Can the Anglican Communion survive a meeting between Crew and +Williams? When Akinola met Crew face to face, the poor Archbishop looked as if he had seen the devil and his future with him.

On the one hand, great. On the other hand, way too much is made of the fact that the ABC "met" with somebody. We are constantly hearing that he has "met" with the Duncanites and that this is evidence that he secretly thinks whatever it is the Duncanites need to pretend that he is thinking at that moment. He's "met" with a group that included me, and we see where that has gotten us, so let's not make too much of this.

What intrigues me about this story is the fact that ENS was allowed to report it. I hope that signals a new openness on the part of the sometimes excessively secretive folks at 815.

I hope that Tobias gives the ABC a copy of his book, Reasonable and Holy.

Jim, I'm with you. "Met with" doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot. Will the group enlighten him more than his good friend Jeffrey John was able to do?

June Butler

I´d like to meet briefly with him...then, the next time we briefly ¨meet¨ I will ¨listen¨ to him...

I want to send a special shout-out to the Rev. Canon Lisa Gray. I heard her preach just over a year ago at the DioMich OASIS Eucharist, and she brought the house down. Word! (as in God's ;-D)

When the ABC meets her, he's looking at someone who will be (if hasn't been already) affected directly by B-033.

JC Fisher

As I read this, +Cantaur didn't ask for this meeting. That doesn't give me much hope that anything will come from it.

And I agree with June Butler that, if +Williams could put the knife in his friend Jeffrey John's back, he isn't likely to suddenly do an about-face and decide that he shouldn't offer GLBTs up as a sacrifice to the idol of the Anglican Communion.

But...what DOES give me hope is that Louie and Tobias will be there. Over the last 40 years, Louie has loved many of his opponents into becoming allies--and Tobias is an incredibly thoughtful and articulate theologian, who has made an excellent theological case for the holiness of same-sex unions. In my view, they are two of the very best examples we have of the gifts that GLBTs (and *partnered* ones at that!) have to offer the church.

I believe Jesus meant it when he said we would know his followers by the good they bring into the world. I pray that +Cantaur will recognize the good and holy fruit that this group of people has produced, and the good they continue to do--and that he will stop trying to force TEC to deny their gifts to placate people who won't be affected by the loss of them.

Paige Baker

I hope at least one of these fine representatives challenges Archbishop Williams with regard to the CofE and its perceived and sometimes real entanglement with a culture of violence not just out there, but in the Church in relation to lgbt persons. The latest UK attack here:
http://www.towleroad.com/2009/07/bloody-hell-uk-teen-attacked-in-homophobic-hate-crime.html

Over the weekend, the UK Independent had a horrifying story about anti-gay violence around the world:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-almost-everywhere-is-touched-by-the-stonewall-riots-now-1726047.html

. . . There are three great swathes of humanity still untouched by the spirit of Stonewall – and terrified, terrorised gay people there are screaming for help. In the Caribbean, majority-Muslim countries and most of Africa, being gay is a death sentence, yet many people who should be showing solidarity choose not to see it.

Jamaica is Taliban Afghanistan for gay people. If caught, gays and lesbians face 10 years of hard labour, but they are more likely to be lynched. The cases documented by Dr Robert Carr, of the University of the West Indies, fill whole books. Here are two from a single week: a father found a picture of a naked man in his 16-year-old son's rucksack, so he produced it in the playground and called on the boy's classmates to beat him to death – which they promptly did. No one was ever charged.

In Montego Bay, a man was caught checking out another man, so the crowd lynched him. When police arrived, they joined in. Hospitals routinely refuse to treat the victims of gay-bashings, leaving them to die, yet people who would never have dreamed of holidaying in apartheid-era South Africa still flock to Jamaica's beaches. A heroic Jamaican called Brian Williamson set up an organisation called J-FLAG to campaign for the rights of gay Jamaicans. His body was found stabbed and slashed 70 times. The police did nothing. The most popular song in Jamaica in recent years – by Beenie Man – choruses: "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays... Take dem by surprise/ Get dem in the head."

Throughout Muslim countries, gay people are routinely jailed, tortured and hanged. Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh denies there are any gay people in Iran, but is happy to have them executed in public squares. In post-invasion Iraq, there has been a homo-cidal pogrom of gay people being led by private Islamist "morality squads". In the past two months, 25 gay men's corpses have been found mutilated in one Baghdad slum, Sadr City, with notes saying "pervert" pinned to their chests. . . .

The whole article is a reminder that "gracious restraint" in the church is abandoning many of God's children to misery and death. The "unity" thus bought seems deeply tainted.

Murdoch Matthew