Reuters offers its analysis of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s Pastoral Letter to the Episcopal Church:
Church rejects Anglican pressure over gay rights
From Reuters.com
Her reaction, issued in a pastoral letter on Wednesday, amounted to a polite rejection of the idea Williams floated last week in his latest bid to avert a schism in the loose group of churches that make up the 80 million-strong Anglican Communion.
Anglicanism has been torn for years by disputes about authority over Church teaching, especially on gay rights. Williams has tried to counter this by defining Anglican positions more clearly and strengthening his central role. Jefferts Schori said his Pentecost letter suggesting sanctions for churches that disagree — both those approving gay clergy and same-sex unions as well as conservatives vehemently opposed to them — smacked of discredited colonial practices.
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COLONIAL ATTITUDES?
Orthodox Anglicans, especially in Africa, vehemently reject pro-homosexual reforms as sinful and unbiblical. Several African churches have ordained orthodox U.S. bishops to lead a dissident network of conservative Anglican churches there.
In the Williams plan, these churches would also be excluded from Anglican committees on doctrine and ecumenical cooperation because they appointed bishops to work in other provinces without the permission of local bishops there.
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Jefferts Schori took a page from the Africans’ book by accusing Williams of taking a colonial view of the Communion, most of whose member provinces are former British colonies.
“We live in great concern that colonial attitudes continue,” she wrote. “In their search for uniformity, our forebears in the faith have repeatedly done much spiritual violence in the name of Christianity.”