christian churches" "
First an appeal not to forget the ecumenical cause, then an invitation to caution: they were respectively made by Queen Elizabeth and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to the members of the 8th General Synod of the Church of England that opened in Westminster on 15 November. The issues on the order of the day also include the delicate question of whether or not the episcopate should be open to women. This is a debate that has been going forward in the Church of England for at least a year, and is supposed to reach a conclusion early in 2006. “One of the priorities for the future period said the Queen on opening the work of the Synod will undoubtedly be that of further exploring the relations between all the Christian Churches of this country”. “At a time when the Christian family is rightly increasing its efforts to promote a dialogue and greater understanding with those of other faiths, it is important that the goal of full and visible unity between the Churches should continue to remain at the heart of the questions of the Synod”. The inaugural ceremony was followed by the celebration of the Eucharist in Westminster Abbey, where a Methodist woman, Frances Young, preached for the first time. Many questions are being tackled by the Synod, which began with a debate on the challenge of terrorism in the light of the terror attacks in London on 7 July and the responses given by the British government, with particular reference to the Terrorism Bill that will be presented in Parliament in November. The question of whether the episcopate should be opened to women was addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who also spoke of another problem that is having a deep impact on the unity of the Anglican Communion, namely, the episcopal ordination of a self-declared gay bishop in the USA. “Everyone knows the threats that face us, internally and internationally, over divisions in the Communion. We are painfully aware of the quarrels over sexuality, and the tensions and complications around how to handle the question of women’s ordination as bishops”. The debate on sexuality the archbishop continued “is infinitely complicated by high levels of mutual ignorance and anxiety between ‘North’ and ‘South'”. For this reason it is important to promote a deeper communion between the members of the different provinces. “If every member of this Synod make a commitment to make contact with someone in another province who is not likely to share their view, we might at least move away from demeaning caricatures on both sides. Similarly, in regard to women bishops, I suggest that we make some individual commitments. When my diocese in Wales was discussing women priests a decade ago, we arranged prayer partnerships between people on opposing sides, on the basis that we should need some ingrained habits of shared prayer and patience if we were going to carry on a common Christian life after a divisive vote. Are Synod members Williams asked ready to undertake such a commitment and to commend it to the Church at large?”. Then, as regards the question of the female episcopate, the archbishop said: “I still believe it is passionately worthwhile to seek for a structure that will allow what I have been calling ‘interactive pluralism'”, i.e. “a situation in which difference is publicly acknowledged and given space, but not regarded as an excuse for ‘ghettoisation’ or exclusion from a serious degree of shared work, shared resources and mutual responsibility”.
