Now there are five.

According to the ENS, five primates have now announced that they will boycott Lambeth in protest to the inclusion of the bishops the Episcopal Church amongst the assembled. Today Archbishop Nzimbi of Kenya joined four others who had previously indicated their concerns.

From the ENS article written by Matthew Davies:

“Archbishops Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Henry Orombi of Uganda, and Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone — who make up five of the 38 Anglican Primates — told the 21 English bishops that they would not attend Lambeth in protest to the invitations extended by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Episcopal Church’s bishops. Akinola, Kolini and Orombi had all previously announced that they intended to boycott the conference.

Neva Rae Fox, the Episcopal Church’s public affairs officer, noted that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is saddened by the primates’ decision not to attend Lambeth.

‘The gathering will be diminished by their absence, and I imagine that they themselves will miss a gift they might have otherwise received,’ the Presiding Bishop said. ‘None of us is called to ‘feel at home’ except in the full and immediate presence of God. It is our searching, especially with those we find most ‘other,’ that is likely to lead us into the fuller experience of the body of Christ. Fear of the other is an invitation to seek the face of God, not a threat to be avoided.’

The five primates acknowledged in their letter that some of them ‘have not been able to take communion with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church since February 2005’ because of the 2003 consecration of Robinson, an openly gay partnered man, as bishop of New Hampshire. ‘The consecrators of Gene Robinson have all been invited to Lambeth, contrary to the statement of the Windsor Report (para 134) that members of the Episcopal Church should ‘consider in all conscience whether they should withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion,” the primates said.”

Read the rest here.

Tobias Haller has some thoughts about the situation here.

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