[Dialogue] Anglican head calls for humility in gay clergy row

[Harry Wainwright]

Reuters

Anglican head calls for humility in gay clergy row
Sun Feb 18, 2007 10:46 AM ET

By Katie Nguyen

ZANZIBAR (Reuters) - The spiritual leader of the world's 77 million
Anglicans reminded his bishops of the need for humility on Sunday in a
veiled rebuke to those whose wrangling over gay clergy threatens to tear the
church apart.

"Very early in the history of the church there was a great saint who said
God was evident when bishops were silent," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan
Williams said to some laughter in a packed cathedral in the predominantly
Muslim Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar.

"There is one thing a bishop should say to another bishop ... that I'm a
great sinner and Christ is a great savior."

Anglican Church leaders are meeting in Tanzania to try to resolve a long
simmering row over the U.S. Episcopal Church's consecration of openly gay
bishop Gene Robinson in 2003, which has set a liberal minority against a
conservative majority.

Absent from the service was the leader of the second-biggest Anglican
province, Nigeria's conservative Archbishop Peter Akinola, who an official
said was ill.

Akinola, together with six other African, Asian and Latin American
archbishops, refused to take Holy Communion -- bread and wine symbolizing
the body and blood of Christ -- on Friday with the head of the U.S.
Episcopal Church.

The group snubbed Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first elected female leader
of an Anglican province, in protest at her unwavering support for Robinson's
elevation and for same-sex unions.

Williams stressed the importance of sharing Holy Communion, a key rite of
the church, but at least one archbishop, Rwanda's Emmanuel Kolini, was seen
passing the plate on Sunday during the lengthy service in English and
Swahili.

Friday's boycott was led by Anglican leaders belonging to a group called the
Global South, whose congregations in poor countries are growing rapidly.

Reading the Bible more literally than some Anglicans, they have joined
forces to expand their influence against liberal trends often associated
with the affluent West.

Akinola, who calls homosexuality an "aberration" has organized a parallel
conservative movement in the church, rallying traditionalist parishes on
Jefferts Schori's own turf.

Akinola's view of homosexuality has strong support in much of Africa, home
to more than half the world's Anglicans, where Christians and Muslims often
clash and the orthodoxy of one side reinforces the orthodoxy of the other.

The religious rivalry was audible on Sunday when those attending the
Christian service heard a call to prayer from a mosque overlooking
Zanzibar's Anglican cathedral.

Williams, a thoughtful rather than charismatic leader, urged Anglicans to
open their eyes to suffering felt by "minorities of one kind or another" in
a sermon that also commemorated the end of slavery.

"Today we remember the abolition of the slave trade, and that reminds us
that ... for thousands of years, people did not see the evil of slavery," he
said, standing in the cathedral built in 1874 on the site of Zanzibar's
slave market.

Legend has it that the altar was erected above a whipping post where African
slaves were bound and flogged to test their fortitude at the behest of their
buyers.

Most archbishops in Africa say ordaining gay clergy flouts Biblical
commands. Liberals argue that the Anglican church has embraced diverse views
during its 450-year history.

  _____  

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