Crossroads for Anglicans

Rowan Williams must face down opposition on all fronts
The Times
July 3, 2008

Rarely has an archbishop been so tested. Only days before he attends the General Synod in York, Dr Rowan Williams has received a letter from more than 1,300 clergy, including 11 serving bishops, threatening to defect from the Church of England if women are consecrated bishops. The letter comes hard on the heels of an equally minatory ultimatum issued in Jerusalem last week by more than 250 bishops from across the Anglican Communion excoriating the Archbishop of Canterbury for his lack of moral leadership and calling on traditionalists to “sideline” him.

That is not all. In a challenge to his authority as primus inter pares, some 800 Church of England clergy and lay leaders took the first step on Tuesday to forming a “Church within a Church”. Led by three overseas bishops, the group met in a London evangelical church to assert their opposition to the ordination of gay people as well as an anathema on liberal theology that they said was undermining the Church.

Most are expected to become part of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Foca), formed at a meeting in Jerusalem by the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon). It bears out Dr Williams's fear that a schism in the Anglican Communion would lead not just to the exodus of several churches from the 38-strong body but to irreparable fissures within national churches. the rest