The Communion waits upon Dr. Williams to speak about Mary Glasspool: The Church of England Newspaper, May 24, 2010 p 7. May 27, 2010
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue, Los Angeles.trackback
Dr. Rowan Williams
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The consecration of a lesbian bishop in Los Angeles has drawn a quick response from partisans of left and right in the US, but little comment from church leaders across the Communion.
On May 15 US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori consecrated the Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool as suffragan bishop of Los Angeles. Following Canon Glasspool’s election in December, the Archbishop of Canterbury said the election of a lesbian bishop “raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.”
In his video address to the Singapore South to South Encounter last month Dr. Williams said he was “in discussion with a number of people around the world about what consequences might follow from [the Glasspool election], and how we express the sense that most Anglicans will want to express, that this decision cannot speak for our common mind.”
A spokesman for Lambeth Palace last week told The Church of England Newspaper that Dr. Williams would not comment again, but would likely speak after the consecration.
Sources close to the archbishop tell CEN that Dr. Williams will likely consult with the House of Bishops this week during their meeting in York before he makes a formal response, so as to make sure the bishops are on board before he acts.
The Archbishop of York has also been silent over the Glasspool consecration, but in an interview with Radio New Zealand, Dr. John Sentamu said that “the difficulty I have got with the Episcopal Church is that while we are in the [listening] process, they have decided to go ahead” with the consecration of gay bishops.
However, Dr. Sentamu dismissed suggestions the Communion would fall apart, stating on March 13 the Anglican tradition of “scripture, tradition and reason” coupled with “experience” would see the church through the crisis. “Once you have got these four strands working together” the church can accommodate diverse opinion, he said.
Liberal activists in the US have applauded the Glasspool consecration. Los Angeles priest, the Rev. Susan Russell, commented that at the service she “sang out of hope that the steps we took Saturday in the Diocese of Los Angeles would be a beacon of light and life to all who are looking for signs of God’s love, peace, justice and compassion.”
Conservative activists have been less sanguine. The Rev. Todd Wetzel of Anglicans United saw the Glasspool consecration as evidence the Episcopal Church was walking away from the Anglican Communion. “While the public rhetoric of the Episcopal Church continually affirmed their care and consideration for the rest of the Communion, the actions of this insular body made those statements empty sentiment,” he said.
However, political scientist and journalist Walter Russell Meade saw the Glasspool consecration as the “beginning of the end of the Episcopal Church as we have known it.”
While Meade places himself on the liberal wing of the theological spectrum, he commented that it was “impossible to avoid the reflection that the Episcopal church is unilaterally imposing its own vision of the church on a worldwide communion.”
“Even if the mind of the church ultimately comes round to the Episcopal view of homosexuality, the Episcopal church has made a profound and historic error in attempting to force this choice on the Anglican Communion as a whole,” Meade argued.
The leadership of the Episcopal Church “in the last generation has frittered away its moral and political authority and capital,” he said, and its “inability to respond creatively to the challenges” facing it today was “accelerating its decline.”
