I'm with the Guardian as to its headline, "Faith 1, Charity 0." Aptly put. RW proposes "the vision of a global church" which will be unified by systematically suppressing LGBT persons in favor of an old order of male leadership who rage against the tides of history and this vulnerable minority , in the name of Christ, no less. As to the BBC's header, "Way ahead found in Church's gay row", I think not. RW will forge ahead to form his pastoral council and Faith and Order Commission. From one corner of the Communion, the General Convention of TEC will, I believe, send back the goods marked "return to sender." I do not believe that we in TEC will pay this price for unity with primates who have distinguished themselves by their silence and cooperation in the violent suppression of gay people in their own countries. Perhaps, we in TEC might do well to vote at General Convention on a resolution to withdraw from active participation in the Anglican Communion. Would this not be better than subjecting our LGBT persons and couples to constant battering from the so-called Communion to which we seem to cling like abused children to their parents? Would it not be better to refuse the manipulations of the current benighted ABC, and his ever changing cast of commissions, designed to pressure us into renouncing our integrity in favor of a genteel silence in the face of the worldwide violence against gay and queer people? As someone who deeply longs for real communion, I want no part of belonging to RW's "global church." And will someone please get that man an eyebrow brush, a pair of small scissors and a mirror before his eyebrows join his hairline! The guy looks like
lunatic.

“A statement signed by more than a quarter of the world's Anglican archbishops said theological voices outside the west had been missing from some key sessions. "We are concerned with the continuing patronising attitude of the west towards the rest of the churches," they said.”

1)You don’t show up at a conference and then complain because your voice is missing from some key sessions?
2)Granting basic rights and loving a persecuted group of people (gays and lesbians) is “patronising”?
3)I wonder how those African bishops feel about the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960’s when another group of persecuted people (African Americans) were granted basic human rights? (A lot of Americans in the old south thought those arrogant “Yankees” were patronisng as well.)

If the Episcopal Church has to choose between loving and welcoming all of God’s children on the one hand and on the other following the modern day Pharisees and Sadducees of Common Cause in the USA and the radicals in the Global South, the choice is clear.

Not listening to voices outside the West? We haven't heard anything else for the past five years!

the voice of america...

"Granting basic rights and loving a persecuted group of people (gays and lesbians) is “patronising”?"

No, they think that's sinful. They're pretty clear on what they find patronizing. It's the appearance of supreme confidence in the rightness of TEC's "prophetic" position to the extent that TEC gives the impression of doing whatever it wants regardless of any body else. It is the equation of the status of gay people in the West, and you just need to read what I have posted elsewhere to see that I know quite well the situation here is not all sweetness and light, with the situations of people in other parts of the world, as though I am treated as badly in Canada as someone in Africa who is dying of HIV, doesn't know where her next meal is coming from, or what will happen to her orphaned children. I'm gay and I find it deeply offensive that anyone would compare my relatively priveleged status to someone suffering that much from real honest to God oppression. But then I feel the same away when some rich conservative parish in the US claims to be oppressed because they don't want a liberal priest who might actually challenge their faith. It is the denial that our actions here have consequences there. Yes, Muslims will find reasons for their pre-existent hatred of the West, but don't pretend that we don't give them a hook on which to hang that hatred, and don't expect that when someone is beating one of your loved ones to death it is particularly easy to say "But they're not killing my son because the Americans like gay people" when those murders are screaming "Death to the fag lovers!" Gay people know what it is to fear the boot coming down on your face, and how maddening it is when people deny that fear is valid. So do many people in Africa. We should empathize with them in that. Couple that then with statements from people like Spong, among others, who give the impression that they think African Christians are backward, primitive, and ignorant and you can, I think, see where this idea that TEC is patronizing comes from.