Conservatives from the world’s largest Anglican provinces who are angered by liberal thinking in churches in North America and elsewhere plan to create a global fellowship that challenges worldwide Anglican unity but stops short of a formal split.
The plan was expected to be adopted yesterday on the final day of the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem. The summit was called by Anglican leaders in Africa and parts of North America and Australia outraged by what they consider a “false gospel” in liberal churches.
Opponents played down the significance of the new fellowship, contending the Anglican Communion already has networks of like-minded churches. But theological conservatives insist they are at the beginning of a movement that will alter the centuries-old Anglican family.
“A major realignment has occurred and will continue to unfold,” they said in their “Statement on the Global Anglican Future.”
The Anglican Communion is a 77 million-member family of churches that trace their roots to the Church of England. It is the third-largest grouping of churches in the world, behind Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and has always held together different views. However, long-standing divisions over how Anglicans should interpret Scripture erupted in 2003 when the US Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
The Episcopal Church is the US Anglican body. Anglicans in developing countries — where the fastest-growing and largest churches in the communion are located — mostly hold to a strict interpretation of the Bible. The archbishops, or primates, of the provinces of Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Southern Cone based in Argentina were among those at the Jerusalem event.
The Jerusalem meeting was held just ahead of a once-a-decade gathering of all Anglican bishops, called the Lambeth Conference.
The upcoming assembly is viewed by many as a test of the leadership of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual head.
Williams does not have the power to force a compromise among conflicting Anglican factions and has faced criticism from many Anglican camps for his actions in the crisis.
Some of the more than 200 bishops in Jerusalem plan to boycott Lambeth, which begins on July 16 in England. Williams has invited US bishops who consecrated Robinson but has barred Robinson and a few other bishops from attending.
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