As Anglican Church Picks New Leader, Gay Marriage Weighs Heavily

The Anglican Church makes its final recommendation to government for a new Archbishop of Canterbury this week. Whoever gets the nod will have to resolve the church's split on gay marriage.

Looking back recently on a 10-year tenure marked by bitter conflicts between liberals and traditionalists, the leader of the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion suggested that his job might really call for two people.

The remarks by Rowan Williams, who steps down in December as the Archbishop of Canterbury, were interpreted as signaling that the church was planning to appoint a ‘global president’ to relieve his successor of some of the burden of heading a communion said to encompass 85 million people.

But as the Church of England group tasked with finding a new leader meets for a third and final time this week before recommending a new leader, such talk has faded. Attention has turned to the shifting field of frontrunners and where they are perceived to stand on divisions that sometimes seemed about to rip Anglicanism apart.

While the question of female bishops remains fraught, there is little doubt that the most difficult issue that will be waiting on the desk of the new archbishop – who ultimately must be approved by the queen – will center on how the church views gays.

Crucially, the Church of England will tackle the issue in two reports in the next two years: one on civil partnerships, which were introduced by the British government in 2005 to give same-sex couples the same legal rights as married couples, and the other on the wider issue of human sexuality. Both are expected to come up with conservative-leaning recommendations, while the church is already at loggerheads with the government over new proposals to legalize gay marriage.

Hopefully they will choose someone who is faithful to traditional Christian values.

Rowan Williams was chosen by Tony Blair because he was pro-gay, and one of his first acts was to appoint a gay bishop. But that backfired, the bishop resigned under pressure, and Rown Williams evidently decided that it was too soon to push his preferences on the C of E.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is traditionally appointed by the Queen. But these days, the Queen normally agrees to whatever the Prime Minister requests her to do.

As mentioned in the article, although the current Prime Minister is nominally a Conservative, he is in fact eager to impose gay marriage on the country.

Hopefully, he will be cautious and appoint a compromising time-server rather than a flaming heretic to the position. But he may just go ahead and appoint another pro-gay Archbishop.

The Queen would be very unhappy with that. But if she refused to agree, the current institution of limited monarchy would itself be threatened. Tony Blair gutted the House of Lords for the similar offense of resisting his will.

I’m pulling for His Grace, The Archbishop of York, The Most Revd and Rt Hon Dr John Sentamu.

While he is probably more liberal on economic policy, on matters of faith and morals, he is as about as traditionalist as you can get, all things considered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sentamu

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.