“It’s something that I like to point out,” said the Bishop Eugene Sutton,the first black Episcopal bishop in Maryland, “the historical anomaly of dioceses that have nothing to do with the black community going all the way to Africa to make these relationships.”
There is rather more fallout from the revelation that the Archbishop of Canterbury holds a position on gay relationships that we already knew he held but had never seen him state so clearly than seems entirely necessary.
As for whether he would follow up on his earlier intention to push for ending the moratorium on gay bishops and allowing church recognition of same-sex marriage when the Episcopal Church meets at its General Convention next year, Shaw said he would now wait until he meets with all the American bishops next month to decide how he will proceed.
I was encouraged by what both bishops had to say about the future of the proposed Anglican Covenant. The appendix of the St. Andrew’s Draft of the covenant, which provides detailed and convoluted procedures by which one province might prosecute and eventually marginalize another, appears to be dead in the water.
The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania has issued its opinion that Bishop Charles Bennison should be deposed for covering up the sexual abuse of his brother.
Coming from a conservative back-ground I was not even prepared to listen to any person who supported the gay and lesbian people. However, the Indaba experience has changed my opinion. After listening to the stories of bishops coming from different cultural contexts I have become aware of the pain and agony people have bear because of our attitude towards each other.
There seems little chance that all Canadian Anglican clergy will honor the moratorium on blessing same-sex unions requested by the worldwide Anglican communion. Archbishop Fred Hiltz, the Primate of Canada pointed out that the decision-making synods of four more Canadian dioceses have in the past year asked their bishops to authorize same-sex blessings.
Williams says that he concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.
All ten videos that were used to introduce the daily themes at the Lambeth Conference are now available at the Trinity Wall Street web site.
But, most worryingly, the Archbishop’s position gives ammunition to those regimes where institutionalised homophobia and misogyny have truly tragic consequences. Two of the bishops who’ve been vocal in their lambasting of the liberals hail from Uganda and Nigeria, states where punitive laws against homosexuals are still on the statute book…