THE statement agreed by the 37 primates at Lambeth Palace under the primus inter pares leadership of Dr Rowan Williams did the near impossible.

It left the Anglican Communion in one piece for the time being and left both the liberals and conservatives convinced that they had scored a victory.

However, it may in time — precisely speaking, 16 days’ time — have turned out merely to have prolonged the agony of the break-up.

The primates, as the statement makes clear, value the benefits of belonging to the Anglican Communion: “We affirm our pride in the Anglican inheritance of faith and order and our firm desire to remain part of a Communion where what we hold in common is much greater than that which divides us in proclaiming good news to the world.”

But the conservatives emphasised that the Primates have reaffirmed the 1998 Lambeth resolution, which took a strictly biblical stance on homosexuality and represented the high watermark of what was theologically acceptable. They made it clear that both Canada and America had gone beyond that.

“These actions threaten the unity of our own Communion as well as our relationships with other parts of Christ’s Church, our mission and witness and our relations with other faiths, in a world already confused in areas of sexuality, morality and theology, and polarise Christian opinion,” the statement says.

In a significant indication of the pressure on Canon Gene Robinson not to be consecrated as Bishop of New Hampshire, the statement, agreed by all the primates including the Most Rev Frank Griswold of America, rebukes the American and Canadian Churches.

The primates said: “Recent actions in New Westminster and in the Episcopal Church (USA) do not express the mind of our Communion as a whole, and these decisions jeopardise our sacramental fellowship with each other.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury made clear that if Canon Robinson is consecrated, he will be unable to exercise his ministry as a priest or bishop in England. But, he added, no province has legal power to intervene in the affairs of another. The developments in Canada and America were in accordance with their own canon law. This crisis might ultimately lead to greater homogeneity of doctrine and structure.

The Most Rev Michael Peers, Primate of Canada, said that the resolution of the meeting was most significant for its recognition of the autonomy of each province.

“The document recognises that one of the basic facts of Anglicanism is the autonomy of the provinces. That’s a very strong principle and has been ever since the Reformation.” He added: “The document says that the possibility of breaking communion exists. What the actuality will be, we will only know in the event.”

The Most Rev Gregory Venables, Primate of the Southern Cone and a leading conservative, said: “If provinces are free like all Anglican provinces with their legal systems to make decisions, nobody can do anything with another province’s process.

“But if the American church goes ahead and consecrates Gene Robinson then a large number of provinces around the world will break communion with it and possibly with some of the other provinces that related to the American church as well.”

What remains unclear is what a breaking of communion would mean in practice. If 20 or so of the 38 provinces broke with America and Canada while remaining in communion with Canterbury, there would still be an Anglican Communion but at best it would be fractured.

One test of unity would be who Dr Williams invited to the next Lambeth Conference in 2008. He said yesterday that it was too early to say whether Canon Robinson would be invited, should he be consecrated.

TAKING THE FIGHT TO THE PULPIT

April 1998: Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell is arrested after disrupting the Easter Day sermon by Dr George Carey, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, at Canterbury Cathedral. Mr Tatchell and six other Outrage! pressure group members climbed into the pulpit to protest against Dr Carey’s stance on homosexuals.

August 1998: 750 bishops meeting at the Lambeth Conference declare homosexual relationships “incompatible” with the Bible and uphold the ban on the ordination of practising gay priests and the blessing of same-sex marriage. Dr Carey endorses the conference’s decision and says that there is “no room for any sexual activity outside matrimony”.

July 2001: Most Rev Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Wales, criticises the Church in a newspaper interview for failing to make progress on the issue of gay clerics.

July 2002: Dr Williams, a social liberal who admits to ordaining homosexuals, is named as the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

May 2003: Officials in the Canadian diocese of New Westminster sanction same-sex unions. The Church of Nigeria said that it no longer recognised the diocese of New Westminster as part of the Anglican Communion.

June: The debate is reignited after Jeffrey John, bishop-elect of Reading, vows to stay with his male partner. He later decided not to take up the post after talks with church leaders.

August: The diocese of New Hampshire elects Gene Robinson, a divorced father of two, as the first openly gay bishop in Anglican history.

November 2: Canon Gene Robinson is due to be consecrated as Bishop of New Hampshire, at the Whittemore Centre in Durham, New Hampshire.

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