Anglican Head: Only Repentance from One Side will Heal Rift

After the release of the long-awaited communiqué from the 38 Primates concerning the resolution for the rift over homosexuality in the Anglican Church, Anglicans around the world have been responding actively.

The decision of the Primates has been hailed by conservative evangelicals in the 77 million-member Church as a victory against homosexuality. The gay-tolerant US Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada were asked to bow out for at least three years from the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).

The election of an openly homosexual bishop - Gene Robinson in the US, and the blessing of same-sex unions in Canada have triggered division between Anglican liberals - many of them in North America - and conservatives, who are strongest in Africa and Asia.

The rift has consumed the power and unity of the Anglican Church for nearly two years, and many have feared that this long-standing influential major denomination in the world would possibly collapse if the delicate relationship between member Churches was formally declared broken.

On Friday, the panel of senior bishops who drafted the closing communiqué held a news conference at Dromantine Conference Centre in Country Down, Newry, Northern Ireland. They sought to put a positive gloss on the decision.

"We still face the possibility of division, of course we do," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams acknowledged the crisis in the Church frankly. He also admitted that there is no painless solution.

He reminded people who had acted in good faith might later realise: "'I hadn't counted the cost.' And that applies in a number of different contexts here." He hinted to those who have been standing firm against homosexuality.

In his sermon at a worship service during the Primates meeting, he criticised the awkwardness with which Anglicans on either side of the debate over homosexuality have treated each other. Holding onto the purpose to reconcile and make peace in the warring Church when managing the current crisis, he disagreed with "activism" and "determination to get an immediate resolution".

A week ago, Archbishop Williams already stated that there was no "cost-free outcome" to the debate.

"Any lasting solution, I think, will require people to say somewhere along the line, 'Yes, we were wrong,'" Archbishop Willaims suggested that the compromise of one side is the way to heal the divided Church.

The Archbishop of Perth, Peter Carnley, primate of Australia's Anglican Church, spoke about yesterday’s news conference. He said that Anglican leaders had "no intention" of watering down the worldwide communion to deal with differences over homosexuality. Archbishop Carnley rejected suggestions that the communion might become "a kind of loose-knit federation".

"That has no interest for the primates," he reaffirmed, adding that the move was not a step towards a collapse of the communion, but was designed "to create some space".

Archbishop Carnley told BBC radio yesterday that both sides of the debate respected Christian scriptures, but merely "read certain texts differently".

The temporary absence of the North American churches would give them a chance to "present their account of their theological thinking and of the processes which led them to take the decisions that they in fact took", he added.

The temporary split of the US Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada will not be reversed until the next Lambeth Conference in 2008, the communiqué read. At this interim, the conservatives apparently have no intention to compromise.

Traditionalist Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, which is home to almost a quarter of the world's Anglicans, strongly opposes the idea of gay bishops as does much of Africa. African church leaders warn that if Anglicanism takes a lenient line on homosexuality, its followers will desert its pews for more conservative Christian churches or even convert to Islam.

Bishop Henry Orombi of Uganda, while willing to listen carefully to the views of both sides of the debate, believes that the Gospel has the power to change and reconcile.

"I proclaim the good news, and the good news has power to change," he said.