The spiritual head of the Anglican Communion’s 77-million followers, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has admitted that the worldwide Church now faces a very possible split following the bitter row that has engulfed the Communion over the consecration of gay clergy.
A statement issued by his Lambeth Palace office on Tuesday, Dr Williams has outlined proposals that are expected to lead to the exclusion of The Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) from the Anglican Communion as a consequence of consecrating a gay bishop in 2003, and for continuingly not backing down on the issue.It revealed that Williams proposes that Churches should be asked to sign a formal covenant, which would allow some to be fuller members of the Anglican Communion than others.
A dual system is proposed, whereby there would be full “constituent” members to the Communion that have conformed to the traditional Biblical views of the Church, but also another section of “associate” members which will incorporate rebel and more liberally-viewed Churches.
The move has come following the ECUSA’s failure to "repent" for its actions to liberalise the gay agenda of the Church at its General Convention in Columbus, Ohio earlier this month. In addition, the ECUSA also failed to vote through a moratorium on any more gay consecrations.
Williams said: “Those churches that were prepared to take this on as an expression of their responsibility to each other would limit their local freedoms for the sake of a wider witness: some might not be willing to do this.”
“We could arrive at a situation where there were ‘constituent’ Churches in the Anglican Communion and other ‘churches in association’, which were bound by historic and perhaps personal links, fed from many of the same sources but not bound in a single and unrestricted sacramental communion and not sharing the same constitutional structures.”
All Anglican provinces will be offered to sign up to a "covenant" which will lay out traditional, Biblical standards on which all full members of the Anglican Church can agree.However, Churches such as the ECUSA, as well as the Anglican Churches in Canada and New Zealand, and even the Scottish Episcopal Church are likely to refuse a commitment to such principles. Therefore, the option would be open whereby these Churches that refused to sign could choose to cut all ties with Canterbury, or they could elect to move to the new associate status.
The ECUSA was the body that brought the worldwide Communion to crisis point in 2003, when it consecrated the Communion’s first ever openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, as the Bishop of New Hampshire.
Most recently, last week, US Episcopalians rejected demands from conservatives in Africa and at home that they elect no more gay bishops. Episcopalians voted instead to call simply for “restraint” to be used with regards to the issue.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, attempting to guide the 77-million-member Communion, has written a letter to its 38 archbishops stating: “There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment.”
Dr Rowan Williams also said in his letter that “associate” Churches would be comparable to the Methodist Church in Britain. In 2003 the Methodist Church also signed a covenant with the Church of England at Westminster’s Methodist Central Hall, which was witnessed by the Queen, who is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment.
Dr Rowan Williams
