ABC asks 5 primates for reflections on sexuality and mission

Anglican Journal:

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has asked the primates (national archbishops) of five provinces, including the Anglican Church of Canada, to reflect on the impact that the current Anglican conflict over sexuality has had on the mission and priorities of their churches.

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said that he and the primates of the U.S. Episcopal Church, Uganda, Pakistan, and South Africa, have been invited to offer their reflections during the primates’ meeting scheduled Feb. 1 to 5 in Alexandria, Egypt.

According to Anglican Communion News Service, "all Provinces will be represented at the forth-coming meeting, except the Church of Pakistan and the Church of South India, where in each case the Moderator cannot attend due to a previously booked engagement."

Comments (4)

I am glad the Church of Canada has put this news out there, and sort of wonder why The Episcopal Church had not previously disclosed it.

I'm interested to see Uganda included. Orombi has a pattern of skipping important meetings, not that he'd skip this one.
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/anglican_communion/joint_standing_committee_meets_1.html

I'm kind of wary of this, for two reasons:

1) the framing of "the impact that the current Anglican conflict over sexuality" suggests either a) a falsely equivalent passivity (i.e., the conflict "happened" to everybody) or, worse, b) that conflict was done TO Uganda and Pakistan (and perhaps South Africa) BY TEC/AngChCanada---when, au contraire, it was people like Uganda's Orombi which CREATED "the conflict"!

2) I think we can expect the primates of Uganda and Pakistan to claim "the conflict is getting our people KILLED!", and Play Victim at the expense of TEC/AngChCanada (while minimizing the damage to the "mission and priorities" of TEC/AngChCanada).

I hope I'm wrong---it's just that we've seen how Orombi operates before.

JC Fisher

According to George Conger, "a spokesman for Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda said he was unaware of any request by Archbishop Williams for him to prepare a reflection paper."

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2009/1/28/welsh-primate-new-province-is-total-nonsense

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