Anglican Mainstream

From Times Online September 17, 2007
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent of The Times

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is to celebrate a “secret” communion service for gay clergy and their partners in London. Dr Williams will celebrate the eucharist at St Peter’s, Eaton Square, the Church of England parish known as a home to the country’s liberal and wealthy Anglican elite.

Dr Williams will also give an address titled: “Present realities and future possibilities for lesbians and gay men in the Church.” Those attending the event, at 10am on November 29, have been told to observe “Chatham House rules” which prevent any disclosure of the discussions there or even when and where it is taking place.

Dr Williams has asked to know who will be present. Names will be on a list, which will be shown only to the Archbishop and shredded once he has seen it. Among those attending will be the Rev Chris Newlands, the convenor and chaplain to the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Rev John Gladwin. Also present will be the Vicar of St Peter’s, the Rev Nicholas Papadopulos; and the former chaplain to the Bishop of Salisbury, the Right Rev David Stancliffe.

Dr Williams’s mission to maintain the unity of the Anglican Communion, rent with schism since the 2003 ordination of the openly-gay Bishop Gene Robinsonm, has never appeared less likely to succeed.

The disclosure of the event could not have come at a time more likely to destabilise him. Later this week he is due to attend a meeting of US Episcopal bishops to discuss the crisis.

A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury said today: “It should come as no surprise that the Archbishop is meeting pastorally with clergy and others affected by the current debates in the Church. Such encounters extend across the Church and right across the range of opinions found within the Church. Few of these encounters ever reach the public domain. That is exactly as it should be.”

The Archbishop has returned from three months on holiday and sabbatical, when he has been working on an important study of the Russian writer Dostoevsky, to be greeted by a Church in perilous disarray.

African archbishops from the Global South group of churches have been consecrating like-minded evangelical bishops from the US to pastor parishes alienated by The Episcopal Church’s liberal drift. A new structure is in place to facilitate a breakaway province in the US. There is speculation that at least one African province could be close to consecrating a missionary bishop in England.

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