Senior Anglican officials crafting resolution with bishops Jenkins, Chane, Bruno, Parsley

Stephen Bates reporting for The Guardian

The compromise being worked on over the weekend has seen the US moderate conservative bishops Charles Jenkins of Louisiana and Henry Parsley of Alabama working with liberals Jon Bruno of California and John Chane of Washington DC and Canons Kenneth Kearon [Secretary General of the Anglican Communion ] and Gregory Cameron [Deputy Secretary General], of the Anglican communion council, on a formal statement that would keep the majority of US bishops together.

The resolution would also allow dioceses out of sympathy with the church’s leadership to seek their own Episcopal oversight and also for the setting up of a pastoral council with foreign representatives.

About the position of the Archbishop of Canterbury Bates writes,

Dr Williams, who attended the bishops’ meeting last Thursday and Friday, was strongly critical of African attempts to recruit dissident parishes in the US and rejected Nigerian bishops’ calls to postpone next year’s Lambeth conference of the world’s Anglican bishops, due to be held in Canterbury next July.

He called on US conservatives not to leave their church, saying: “We are inevitably in the business of compromise…if we are able to get this right, to live with it in some structure, in a godly way, we will have done something for the whole Christian community.”

More:

American conservative bishops complained that the archbishop refused to see them, or return their calls during his stay. A handful have now left the meeting and are planning to re-gather in Pittsburgh this week to discuss strategy, which is likely to include seeking oversight from an African province. Their leader, Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh, predicted that about five of the US church’s 112 dioceses would seek to affiliate outside the US.

Read it here.

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