ANGLICANS TO SEEK PACT TO PREVENT A SCHISM

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: August 4, 2008

CANTERBURY, England — Nearly three weeks of discussion aimed at preventing a breakup of the worldwide Anglican Communion over homosexuality ended Sunday at a conference here with 650 bishops and archbishops agreeing to seek a new pact among all parties to the ecclesiastical controversy.

The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, announced a consensus to seek the pact, known as a covenant, in the absence of a formal vote at the Lambeth Conference, which meets in Canterbury every 10 years.

Archbishop Williams, the supreme voice of a church that is reckoned the third largest Christian denomination, after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox faiths, had decided ahead of the meeting to avoid resolutions and votes in hopes of preventing a schism that might well rupture worldwide Anglicanism more severely than at any time in more than 450 years.

The push for a covenant amounted to a stratagem for finding both short- and long-term solutions to a dispute that has bitterly divided an estimated 80 million Anglicans worldwide. The split has expressed itself most keenly in the starkly opposed views of traditionalists, primarily in Africa and Asia, who oppose any concessions on homosexuality, and of more liberal elements, especially in the United States and Canada, who favor the ordination of openly gay and lesbian clergy members and church blessings of same-sex unions.

Archbishop Williams told reporters that he hoped Anglican leaders could agree on a draft covenant within a year, but said that winning approval for it among the 44 national and regional churches of the Anglican Communion could take until 2013. That period might coincide with a push among the bishops here to hold another Lambeth meeting after only five years.

In the meantime, the archbishop said, agreement was widespread for continuing “moratoria” on the ordination of gay and lesbian priests and blessings of same-sex unions and for matching restraint by conservatives [who offer cross-border oversight to faithful Anglicans who flee liberal provinces]. A document published as the conference ended spoke of the moratoriums ushering in “a season of gracious restraint” while the covenant is negotiated.

The archbishop said the decision to seek agreement on a covenant while urging church liberals in North America to hold back on the openings to homosexuals was broadly supported in the small-group gatherings of about 40 prelates each that, together with smaller Bible study groups, constituted the main work of the conference. The small groups were called indabas, after a Zulu term for tribal meetings, often at a village level, to iron out disputes by discussion. Like the bar on voting, the process was intended to avoid breaking into disarray over homosexuality.

The outcome appeared to be a modest triumph for Archbishop Williams, a bearded, Welsh-born theologian with liberal views on gay and lesbian issues who was enthroned as the archbishop of Canterbury in 2003. That was just as strains among Anglicans over homosexuality were coming to a boil over the election of an openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire.

Archbishop Williams, 58, has been criticized by conservatives and liberals alike for his efforts to steer a middle course. Even church moderates have suggested that his acknowledged intellectual talents may not have been matched by the political skills and personal force needed to wrench a lasting compromise out of the contending parties.

But the conference document, called Indaba Reflections, prepared by a group of bishops, spoke of the “great affection and love” for Archbishop Williams among participants, suggesting that the gathering may have strengthened his hand. He spoke at a news conference with a tone of relieved assurance, while acknowledging more than once that the bishops had met under the threat of a breakup in the Anglican Communion, as the loose network that grew out of the Church of England is called. In one wry aside, he spoke of what he called the communion’s “current rather wobbly state.”

“I think we’ve emerged at the end of this conference with some quite surprising results: a surprising level of sheer willingness to stay together, and a surprising level of agreement about what might be necessary to make that happen,” he said. “For all that the details of the covenant proposal still need a great deal of clarification, nonetheless there is a following wind for that. There is also a wide degree of agreement about the need for moratoria on both sides where divisive actions are concerned.”

The conference left unclear what form the proposed covenant might take and the extent to which it might seek to lay down a code of practice on homosexuality. Some bishops appeared to see the document as a statement of shared beliefs and a commitment to abide by them; others saw something much looser. Many saw it as a possible step toward a two-tier communion, consisting of churches that embrace the covenant and those that do not, with those that do not still staying, formally but loosely, within the communion.

In remarks to reporters, Archbishop Williams said little to clarify what the covenant might entail. But when he described the kind of church he saw emerging from future discussions, he spoke of a willingness to conform to agreed practices that sounded more disciplined than the Anglican Communion has been in recent times. “I hope that a little bit more mutual responsibility and accountability, a bit more willingness to walk in step, will make us more like a church,” he said.

In a remark that appeared directed at conservatives and liberals alike, he said Anglicans should work against “the tendency of local churches to get trapped in their local contexts” at the cost of shared spiritual ideals.

More pointedly, he appealed to “the North American churches” to stick to moratoriums on the ordination of openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions, saying their failure to do so would imperil the chances of broad agreement on the proposed covenant. And that, he said, would mean that “our communion will continue to be in great peril.”

END