Source: Times (London), Guardian, BBC News
Calls Sunday during opening ceremonies for an 'inclusive' church took a different tone as the Lambeth Conference continued at University of Kent as an African bishop issued a sharp condemnation of the US church.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, who has urged a middle ground on several contentious matters, issued what the Times of London characterized as a "strong statement against living in sin and gay sex." BBC News, on the other hand, characterized his statements as "enigmatic."
Dr Williams has taken a liberal view of homosexuality, but has adopted the more conservative majority policy as the Church's leader.
"What counts for me as wrong is any relationship outside a covenant of mutual love and support," he said.
Then, deferring to Anglican orthodoxy: "I don't think that sex outside marriage is as God purposes it.
"In the question of same-sex relationships the Lambeth Conference has made its views clear and that is the position I hold as archbishop."
Hostilities over New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson resumed yesterday in Canterbury, as an African primate urged Robinson to resign and save the Anglican Communion.
The Rt Rev Daniel Deng, Archbishop of Sudan, and African colleagues accused the US Episcopal church of exposing Anglicans to ridicule, and issued a rejection of homosexual practice, The Guardian reports.
Traditionalists objected to the presence in Canterbury of American bishops who helped ordain the openly gay bishop in 2003.
"This has not only caused deep divisions within the communion, but it has seriously harmed the church's witness in Africa," Deng said.
He claimed that Robinson's consecration had been responsible for "opening the church to ridicule and damaging its credibility in a multi-religious environment."
The statement is endorsed by more than 150 bishops attending the 10-yearly Lambeth gathering, who between them represent 17 of the 38 provinces in the communion.
At a press conference, Deng said: "He [Robinson] should resign for the sake of the church. The people who consecrated him should confess to the conference because they created an outcry in the whole Anglican world."
Deng said that around 230 bishops are boycotting the conference because of Robinson's election and the people who consecrated him.
"Can he not resign to allow the 300 bishops to come back to the house? The norms of the communion have been violated. We're asking them as Christians to keep the Anglican world intact."
Although several bishops have defied the instructions of archbishops in countries such as Kenya, and turned up in Canterbury for the once-a-decade meeting of all the Anglican Communion's bishops, the boycott looms over the conference, BBC News reports.
Dr Williams acknowledged that the boycott raised the question of whether the conference could legitimately speak for the whole communion, but he insisted that if traditionalists had wanted their voices heard they should have attended.
"What is my message -- we're sorry you're not here", he said. "The great pity is that to have those voices would have been a healing and helpful thing."
Dr Williams denied that the Anglican Communion was at an end and said he did not believe the Church of England had entered the Lambeth conference as "a bleeding, hunted animal with arrows in its side" as a result of the vote on women bishops which took place at the General Synod last month.
Dr Williams said the American bishops had earned their invitations through contrition.
Some individually expressed regret for the action widely blamed for prompting the widening rift over homosexuality in the Communion.
"Corporately the (American) House of Bishops asked for forgiveness last year," said Dr Williams, "and 50% of the provinces (individual autonomous national Anglican Churches) or a bit more said that's probably all right."
Robinson, the Anglican Communion's first openly gay bishop, is conspicuously unrepentant.
On the contrary he is determined that other Anglican bishops should not, as he put it, meet without a reminder of his presence.
Dr Williams said Gene Robinson didn't get an invitation to the conference because he remained so controversial in the Communion.
"The bishops represent not only their dioceses but also the worldwide fellowship… and that's the rationale."
BBC News reports that Bishop Robinson has become a familiar sight on the campus of Kent University, despite not getting an invitation. He's been making the most of plentiful chance meetings with other bishops to press his case for a re-thinking of the Communion's official view of active homosexuality as against biblical teaching.
Full article: Call at Lambeth for gay bishop to resign post | The Guardian
Archbishop confirms church's anti-gay sex stance | Times (London)
Lambeth diary: Saying sorry | BBC News