30 September 2015 A.D. Proposal to loosen Anglican Communion ties draws mixed responses
30
September 2015 A.D. Proposal to loosen Anglican
Communion ties draws mixed responses
Grunday,
Trevor and Frederick Nzwili. “Proposal to loosen Anglican Communion ties draws
mixed responses.” Religion News Service. 17
Sept 2015. http://www.religionnews.com/2015/09/17/proposal-loosen-anglican-communion-ties-draws-mixed-responses/. Accessed 30 Sept 2015.
CANTERBURY,
England (RNS) A proposal to loosen the ties of the bitterly divided
Anglican Communion drew mostly favorable reactions in Britain, while
African prelates said they needed time to study the matter.
Justin
Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, drew headlines this week after he floated
a proposal to invite all 38 national church heads of the Anglican
Communion to explore how Anglicans can stay together while going their separate
ways when it comes to dealing with two of the most explosive issues facing the
Christian world: inclusion of LGBT people and the ordination of women.
Welby’s
proposal would allow the communion to maintain relations with liberal churches
of North America that recognize and encourage gay marriage and with the mainly
African churches, led by Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria, that strenuously oppose any
efforts at gay inclusion.
Both
will then be able to call themselves “Anglican” under the proposal.
Asked
whether this represented a divorce or a separation, an unnamed source at the
archbishop’s office told The
Guardian:
“It’s more like (a couple) sleeping in separate bedrooms.”
One
element of Welby’s proposal is to ask the Anglican Church in North America, a breakaway
group from the Episcopal Church, USA, to attend the meeting in January — but
not as a full member.
Welby’s call for a make-or-break summit dominated the pages of several newspapers, radio and TV news bulletins in Britain, where the response was mostly welcoming.
The
Rev. Sally Hitchiner, a prominent gay priest in the Church of England, told The
Guardian: “This is a positive move for all sort of reasons. We can’t hold
together from a place like England where an archbishop of Canterbury could be
in a gay marriage possibly in my lifetime, to somewhere like Uganda, where they
want to imprison people for gay sex.”
In
Africa, responses were more muted.
“We
will be seeking to know what he means by a more loose organization,” said
Anglican Bishop Joseph Kanuku of Machakos, Kenya. “For us, the Bible
should be the compass and the pilot guiding the ideology of any new structure
formed.”
Bishop
Julius Kalu of Kenya’s Mombasa Diocese said: “I don’t think this will solve the
problems of the communion. The Anglican Communion is such an old organization,
that may not be easy to
replace. We know even before the
emergence of the disputes over
homosexuality, the communion was
a loose union of dioceses and
provinces. It is still. We have
been united in diversity.”
There
is concern that if the African churches decide to withdraw altogether from the
Anglican Communion, they will pressure conservative churches within the
Church of England to align with GAFCON, the so-called Global Anglican Future
Conference, as a kind of rival to the communion. With 80 million members, the
Anglican Communion is currently the world’s third-largest Christian body.
Uganda
Archbishop Stanley Ntagali said he received the invitation but was still
studying its contents.
“I
am still consulting with my colleagues in GAFCON,” he said. “I will be giving a
response in the due course.”
At
the 2008 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Communion’s 10-year meeting,
nearly 250 out of the 800 invitees stayed away.
Welby
had previously announced the indefinite postponement of the next Lambeth
Conference.
In
an interview
with the BBC’s Radio Four, David Walker, the bishop of Manchester, said Welby
has met most of the world’s national church heads in recent years, so no one
should be surprised that he called a meeting to discuss the future of the
Anglican Communion.
“I
think most will come,” he said. “It isn’t just about sexuality. There will be
other issues on the agenda.”
Walker
acknowledged that Welby is taking a big risk bringing so many
prelates together. But he added: “This is about finding a way forward for
the Anglican Communion. I think we can find a good solution.”
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