Anglican Head Suggests Two-Tiered Church System

Groups with nontraditional views, such as the U.S. Episcopal Church, would end up with a lesser role.

LONDON (AP) - The leader of the world's feuding Anglicans suggested Tuesday that the divided fellowship of churches could stay together under a system in which members with nontraditional views on issues such as gay clergy accepted a lesser role in the group.

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(Photo: AP / Chris Radburn, PA)

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in the courtyard at Senate House, Cambridge, England before receiving an Honorary Doctorate in Divinity from Cambridge University, Tuesday June 27, 2006. The leader of the world's feuding Anglicans on Tuesday urged them to work toward a structure for co-existing despite differences on the roles of women and gays and over the authority of the Bible. 'There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment,' Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote to the Anglican Communion's 38 primates.

"Some actions - and sacramental actions in particular - just do have the effect of putting a church outside or even across the central stream of the life they have shared with other churches," Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote to the Anglican Communion's 38 leaders, called primates.

His proposal could eventually compel the U.S. Episcopal Church and other Anglican provinces to decide whether they should maintain full membership in the Anglican Communion by adhering to the views of a majority of its leaders, or accept a lower-level status.

Most Anglican leaders believe gay relationships violate Scripture, though that is the minority opinion in the U.S. church.

Williams' letter was billed as a "reflection" on where the Anglican Communion stood after last week's General Convention of the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism. Episcopalians brought Anglican differences over sexuality to a crisis point in 2003 by elevating V. Gene Robinson, who has a male partner, to bishop of New Hampshire.

Rejecting demands from conservative Anglicans overseas and at home that they elect no more gay bishops for now, Episcopalians voted instead to call for "restraint." And in a communion where female bishops are the exception, Episcopalians ruffled some Anglicans by electing Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who supports ordaining gays, as their first female presiding bishop.

Williams suggested a two-tiered model of full-member churches that would "limit their local freedoms for the sake of a wider witness" and other "churches in association," which would have no restrictions on actions such as ordaining gays but would have "no direct part in the decision-making" of the communion.

"There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment," he said.

Williams said the same two-tiered model could work within national churches, including the Episcopal Church, where some parishes are in open revolt against their liberal leaders. The Anglican Communion Network, which represents 10 U.S. conservative dioceses and more than 900 parishes within the Episcopal Church, is deciding whether to break f rom the denomination.

Departing Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold cautioned that Williams' statement was complex and that it should not be read as an ultimatum to the Episcopal Church.

"The statement is so extensive and in many ways dense, people with different points of view are going to pull out of it whatever they find useful and say this is what he means," Griswold said.

Williams, he said, "in no way prejudges the outcome."

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