The silence from the ConsEvs on this issue remains thunderous. It's obviously getting to be too much even for Ruth Gledhill. Aren't you fine upstanding defenders of orthodoxy even the least bit embarassed by any of this? Do you support this? Would you like to see similar legislation in the West?
As a scandal and offense against all things holy, this far outclasses what a sailor and a hairdresser like to do with each other on a Saturday night; or any irregularities about a duly elected Bishop of New Hampshire.

If finding myself yoked to something like this in any way at all is the price for maintaining Anglican unity, then I say,
To hell with the Anglican Communion!

BE CLEAR, in the context of the human rights disaster that is now unfolding in Nigeria, the presnt report of alleged 'listening in the AC' is too little, too late. It is too late for Nigerians of all religions and none. It is also too late now for the Anglican Communion itself. It will never be able to recover from the ethical and spiritual nadir into which it is inexorably descending.

You may say that it recovered from its part in the process of financial enrichment from enslavement of others. And that no-one worries that the USPG and C of E itself held slaves and worked them to death for profit. However, I think that this too is coming back as an issue. Those who try to say, "It is all in a past age of lower moral standards", will not be able to do so with impunity, in light of the disaster for lgbt people unfolding in Nigeria. A disaster colluded at by Abuja; and not even remarked upon, let alone condemned by Anglican leaders at Dar-es-Salaam recently. (What a mis-nomer that name has proved to be for such a gathering.) Their failure is as nothing compared to the failure of Canterbury to speak out AGAINST the Nigerian legislation and FOR human rights and civil liberties.

The C of E is now destined to a slow decline, into increasing moral irrelavance and national obscurity. Such is the inevitable end, of all anti-intellectual, unethical and anti-progressive bodies, lost in their own hypocricy and cowardice.

I wonder how long it will take commited anglicans to react against all this. What will the GS do ? The various synods and chapters and deaneries ? And the craven 'House of Bishops' of the C of E itself ? It is disgraceful that they and ordinary congregations and clergy are doing nothing about all this. THINK : how a few vocal, passionate people aborted the Bishop-Elect of Reading (though he had the Royal Assent). THINK: how the archbishops and bishops have rushed round the globe on their anti-lgbt mission.

ARE YOU GOING TO CHANGE THE CHURCH OR LEAVE IT ?

But who is looking for an 'agreed statement'?

How about a bit of courage and leadership from Williams - telling the Nigerians what is unacceptable and why.

If they storm off - something to celebrate, surely? This abhorrent church should not have any connection with the Church of England.

Thanks for the usual excellent roundup of links. It's helpful to know that my concerns regarding ++Rowan's statements are shared by others.

"When scripture says something is wrong and some people say that it is right, such people make God a liar."

So when scripture tells us to not oppress, but others say oppression is right, does that mean they are making God a liar? When God promises an everlasting covenant e.g. to the Daughter of Zion (Isaiah 55:3, 60:14-21, 61-62) and males deny and dishonor it, does that make God a liar?

Ezekiel 18:4 every living soul belongs to God. Ezekiel 18:29-30 It is not God who is unjust, it is the ways of human that are unjust? God will judge each of us according to our ways.

The problem with some theologians is that they have decided that they are God and that their interpretations are God's interpretations. Peace will never be found with such souls as their world view does not allow any concession with the "lesser mortals".

Yet God tells us that God's thoughts are higher than human thoughts (Isaiah 55:9). I think Obadiah 1 quite nicely summarises God's contempt for those who advocate and commit violence against their brothers and sisters. It also shows God's contempt for theologies that think it is okay to cut down or deprive others' safe egress to Zion. Similarly in Ezekiel 16. God's complaint against Sodom focusses on their haughtiness, selfishness and indifference to the poor and needy. Yet Jerusalem is seen as worse the Sodom - because they sacrified children to idols and build lofty shrines and prostituted herself with Babylonia and Egypt.

A church that builds itself and its name whilst denying justice to the outcastes and poor is more like Jerusalem at her worst. A church that only takes up the issues of poverty and care for the environment to save face and public credibilty, is blatently opportunistic.

They have not disgraced God, they have disgraced themselves.

Just to say that I posted Rowan's reply to LGCM on this blog first on 24th March in a comment on a story dated 22nd March.

Ruth Gledhill mentions the Rathbone ancestors. Just information that the fourth William Rathbone became a Unitarian and some Rathbones still are (I used to see one from time to time).

It is interesting to look at current presentations of slave history and racism, that the anti-slavery attitudes, including among the evangelicals attracted to the cause, faded some decades on to become replaced by an attitude of suppressing the "weaker races" with the notion that all were not equal, and British and German empires that stood by while inferiors died and even systematically killed them. One reason for this change was Christians who thought they could civilise the undeveloped, which left their victims in such a diminished state in a cultural genocide that they died through lack of hope. Their own deaths or their resistance was one route to a nastier approach to dominance and power.

There are some parallels and overtones here today that gay people can repent and become civilised either through abstinence or becoming something else and then marrying the opposite sex, all because of selected biblical verses; and that when it becomes support for legislation by these new Christian missionaries it also threatens the lives and culture of gay people, as in Nigeria, no doubt to depress and dispirit them too.

Noted Martin:

Without attribution, which I thought was very discreet, at the time. Applause.Applause.

I think Jim Naughton confuses "seen to be" with "seems to be". I suggest that it is not what is perceived to be happening with Nigeria but that it is actually *seen*. That it is seen is causing Western governments and the European Union to condemn Nigeria, and here the Archbishop is being forced to say at least (the least) something. But he does it by saying about homophobic attacks in the West. So he tries to balance what he says.

He doesn't get it, does he? There may just be one or two (or even more) Christian believing idiots in the West who might advocate or even do violence to others they despise, but it is rather different when an Archbishop and his Church is organising systematic support for legislation to intimidate, suppress and lock up a class of people. It requires not yet another attempt to nuance and balance, but clarity.

How the bureaucratic requirements of a hierarchical post and policy desires for international uniformity destroy a simple ethical demand.

Brava! to Ruth Gledhill!

counterlight - you are imagining your opponents are silent because it suits your prejudices....

"conservatives" have criticised both the Nigerian legislation and abuses in Harare.....but that does not mean we have to also accept heresy in the AC - (this does not follow - I am against VGR and the chap in Harare and the Nigerian legislation - based on scripture, I can accept none of these)

Cheryl,

I agree entirely. Holding conservo-fundie right-wing views makes hypocrisy all the easier to fall into.

'they died through lack of hope.'

Thank you for this compelling and moving expostion Pluralist (one of many here).

Those six words seem to say it all.

May the efforts of TA and other sites and those who use them bring hope and so hold back forces tending to death ...

I'm still waiting for Bishop Minns and the Moderator of the Network to come out and forcefully and unequivocally condemn this legislation.

So far, all I've heard is crickets chirping.

Pluralist is right in the comment about the difference between a few nut jobs who commit hate crimes against homosexuals (hate crimes not proposed, encouraged or supported by TEC) and the church supporting legislation in a national campaign of oppression and abuse against one segment of the community no matter how small.

I really don't understand this ABC. Can he say nothing to condemn wholesale oppression of a group for whom he just said the church should be
a safe place without slamming the "liberal" areas where such hate crimes are decried and the safety of GLBTs is of paramount importance? And is slamming the "liberal" (read TEC) church so much more a test of his dedication to unity in the AC than vocally and decisively speak to those churches who actually support legislation that creates anything BUT a safe place for GLBTs?

Ruth Gledhill also reports that Dr Rowan is taking 2 months off, combined with his ususal August vacation - which explains why there is no time left to meet with the HOB and the TEC Executive Counsel between now and the September "deadline".

Today on the American HOB and D list it is asserted (by the TEC Bishop of Europe) that this sabbatical was planned several years ago...

The crisis shall have to sort it self out ;=)

(which makes me think Dr Rowan is even more self-absorbed than I thought possible)

This is quite important, isn't it, this three months in total off. It does say no to TEC, in terms of a meeting, unless it is a last minute job. It raises questions about what sort of reflection Rowan Williams will have, rather than just burying his head into some books.

He sets something up and then, as the various places manoeuvre and the intensity of the situation grows, moving towards a deadline, he disappears.

I wonder if he is considering more than just needing a break from the intensity of it all?

Crawley nailed it: The Primate of Homophobia. That's akinola to a tee.

Regardless of what side one comes down on re. this divide in the Anglican Communion, this truth stands for all and relates to slavery of the soul"
"A man is a slave by whatever controls him."

Whatever is lodged in our brains about who/what a man or woman can/cannot be is what controls them.

We also forget that the Christian life and the living of it has NEVER been about genetics or one's proclivities whatever they seem to be either by the design our genes or the "pronouncements" put on us about by others about what we are or can or cannot be.
The Christian life is imparted spiritually, and is not what comes by "human design" or the will of a biological parent..."To as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the children of God...not born of flesh...."
It is this imparted life that FREES us from corruption and whatever sinful proclivities. It is this OVERCOMING life that is a gift of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does not leave people stuck in their "whatever."

Church leaders show little sign of all this Julia. I think you will find the history of 'sinless perfection' shows what a false and danerous notion it is. Ever heard of the old man?!