London, UK - A split in the Anglican Church was inevitable, a leading conservative cleric said last night as he attacked Rowan Williams’s belief that gay relationships could be “comparable to marriage”.
After a successful Lambeth Conference for the Archbishop of Canterbury, where he avoided schism over the issue, Dr Williams faced a fresh furore over the strength of his liberal views.
The Primate of the Southern Cone, Bishop Gregory Venables, predicted the end of the communion, saying: “This is more evidence of the unravelling of Anglicanism. Without a clearly agreed biblical foundation, all the goodwill in the world cannot stop the inevitable break-up. Unity without truth is disunity.”
Bishop Venables, who has infuriated North American Anglicans by taking conservative defectors into his South American province, including the entire Diocese of San JoaquÍn in central California, was among the organisers of the recent Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem.
With Archbishop Henry Orombi, of Uganda, and Dr Peter Akinola, of Nigeria, he will be at the meeting of the Global Anglican primates in London this month, where Anglican bishops who boycotted Lambeth will discuss Dr Williams’s views.
A leading Global South primate told The Times that most conservative bishops and archbishops in Africa and Asia had been unaware of Dr Williams’s personal theology on same-sex relations and had never read his 1989 essayThe Body’s Grace, where he gave some indication of his views.
The disclosures will add impetus to the Global Anglican Future movement and drive liberals and conservatives in the Anglican Communion even farther apart.
The emergence of Dr Williams’s views, in private correspondence published byThe Times yesterday, prompted renewed attacks on his leadership from British conservatives.
The Rev Rod Thomas, of Reform, a network of Anglican evangelicals committed to reforming the Church of England, said: “For many people in the communion, what this reveals calls into question the ability of Dr Williams to lead the communion out of the crisis it is in. Despite his considerable personal qualities, he is so obviously torn. In his very person he is bound to give encouragement to one side of the controversy. This leaves a vacuum of leadership and that is why the Global Anglican Future Conference emerged.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury also came under attack from liberals, particularly in the United States, who accused him of “rank hypocrisy” for blaming them for rifts among Anglicans, while British liberals criticised him for putting unity before belief.
The Rev Susan Russell, of the US gay lobby group Integrity, said that Dr Williams was seeking a false unity based in dishonesty. The latest revelations would encourage liberals in North America to press on with their agenda and protect them against charges of apostasy, she said.
“That Archbishop Rowan Williams’s theology is identical to that held by Canadian and American Anglican Churches currently blessing same-sex unions is not news,” Ms Russell said. “What should be news is the rank hypocrisy of Williams’s willingness to lay at the feet of Canadian and American Anglicans the blame for divisions in the communion when the only difference between what’s happening in our Churches and in his is that we’re telling the truth about it.”
The Rev Giles Fraser, Vicar of St Mary’s in Putney, southwest London, which played host to the gay US bishop Gene Robinson on his recent visit to London, said: “I know Dr Williams thinks the Church is important. But this is almost saying the Church is more important than belief. We had a Reformation to change that view.”
Clergy and laity in the centre ground defended Dr Williams. The Rev Graham Kings, Vicar of St Mary’s, Islington, in North London and founder of the open evangelical group Fulcrum, said the letters “added nothing” to what was known of Dr Williams’s views.
Dr Williams said in a letter to an evangelical churchgoer that, after 20 years of thought, study and prayer, he had concluded that the Bible did not condemn homosexuality.
A Western imposition
Analysis: Tabu Butagira
It is no coincidence that African bishops are among the most prominent voices speaking against same-sex relations.
Africans are largely conservative about issues of sexuality. Homosexual relationships are illegal in most parts of the continent. In Uganda, sodomy attracts a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The continent now finds itself struggling with an increase in homosexual behaviour, which is seen by many Africans as an alien cultural imposition perpetuated by rich Westerners targeting vulnerable youths. Indigenous African communities often shun and vilify homosexuals.
Opposition to homosexuality has united African political leaders, atheists and clerics determined to defeat what is seen as cultural imperialism. The disagreement within the Anglican Communion looks set only to deepen further.