Ruth Gledhill: Archbishop faces boycott at gay summit
February 14, 2007

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has flown nearly 5,000 miles to attend the controversial Anglican summit on gays in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

But the Ugandan-born Archbishop could tomorrow find himself “excluded” from the meeting after protests from African and Asian archbishops representing the conservative Global South.

The meeting, which begins tomorrow and lasts until Monday is crucial for the future of the Anglican Communion, facing a schism over the gay issue.

On Friday, the primates will debate a new document, an Anglican Covenant, designed to set out a framework of faith and unity to avoid future schismatic actions. the rest


Ruth Gledhill weblog: Time for Anglicans to divorce

This is a longer version of an oped in the paper today. There is also a news story about the Primates, on how Sentamu might be excluded from the meeting and the significance of Archbishop Okoh's arrival in Tanzania.

There come times when organisations and the factions within them naturally start to drift apart, for reasons that cannot be wished away by the greater organisation itself. The Primates of the Anglican Communion might wish to consider the benefits of schism when they meet in Tanzania from tomorrow, Thursday. There have been many schisms in the Christian Church. The Great Schism was between East and West in 1054. The Reformation was a whole series of disruptions between the 14th and 17th centuries. In both, the seeds were sown long before the splits. Just as now, the differences were deep-seated and often cultural as well as theological. In retrospect, it is possible to argue that these schisms were necessary to allow the different churches to go their own way in freedom and faith. There seems little purpose in unity if the factions within an organisation cannot see eye to eye with each other any more. the rest