Bishops braced for a battle

As the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops gets under way, Ian Swanson looks at the church's showdown over homosexuality.

TEN years ago Richard Holloway was left angry and appalled by the hard-line stance adopted by fellow church leaders against gays.

The 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops from around the world voted by 526 to 70 to declare homosexual relationships incompatible with the Bible. They also upheld a ban on the ordination of gay priests and the blessing of same-sex marriages.

The then Bishop of Edinburgh said he had been amazed by the "intensity and brutality" of the event. It had felt like "being in the middle of a lynching".

Soon afterwards he announced he was giving up his attempt to become a member of the new Scottish Parliament so he could concentrate on fighting intolerance and fundamentalism in the church.

Bishop Holloway has now retired from church leadership, but the Lambeth Conference, which only meets once a decade, is assembling again and the issue of homosexuality will again be a hot topic.

"I'm glad I'm not there," says Bishop Holloway.

The 17-day gathering, which begins today in Canterbury, has been billed as another step towards schism, a staging post in the disintegration of the worldwide Anglican communion, which includes the Scottish Episcopal Church and claims 80 million followers in 164 countries around the globe.

More than 200 of the 880 invited bishops are boycotting it in protest at the presence of pro-gay bishops.

Many of them attended last month's Global Anglican Futures Conference in Jerusalem, an alternative gathering which complained of a liberal "re-writing" of the Bible.

Meanwhile, the openly gay American bishop, Gene Robinson, whose appointment five years ago sparked the crisis over sexuality, plans to turn up even though he has not been invited.

Bishop Robinson, who was heckled when he preached in London at the weekend, is due in Edinburgh immediately after the Lambeth Conference for several events at the Festival of Spirituality.

The conference will be a testing time for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who is on the liberal wing of the church but has devoted himself to trying to hold the church together. Some have accused him of seeking consensus where there is none.

He seems to have disappointed radicals while failing to satisfy traditionalists, but Bishop Holloway has a strong respect for the archbishop. "Rowan is a liberal, warm-hearted man," he says. "There is something very honourable about what he is doing. He has decided to park his own private convictions and work to preserve the unity of the institution.

"It is a very self-sacrificing thing to do and it has won him a lot of respect as well as criticism. My hunch is the good guys will rally round and do what they can to bolster him up."

Bishop Holloway, who was Bishop of Edinburgh for 14 years and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church for eight, attended the last two Lambeth conferences.

He says: "Each Lambeth I have been at, the press has predicted the dissolution of the Anglican communion. In 1988 it was over the ordination of women, but we found a way of living with that. In 1998 they did less well with the gay thing. I suspect this time they will get through again.

"I don't imagine the really rabid ones staying away will be particularly missed – and if they go off and decide to do something on their own, that's up to them, but it's a bit like a boy taking his ball off the football pitch."

The Scottish Episcopal Church takes a fairly relaxed view on the gay issue – and the threat of schism. A 2005 statement by the bishops, which still stands, acknowledged a "scepticism" in Scotland about the importance of the Anglican communion and acknowledged a "significant diversity of view" on gay bishops and blessing same-sex unions.

However, it said: "The Scottish Episcopal Church has never regarded the fact that someone was in a close relationship with a member of the same sex as in itself constituting a bar to the exercise of an ordained ministry."

It also said adopting a formal liturgy for same-sex unions would be "premature" but seemed to suggest informal blessings could be acceptable.

The current Bishop of Edinburgh, Brian Smith, who is at the Lambeth Conference, says he is optimistic about the gathering, but adds: "I may find that optimism dashed."

He says: "The potential for division is clearly there. I hope with two and a half weeks together, a bit of patience and looking at the complexity of the issue, there may be a healing of some of the divisions, many of which arise from misunderstanding."

Bishop Holloway also takes an optimistic line, but does not think there has been a change for the better in the attitude of hard-liners since 1998. He calls the last Lambeth Conference "a hatefest".

"I still have enormous contempt, not so much for their point of view as the way they have expressed it, in ugly, violent language."

He was particularly appalled by the comments of Peter Akinola, Archbishop of Abuja in Nigeria, and a leading figure on conservative wing.

"He doesn't say just he disagrees with gay people, he insults them and likens them to animals. You can disagree with people and still have a respect for each other.

"But if he's not there, then maybe that will be missing this time."