Source: WalesOnline, Times of London, Times of London, Time, London Independent
The Anglican row over homosexuality, which seemed to have been quieted after a successful meeting of bishops this month, has been re-ignited by the leak of letters written by Rowan Williams before he became Archbishop of Canterbury.

The letters were printed by the Times of London, a newspaper that's generally aligned with conservatives in the Church of England.

The Independent of London, a newspaper more aligned with Anglican liberals, characterizes release of the letters as "a last-ditch attempt to undermine the position of the Archbishop of Canterbury."

Williams has been under pressure from conservative to take a harder line against Anglican churches in the United States and Canada, some of whom have blessed same-sex partnerships.

The archbishop was widely seen to have made successful efforts to heal the rift last week at the Lambeth conference, the once-in-a-decade meeting of bishops from around the world. But the release of the letters has added new fuel the controversy.

In in a series letters dating from 2000 and 2001, when he was still Archbishop of Wales, Williams wrote to a Welsh psychiatrist and evangelical Christian, Deborah Pitt, that sexual relationships between gay couples could be compared to marriage.

In one of his first letters to Pitt, Williams said, "Until about 1980, I fully shared the traditional ethical understanding of homosexuality as a condition of (at best) some sort of ‘privation’, the practice of which was strictly forbidden to Christians by Scripture and tradition."

Describing the shift in his own thinking over time, Dr Williams wrote, "I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness."

In itself, the revelation of the letters comes as no surprise to either liberal or conservative camps within the Anglican church. But Williams' previous writings on the subject have been few and couched in theologisms, Time reports.

The release of the letters by the Times was followed the next day by a story in the same paper quoting church conservatives who decry Williams' leadership.

The Primate of the Southern Cone, Bishop Gregory Venables, again predicted the end of the communion, the Times reports.

Responding to the leaked correspondence, Venables said, "This is more evidence of the unravelling of Anglicanism. Without a clearly agreed biblical foundation, all the goodwill in the world cannot stop the inevitable break-up. Unity without truth is disunity."

Bishop Venables, who has infuriated North American Anglicans by taking conservative defectors into his South American province, including the entire Diocese of San JoaquÍn in central California, was among the organizers of a recent conference of Anglican dissident bishops in Jerusalem.

The Archbishop of Canterbury also came under attack from liberals, particularly in the United States, who accused him of "rank hypocrisy" for blaming them for rifts among Anglicans, while British liberals criticized him for putting unity before belief, the Times reports.

Rev Susan Russell, of the US gay lobby group Integrity, said that Williams was seeking a false unity based in dishonesty. The latest revelations would encourage liberals in North America to press on with their agenda and protect them against charges of apostasy, she said.

The Reverend Elfed Godding, the Cardiff-based General Secretary of the Welsh branch of the Evangelical Alliance, said of letters: "We’re looking back here at something he [Williams] was saying before he became Archbishop of Canterbury.

"Since he became Archbishop he has maintained an orthodox position on the issue of practicing homosexuality."

Amid this web of loyalties, the internally conflicted views of Williams himself were often overlooked, London Times reports. He was assumed to be a liberal on sexuality. Little account was taken of his conservative view of leadership, requiring him to put church unity before his own views.

His letters to Dr Pitt show that he was already working out how to reconcile his private theological view with his public persona.

An early indication of how he would manage the discrepancy between his views and the requirements of his high office come in the leaked letters. "I don't see myself as a campaigner for a new morality," Williams writes in a letter of September 2000, "but if I'm asked for my views, as a theologian rather than as a church leader, I have to be honest and admit that they are as I've said".

Source: Letters throw fuel on fire in homosexuality row - WalesOnline
New light on Archbishop of Canterbury's view on homosexuality | Times (London)
Dr Williams has made a split inevitable | Times (London)
Williams's comparison of gay sex to marriage sparks fresh row | Independent (London)
Anglican Church Gay Row Heats Up | TIME