The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, asserted his authority over Anglican leaders yesterday in a document sent to all archbishops that said that those who went against the “mind” of the Church risked being excluded from its councils.

The warning, spelt out in his long-awaited Advent Letter to the Church’s 38 Primates and other leaders, could lead to The Episcopal Church of the US and the Anglican Church of Canada forfeiting their seats at the top tables of the Anglican Church if they do not curtail their liberal pro-gay agenda.

The admonition applies equally to conservative bishops and archbishops who have been carrying out “irregular” ordinations. Dr Williams condemns this as illicit interference in other provinces and says these newly ordained conservative bishops will under no circumstances be invited to next year’s Lambeth Conference, the ten-yearly meeting of all Anglican bishops.

Dr Williams is to set up a small group of archbishops and other leading clergy “to consider whether in the present circumstances it is possible for provinces or individual bishops at odds with the expressed mind of the Communion to participate fully in representative Communion agencies, including ecumenical bodies.” He is also to arrange “professionally facilitated conversations” between the leaders of The Episcopal Church and those with whom “they are most in dispute”.

The letter is the clearest indication yet from Dr Williams that he will not be taken hostage by either the liberals or conservatives in the dispute, which has taken the Anglican Communion to the brink of schism. It represents Dr Williams’s determination to reclaim the Anglican middle ground, the “via media” outlined in the mid-19th century by Cardinal Newman, who converted to Roman Catholicism. This is the doctrinal territory that is occupied still by the majority of the 75 million Anglicans worldwide.

Liberals immediately criticised Dr Williams for behaving like “an Anglican Pope” while conservatives condemned him for failing to demand repentance from the US Church over its consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

The Archbishop said he was writing out of a “profound conviction” that the Anglican Communion was a gift of God and that everyone in it would be “seriously wounded and diminished” if the Church fractured any further.

Showing clear leadership skills he set down boundaries regarding Scripture and “ecclesiology” beyond which even Anglicans, with their historical tradition of broad fuzziness, should not stray. “Our obedience to the call of Christ the Word Incarnate is drawn out first and foremost by our listening to the Bible and conforming our lives to what God both offers and requires of us through the words and narratives of the Bible,” he said. “Radical change in the way we read cannot be determined by one group or tradition alone.”

Arguing that the debates about sexuality were “symptoms” of Anglican confusion, Dr Williams said that it was far too easy to make the debate a stand-off between those who were “for” and those who were “against” homosexual people in the church.

The Rev Ian Douglas, Professor of Mission and World Christianity at the Episcopal Divinity School in the US, described the letter as “a significant statement” but declined to comment on the apparent warning to Episcopal leaders about their seats at the councils of the Church.

The Rev Giles Fraser, Vicar of St Mary’s, Putney, and founder of the liberal Inclusive Church, criticised Dr Williams for planning yet more meetings and bureaucracy in an attempt to resolve the crisis. “We do not want an Anglican Pope,” he said.

A broad Church

77m people in the worldwide Anglican Communion
26m Anglicans in England
1m Attended Sunday services by the Church of England in 2004

Sources: Anglican Communion and the Church of England