Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in a long-awaited message to the global Anglican Communion he heads, said Friday there was no consensus among Anglican leaders on whether the Episcopal Church had met demands that it stop consecrating openly gay bishops and authorizing same-sex blessings.
In a letter released Friday, Williams said just more than half of the fellowship’s top bishops and archbishops had responded positively to recent pledges from the Episcopal Church to roll back its relatively liberal positions on homosexuality and the Bible.
But for the rest of the Anglican leaders surveyed, the promises made by Episcopal bishops were “inadequate,” the archbishop wrote. In September, the bishops pledged to “exercise restraint” in consecrating openly gay bishops and said they would not authorize official blessings for same-sex couples.
Williams, who is struggling to keep his global fellowship from splintering, said he planned to ask mediators to help guide discussions between the Episcopal Church’s leadership and conservative dissidents in the United States and abroad.
“We have no consensus. …,” Williams wrote. “All of us will be seriously wounded and diminished if our Communion fractures any further.”
The 2.4-million-member Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of Anglicanism, the world’s third-largest Christian denomination with 77 million members. But for years, conflict between theological liberals and conservatives has been building both within the U.S. church and across the communion.
The rift widened in 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated a partnered gay priest, Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire.
Since then, about 55 Episcopal parishes have taken steps to sever ties with the national church, sparking lawsuits over church property.
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