Looking for the Light

For his last official act before a three-month sabbatical, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams ordained a new bishop in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. Williams, the tousle-haired leader of the Church of England and titular head of its global offshoot, the Anglican Communion, performed the liturgy of ordination: “Will you strive for the visible unity of Christ’s Church?” he asked. Answered the new bishop: “By the help of God, I will.”

By the help of God, indeed. Almost from the day he took over, in 2002, Williams, now 56, has been attempting to prevent a schism among the world’s 79 million Anglicans. It has been a horrible task. Within months of his taking the job, a simmering debate on homosexuality exploded into a brutal battle, pitting some of the wealthiest and most liberal of the church’s 38 provinces, notably those in North America, against a more socially conservative group mostly concentrated in Africa and Asia and known as the Global South. The latter’s views were reflected in 1998 in language at the communion’s once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, calling homosexual practice “incompatible with Scripture.” But in 2003 the Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the U.S., ordained Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire. Unlike the Pope, the Archbishop makes no claims to infallibility and cannot dictate to his flock. The years since have featured angry meetings, threats of secession and unmet deadlines. The next full-scale opportunity to negotiate will be at the Lambeth meeting in July 2008–if Williams can keep all parties on board.

Anglicanism matters, and not just because it’s one of the largest Protestant denominations. Like Roman Catholicism, it is global, uniting varied ethnicities in an overarching understanding of faith. But Anglicans have forgone Catholicism’s authoritarianism, staking their unity on a continual conversation and mutual respect. The sharp debate over homosexuality crystallizes a challenge facing everyone in an uneasy, newly wired world: Can the North–rich and imbued with an ethos of individual rights–and the poorer South find a constructive interdependence? Speaking to TIME on a cool May morning, Williams insisted, “I don’t think schism is inevitable.” But he has his work cut out to stop it.

Williams was the youngest Archbishop of Canterbury to be ordained in 200 years and a self-professed “hairy lefty,” who was once arrested during a protest at a U.S. air base in Britain. In 1989 he delivered a lecture in which he stated, “The absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory.” As a bishop, he knowingly ordained at least one noncelibate gay man.

That was before he was asked to lead a global church. When the Episcopalians elected Robinson, Williams faced conservative demands that the Americans leave the communion. Instead, he endorsed milder requests like a promise, for now, to make no more gay bishops and bless no more gay marriages. The Episcopalians made ambiguous gestures of compliance but have elected as their presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who had supported Robinson. Today Williams calls Robinson’s election–absent any prior decision allowing same-sex ordination–“bizarre and puzzling.”

Williams insists that he is “not recanting” his old arguments about homosexuality but that his new job demands that he express “where the consensus of our church is” rather than press for change. He himself does not see sexuality as of “first-order” theological importance. But he believes so many Christians do that pro-gay measures must be preceded by a broad shift in consensus–and thinks the U.S. church failed in that regard. Old allies, he admits, saw his shift on gays as a “betrayal.” But it has won him few new friends–certainly not archconservative Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, who has said that God regards homosexuality as the equivalent of humans’ having sex with various animals and who has set up his own Anglican body in the U.S.

Williams has handed out offsetting penalties to the two sides. One of his few direct powers is to send invitations to the Lambeth Conference, and he announced in May that for now he was excluding just two people: Robinson and Martyn Minns, the bishop of Akinola’s U.S. church. Akinola has threatened that Nigeria will boycott Lambeth, and Robinson hinted at wanting the Episcopalians to do likewise. But defections may be limited. Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, an influential Global South leader, says his contingent will attend. Liberal Washington bishop John Chane said he will probably skip the conference out of loyalty to Robinson, but “I think the American church will be well represented … I don’t see a walkout.”

Williams wants everyone to downplay their more extreme philosophical impulses and work to preserve Anglicanism’s unique assets. God, he says, intends that members of a church “have something to learn even from the people we most dislike or instinctively mistrust.” It’s a nice thought. Will it be enough to stop a split? Williams concedes he is not “absolutely confident” that the whole structure of Anglicanism can be kept together. But–by the help of God, no doubt–he’s trying.