Thinking Anglicans

Williams and Kearon: more stories

Continued from here.

Simple Massing Priest has The end of authentic Anglicanism.

Colin Coward has What the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General should really be doing.

An earlier news report published by ENS by Neale Adams CANADA: Hiltz supports Episcopal Church, echoes objections to proposed sanctions

Associated Press Anglicans cut Episcopalians from ecumenical bodies

Religion News Service Episcopalians Booted from Anglican Bodies Over Gay Bishops

Anglican Journal Facing the consequences: Anglican Communion takes action against The Episcopal Church (previously linked in our Canadian synod coverage)

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PB: "sanctions are 'unfortunate'"

ENS has a report on what the Presiding Bishop said to the Canadian General Synod.

See Marites N. Sison Presiding bishop describes Canterbury’s sanctions as ‘unfortunate’

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has described the decision by Lambeth Palace to remove Episcopalians serving on international ecumenical dialogues as “unfortunate … It misrepresents who the Anglican Communion is…”

Update

A partial transcript of the press conference is available at the Anglican Essentials website, see Press conference with TEC Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts-Schori. Some excerpts:

Q: On the sanction imposed by the ABC on TEC for the ecumenism committee, the argument was that because of what has happened TEC doesn’t represent the faith and order of the communion. Is that fair? Secondly, how is it going to effect the work of TEC since you have a very strong interest in ecumenism?

KJS: Certainly our bilateral conversations will continue. I think it’s very unfortunate because it misrepresents who the Anglican communion is: we have a variety of opinions on these issues of human sexuality. People act as though one resolution from the 1998 Lambeth conference decided this for all time. If you look at the history of the Lambeth conference, they have gone back and forth: one in the 20s said that contraception was inappropriate and the next one said, yes it was appropriate and by the time you got 2 or 3 further down the road, it was the duty of families to plan. So our understanding about ethical issues evolves as it needs to, because our context evolves. For the Anglican communion to say to the Methodists or the Lutherans that we only have one position is inaccurate. We have a variety of understandings and, no we don’t have consensus on the hot-button issues of the moment.

and

Q: Has the ABC responded adequately to cross border interventions?

KJS: I don’t think he understands how difficult, painful and destructive it’s been, both in the ACoC and TEC. When bishops come from overseas and say, well, we’ll take care of you, you don’t have to pay attention to your bishop, it destroys pastoral relationships. It’s like an affair in a marriage: it destroys trust and I believe it does spiritual violence to vowed relationships. It is a very ancient teaching of the church that a bishop is supposed to stay home and tend to the flock to which he was originally assigned.

Q: you mentioned in your Pentecost letter – from the duelling Pentecost letters – “we note the troubling push towards centralised authority “ in response to Rowan Williams. Is not the resistance to cross-border interventions a similar push towards central authority on a smaller scale?

KJS: The resistance to cross-border interventions is for the reasons I’ve pointed out: it destroys pastoral relationships. It prevents any possibility of reconciliation; it prevents growth in understanding among people who disagree. The idea that one person in one location in the world can adequately understand contexts across the globe and decide policy across the globe, I think contravenes traditional Anglican understanding of local worship in a language understood by the people. This is what we were arguing about 500 years ago.

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more responses to Williams and Kearon

Doug LeBlanc has reported at the Living Church that the Letter Affects Five Episcopal Leaders.

Earlier he had written Archbishop’s Letter Could Affect 30 Leaders.

The Living Church also published an editorial, An Invitation to Grow Up.

At Episcopal Café John Chilton wrote Disinvitations raise constitutional questions.

Also Jim Naughton wrote The incredible shrinking Archbishop of Canterbury.

Mark Harris wrote What makes The Episcopal Church so “Special” in the Archbishop’s eyes?

Adrian Worsfold at Pluralist Speaks has written Someone Should Remove Williams.

And he also published Rounding Up: The Opposition Grows.

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Episcopal Church reports on ACO action

ENS reports: Episcopalians removed from Anglican Communion’s ecumenical dialogues

Jan Butter, communications director for the Anglican Communion, confirmed that the membership change applies to all ecumenical dialogues.

Butter told ENS that the Anglican Communion’s secretary general, in consultation with the archbishop of Canterbury, appoints members to the ecumenical commissions and to IASCUFO. “He therefore can ask people to stand down,” he said.

Episcopal Church members who were serving on the Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue are the Rev. Thomas Ferguson, the Episcopal Church’s interim deputy for ecumenical and interreligious relations, and Assistant Bishop William Gregg of North Carolina.

Bishop C. Franklin Brookhart of Montana had been a member of the Anglican-Methodist International Commission for Unity in Mission and the Very Rev. William H. Petersen, professor of ecclesiastical and ecumenical history of Bexley Hall, Columbus, was serving on the Anglican-Lutheran International Commission.

The Rev. Katherine Grieb, an Episcopal priest and professor of New Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary, was the IASCUFO member who has been invited to serve as a consultant.

Kearon said he has also written to Archbishop Fred Hiltz of the Anglican Church of Canada “to ask whether its General Synod or House of Bishops has formally adopted policies that breach the second moratorium in the Windsor Report, authorizing public rites of same-sex blessing,” and to Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, “asking him for clarification as to the current state of his interventions into other provinces.”

Some dioceses in the Canadian church have made provisions for blessing same-gender unions and Venables has offered oversight to conservative members of parishes and dioceses breaking away from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

No mention was made in Kearon’s letter of ecumenical commission members from other provinces — such as Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda – that are currently involved in cross-border interventions in the United States.

Another document which surfaced today is a set of talking points from the Office of Public Affairs of the Episcopal Church. There is a copy of this, with some additional notes, at Episcopal Café.
There is now an official website copy over here.

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Pentecost letters: more analyses

Three more articles analysing the letters from Rowan Williams and Katharine Jefferts Schori:

Jim Stockton wrote The power hungry Rowan Williams.

Christopher Seitz wrote God the Holy Spirit and “being led into all truth”.

The Anglican Scotist wrote a short item, titled Williams/ Schori (H/T to Episcopal Café).

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ACO announces next steps

The ACO has published this: Secretary General lays out next steps following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pentecost letter.

…So the Archbishop of Canterbury has made the following proposals in his Pentecost Letter which spell out the consequences of this action:

“I am therefore proposing that, while these tensions remain unresolved, members of such provinces – provinces that have formally, through their Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion and recently reaffirmed by the Standing Committee and the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) – should not be participants in the ecumenical dialogues in which the Communion is formally engaged. I am further proposing that members of such provinces serving on IASCUFO should for the time being have the status only of consultants rather than full members”.

Last Thursday I sent letters to members of the Inter Anglican ecumenical dialogues who are from the Episcopal Church informing them that their membership of these dialogues has been discontinued. In doing so I want to emphasise again as I did in those letters the exceptional service of each and every person to that important work and to acknowledge without exception the enormous contribution each person has made.

I have also written to the person from the Episcopal Church who is a member of the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order (IASCUFO), withdrawing that person’s membership and inviting her to serve as a Consultant to that body.

I have written to the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada to ask whether its General Synod or House of Bishops has formally adopted policies that breach the second moratorium in the Windsor Report, authorising public rites of same-sex blessing.

At the same time I have written to the Primate of the Southern Cone, whose interventions in other provinces are referred to in the Windsor Continuation Group Report asking him for clarification as to the current state of his interventions into other provinces.

These are the actions which flow immediately from the Archbishop’s Pentecost Letter.

Looking forward, there are two questions in this area which I would like to see addressed: One is the relationship between the actions of a bishop or of a diocese and the responsibilities of a province for those actions – this issue is referred to in the Windsor Continuation Group Report para 48.

Secondly, to ask the question of whether maintaining within the fellowship of one’s Provincial House of Bishops, a bishop who is exercising episcopal ministry in another province without the expressed permission of that province or the local bishop, constitutes an intervention and is therefore a breach of the third moratorium.

The Revd Canon Kenneth Kearon.

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Canadian Primate on SS blessings and Covenant

Although the Presidential Address of the Canadian primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, has already been linked on TA in the course of covering the Canadian General Synod meeting, I think it is worth noting separately the section of his remarks on same-sex blessings and on the Anglican Covenant. It is copied out below the fold. This includes his comments on the Pentecost letter of Archbishop Williams. The full text is over here.

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Observer responds to complaint

Updated Monday afternoon

Recently the Observer Sunday newspaper published some editorial comment.

The Stand Firm website took exception to it.

Today, Stephen Pritchard, the Reader’s Editor of the Observer responds at length. See The Readers’ Editor on… what did the Nigerian bishop really say about gay men?

A journalist’s retraction of quotes he attributed to the Rt Rev Isaac Orama has done nothing to clarify a confused situation…

Update

This does not satisfy the author of the original complaint (who also does not understand that The Observer is a separate newspaper title from The Guardian).

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bishops and divorce

Jonathan Wynne-Jones reports for the Sunday Telegraph Divorced bishops to be permitted for first time by Church of England.

Divorced clergy are to be allowed to become Church of England bishops for the first time in a move which has been condemned by traditionalists.

Critics described the change in Church rules as “utterly unacceptable” and warned it would undermine the biblical teaching that marriage is for life.

Conservative and liberal bishops have been deeply divided over the issue, which they have been secretly discussing for months.

While Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, supported relaxing the rules, John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, is understood to have fiercely argued against a change.

But The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that the change was agreed at a meeting of the House of Bishops in May.

The Church is set to issue a statement announcing the new policy next month after legal advice made clear that there is no obstacle to a divorcee, or a priest married to a divorcee, being consecrated.

It means that a number of clergy who have been rejected in the past by the Crown Nominations Commission, the body responsible for appointing bishops, will now be put forward for consideration.

The first beneficiary of the change could be the Rev Nick Holtam, vicar of St Martin in the Fields in London, whose supporters want to propose as the next Bishop of Southwark.

Despite having gained a reputation as an accomplished preacher and a formidable fund-raiser, having masterminded his church’s £36 million renovation appeal, conservatives had warned that his name would be blocked because his wife of 29 years had a brief marriage as a teenager.

Senior figures in the diocese of Southwark were angered by the prospect of not being able to appoint a man they saw as an outstanding candidate for the post. They have welcomed the change in the Church’s position…

…Under current rules, trainee clergy who are divorced, or are married to a divorcee, are required to obtain permission – known as a faculty – before they can be ordained, but priests with such a personal history are currently blocked from becoming bishops.

Now the moratorium is to be dropped in favour of clergy being considered for promotion on a case-by-case basis, a Church spokesman said…

The Press Association has what appears to be the full quote from the CofE spokesman:

“The House had asked previously for clarification of the relevant legal background and, in the light of that, has now agreed that a statement setting out its approach to these issues should be prepared.

“It is expected that the statement, addressing the relevant legal and theological issues, will be available in July when the General Synod meets.

“There is no legal obstacle to persons who have remarried after divorce, or are married to spouses remarried after divorce, becoming bishops. The agreed policy is to pursue a discretionary approach on a case-by-case basis. It is a clarification in an area where there has previously been some uncertainty both about the legal background and the policy.”

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responses to the Presiding Bishop's letter

Updated Friday evening

Here are three:

Another version of this article is at Huffington Post The Real Reason for the Anglican-Episcopal Divide

Other news reports:

Religion News Service Daniel Burke Episcopal Head Lashes Out at Anglican ‘Colonial’ Uniformity

Reuters Tom Heneghan Church rejects Anglican pressure over gay rights and earlier Avril Ormsby Latest Anglican peace bid meets with skepticism

Friday evening update

Here’s a fourth analysis:

Living Church and Covenant Ephraim Radner Actions Now Have Consequences

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Religion and the Judiciary

The UKSC blog, which is focused on the new UK Supreme Court, has published an article by Aidan O’Neill QC titled Religion and the Judiciary.

He discusses several recent situations where the personal religious convictions or cultural background of judges have given rise to comment, and in particular the recent intervention by Lord Carey in McFarlane v Relate Avon Ltd.

He concludes:

The paradox is that the obvious tension between the views expressed by Lord Carey and their unequivocal rejection by Lord Justice Laws arises precisely because of the expansion of anti-discrimination law explicitly to outlaw discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. What the religiously motivated find difficult to understand or accept is that the freedom from discrimination on grounds of religion or belief which has been afforded them by the law does not extend to giving the religious a general right to discriminate (on otherwise unlawful grounds such as sex, age, race, disability, or sexual orientation) on the basis of religion or belief. There will undoubtedly be more litigation – if not further legislation – on this whole vexed issue. The UK tradition of being blind to our Justices’ religion will come to be further strained as a result.

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Presiding Bishop issues pastoral letter

[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has issued a pastoral letter to the Episcopal Church, in which she refers to the Pentecost letter from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and urges continued dialogue with those who disagree with recent actions “for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding.”

The full text of the letter is below the fold. It also deals with the proposed Anglican Covenant. The covering press release continues:

In his May 28 letter, Williams acknowledged the tensions caused in some parts of the Anglican Communion by the consecration of Los Angeles Bishop Suffragan Mary Douglas Glasspool and the ongoing unauthorized incursions by Anglican leaders into other provinces. Glasspool is the Episcopal Church’s second openly gay, partnered bishop.

Jefferts Schori acknowledged in her letter that “the Spirit does seem to be saying to many within the Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God’s good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones. The Spirit also seems to be saying the same thing in other parts of the Anglican Communion, and among some of our Christian partners, including Lutheran churches in North America and Europe, the Old Catholic churches of Europe, and a number of others.

“That growing awareness does not deny the reality that many Anglicans and not a few Episcopalians still fervently hold traditional views about human sexuality. This Episcopal Church is a broad and inclusive enough tent to hold that variety.”

Note: the error discussed in the comments below has now been corrected in the original ENS published copy, and therefore this copy has been conformed accordingly.

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Bishop of California responds to ABC

Bishop Marc Andrus of California has written A response to Archbishop Rowan’s Pentecost letter.

Here is an extract:

…When an Empire and its exponents can no longer exercise control by might, an option is to feint, double-talk, and manipulate. Such tactics have been in the fore with Archbishop Rowan since the confirmation of Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. The deployment of the Windsor Report and the manipulation of the Lambeth Conference, as cited above, are prime examples. The archbishop’s Pentecost letter is the most recent example.

In the Pentecost letter, it looks like he is disciplining errant provinces of the Communion, while only a little concentration shows that the underlying goal is to assert his power to be the disciplinarian. Archbishop Rowan is intent on a covenant with punitive measures built in. The bishops of the Communion expressed their distaste for a punitive covenant, and so the archbishop has stepped up to be himself the judging authority he has been unable to build into a covenant.

Other examples in the Pentecost letter:

  • All three moratoria are supposedly to be attended to, but the packaging of the letter on the Anglican Communion website makes it clear that it is Mary Glasspool’s consecration that has galvanized the archbishop into action.
  • The archbishop says that primates of disciplined provinces are free to meet together. Surely these primates do not need the archbishop’s permission to meet together. This is another example of promoting the illusion of the archbishop’s power.
  • By taking offending provinces out of the conversation with ecumenical partners, the archbishop subtly implies that such conversation is dangerous and contaminating, exactly as was done with Bishop Robinson and LGBT voices in general at the Lambeth Conference…
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more criticism of the ABC

Jim Naughton has written an article at Episcopal Café titled The self-trivializing Anglican Communion.

…About halfway through weighing some of the issues that I’ve written about here before, I had a sudden realization: reflecting on Rowan Williams’ letter wasn’t a worthwhile use of my time; writing it was not a worthwhile use of his. The issues at stake have become so trivial — We are not debating right and wrong, we are debating whether there should be trifling penalties for giving offense to other members of the Communion.—that to engage them at all compromises our moral standing and diminishes our ability to speak credibly on issues of real importance.

This isn’t to say that we don’t have to make a decision about whether to accede to the archbishop’s proposal — and I suppose I think that we shouldn’t because it would only encourage him to make other such requests — just that whether we accede or not make very little difference to the world, to the Communion, to our ecumenical partners, to our church, or even to a Communion news junky like me.

Which is why I was of no use to the reporters I spoke to on Friday afternoon; because, God bless them, they had to write stories based on the mistaken notion that all of this stuff still matters, and increasingly, it does not. In attempting to ram through a covenant that marginalizes the laity and centralizes authority in fewer hands, Rowan Williams has unwittingly made it clear that the governance of the Communion is as nothing compared to the relationships within the Communion, and the relationships are beyond his control.

Last week, Jim also wrote a piece endorsing last week’s Observer article criticising Anglican silence on gay persecution in Africa, see Complicity is too mild a word.

As Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has not only been complicit in the persecution of gay and lesbian Africans, he has actively abetted the cause of the Anglican Communion’s most virulently bigoted prelates, and twisted the Communion’s moral calculus beyond recognition…

…Williams’ silence on these issues would be less troubling had he not so frequently and publicly criticized the Episcopal Church for treating gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered Christians as full members of the Church. He used an invitation to the Church’s General Convention last summer to urge worshipers — during a sermon — not to pass legislation making it more likely that a gay or lesbian candidate would be elected to the episcopacy. When then-Canon Mary Glasspool, a lesbian, received sufficient consents to be consecrated as suffragan bishop of Los Angeles, Williams expressed his displeasure in a press release emailed far and wide at the crack of dawn (in stark contrast to his tepid criticism of the Ugandan legislation). And he continues to warn about the “consequences” that the Episcopal Church will face for Glasspool’s consecration.

Williams’ behavior suggests that there is only one sin for which an Anglican leader can earn public condemnation, and only one act that merits exclusion from the councils of the Communion: repenting of the Church’s age old homophobia. Calling him complicit in the persecutions of LGBT people in African suggests that he acquiesced in the creation of a climate of intolerance within the Anglican Communion. But in reality, he is one of its architects.

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Primate calls for Nigeria to leave the UN

Two news sources from Nigeria report this story.

Sunday Trust Anglican Primate urges Nigeria to withdraw from the UN

Weekend Observer Homosexuality:Pull Out Of United Nations … Anglican Primate Urges FG

The Primate, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, last Thursday called on Nigeria to quit the UN, over the latter’s support for homosexuality.

Okoh said that it was regrettable that the UN was currently using human rights bodies and non-governmental organisations to ensure the entrenchment of homosexuality globally. The cleric made the call in Lagos at a reception held for him by the Ecclesiastical Province of Lagos at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina, Lagos.

“If the UN has made itself an agent for the propagation of homosexuality globally, then it is time for us (Nigeria) to pull out of the organisation.

“This is because the UN has no right to determine for or impose moral standards on us (Nigeria). Let us stand firm and refuse to be bought over by the West,’’ he said.

Okoh promised to continue the fight against homosexuality and urge the Anglican Church to support him…

Hat Tip, Lionel Deimel.

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Pentecost letter: reports and reactions

Updated Sunday afternoon

Church Times Dr Williams makes first strike against erring provinces

Telegraph Archbishop of Canterbury imposes first sanctions on Anglican provinces over gay bishops dispute

Episcopal News Service Canterbury proposes resignation of ecumenical commission members

BBC Archbishop calls for action against rebel Anglicans

CNN Archbishop of Canterbury slaps Episcopal Church for openly gay bishops

From the blogs:

Cif belief Mark Vernon The Anglican Communion falters, again

Mark Harris Thoughts on the ABC’s Pentecost Letter.
Also, Who is on the Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order?

Fr Jake Canterbury’s Pentecost Punishments

Tony Clavier PENTECOST LETTER

Updates

Episcopal Café What kind of Pentecost?

Wounded Bird THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY’S PENTECOST LETTER

Caminante Twenty-four hours later

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Italian crucifix case develops

Updated 3 June

See earlier reports here.

The full judgment is available in English here (PDF also available there), or as a Word file, downloadable here.

Neil Addison notes that a relevant bit of history is contained in paragraph 16, see here.

The next hearing in the case will be at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on 30 June.

The Italian Government has submitted a brief (PDF), which is so far only available in French.

Several other parties have filed Amicus Curiae briefs in this case. Here are links to some of them.

The European Centre for Law and Justice has filed a brief (PDF).
See their press release: The ECLJ Admitted as Amicus Curiae in the Italian Crucifix Case Before the European Court of Human Rights.

The American-based Alliance Defense Fund has submitted a brief (PDF) on behalf of 32 members of the European Parliament.
See their press release: Court grants ADF request to allow 32 members of European Parliament to defend Italy in cross case.

Another American-based group, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has also filed a brief (PDF) prepared by a team of 37 law professors.
See their press release: 37 Law Professors Urge European Court to Reject Ruling Banning Cross from Italian Classrooms.

Also, the European Humanist Federation has filed this brief (PDF). More from the EHF available here. Update This organisation has had its application to intervene rejected.

Update

There are also reports that ten European states have joined Italy in petitioning the European Court of Human Rights to overturn its decision. They are reported to be:

  • Armenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, San-Marino, Romania, and The Russian Federation.
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Los Angeles consecration of bishops service

As there are a number of people, even bishops, who have expressed criticism of this event, it may be helpful to link to the Order of Service that was followed.

It is in a PDF file, available here.

Direct links to the video recordings are also available from this page.

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ABC speaks about Malawi

Archbishop welcomes bishops’ statement on Malawi sentencing

Thursday 27 May 2010

The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomes the statement made by the Anglican Bishops in Southern Africa regarding the sentencing of Stephen Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga to 14 years of hard labour.

The Imprisonment of Stephen Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga

This Statement from the Anglican Bishops in Southern African on the Imprisonment of Stephen Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga…

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Archbishop's Pentecost letter

The Archbishop of Canterbury has written his Pentecost letter to the Anglican Communion.

The press release about it, together with Notes to Editors is reproduced in full below the fold.

Read the full text of the letter by going here. Another copy here (scroll down).

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