Anglican Leader in U.S. Over Gay Bishop
By ROBERT BARR
LONDON

(AP) — It wasn't just a friendly invitation.

U.S. Episcopal bishops, fed up with Anglican criticism of their support for gay priests, implored the Anglican spiritual leader to hear their side of the story — in person.

Starting Thursday, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will be in New Orleans for that private talk, hoping he can hold together the increasingly fractured world Anglican family.

"If anybody can do it, then somebody of the intellectual stature of Rowan Williams could," said Mark D. Chapman, lecturer in systematic theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxford, England. "But it is a very tall order."

Williams arrives in the U.S. facing a real danger that the global Anglican Communion could break up on his watch. the rest