LONDON (AP) – Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said Monday he hoped this week’s meeting of world Anglican leaders could avoid a split over homosexuality in the worldwide fellowship and lead to “finding ways to disagree well.”
However, Welby said there’s little he can do if some of the 38 leaders quit the meeting in Canterbury. Welby is the spiritual head of the 85-million-member Anglican Communion but, unlike a pope, he has no authority to force a compromise.
“Certainly I want reconciliation, but reconciliation doesn’t always mean agreement – in fact it very seldom does. It means finding ways to disagree well and that’s what we’ve got to do this week,” Welby told the BBC. “There’s nothing I can do if people decide that they want to leave the room. It won’t split the communion.”
The communion, a fellowship rooted in the Church of England, has been fracturing for decades over gay relationships and women’s ordination, among other issues. The rifts blew wide open in 2003 when the Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the United States, consecrated the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire. The most vocal outrage over Robinson’s election came from Africa, home to some of the fastest-growing churches in the communion and the deepest opposition to gay relationships as a violation of Scripture.
Over a series of world meetings, leaders of the national churches, called primates, have debated whether they should remain one world fellowship given their differences. In 2009, Anglican national leaders in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and other church provinces helped create the Anglican Church in North America, as a conservative alternative to the U.S. Episcopal Church. Welby invited the leader of the conservative North American body to participate in the Canterbury assembly.