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Former Anglican Archbishop Predicts No Quick Resolve to Gay Issue

Monday, Dec. 12, 2005 Posted: 12:55:45PM EST

A former top Anglican leader with a self-proclaimed “grey area” in his sexual orientation said Sunday that he believes the Anglican Communion will not resolve the issue of homosexuality and women priests in his lifetime.

Father David Hope, who resigned from his position as Archbishop of York – the second highest position in the Church of England – said he could see no way for the deep divisions over those issues to be resolved.

Speaking on a BBC radio program called “Desert Island Discs,” Hope said he had grown weary of hearing “the same people repeating the same arguments over and over again.”

In the past, Hope, who self-admittedly has a sexual orientation with a “grey area,” had been caught in the gay-ordination controversy within the Anglican Communion. During his spot on BBC, Hope looked back at the controversy and said that while he would refuse to talk of his private life, he adheres to the teachings of the church; the Anglican Communion, like most other Christian families, forbids the ordination of sexually active homosexual individuals.

Hope’s comments reflect those of Gene Robinson, the sexually active gay bishop whose ordination in 2003 sparked the international outcry that is nearly ripping apart the 77 million-member Communion. Robinson, also talking to BBC, in October said he believes gays would be accepted in the church but not in his lifetime.

Elaine Spencer
elaine@christianpost.com

Membership Trends Spell Doom for Canadian Anglicans

Ron Csillag
12-13-05

TORONTO (RNS) A grim new report says the Anglican Church of Canada is losing 13,000 members each year and faces extinction by the middle of this century if trends are not countered.

Membership in the Anglican Church has fallen by 53 percent over the past 40 years and continues to drop by 2 percent a year, the steepest recorded decline of any mainstream Canadian church, the study says.

The report, presented in October to a closed-door meeting of the church's House of Bishops, is a wake-up call, concedes the primate of the Canadian Anglican Church, Andrew Hutchison.

"It's causing us to refocus our efforts on issues that we haven't been able to address effectively in recent years," Hutchison told the National Post newspaper.

He said that for several years the church has thrown its "energy and attention" into settling abuse cases at Indian residential schools, at the expense of "Church development."

After years of legal wrangling, the federal government last month offered a $1.9 billion compensation package to tens of thousands of aboriginal Canadians who attended church-run Indian residential schools.

Observers say the worldwide Anglican Church's protracted debate over homosexuality is also thinning the pews.

The Canadian report, prepared by Keith McKerracher, a volunteer adviser to the church, shows that between 1961 and 2001, Anglican dioceses' rolls in Canada plunged from 1.36 million to 642,000.

And the decline is accelerating: Membership fell by 13 percent from 1981 to 1991, and by a further 20 percent between 1991 and 2001.

McKerracher says his warning to Anglican bishops was clear: "My point was, `We're declining much faster than any other church. We're losing 12,836 Anglicans a year. That's 2 percent a year. If you take that rate of decline and draw a line on the graph, there'll only be one person left in the Anglican Church by 2061.'

"The church is in crisis. They can't carry on like it's business as usual."

McKerracher suggested the church conduct marketing research to find out why people are fleeing. "But I don't think the Anglicans will do anything. They talk things to death."