| THE EXCLUSION of the Bishop of New Hampshire, the Rt Revd Gene Robinson, from the Lambeth Conference programme was hindering reconciliation, said a mediation specialist on Monday.
Canon Donald Reeves, a former Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, and a specialist in reconciliation in Bosnia, said that a vital opportunity to invite Bishop Robinson and the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, the Most Revd Greg Venables, a conservative, to sit in the same room and begin to resolve their differences had been missed.
Canon Reeves, who founded the organisation Soul of Europe, said: “Gene Robinson was on campus today, and he was prepared to meet anybody. Venables said to me: ‘I would like to meet him.’ But there are no formal facilities for such a meeting.
“Such a meeting is very simple, although it is very hard work. It is two people meeting over a table with a cup of coffee and a professional facilitator. It worked in Bosnia, and if it can work there, then surely to goodness it can work here,” he said.
He had spent six years getting warring parties to meet in the Balkans: it was essential to talk to your enemies. “I have brought the perpetrators of atrocities and the survivors of the killing camps together.
“Gene Robinson and Archbishop Venables profoundly disagree with each other. They need to have a real conversation; they need the time and the place to do it; and they need someone to facilitate them. There needs to be a proper process. I have been in touch with the Archbishop of Canterbury about this, but it has not got any further. It can’t all be left to Dr Williams.”
In the event, programme clashes meant that only six people attended the meeting on reconciliation, he said. |
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