From TimesOnline (UK):
December 05, 2008
Canterburycathedralinside_largeWell I suppose that headline is not quite accurate. The mother church of the Anglican Communion, Canterbury Cathedral, today welcomed into her stable the five Gafcon primates from the South and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who they had travelled from afar to see. They bore gifts of frank discussion, gold-standard Christianity and little in the way of mirth. They were there to mark a new birth in the North, a province. Question marks hang like shepherds' crooks over its legitimacy, and probably will continue to do so for another 2,000 years or so, if it is not forgotten by then. But stranger things have happened.
So what really took place that day not so long ago?
The five primates of Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Southern Cone met with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the cathedral. They prayed, started talking at 10am, prayed, had lunch, prayed, carried on talking, prayed again and finished mid-afternoon. Discussions were pretty frank and they went over everything, from Lambeth 1:10, through 2003 to the present day. No-one blinked.
Ultimately, it comes down to a question of identity.
Who, or what, is The Communion?
And I'm not sure that Jesus himself could answer that one.
Posted by Ruth Gledhill on December 05, 2008 at 06:47 PM in Anglican Communion |
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