| THE Archbishop of Canterbury has described himself as “hopeful” but not “absolutely confident” that the Anglican Communion can avoid schism and hold together.
He told an interviewer for Time magazine that his task was “to try and maintain as long as possible the space in which people can have constructive disagreements, learn from each other and try and hold that within an agreed framework of discipline and practice”.
Dr Williams warned that a schism would not be a clean break. “It’s not as if [the Communion] would snap apart like a dry biscuit.”
About reports of a nadir in spring 2006, when he was feeling isolated and depressed and treading his own via dolorosa, Dr Williams commented: “I think it’s a rather dramatic picture painted there. Making decisions that will lose you friends, compromise perceptions of your integrity — that’s very hard.”
Drawn to speak of theological differences in relation to the Archbishop of Nigeria, the Most Revd Peter Akinola, Dr Williams responded that God intended people in one Church to “have something to learn even from the people we most dislike or instinctively mistrust. Here they are. In an ideal world, no doubt I’d have chosen differently, but it wasn’t up to me.”
He told Time that he was not “recanting” his old arguments about homosexuality, which were offered in a lecture to the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) in 1989, and much quoted since. But his job demanded that he express “where the consensus of our Church is” rather than press for change, he said.
Dr Williams expressed a desire to see a Covenant in place, and acknowledged that it could isolate the American Church over homosexuality; but he said: “I don’t want to accelerate departure — God forbid.”
Asked whether he could sustain the blow if the Communion did break apart, he replied: “Yes. Because I trust my God and I believe that whatever mistakes I make and whatever disasters may occur, there is always grace.”
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