ENS: Canon Robert Williams, who in July will mark four years as senior director in the Episcopal Church Center’s Communication Office, has chosen to step
TIME: The secession it threatened to bring to the 78 million-member Anglican Communion looks like a confused bust. This all comes as a bit of surprise to the press, which — with ample encouragement from the Church’s right — had been framing GAFcon as a decisive step toward schism….GAFcon seems to be falling apart on several fronts.
There are two. Brothers, Peter and Phillip. Together they form the backbone of agressive low church conservatism in the diocese of Sydney.
They were first noticeable on the Mount of Olives, where the Primate of Nigeria was flanked by two guards, complete with Raybans and curly wires leading to ear-pieces. This was trumped by the Bishop of Rochester, whose press conference was staffed by three attentive guards. Journalists were left wondering whether this said more about about the Bishop or about them.
“If the facts are as reported, this is extremely distressing and completely contrary to the longheld stance of this church. I am taking immediate steps to review and address the matter.”
Said in 2004 in an interview where his aim was to improve his image: “It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things.”
These rows are missing four key ingredients – an understanding that ‘top-down’ models of the Church are dying, that the world needs examples of reconciliation and peacemaking rather than animosity, that many want to affirm gay Christians on deeply traditional grounds, and
that disagreement without courtesy and love is destroying the credibility of the Church’s message.
– Simon Barrow
I hope bishops at this summer’s Lambeth Conference will remember that communion is neither an enforced human artifact of pure unity nor a reward for agreeing that everyone like us is right and everyone not like us is wrong. But can we find our way without singing together when music is an essential nutrient in the fertile ground from which communion springs? Does this sound like overstatement? I do mean it.
All religious groups I know about seem to have many people who are afraid of conflict. They cannot distinguish in their minds between disagreement and condemnation. Afraid to say “no,” they live with things they cannot agree with or do jobs they do not really want to do. One day they explode.