Updated again 10 pm Wednesday evening
Guardian Stephen Bates Williams faces fresh effort to stop Anglican split over gay clergy and in G2 The real Mr Big? on Archbishop Peter Akinola.
Telegraph Jonathan Petre Archbishop faces Church split
The Times Ruth Gledhill Archbishop faces boycott at gay summit and on the Comment pages It is time for the Anglican Luthers to divorce. There is a longer version of the latter on Ruth’s blog, Time for Anglicans to divorce.
Reuters Katie Nguyen Anglican leader faces tough summit to avoid schism
Changing Attitude has a second report from Colin Coward, and there is also this press release from Davis Mac-Iyalla relating to the Nigerian anti-GLBT legislation which is to be debated again today, 14 February, by Nigerian lawmakers.
Scott Gunn has also blogged from Tanzania, his first reports are here and here.
Late morning update
Another Living Church report: UN Anglican Observer May Brief Primates.
Toronto Globe and Mail Michael Valpy Anglicans face ‘a bit of pruning’ over gay rights
Reuters George Obulutsa Tanzania bishop breaks ranks in gay Anglican row
BBC Anglicans face difficult summit
Changing Attitude Davis Mac-Iyalla meets Archbishop Peter Akinola
Early Evening update
BBC Robert Pigott Anglicans facing threat of schism
Ekklesia Nigerian Primate has unexpected Valentines Day gay encounter and Welcome for Williams but interrogation for gay Christian in Tanzania.
Reuters Katie Nguyen US pro-gay bishop attends Anglican meeting
Associated Press Elizabeth A. Kennedy Anglican conference opens in Tanzania amid struggle over the Bible and sexuality link amended to longer version of this report
10 pm Update
Living Church George Conger Primates’ Official Opening Session Likely to Be Contentious
Dar es Salaam Daily News Anglicans meet on gay saga
Scott Gunn has reports: Conspiracy theories abound — news from this afternoon’s briefing, and then here, and here, and here.
Some things are becoming clear, and some things are as yet unclear. No doubt Nigerian HQ will provide leaks for journalists with the main meeting place sealed off. Clear is that there is some sort of structural proposal, but it is still unclear that Rowan Williams would find it acceptable. And it may not matter whether he does or not to any outcome. The Covenant is too slow, but it may be still his option, especially if Lambeth 2008 becomes a Covenant joining party – and who will decide that? Would there be a bargain, that there can be a… Read more »
I am heartened by this ‘bishop who is an unlikely rebel’.
He speaks with compassion and understanding.
Davis : “I came to Tanzania hoping I would be given the opportunity to meet my own Primate and I am very happy now to have met him and been warmly greeted by him.”
What happened? If a section of the press was to be believed, either Abp. Akinola sets upon stoning Davis or he (the archbishop) runs away rather than shake hands with a self proclaiming homosexual.
I look forward to more apologies.
If I understood Davis’ post correctly, he had a lengthy chat with his Primate before Archbishop Akinola realised who he was. I am glad the Archbishop remained friendly afterwards!
And because he is so friendly to lgbt people, I also hope he notes Davis’ appeal to Primates about the anti gay legislation in Nigeria and does all he can to stop it from being introduced.
I cannot see how I could easily sign up (insofar as it was my decision) this parish to official second-class status. I am too aware of my own shortcomings (and thus examine myself before receiving etc etc) to be able to join any community of the pure.
So let me see if I am following Ruth Gledhill’s published logic? We have to split because we cannot agree to disagree as believers who live in peace, do Tikkun Olam service, and let God sort us out over time while we continue to live/talk/worship together? Why can’t we live in peace? (It used to be because puritans and catholics couldn’t manage to stop killing one another for God, until Elizabeth I.) Now it is: Because the queer-friendly believers will not stop living their faith out as they lay down legacy doctrines which tradition has keenly weaponized and as they… Read more »
It is we who are expecting apologies, Tunde.
Just coff up!
“What must seem increasingly in decline is geographical provinces, even geographical dioceses – maybe even geographical parishes.”
This is called congregationalism. There is quite a nice denomination in the US called the Congregational Church. I commend it to ++Akinola, +Minns and their followers. Of course, they would have to give up their fancy hats and duds …
“If a section of the press was to be believed,”
Tunde,
I love it when the press acts badly and ends up looking silly, so, please, give us a link to stories that report this kind of thing. I’d be only too vocal in demanding they apologize, since, to read the Changing Attitude piece, the meeting might have been at most a bit tense.
While all this has been going on in Tanzania, Gene Robinson was interviewed on BBC Northern Ireland last night. In a 30 minute interview he said he was certainly going to attend Lambeth
AND
he said this too – even if the Windsor Report had been written in 2003, he would probably STILL have been consecrated a bishop!
But think how much better a church we would have after a split?
Its clear there cannot be agreement – why exactly does anyone here WANT to be in communion with these people?
Mike, Try 1 Corinthians 12, verses 12 and onward. You see, if we put aside our human pride and need to be right, in other words if we behave as Christians ought to behave, then “these people” have their role. I’ve asked on another thread, and I apologize here if it sounded snotty, it wasn’t meant to, how you define things like “Church”. We want to be in communion with “these people” because we are called as Christians to rise above the bickering and strife breeding that are part of our human nature. If “they” exhibit bad behaviour, the Christian… Read more »
Then the Church as an institution is simply a waste of time, Ford.
Its not a case of needing to be right: its a case of being part of something worth belonging to.
But, then, I don’t believe in the sort of nonsense which some do about the Church. It is a purely human institution.
“However, most Anglicans outside the United States believe gay relationships are sinful, and they are distancing themselves from the U.S. church.” The AP’s Elizabeth Kennedy is out to lunch here. Of the two contentions above, 1. may be true, but we have little real way of knowing (and what about all the divisions *within* all those “outside the United States” Anglican churches?) 2. there’s even LESS evidence of this one. The *hierarchies* are distancing themselves—but even here, there are episcopal exceptions (e.g. the bishop of Central Tanganyika). But individual Anglicans? I contend that most either don’t know, don’t care, “live… Read more »
What ‘church’ Merseymaike?
Ford I’m with you, it is not about having a “comfortable” communion. A broad tent communion by its very nature will be uncomfortable because it intrinsically involves having people who do not agree with you on every thing and have different gifts and talent. The beauty of a broad tent communion is that it helps the church to manage the paradoxes and avoid extremes. On one hand encouraging people to do their best and avoid destructive behaviours, on the other forgiving them for their fallabilities and offering the support for them to try again the next day. An example, a… Read more »
” … in other words if we behave as Christians ought to behave,…” It is not the liberals who have refused table fellowship. It is not because ++Williams was afraid ++Hutchinson and ++Jefferts Schori would throw a hissy that he did not schedule a Eucharist for this meeting. The question is, are we still in communion with those who do refused to share the Eucharist with ++Frank? Is it accurate to call it the Anglican COMMUNION if we cannot come to Christ’s table together? Do we want an Anglican Communion in which one must have a communion ticket, like the… Read more »
Ford, obviously you cannot deny reading words like ‘homophobic’, ‘gay-hater’ ‘gay bashing’, bigot, etc, in relation to the archbishop. Cannot search now and if nobody has ever painted him as such, I hereby offer my unreserved apologies. Maybe I am also letting my prejudices get the better of me.
Reading these various articles makes me think how horrible the Anglican Communion must sound to more enlightened people–such as athiests and agnostics–who think the whole Christian religion is a blight on the world. Women as second class citizens (God doesn’t love them but gave them brains? Intelligence for what purpose?) Demanding that a primate of another faction be banned from the meeting? The oppressed OPPRESSED by and in scripture? Bishops precluded based on one type of sin? The opposing sides facing off! Setting up headquarters down the road, strategizing, sending out ultimatums. The very Archbishop rudely accosted with ridiculous demands.… Read more »
Hmm–this whole thing is going much better than I had hoped for. Didn’t the GAS Primates try to pre-emptively exclude TEC at the last ACC? That failed too.
And I like what has been called Williams’ “nuclear option”; it’s the best thing I’ve heard yet: a covenant assembly with Lambeth ’08 cancelled.
It’s gonna be all champagne and roses tonight!
Actually Tunde, you need to usher your excuses in the direction of Titusonenine and Standfirm.
Your December 2005 character assassination of Davis Mac-Iyalla is being spewed all over, much to the consternations of commenters who question how Bishops Akinola and Minns or Messrs Petre and Conger could have contemplated socializing with such an awful person in this manner.
http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=17747#comments
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/2141
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/2133
“You can always be a Congregationalist…” doesn’t fly. Churches that have a congregational structure de facto don’t provide the religious life that Anglican churches do: the liturgical, sacramental character, the ethos, the historical connections–not just fancy hats. The polity of the Anglican Church, the hierarchy of bishops with geographically defined dioceses and the system of geographically defined parishes is an expensive anachronism. It evolved in late antiquity to suit social and political circumstances and its ostensible religious purpose was to insure uniformity of doctrine–something most Episcopalians don’t, and IMHO shouldn’t want. That administrative arrangement is now being fetishised because there… Read more »
I am tired of the suggestions that advocates of gay rights are opposed to the Bible — not true. It is precisely through a deeper meditation on the implications of the Gospel message that many of us have changed our minds.
I am also tired of hearing about how it all started with Gene Robinson. AMiA anyone?
On 14 February 2007, Cynthia wrote: “This is called congregationalism. There is quite a nice denomination in the US called the Congregational Church. I commend it to ++Akinola, +Minns and their followers. Of course, they would have to give up their fancy hats and duds …” Cynthia, Two of the modern-day descendents of the Congregationalists are both very gay-friendly — the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Congregationalism may lead to same-sex marriage and ordination of GBLT people as well. Once one removes a centralized authority (e.g. bishops, etc), one can find a church evolving in many… Read more »
I have just received this in an email from a reliable source currently in Dar es Salaam:
” A Primate is holding dossiers on three leading Global South Primates. The reports are the result of two years work by a group of Southern hemisphere theologians studying the sermons and writings of the Church leaders over that time. The dossiers establish a long list of “heresies” and failures of correct Biblical teaching for each primate. “
Does anyone know any more?
PB Schori certainly sees the value of listening to those with different views. Those who want to exclude her from the primates club simply don’t know what they would be missing. She is very special as detailed here: http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/janfeb/features/schori.html
See Province of Nigeria offical statemet on Davis Mac Iyalla. Might want to discount this person a bit.
The Anglican Primates’ Circus goes on and on. Very few primates behave in a Christ-like manner. Shame on them! I for one would be happy to see a moratorium on all further meetings unless such meetings include all four orders of ministry: bishops, priests, deacons and laity.
The primates have brought disgrace on the Anglican Communion.
My dear ‘Scotist’,
If you (for obvious reasons) will need a ‘pick me up’ pill on Monday, please let Mr Sarmiento forward my address to you and I’ll send you a substantial amount!
I am sure the so-called “Davis (David) Mac Iyalla,” the self-styled “homosexual” Nigerian “Anglican” is laughing all the way to the bank. How easy it is for this guy to be getting good money and the spotlight from the promoters of homosexuality in the Western world. Talk of the real Nigerian fraud scheme: This is it. Look no further. Other Nigerian fraudsters are watching this guy. If he succeeds, I bet there is going to be a flood of emails from supposedly “homosexual Nigerian Christians” being discriminated against by Akinola. And, of course, these supposed victims will be asking (in… Read more »
Davis McIyalla greeting Akinola, Scott Gunn’s stories of sharing a table — these are gracious moments that point the way forward. They show what a church, or what a family reunion, should look like. Many families throughout the world have disagreements about gay-connected issues. Only very immature and dysfunctional families resort to disowning members, or to walking away in a huff. Ford and Cheryl are right: living with disagreement and with people you are uncomfortable with is of the ESSENCE of a Christian Church — a Church like that of Paul in I Corinthians. Ruth G. says that “No Communion… Read more »
I am just suprised at how much this meeting is turning out to look like the early eccumenical councils. In terms of two differant meetings going on, sometimes being together, sometimes not, the accusations all over the place and so forth (at least this is the impression I get from the media, I could be completly wrong). I suppose if we follow the parrallel two things are likely. 1. Someone is going to be consciously excluded, although we may not necessarily know who, but whoever it is, it will probably be for the best (or perhaps we would have been… Read more »
The noisy smear campaign against Jefferts Schori is particularly represented by one David Virtue: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5477 Her innocuous remarks about two “strands” in the Gospel — one focusing on sin and atonement, the other on divinization — are being vetted obsessively with a view to finding in them a smoking gun of heresy. But the hilarious irony is that Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ” is held up as golden criterion of orthodoxy, whereby to consign “Mrs Schori” to outer darkness. Rightist Christians really lost it when they started taking droves of schoolchildren to see Mr Gibson’s antisemitic and… Read more »
Does anyone have a link to the BBC interview with Gene Robinson mentioned earlier? I think it’s extremely significant if Bishop Robinson actually did say that he would have been consecrated NOTWITHSTANDING the Windsor Report.
Annie, as an atheist, it’s just more of what we come to expect from “Christians”, I’m afraid. I admit I had hoped for better from the Episcopalians, since you all have always seemed to be more reasonable than most.
“Really ought to expect better of an AP reporter “
Although this was probably just a lapse, AP doesn’t have a happy track record: it was AP which mangled David Jenkins’ ultra-orthodox statement on the Resurrection in 1984, and all the corrections in the world have not succeeded in displacing the belief that +David Dunelm dismissed it as ‘a conjuring trick with bones’ – indeed he is still vilified by one or two posters on this site who have taken the lazy way out.
Davis Mac-Iyalla is one of the most committed Christians I have ever had the privilege to speak to. He is completely devoted to his church and to God. His integrity is so strong that he believed Christ would not wish him to live a lie, and he therefore came out as gay, trusting his church to accept him as a fellow Christian. As we know, his church has not accepted him at all but has started to persecute him and to destroy his name in public. Davis is now living in hiding and in fear of his life. He has… Read more »
H.E. Barber wrote: “Churches that have a congregational structure de facto don’t provide the religious life that Anglican churches do: the liturgical, sacramental character, the ethos, the historical connections–not just fancy hats.”
Oh for the fairy tale magic! the castles in Spain…
“… two years work by a group of .. theologians studying the sermons and writings of the Church leaders over that time. The dossiers establish a long list of “heresies” and failures of correct Biblical teaching for each primate.”
Could be fun!
Maybe it is time to some detailed study of late 20th century American and other Anti Modern eschatology, theology, ecclesiology, exegetics and so on, in light of what the un-truncated, un-translated and un-diluted Bible actually says / doesn’t say on various topics.
Could be even greater fun ;=)
Fr Joseph O’Leary wrote: “Also, nobody’s positions are written in stone. None of the parties have the final and complete wisdom in the very fluid and open-ended debate about homosexuality.” Nobody’s “position” is yet deserving of the name position, because this quarrel is quite new. 40 years at the most. It was started in 1966 by certain Roman Catholic Cambridge “exegetes” eager to introduce their anti-Modern Social Politics into the translation of the not yet overtly (homo)sexualized 1955 Bible de Jérusalem. Not to mention their thoroughly late Modern concept of “sexual orientation as identity”, changing malakós (the “proof” of a… Read more »
‘Time to divorce’ is a message that presupposes that relationships are finite, or typically finite. They ‘die’. This presupposition is neither Christian nor has borne anything but bad statistical fruit since the day it was adopted. Ruth Gledhill should aim to ‘divorce’ herself from the highly quesitonable presuppositions of her (and our) own limited culture.
Suppose we fissure, and fissure again etc, that means that each resulting group is more narrow minded and ends up talking only to its own kind. That is the very opposite of the way that trith is attained.
As Pilate almost said, ‘What is trith?’
Merseymike, I disagree entirely. Cynthia, I have always felt that the lion’s share of bad behaviour was on the part of the “Right” in this, but the Left is not blameless. I have no problem with the consecration of +VGR, he’s as worthy of a mitre as +Iker, for certain, but was it necessarily right to do it after warnings from people all around the world that this would be a huge issue, and furthermore, that some in countries on the otherside of the globe might lose their lives as a result? Is TEC so assured of Her prophetic role… Read more »
‘What is trith?’
Must be some kind of statistics.
There are serious allegations made about MacIyalla by Church of Nigeria. These have not been disproved but only denied. The most pertinent ones are these: 1. That he did at one time undertake to marry the daughter of the late bishop of Otukpu. Did he actually make any such undetaking, either to the bishop or the woman in question? 2. That he stole money and documents from the church. Where is the prima facie evidence of this, and how much was allegedly stolen? 3. That the police in that Nigerian State are seeking him on charges of theft. Is this… Read more »
A good post, Dr. Shell. ANd the supplementary:-) Whether it proves possible……
Ford Elms — Have many people have been killed because of Gene Robinson? Compared to say, because of George Bush? Assuming that you are referring to the period following the General Convention that consented to his election, there was no legal process to block his consecration. The Presiding Bishop has no authority not to consecrate a bishop-elect who has received the consents of the majority of diocesan bishops & the diocesan Standing Committees (or House of Deputies, depending of the time of the election). ++Frank made it clear that he agreed that going ahead would cause difficulties but that he… Read more »
Thank you Steve Watson for that meaningful contribution to the discussion on MacIyalla, the so-called Nigerian Anglican homosexual. Your is a refreshing breath of fresh air.
However, I must warn you that if you are holding your breath, waiting for the backers and promoters of homosexuality to actually ask this Iyalla guy any serious questions, you are in grave danger.
If anyone believes this Iyalla guy is not a fraudster, I have some penguins to sell to you. By the way, the penguins are somewhere in the Sahara Desert.
“Thinking” Anglicans should appreciate Ford taking the trouble to see some of the other side of the argument – much more productive than building and reinforcing a bunker mentality.
Better to THINK – and think about the meaning of th scriptures in relation to all this Anglican mess (thanks to decades of poor leadership and fudges)
Colin Coward has admitted he was not factual in his reporting of the so-called meeting/snubbing that never was. Making up stories, misrepresenting facts, and denying the obvious are the stock-in-trade of those, like Coward, who are more interested in championing their cause for a worldly political end, guised in religion, than they are in championing the Cause of Christ who calls all sinners to repentance and to a New Life in Him that may sometimes call for very serious sacrifices, including cooling of unwholesome sexual desires, OF ALL SORTS. Any sexual intimacy outside the bounds of marriage between a man… Read more »