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Anglican head calls for humility in gay clergy row
18 Feb 2007-
Zanzibar - The spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans
reminded his bishops of the need for humility on Sunday in a veiled
rebuke to those whose wrangling over gay clergy threatens to tear the
church apart.
"Very early in the
history of the church there was a great saint who said God was evident
when bishops were silent," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said
to some laughter in a packed cathedral in the predominantly Muslim
Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar.
Anglican Church
leaders are meeting in Tanzania to try to resolve a long simmering row
over the U.S. Episcopal Church's consecration of openly gay bishop Gene
Robinson in 2003, which has set a liberal minority against a
conservative majority.
Absent from the
service was the leader of the second-biggest Anglican province,
Nigeria's conservative Archbishop Peter Akinola, who an official said
was ill.
Akinola, together
with six other African, Asian and Latin American archbishops, refused to
take Holy Communion -- bread and wine symbolising the body and blood of
Christ -- on Friday with the head of the U.S. Episcopal Church.
The group snubbed
Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first elected female leader of an
Anglican province, in protest at her unwavering support for Robinson's
elevation and for same-sex unions.
Williams stressed
the importance of sharing Holy Communion, a key rite of the church, but
at least one archbishop, Rwanda's Emmanuel Kolini, was seen passing the
plate on Sunday during the lengthy service in English and Swahili.
Friday's boycott
was led by Anglican leaders belonging to a group called the Global
South, whose congregations in poor countries are growing rapidly.
Reading the Bible
more literally than some Anglicans, they have joined forces to expand
their influence against liberal trends often associated with the
affluent West.
Akinola, who calls
homosexuality an "aberration" has organised a parallel conservative
movement in the church, rallying traditionalist parishes on Jefferts
Schori's own turf.
Akinola's view of
homosexuality has strong support in much of Africa, home to more than
half the world's Anglicans, where Christians and Muslims often clash and
the orthodoxy of one side reinforces the orthodoxy of the other.
The religious
rivalry was audible on Sunday when those attending the Christian service
heard a call to prayer from a mosque overlooking Zanzibar's Anglican
cathedral.
Williams, a
thoughtful rather than charismatic leader, urged Anglicans to open their
eyes to suffering felt by "minorities of one kind or another" in a
sermon that also commemorated the end of slavery.
"Today we remember
the abolition of the slave trade, and that reminds us that ... for
thousands of years, people did not see the evil of slavery," he said,
standing in the cathedral built in 1874 on the site of Zanzibar's slave
market.
Legend has it that
the altar was erected above a whipping post where African slaves were
bound and flogged to test their fortitude at the behest of their buyers.
Most archbishops
in Africa say ordaining gay clergy flouts Biblical commands. Liberals
argue that the Anglican church has embraced diverse views during its
450-year history.
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