Ecumenical News International 
Daily News Service 
06 March 2006 

Anglican Communion could rupture over gay clergy, says Williams 
ENI-06-0219 

Geneva, 6 March (ENI)–The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan
Williams, has warned in a television interview that the worldwide
Anglican Communion may "rupture" over the issue of homosexuality.

Anglicans have been riven with division since the election in
2003 of V. Gene Robinson, who lives openly in a same-sex
relationship, as a bishop in the US Episcopal (Anglican) Church,
and the introduction by a diocese in Canada of a rite for
blessing same-sex unions.   

Many Anglican churches, particularly in Africa, condemned
Robinson’s election and several have cut ties with the US church.

Interviewed by veteran broadcaster David Frost for the BBC in
Sudan, where he is visiting aid projects, Williams was asked if
he could imagine the Anglican Communion becoming a looser
federation to accommodate Anglican churches with widely differing
stances on  homosexuality. 

"If there is a rupture, it’s going to be a more visible rupture,
it is not going to settle down quietly to being a federation,"
said Williams, the leader of the more than 70-million strong
Anglican grouping. "My anxiety about it is that if the communion
is broken we may be left with even less than a federation."   

In 2004, the "Windsor Report", produced by an Anglican commission
set up after Robinson’s election, requested the US church to
adopt a moratorium on any candidate for bishop in a same-sex
union until a consensus had emerged in the communion. It also
urged the US and Canadian churches to apologise to other
believers within the Anglican communion who they had offended by
their actions.   

Still, among five nominees to become the new bishop of the
Episcopal diocese of California are a lesbian and a gay man, US
media have reported. Both homosexual candidates, Bonnie Perry of
Chicago and Robert Taylor of Seattle, are in same-sex
relationships, the reports stated. 

The diocese will vote on the candidates in May, with the
bishop-elect requiring ratification at the Episcopal Church’s
general convention in Columbus, Ohio, the following month. The
Episcopal convention is also scheduled to elect a successor to
Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. Three of the nominees are
reported to have voted in favour of Robinson’s consecration as a
bishop. One opposed it. 

Meanwhile, in an article in the Washington Post, the Episcopal
bishop of Washington DC, John Bryson Chane, struck out at
Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, a prominent opponent of the
election of Robinson. 

Akinola, wrote Chane, "is perhaps the most powerful member of a
global alliance of conservative bishops and theologians,
generously supported by foundations and individual donors in the
United States, who seek to dominate the Anglican Communion and
expel those who oppose them, particularly the Episcopal Church
and the Anglican Church of Canada". [456 words] 

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