In gay dispute, Anglican leader urges humility
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 19, 2007
ZANZIBAR, Tanzania - The Anglicans' spiritual leader, faced with a deepening rift over homosexuality and Scripture in the worldwide Anglican Communion, called Sunday for humility among bishops as the conflict threatens to fracture the church.
Leaders of the world's 77-million Anglicans, meeting in Tanzania for a conference that ends today, traveled by boat from the mainland for a Holy Eucharist in Zanzibar, a predominantly Muslim archipelago on the Indian Ocean.
The Anglican Communion is struggling with a rift over ordaining gays and blessing same-sex unions, which reached a crisis in 2003 when the Episcopal Church - the U.S. wing of the fellowship - consecrated its first gay bishop. Last year, the U.S. church elected its first female leader, Katharine Jefferts Schori, fueling the divide.
"There is one thing that a bishop should say to another bishop," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglicans' spiritual leader, told the Anglican leaders and several hundred worshipers in a packed cathedral Sunday. "That I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great savior."
Conspicuously absent from Sunday's service was Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, who has called the acceptance of gay relationships a "satanic attack" on the church and who now leads a rival network formed by conservative Anglicans in the United States.
On Friday, Akinola led seven conservative archbishops in refusing to take Communion with Jefferts Schori.
The creation of Akinola's group, called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, has been the most dramatic step by conservatives to encourage a breakaway Episcopal group that would be outside Jefferts Schori's oversight.
An eventual breakup of the communion would be the most stunning fallout from struggles over gay relationships that also have gripped Roman Catholics, Lutherans and others.
Many conservative Anglicans believe a liberal trend could cost the fellowship significant numbers of converts - particularly in Africa, where competition for souls is fierce.