The crisis summit of the Anglican world community ended on Tuesday night in Dar es Salaam with a sharp ultimatum, but without division. In a resolution passed unanimously shortly before midnight, the liberal U.S. Episcopal Church is asked to prove within seven months that it has permanently turned away from its previous course. Failure to do so will have "consequences" for "full participation" in the Anglican Communion.
The episcopal ordination of an avowed homosexual and blessing rites for same-sex couples in the U.S. and Canada have brought the conservative and liberal wings of the church to the brink of schism. The five-day summit in Tanzania was marked from the beginning by a possible schism. Several leaders of conservative national churches, especially from Africa, repeatedly threatened not to sit at the table with the U.S. church's presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, in attendance. They also rejected a joint celebration of the Lord's Supper. Tension until the end Until the very end, observers thought it was possible that the conservatives of the "Global South" grouping might back out of a joint final statement and publish a minority vote. This would have meant, in effect, a schism. They have been calling for a "conversion" or "repentance" by the U.S. church for years, but so far this has been half-hearted.Therefore, church leaders such as the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, no longer recognize the liberal leadership of the U.S. church and are striving for a kind of parallel church. In it, according to their ideas, conservative U.S. Anglicans should unite in their own congregations under the care of so-called flying bishops or even bishops of other national churches.The Anglican world communion with its approximately 78 million members is divided into largely autonomous national churches. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as honorary primate, has no legal means to discipline individual member churches.