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Mediation might help Anglicans, says Dr Williams
by Pat Ashworth
The Church Times
THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury has floated the idea that the Anglican Communion might need professional help to resolve its crisis over homosexuality.
His comments come in a new book, A Church at War, written by The Guardian’s religious correspondent, Stephen Bates.
Mr Bates interviewed Dr Williams in January. “I asked him why he thought homosexuality had become the issue on which the Church was dividing, and why now,” he records in the final chapter.
It was a cultural challenge to the whole view of scripture, said Dr Williams. “This is an issue which allows a clear line to be drawn in the sand.
It’s not something that affects many people, unlike divorce. It’s a good rallying point at a time of cultural flux. If you are a [Roman] Catholic there are other issues you can find as a marker — divorce, contraception — but Anglicanism does not have these,” he said.
Balanced debate and rapid reconciliation in the near future was unlikely, the Archbishop believed, lamenting that “border skirmishing” was taking up the Church’s energy rather than attention to “the big central shape of the story”.
Dr Williams spoke of the pain caused by the campaigning of conservative Evangelicals. Asked how the crisis would be worked out, he suggested the need for an outside expert on conflict resolution.
“When the dust has settled, it may be time to think about a facilitated conversation. Somebody coming in to structure discussions, who is an outsider and so does not threaten or bully. . . That might bring the two sides together.”
The Jeffrey John affair is meticulously charted in the book, for which Mr Bates interviewed more than 50 senior figures in the Anglican Communion. Staff at Lambeth Palace come under scrutiny for the part they played in the process that led to Canon John’s withdrawal as Bishop of Reading. The book says that he subsequently attempted to rescind his resignation.
Stephen Bates declares his belief that the Church of England is being invaded by a “Taliban Tendency with its own agenda and a strong determination to win”. Theirs, he says, is “a sectarian, congregationalist Church that can tolerate only one sort of Christian”.
END
Editorial note. This story is relayed to you, not that you should buy the book, but to make you realize that liberal notions about mediation always work in favor or revisionists, not those who are orthodox
