The Christian Century

Signs of a full-blown split between the Episcopal Church and most of the worldwide Anglican Communion appeared only days after the U.S. church’s General Convention refused to renounce the election of gay bishops.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has warned in a television interview that the worldwide Anglican Communion may “rupture” over the issue of homosexuality.

The choice of Uganda-born John Sentamu as archbishop of York, the second most senior post in the (Anglican) Church of England, has been hailed in both countries, with a leading Ugandan newspaper describing the move as “a reverse evangelism.”

Leaders of the Episcopal Church, in an analysis requested by Anglican peers overseas, stood by their decision to ordain an openly gay bishop and to bless same-sex unions, with a report arguing that there is a “genuine holiness” among gays and lesbians.

Like their Episcopal colleagues in the U.S., Canada’s Anglican church representatives will “attend but not participate fully” in the June meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham, England.

The Episcopal Church Executive Council has decided to “voluntarily withdraw” its three official participants from a June global steering committee meeting of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Leaders of the Scottish Episcopal Church have added fuel to a controversy dividing the worldwide Anglican Communion by declaring that in their church practicing homosexuals are not barred from becoming priests.

Almost more than any other Christian group, Anglicans are notoriously—and proudly—hard to pin down. They are not fully Protestant yet not quite Catholic; hierarchical yet independent; scripturally literate but not literalistic; equal parts New York and Nairobi.

The Church of England will be “increasingly isolated and anachronistic” unless it accepts women as bishops, a working party of the Anglican Church has concluded.

Finding ways to live together amid disagreement has long been an Anglican ideal. That ideal is receiving its severest test as the Anglican Communion discusses the Windsor Report, issued in October in response to the election of an openly gay bishop in the U.S. and the blessing of same-sex relationships by some American and Canadian dioceses.