Ruth Gledhill, religion reporter for the Times of London, reports that The End May Be Near for the Anglican Communion:
The openly gay bishop of New Hampshire must resign if the Anglican church is to be saved from schism, a senior Archbishop said today.
The Archbishop of Sudan, Dr Daniel Deng, who has the backing of more than 150 bishops and archbishops from 17 provinces in the Global South, said that if Bishop Gene Robinson was to be true to his Christian faith he had no alternative but to step down.
And he called on the 60 bishops who consecrated him, many of whom are at the ten-yearly Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, Kent, to confess, repent and beg for forgiveness for taking the Church to the point of schism.
It was a clever move on the part of the Global South bishops to make Archbishop Deng their spokesman–no Christans in all the world have suffered more for their faith than the Sudanese. The contrast that it sets up is stark: on the one hand, you’ve got gay clerics in the West demanding the right to indulge their sexual appetites; on the other, Christians in the Global South face deadly persecution in part because Muslims associate them with Western decadence. The archbishop alluded to this when he said:
Citing Islam as one justification for his stance, Dr Deng said: “We are called infidels by the Islamic world when they hear our brothers and sisters from the Christian world talking about same-sex [relationships] to be blessed.
“Immediately it gives them the way to tell other people, these people are evil. It will give them the upper hand to kill our people.”
Nor was the archbishop alone in his call for drastic action:
The Right Rev Jack Iker, Bishop of Forth Worth, said: “Those Bishops who stand in solidarity with Gene Robinson should withdraw themselves from further participation in the Lambeth Conference. Having failed in several attempts to include Gene in the Conference, his supporters should themselves feel a sense of rejection from the Conference itself.
“Integrity and honesty would dictate that they should stand with Gene — excluded from full participation in the Lambeth Conference. Is this all talk, or is it backed up by action?”
There’s as much chance of that happening as there is of ice cream not melting in the oppressive heat in the non-air conditioned big tent that for some bizarre reason is the site of a lot of the Lambeth business. Put together the apparently awful conditions, the perception on the part of some bishops that the process is a waste of time, and the conflict between Global South and Western bishops over sexuality, and it’s no wonder that Ms. Gledhill says on her Times blog:
The conference is falling apart and it is only day two of official business.
(Via Stand Firm.)
Posted by David Fischler 
