(All Special Sections)





Editorial


You've got to sympathize with the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Church. Supportive of gay rights himself, he is trying hard to hold together a church that's been on the verge of a crack-up ever since the 2003 election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire.

Nonetheless, Williams's dramatic pronouncement over the weekend and his treatment of Robinson over the past several weeks seem unlikely to quiet his unruly flock.

Williams called on Sunday for a moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops and priests. His plea doesn't strip Robinson of his authority, making it unlikely to satisfy the most ardent conservative activists. (He also has no power to enforce such a moratorium - the 38 national Anglican churches are self-governed.) Yet Williams no doubt simultaneously alienated many American Episcopalians, especially in New Hampshire, who have seen Robinson's consecration as a crowning civil rights achievement.

In effect, Williams has called for a temporary truce in the battle over gay clergy - so far, at least, without explaining what happens next. The battle apparently will be fought another day.

Over the past five years, Robinson has drawn unrelenting ire from conservative clerics, and the attention has made him a figure of international controversy. The dispute, meanwhile, has turned Williams into something of a harried politician - attempting to please warring constituencies simultaneously. As in politics, it hasn't worked too well.

Williams barred Robinson from the Anglicans' once-a-decade conference last month, part of an attempt to lure the conservatives there.

Alas, the plan fizzled. At least 220 Anglican leaders boycotted the Lambeth Conference, unmoved by Robinson's anti-invitation. Meanwhile, shortly before the conference convened, disaffected conservatives met in Jerusalem to establish a new group called the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. Among their vows: never to accept open homosexuality among clergy or bishops. For good measure, they rejected the premise that the archbishop of Canterbury speaks as the Anglican Church's supreme voice.

So the activist conservatives bowed out. But what of Robinson? If the archbishop thought he could persuade him to stay home and pipe down, he figured wrong.

Robinson didn't storm the Lambeth Conference's meetings, but he was there all right. In fact, by some accounts, he was the toast of Britain, delivering sermons, praying with monks, posing for photographs, signing autographs, sitting for radio and newspaper interviews. His goal, as he told one interviewer, was to remind the gathered bishops that there are gay and lesbian Christians in the pews every Sunday - and that they have taken vows to serve everyone in their congregations.

Robinson's presence outside the Canterbury meeting didn't lead to violence. Inside the tent, Williams didn't challenge the 650 church leaders to vote on any resolutions involving homosexuality, averting a meltdown - for now - but also forestalling a true attempt to wrestle with a problem that seems nearly unsolvable:

Will the liberals acquiesce to Williams's urging that they reject gay clergy? What if they don't? Can Anglican leaders persuade the conservatives to stick around? What if they can't? Will Robinson continue to be treated as a second-class bishop?

Among the Anglicans interviewed by reporters outside the Lambeth conference in recent days were several who expressed frustration with the focus on Robinson and the issue of homosexuality. They said they wished their church leaders could simply settle it once and for all and move on to issues of war and global poverty and environmental degradation.

Chances are, Archbishop Williams would second that sentiment. But the Lambeth Conference brought Anglicans no closer to that day.