Word: bishops
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...last official act before a three-month sabbatical, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams ordained a new bishop in London's St. Paul's Cathedral. Williams, the tousle-haired leader of the Church of England and titular head of its global offshoot, the Anglican Communion, performed the liturgy of ordination: "Will you strive for the visible unity of Christ's Church?" he asked. Answered the new bishop: "By the help of God, I will...
...Global South. The latter's views were reflected in 1998 in language at the communion's once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, calling homosexual practice "incompatible with Scripture." But in 2003 the Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the U.S., ordained Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire. Unlike the Pope, the Archbishop makes no claims to infallibility and cannot dictate to his flock. The years since have featured angry meetings, threats of secession and unmet deadlines. The next full-scale opportunity to negotiate will be at the Lambeth meeting in July 2008--if Williams can keep...
...base in Britain. In 1989 he delivered a lecture in which he stated, "The absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory." As a bishop, he knowingly ordained at least one noncelibate...
That was before he was asked to lead a global church. When the Episcopalians elected Robinson, Williams faced conservative demands that the Americans leave the communion. Instead, he endorsed milder requests like a promise, for now, to make no more gay bishops and bless no more gay marriages. The Episcopalians made ambiguous gestures of compliance but have elected as their presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who had supported Robinson. Today Williams calls Robinson's election--absent any prior decision allowing same-sex ordination--"bizarre and puzzling...
Williams has handed out offsetting penalties to the two sides. One of his few direct powers is to send invitations to the Lambeth Conference, and he announced in May that for now he was excluding just two people: Robinson and Martyn Minns, the bishop of Akinola's U.S. church. Akinola has threatened that Nigeria will boycott Lambeth, and Robinson hinted at wanting the Episcopalians to do likewise. But defections may be limited. Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, an influential Global South leader, says his contingent will attend. Liberal Washington bishop John Chane said he will probably skip...