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Anglican liberals attack Windsor Report
Church of England Newspaper
September 30, 2005
Anglican discussion on homosexuality has been superficial, claimed the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, in a commendation for a new book which attacks the Windsor Report.
Archbishop Morgan who was himself a member of the Lambeth Commission which produced the report, in contrast has praised a book of essays by leading Anglican liberals and gay theologians. He said that the book which criticises his predecessor, Rowan William's handling of the crisis, presented a "formidable challenge to the Anglican Communion" which it could not "ignore".
In the collection of essays 'Gays and the Future of Anglicanism', Oxford theologian Andrew Linzey compares Anglican attitudes to homosexuals to the policy of the Nazis and accuses the Anglican Communion of "homophobia".
He also highlights the Archbishop of Canterbury's own unenviable position in the current controversy pointing out Dr William's previously publicised views on homosexual and the revelation that he had ordained practising homosexuals.
"The Report [Windsor] sees no irony in wanting the Archbishop to become a visible focus of unity, and an "instrument" of discipline, despite the fact that he is already regarded, by those who want that view to prevail, as a "false teacher" himself.
One of the Church of England's leading Deans, Christopher Lewis, claims that the Windsor report is creating a more legalistic and corporate structure for the Anglican Communion at a time when controversy calls for the links to be loosened. "What has been a family with its full range of rows and reconciliations is becoming a cage in which sustained fighting is all but inevitable," he argues.
Another Oxford theologian, Marilyn McCord Adams defiantly throws down the gauntlet to the Archbishop of Canterbury who recently warned that North American Anglicans may have to back down. "For us who recognise gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons as treasures of the church, backing down would carry a different cost that we cannot afford to pay: a failure of faithfulness, a betrayal of our own honest and prayerful discernment."
She said that the current crisis put the Church of England equally on the spot with ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada as the mother Church of the former colonies.
One of the authors, Richard Kirker of the Gay and Lesbian Christian Movement, argues in the book that the Church's homsexual members will not leave unless they have no alternative. He writes: "I refuse to believe that Anglicanism, which has survived so many 'crises' and so much turmoil, cannot enable a way in which all of us can live Christianly together."
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