Archbishop of Canterbury addresses communion tensions in letter to primates
The Archbishop of Canterbury addressed the tension between The
Episcopal Church and some parts of the Anglican Communion today when he
released a long-anticipated Advent Letter.
Addressed to the fellow primates of the communion, Archbishop Rowan Williams asked that the letter be shared widely with others. Much of the content of the seven-page letter is concerned with the current tensions within the Communion, but the role of The Episcopal Church [TEC] in this climate was singled out, especially regarding the public response of the House of Bishops following their meeting in New Orleans in September.
"I believe that we as a Communion must recognize two things in respect to the current position in TEC," Archbishop Williams wrote. "First: most if not all of the bishops present in New Orleans were seeking in all honesty to find a way of meeting the requests of the primates and to express a sense of responsibility towards the Communion and their concern for and loyalty to it.
"Second: it is practically impossible to imagine any further elucidation or elaboration coming from TEC after the successive statements and resolutions from last year's General Convention onwards. A good deal of time and effort has gone into the responses they have already produced, and it is extremely unlikely that further meetings will produce any more substantial consensus than that which is now before us."
Regarding the matter of same-sex blessings, Archbishop Williams wrote, "There is obviously a significant and serious gap between what TEC understands and what others assume as to what constitutes a liturgical provision in the name of the Church at large."
In order to address these tensions, the archbishop proposed two courses of action. "I wish to pursue some professionally facilitated conversations between the leadership of The Episcopal Church and those with whom they are most in dispute, internally and externally, to see if we can generate any better level of mutual understanding.
"I also intend to convene a small group of primates and others, whose task will be, in close collaboration with the primates, the Joint Standing Committee, the Covenant Design Group, and the Lambeth Conference Design Group, to work on the unanswered questions arising from the inconclusive evaluation of the primates to New Orleans and to take certain issues forward to Lambeth."
—From
the Web site of The Living Church.
Read Archbishop Williams' Advent Letter