Council Statement September 02
The Reform Council met on 17 September for the first time since the announcement that Rowan Williams was to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Council was aware that many Reform members, shocked by this appointment, were looking to the Council for a lead. Whilst intending to continue consultation amongst the whole network of Reform members and to bring these concerns to our national conference next month, the full Council, after its deliberations and in its own right, has agreed to make the following statement:
“Since the announcement of the Archbishop of Wales, Rowan Williams, as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, we have spent time in further study of his public statements and published writings and in consultation world-wide. We have long been disturbed at the steady growth of unorthodoxy, currently so focused on the growing acceptability of homosexual practice, in the Anglo-Anglican churches of the Anglican Communion including the Church of England. Such sexual relations are contrary to the teaching of Scripture, as the General Synod overwhelmingly voted in 1987 and as the Bishops’ “Issues in human sexuality” clearly reaffirmed. Accordingly we and others worldwide were deeply dismayed at the appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury of a man who was known for his non-biblical views on homosexual relationships. Even shortly before the appointment he publicly said that he is ‘not convinced that a homosexual has to be celibate in every imaginable circumstance’ and again we can ‘no longer say that Biblical account answers all the questions we have or want to ask’, (Anglican Media, Sydney, 2002). In ‘Open to Judgement’ (1994 reprinted 2001, page 159) he has said that there are “writers of Scripture caught up in the blazing fire of God’s gift who yet struggle with it, misapprehend it, and misread it”. Furthermore, the retiring Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has claimed at the recent (and his last) Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Hong Kong that liberal views and policies on homosexuality have led the Anglican Communion to a situation of ‘crisis proportions’.
Therefore:
1. In view of the publicly expressed opinions of Rowan Williams on homosexual practice, sadly we cannot welcome his appointment as the next Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world-wide Anglican Communion.
2. For the avoidance of doubt, and following the Lambeth Conference 1998 Resolution 1.10, where homosexual practice was rejected ‘as incompatible with Scripture’ and where it was voted that the Conference, ‘in view of the teaching of the Scripture, upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in life-long union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called for marriage,’ we ask Rowan Williams whether he is willing and able, personally and publicly, to affirm, teach and defend:
a. The received teaching of the church that all its members are to abstain from sexual relations outside holy (heterosexual) matrimony.
b. The need for appropriate discipline* within the church where there are sexual relations outside holy (heterosexual) matrimony.
c. The practice of ordaining only those who themselves will teach, and seek to model in their own lives, the received teaching of the church that all its members are to abstain from sexual relations outside holy (heterosexual) matrimony.
3. In the light of the teaching of Scripture, and in the light of the fact that, as the retiring Archbishop of Canterbury has said at the Anglican Consultative Council (and as we have been saying for 10 years), the Anglican church is being driven ‘towards serious fragmentation’ due to unorthodox teaching and practice with regard to homosexuality, regretfully we ask Rowan Williams, even at this late stage, if he is unwilling or unable, personally and publicly, to make these affirmations, to withdraw his acceptance of the nomination to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury, for the sake of the Church’s gospel witness and unity.”
*‘appropriate discipline’ can be exercised by private discussion with the person or persons concerned, by public denunciation of such behaviours when there is no repentance, and, extremely, by church legal action if judged ‘appropriate’.