Dar Es Salaam: Archbishop faces Church split

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:27am GMT 14/02/2007

The Archbishop of Canterbury arrived at a critical Anglican summit yesterday looking increasingly likely to back a "parallel" Church for conservatives, a move that will appal liberals.

Dr Rowan Williams called for divine guidance after he flew into Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania for the five-day primates' meeting, that will be dominated by the bitter row over homosexuality that could split Anglicanism.

"We have a difficult meeting ahead of us with many challenges and many decisions to make," he said.

"I hope that all the people of the Church will be praying for us as we meet together as the leaders of the Anglican Church worldwide and that God's will will be done."

He will come under pressure from the conservative Global South leaders to discipline the liberal American Episcopal Church for consecrating Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop in 2003, in breach of official policy. The conservatives have also drawn up a blueprint for a new parallel "ecclesial body" to accommodate conservative American Anglicans who reject the leadership of their liberal Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori.

Seven conservative American bishops have so far indicated that they want to come under an alternative leader.

About another dozen or so are expected to follow suit if Dr Williams gives the plan his blessing.

But the creation of a parallel Anglican structure within the Episcopal Church will be fiercely resisted by liberal Americans, who will see it as unwarranted interference.

More alarmingly for Bishop Schori, it would result in the appointment of a rival Presiding Bishop — called a "moderator" under the Global South plans — who would wield authority within a significant part of her domain.

Moreover, such a precedent could have serious ramifications worldwide, including the Church of England where opponents of women bishops are calling for their own "Third Province", free of women clergy.

According to insiders, the Global South group is proposing that the new body will consist of a "college" of bishops that will minister to dioceses and parishes across America that affiliate with it.

The college would choose three moderators from within its ranks, one of whom would be selected by the primates and given powers equivalent to those exercised by the Presiding Bishop, the American equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Williams is understood to be prepared to countenance a version of this arrangement. But he is likely to argue for a significantly watered down variation in the hope that a less radical plan might be reluctantly accepted by the liberal leadership of the Episcopal Church in return for remaining within the worldwide Communion.

The first step in the process will take place today when the primates hear the views of three American bishops.

But to make any further progress, Dr Williams still needs to persuade all the primates to sit in the same room together at the start of the official meeting on Thursday.

This article comes from The Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

The URL for this story is:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/14/nchurch14.xml