Tales from the crypt, Southwark edition

Some comments at Thinking Anglicans following the leak that Jeffrey John will not be the next bishop of Southwark (SUTH-urk):

Ironic if the man who was vetoed for Southwark by George Carey for declining to repudiate his writings on homosexuality should now have vetoed Jeffrey John's nomination to the same diocese. As Göran Koch-Swahne posted earlier today at another blog, "Judas only betrayed his chum once".

Posted by: Lapinbizarre on Thursday, 8 July 2010 at 12:47am BST
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We're told that when Tony Blair received the names for the Diocese of Liverpool he sent them back and asked for another list with the name of James Jones on it. David Cameron should return the Southwark nominations and keep returning them until Jeffrey John's name is there.

Posted by: junius on Thursday, 8 July 2010 at 7:13am BST
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Rowan withdrew his name from Southwark after George invited him to a meeting at Lambeth - he found there his writings all laid out on a table .......

I think we can all pretty accurately guess at the sort of conversation that followed......

Posted by: Martin Reynolds on Thursday, 8 July 2010 at 7:36am BST
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Quote of the day

Quoting from here:

It is in fact a remarkable and heartening truth about the contemporary western world that it has such a vibrant ethical debate as a distinctive part of its culture. Yes, the west does bad things - makes war, exploits and battens, pillages the environment, and much besides - but it also criticises itself about these very things, challenges itself, argues with itself, and sometimes makes things very much better for its denizens than almost anywhere else, at any other time, in the world and human history.

Think of it this way: would you rather live in a functionally secular western country, or in one where the moral climate is much more influenced by what (among others, religious) leaders say it should be?

Some things you may not know about Rowan Williams

From the BBC profile of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams:

In 1997, Dr Williams came close to be offered the post of Bishop of Southwark. There were fierce wrangles at the time between anti and pro-gay lobbies in the diocese. When George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, asked Rowan Williams to distance himself from his pro-gay writings on the subject, he declined. In 2000 he was enthroned as Archbishop of Wales.

Rowan Williams is regarded as a liberal, even a radical. But in general, his theology is orthodox. It's been nurtured by Anglo-Catholicism, Russian mysticism, and scores of encounters with other traditions. Many of his ethical positions are orthodox too. For example he is opposed to abortion and believes consumerism exploits, corrupts and causes a premature sexualisation of children.

Homosexuality has been the cause of recent criticism by fellow priests. Several years ago he employed a priest he knew to be living in a homosexual relationship. It is this, coupled with his conviction that the Church should reassess its approach to faithful gay partnerships that has alarmed conservative evangelicals.
...
* Rowan Williams is unable to drive. His chaplain used to drive him everywhere, so the chauffeur-driven world of Lambeth must have come naturally
* He is hard of hearing in one of his ears
...
* He insists on always travelling second-class

My emphasis.

See what's brewing at Episcopal Café

It's all here.

Williams on religion and government

From his Sunday Times essay, "Down with Godless Government":

But if the state enacts or perpetuates in the corporate life of the nation what is directly contrary to the Christian understanding of God’s purpose, then Christian activism in respect of changing the law is justified, primarily when the state is responsible for — so to speak — compromising the morality of all its citizens.
...
This makes sense, though, only if it is possible to convince those who run things in the public sphere that there are human values and ethical norms to which an entire society is answerable. In our relativist climate, this is very difficult. What tends to happen is that nothing much is left as a substantive moral basis for public life except a poorly defined principle of tolerance or avoidance of mutual harm. The idea that you can give substance to a common social ethic, something to which society as a whole can be held accountable, is unfashionable and unwelcome. Even from the point of view of many who have no religious commitment, there is a recognition that this is a thin diet.

Sounds good. But if there is vociferous disagreement amongst Christians disagree, then what? For example, in the application of their values and norms to the full inclusion of homosexuals? Disagreement this strong points back to basic differences in values and norms derived from our faith. Can we even articulate those differences to each other, let alone to the state?

It is not our relativist climate that has brought some Christians to reject past teachings on homosexuality. Nor is it mere tolerance. It derives from an openness to question where the church may be in error of inclusion and exclusion regarding sin. Is homosexuality sin? Is slavery sin? There is no longer any debate within the church that it wrongly excluded the latter. In time the church will conclude it is an error to include homosexuality in the list of sins.

By the way, you cannot merely list sins. A list does not guide action. Sin is about whether our heart is with God or not. It is never is, of course, but we strive.

Tom Horwood has a column in The Guardian, "Religious leaders should be hopeful, not defensive, in public debate", that serves as a nice companion piece to Williams'. An extract:

There is a new mood of defensiveness within faith communities, the symptom of a fear about where libertarian social trends are leading. It has not always been like this. Skilful religious leaders have engaged in debate and argued persuasively for positive change. Wilberforce, Gandhi and Martin Luther King took unpopular stances, but pointed to a better way for all, inspired by faith.

Archbishop of Canterbury announces he will meet with Episcopal Church

Excerpting from Episcopal Life:

Speaking in a news conference in Toronto, Williams said he would make the visit together with members of the Standing Committee of the Primates, of which Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is a member, and the Anglican Consultative Council.
...
Williams said the meeting will take place during the House of Bishops' previously scheduled fall gathering in New Orleans September 20-25.

"I am glad that he has accepted this invitation, and I know the other bishops will be glad, as well," Jefferts Schori told ENS in an interview following Williams' announcement. "We look forward to a conversation together in September."

Jefferts Schori said that she has received replies from some members of the Joint Standing Committee indicating their plans to attend. Replies from other members are still pending at this time, she said.

This will be the first time Williams has met with the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops or attended a meeting of any of the church's leadership bodies such as General Convention or Executive Council.
...
Jefferts Schori has underscored in earlier interviews that the House of Bishops' resolution inviting the Archbishop of Canterbury to meet with them was passed unanimously.

The article includes this reminder:

In their communiqué, the Primates also gave the House of Bishops, via a response from Jefferts Schori, until September 30 to agree to "make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorise any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention" and "confirm that the passing of Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention means that a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion."

Archbishop of Canterbury to visit US

The press release from his office is here: "this autumn."

This autumn? Very timely.

Last bid to stop Anglican split :: The Guardian

Quote:

Experts believe Williams will conclude that TEC has not taken sufficient steps to conform to the Windsor Report, which reaffirmed the church's position on homosexuality and effectively opposed the ordination of gay bishops.

'Rowan is going to have to make a call,' said Dr Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the diocese of South Carolina. 'My sense is that he's going to conclude TEC's response has been inadequate. This is a pivotal moment; there is a real risk now that the primates are not going to be able to stop the church from coming apart.'

At the conference, Williams will be briefed by the 'gang of four', a group of advisers he hand-picked to help him draw up his response. Bernard Malango, Archbishop of Central Africa, Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales and two lay members, Philippa Amable and Elizabeth Paver, are expected to criticise the US liberals.

I wouldn't be surprised if the reasserter Kendall Harmon is correct. Kendall probably is as good as any at reading the tea leaves. But The Guardian should point out who he is and where he stands.

More:

The outcome of the conference is likely to create a furore about the role of the Anglican Communion's senior clergy. Martin Reynolds, spokesman for the LGCM [Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement], said the bishops were to blame for the bitter divisions: 'They have failed to heal this divide. They've exacerbated it. This is about fear of schism, fear of decisions, fear of each other.'

And Reynolds said any implicit condemnation of homosexual bishops would be at odds with reality. 'There are more than 100 gay bishops in the Anglican Communion. If they all stood up, this argument would not happen.'

From Wikipedia: The Anglican Churches in the British Isles are the main focus of LGCM activity, but its membership and interests are nonetheless entirely ecumenical and international.

These sacred mysteries: Gays, marriage and Rowan Williams :: The Telegraph

Extract:

He had long supported the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. His theological attitude to homosexual relations depended in part upon finding in the Bible a condemnation of homosexual acts performed for gratification, but no biblical distinction between such acts and homosexual disposition.

It would, the argument went, be unjust to consign to celibacy those who had never known sexual attraction to the opposite sex. Logically, homosexual partnerships would be acceptable to all who endorse contraception, the thinking being that once the link between sex and procreation is broken, then other forms of sexual relations cannot be ruled out.

Within the Anglican Communion, some believe that the plain words of the Bible condemn homosexual acts, and others insist that the clear universal teaching of the Church cannot be overturned unilaterally by local churches (that is, individual bishops). Between them, they form a big enough group to threaten the Anglican Church with a permanent split.
...
Canterbury's authority is in theory merely that of Primate of all England. In practice that position has grown, as if in an unwritten constitution, into a figurehead for the entire Anglican Communion. So Dr Williams has tried to hold together Anglicans by sticking to an agreed position, and discouraging unilateral actions such as ordination of bishops living with gay partners, even if that seems to go against his private opinions in the past.

Church of England General Synod :: Observor

Quote:

At the synod the church's bishops will try to head off calls for fairer treatment for gay people and an opposite motion from conservative evangelicals to harden its line against civil partnerships for same sex couples. In attempts to emasculate the motions, the bishops of Gloucester and Liverpool will move amendments seeking "to prevent the diversity of opinion about human sexuality creating further division and impaired fellowship within the Church of England and the Anglican Communion".

The moves to avoid further divisions come as concern rises about next week's meeting in Tanzania of the church's 38 archbishops and presiding bishops from around the world at which African church leaders are threatening to walk out if the American presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, is allowed to attend, because of her support for the US's gay bishop, Gene Robinson, and for blessings of gay couples.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is due to preside over the meeting, is said to be nervous that the meeting will break up in disorder with the third largest Christian denomination finally being plunged into schism because of its divisions over homosexuality.

If the US Episcopal Church does withdraw, it is likely to plunge Anglicanism into a financial as well as a doctrinal quagmire, since it underwrites the activities of the worldwide communion.

Louis Crew receives an email :: Church Times

Church Times (UK), January 26 (web version in full):

Secretary-general hints at ‘difficulties’ with Dr Williams
by a staff reporter

DISQUIET at the attitude of Dr Williams to the Episcopal Church in the United States (ECUSA) is shared by the secretary-general of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon, it was revealed this week.

Last week, the Bishop of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, the Rt Revd Paul Marshall, criticised the Archbishop for cold-shouldering the Episcopal Church (News, 19 January). The relationship was “distant, confused, and multiply triangulated”, wrote Bishop Marshall.

In an unguarded email to Louis Crewe, who runs the pro-gay Integrity organisation in the US, Canon Kearon writes that he had sent Bishop Marshall’s criticism to Dr Williams.

“Sadly, it’s very accurate, and is almost the script for a very difficult meeting I had with him last Wednesday,” he writes. “We discussed absolute limits of appeasement, and also how a future direction might be identified.”

More cryptically, he ends his email: “Advisers (and sadly I’m not one of them) are at the heart of this.”

Via MadPriest who has more to say about Rowan Williams' advisers at Lambeth Palace.

UPDATE: I'd failed to notice that Jim Naughton at daily episcopalian also picked up this story. In his post Jim links the story above with this news:

Archbishop of Canterbury has invited Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, to attend a special session of the Primates Meeting to be held on Wednesday February 14 in Tanzania. Duncan has accepted.

Another Episcopal bishop, as yet unnamed, will also receive an invitation, the magazine reports.

This is a great public relations victory for Duncan and the Network, and the archbishop has to be aware of that.

It would be nice if the player to be named later is a bishop who has not asked for alternative primatial oversight and who wholeheartedly supports PB Schori. But the damage has been done. This is a meetings of primates. Duncan is not a primate.

At titusonenine the comments r.e. Duncan story are plentiful.

UPDATE 2: 2nd bishop named. Preludium has the story:

The choice of Bishop MacPherson is an interesting one. He is a fine bishop and has just recently been made the President of the Presiding Bishop's Council of Advice. He is conservative but a very constructive and pastoral person. His presence is, however, contrary to the Council of Advice's own read of the matter of inviting additional people from the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal News Service article on the meeting said this; "The Council was not encouraging of the Archbishop of Canterbury's consideration of additional "dissenting" bishops from this Church attending the Primates' Meeting."

So Bishop MacPherson goes as the President of a Council that advised against consideration of additional "dissenting" bishops attending the meeting. Believing him to be a person of great integrity I am sure he goes not as a "dissenting" bishop and not with the understanding that he is attending the Primates Meeting. We may rightly hope that he will be a moderate voice.

Rowan Williams accused :: The Times

Ruth Gledhill reporting on Bishop Marshall's letter:

Although Bishop Marshall is an elderly bishop who is little known outside his numerically small province of The Episcopal Church, his words are being afforded weight because they reflect a growing frustration at Dr Williams, primus inter pares, or first among equals of all 39 Primates.
. . .
Dr Williams, as an academic and as Archbishop of Wales, was understood on his appointment to the top job to be liberal on the issue of gay clergymen.

In essays such as The Body’s Grace, he argued a Christian case for the acceptance of homosexuality.

But since becoming Archbishop, he has distanced himself from these views and become more sympathetic to the conservative cause, believing that Church unity must come first.
. . .
A Lambeth Palace spokesman defended the Archbishop last night. He said: "The Archbishop of Canterbury has already said there is no aspect of this debate which is pain-free. Just because the liberal voice is not all that often heard in complaint does not mean to say that they do not feel this pain just as acutely."

Here are some google search results on "The Body's Grace."

Here is a link to The Body's Grace, by Rowan Williams, 1989. Read the whole thing. Quoting an isolated paragraph does not do justice to the whole, but here is one:

In fact, of course, in a church which accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts, or on a problematic and non-scriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures. I suspect that a fuller exploration of the sexual metaphors of the Bible will have more to teach us about a theology and ethics of sexual desire than will the flat citation of isolated texts; and I hope other theologians will find this worth following up more fully than I can do here.

Bums in pews are often just that :: Times of London

Quote:

Churches in Britain are a “toxic cocktail” of bullying and terror, as parish priests struggle to lead congregations dominated by neurotic worshippers who spread havoc with gossip and manipulation.
[...]
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is among the contributors to the report, The Future of the Parish System: Shaping the Church of England for the 21st Century.

One of the authors, Sara Savage, a psychology and religion researcher at the University of Cambridge, reports how increasing numbers of ministers are going down with a new illness, irritable clergy syndrome.
[...]
One difficulty is how to motivate the “settled blancmange” of the softly acquiescent majority, described by Dr Savage as “social loafers”. “Bums on pews are often just that,” she reports.

Dr Savage says one of the problems is that churches are hierarchical systems, with all the attendant echoes of feudal society. Thus they elicit bad behaviour such as status seeking, fawning, bullying, passivity, blaming others and gossiping.

Here's what Farkers are saying.

Episcopalians reach out to conservatives :: AP

Quote:

NEW YORK — Episcopal leaders offered conservatives more independence from the national church Thursday, as a California diocese quietly backed down from its threat of a swift break with the denomination.

The Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno, made the change as it came under pressure from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her advisers to ease off a proposal to leave.
. . .
The proposal would create a leadership position called a "primatial vicar." The vicar would work with conservative dioceses, performing functions that normally fall to Jefferts Schori, including consecrating local bishops.

A representative of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, would have a role on a panel of church leaders supervising the appointee. However, the vicar would ultimately be under the authority of Jefferts Schori. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. wing of the 77 million-member Anglican family.

Virginia Bishop Peter Lee, a leader in developing the proposal, said the group that worked on the idea was "conscious of the need to respond quickly to the needs of parishes and dioceses." The Diocese of San Joaquin had been set to vote on a split at its convention, which runs through Saturday.
. . .
Canon Kendall Harmon, a conservative leader from the Diocese of South Carolina, said he was encouraged that Lee and others acknowledged the urgency of the situation. But he said the proposal failed to address underlying theological differences and their impact on the church.

"It's as if at the last minute they pulled a feather out of their hat and said, 'Here,'" Harmon said.

Episcopal News Service:

The Primatial Vicar, accountable to the Presiding Bishop, would report to an advisory panel that would include the designees of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Presiding Bishop, the President of the House of Deputies, and a bishop of the Episcopal Church selected by the dioceses petitioning for pastoral care by the Primatial Vicar.

The response makes clear that the arrangement does not affect the administrative or other canonical duties of the Presiding Bishop except to the degree that the Presiding Bishop may wish to delegate some of those duties to the Primatial Vicar. The response also specifies that the Primatial Vicar and the Advisory Panel shall function in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church.

Over at titusonenine the text of the response by the Archbishop Bishop of Canterbury is given and there's plenty of comments.

Consequences consequences

Falls Church News-Press Opinion: Schism is a small price to pay

Is size all that matters to the Anglican Church? It appears that the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, is willing to steamroll gays to prevent a seismic schism that would decrease membership rolls. . . . The painful nature of this debate brings up existential questions that leaders such as William seem unprepared to face. For example, is the more successful church the one brimming with members based on bigotry or is it the smaller institution walking in righteousness? . . . If the church thinks Equal-lite is the solution, it is headed for a schism. In a sense, this skirmish is no longer about gay people in the Anglican Communion. It is about whether the church is still a conduit for spiritual integrity and intellectual honesty. If members can no longer be true to their beliefs, then the institution will have lost much of its power and meaning. Is a church that dictates one’s conscience rather than allowing one to live as his conscience dictates worth saving? . . . As a practical matter, most church-goers won’t even notice the missing malcontents if the Anglican Church splits. . . . Yes, bigger can be better, but the Anglican Church may soon learn that the size of ideas matter more than the size of membership lists.

The HooK: "There have to be consequences"

Vander Wel says the new bishop is out of step with the Anglican Communion's governing body in England that in 2004 asked the Episcopal Church to express regret for consecrating Bishop Robinson and to place a moratorium on approving any more gay bishops.

"This is a fatal blow in the Anglican Communion if the Episcopal Church does not comply," says Vander Wel. "The Anglican Communion will cease to be as it exists."
. . .
Vander Wel, however, says the resolution does not go far enough-- because there are no built-in consequences for violating it. "The Episcopal Church is an undisciplined church," he says. "I have a little boy, and it'd be like saying don't throw food off your tray; and he throws food off his tray, and I don't do anything about it. There have to be consequences."

But the Diocese of Newark now has a metaphorical handful of Cheerios cocked and ready to test mother church. Just last week, on June 28, it nominated an openly gay priest as one of four candidates to be its next bishop.

The Rev. Brian Vander Wel is associate rector of Charlotteville's Christ Episcopal Church.

On being a prophet: truth and consequences

The Lexington Herald-Leader asks, A church divided cannot stand -- can it? Quoting:

Around the world, friends in the 77 million-member Anglican communion are taking sides. In a letter this week, the Archbishop of Canterbury hinted that in a newly reconfigured Communion, the U.S. church and others who make "significant decisions unilaterally" might end up as "associate" members, observers with "no direct part in the decision making."

Noting that some provinces no longer have full communion with the Episcopal Church, Archbishop Rowan Williams made no apologies. "It isn't a question of throwing people into outer darkness, but of recognizing that actions have consequences -- and that actions believed in good faith to be 'prophetic' in their radicalism are likely to have costly consequences."

Regarding gays and lesbians, Williams said that "rhetoric about 'inclusion'" should not obscure the key issue -- whether a church which seeks to be "loyal to the Bible" must bless homosexual behavior or warn against it.

In other words, the Episcopal Church is acting as a prophet. If one examines the Bible, one quickly sees: (1) Prophets in the Bible are rarely popular, and (2) prophets in the Bible are rarely wrong as seen in hindsight by the faith community. This does not imply that the Episcopal Church is prophetic. No doubt the Bible includes only those prophets that proved right in the interpretation of the faith community.

Rowan Williams is saying that it is indeed possible that the Episcopal Church will prove to have it right, but that for now it is proving to be a voice that much of the Anglican Community does not accept. That's quite a complement.

In the meantime, acting as prophet - being an irritant to the faith community - necessarily means bearing the consequences. Rowan Williams is right: there's no way to be a prophet and avoid the consequence of being shunned by the faith community.

Are prophets good for the faith? The Bible tells us they are.

Therein lies the answer to question: Can a divided church stand? Answer that by asking this question: has God stopped sending prophets?

A letter to the Diocese of Virginia from the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, Bishop

Extract (my emphasis):

In a story in today’s Washington Times newspaper (June 29, 2006), reporting on the election by the Nigerian Episcopal Synod of the Rev. Canon Martyn Minns as a bishop of the Church of Nigeria, it is asserted that Truro Church, Fairfax and The Falls Church, Falls Church have informed me that they plan to leave the Diocese.

I have had no such conversation with either church. In fact, I received a call today from the Rev. John Yates, rector of The Falls Church, to apologize for the assertion in the story and to assure me that there is no such plan on the part of The Falls Church. I also received today an e-mail from the Rev. Martyn Minns assuring me that no such decision had been made at Truro.

The election of the Rev. Martyn Minns as a Bishop of the Church of Nigeria with oversight of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America is an affront to the traditional, orthodox understanding of Anglican Provincial Autonomy. Archbishop Akinola acknowledges as much in his letter to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. How that situation resolves itself remains to be seen. However, the request by Archbishop Akinola that Martyn be allowed to continue as rector of an Episcopal congregation while also serving as a Nigerian Bishop seems to me, at this point, to be impossible.

Here's the June 29th Washington Times article (and correction). In "A Note from Truro Church" (click, then scroll down) Minns writes "As the saying goes, don't believe everything you read. Thursday's headline in the Washington Times was terribly wrong-I literally groaned when I saw their headline this morning. I guess the true facts were not exciting enough for their headlines. The Truro congregation has not gone through its discernment process and so no decision has been made about our future plans." Finally, at The Falls Church homepage (under What's Happening @ TFC - Recent News): "The Washington Times reported that our church informed our Bishop that we are leaving the Diocese of Virginia and leaving the Episcopal Church. This certainly is not true and misrepresents where we are as a congregation. It is true that we think an extended period of study, prayer, and deliberation about how we are to respond to the serious rift in our denomination is wise and we are hoping to engage in such a time this fall."

Archbishop of Canterbury: 'Challenge and hope' for the Anglican Communion

Here's the full text of Rowan Williams' ‘The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today, A Reflection for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion’.

I have no immediate reaction on the substance.

Will most Anglicans even know what he is talking about? I doubt it. And that's part of the problem. The leaders of the church are generally unable to communicate their thoughts in a way that can be understood. Presuming they have something useful to communicate, that's a problem.

Wither the Anglican Church?: Schism

New York Times:

In a defining moment in the Anglican Communion's civil war over homosexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed a plan yesterday that could force the Episcopal Church in the United States either to renounce gay bishops and same-sex unions or to give up full membership in the Communion.

The archbishop, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, said the "best way forward" was to devise a shared theological "covenant" and ask each province, as the geographical divisions of the church are called, to agree to abide by it.

Provinces that agree would retain full status as "constituent churches," and those that do not would become "churches in association" without decision-making status in the Communion, the world's third largest body of churches.
. . .
The archbishop said his proposal could allow local churches in the United States to separate from the Episcopal Church and join the American wing that stays in the Communion. But that process could take years, and some American parishes are already planning to break from the Episcopal Church. Entire dioceses may announce their intention to depart, as soon as today.

The NYT article ends:

Archbishop Williams said in his statement, "The reason Anglicanism is worth bothering with is because it has tried to find a way of being a church that is neither tightly centralized nor a loose federation of essentially independent bodies."

But that decentralization will continue to be a cause of conflict unless it is addressed, he said, adding, "What our Communion lacks is a set of adequately developed structures which is able to cope with the diversity of views that will inevitably arise in a world of rapid global communication and huge cultural variety."

He's characterized the organizational uniqueness of the Anglican Communion. But, at least in this quote he's not explained why that characteristic makes the Communion "worth bothering with." I'll read his statement and get back to you if I see some explanation.

Church of England faces mutiny

Quote:

The Church of England’s most senior cleric is facing an “unprecedented” attack on his authority after senior clergy condemned his more liberal stance on gay priests, the Guardian said on Thursday.

The newspaper said 17 of Anglicanism’s 38 primates had signed a “highly personal” letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, urging him to take action against “unrepented sexual immorality” in the Church.