Anglican leaders agree to disagree on gay marriage

A ONCE-A-DECADE conference of the Anglican Communion has been forced into an awkward compromise on gay marriage after it descended into a row over the subject within a day of opening.

After a draft communique condemning gay marriage was published earlier in the week, a backlash forced the conference to scramble to produce a new version in which members of the communion effectively agree to disagree.

The Lambeth Conference, convened by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is being held for the first time in 14 years. As part of the conference, delegates will be asked to vote on the so-called Lambeth Calls, a form of conference communique informally tying the communion together in a set of stated beliefs and values.

When the draft Calls were published on Monday, the section on “human dignity” included contentious language first used at the 1998 conference which stated: “It is the mind of the Anglican Communion as a whole that same-gender marriage is not permissible.”

That infuriated LGBT campaigners within the church and several bishops condemned the wording.

It is unclear how the wording, known as Lambeth I.10, made it into the Calls. Kevin Robertson, the openly gay Bishop of York-scarborough in Canada and a member of the working group drafting that section of the Calls, said the language was never discussed in the group.

“I never agreed to this Call in its current form,” he said, adding that the claim that it was the mind of the Anglican Communion to reject same-sex marriage “is simply not true”.

After stating on Monday evening that the Calls would be amended, the conference published a new version late yesterday afternoon. The new language reads: “Many Provinces continue to affirm that same-gender marriage is not permissible… Other Provinces have blessed and welcomed same-sex union/ marriage after careful theological reflection and a process of reception.”