THE TELEGRAPH: Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has admitted the Anglican Communion may divide into a “two-track” church due to deep divisions over the ordination of homosexual clergy.
Dr Williams acknowledged for the first time that believers may have to accept "two styles of being Anglican" in order to avoid schism.
The decision by Episcopal bishops in the US earlier this month to press ahead with the ordination of homosexual priests and bishops – effectively overturning a ban on the practice – has pushed the 80 million-strong global church to the brink of an irrevocable split.
Traditionalists in the US and Canada have already formed a rival province to the Episcopal church to resist against the liberal tide.
Dr Williams appeared to accept that his efforts to preserve the unity of the communion had failed as he sketched a new Anglican structure that would allow local churches to loosen their ties with the main church body.
"This has been called a 'two-tier' model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure. But perhaps we are faced rather with the possibility of the two-track model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage," he wrote.
"It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are – two styles of being Anglican." >>> Matthew Moore | Monday, July 27, 2009
