[The Nassau Guardian] 22 Nov 2007--The Anglican church in The Bahamas and worldwide is faced with a serious challenge, and Archbishop Drexel Gomez says he hopes and prays that they find a collective way forward to avoid the route of a split. This came from Gomez during his charge at the recent 107th session of the Synod, at Holy Trinity Conference Centre.
"Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention because he regards it as providing a particularly graphic image of the way in which humans distort God's created order. God the Creator made man and woman for each other, to cleave together, to be fruitful and multiply.
"When human beings 'exchange' these created roles for homosexual intercourse, they embody the spiritual condition of those who have 'exchanged' the truth about God for a lie."
The Province of the West Indies adheres firmly to this theological position, according to Gomez.
"The diversity of opinions across the Communion has led some persons to conclude the Anglican Communion will have to divide, seeing that those who are convinced that the Gospel is clear in its teaching and must take precedence over culture cannot accommodate those who believe the contrary," he said.
"The split — if it occurs — will be about the most fundamental of all questions: the nature of reality. Which relationships correspond to God's ordering of life, and which violate it? It is clear that the future of the Anglican Communion is unclear at the moment, but there can be no doubt that the future shape of Anglicanism will have to undergo significant adjustments if the Communion is to remain intact" said Gomez.
He informed Anglicans that the Archbishop of Canterbury in his reflection clearly stated that as a result of the action taken by the Episcopal Church in 2003, that: "There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment."
"Meanwhile, I hope and pray that collectively we may, as a Communion, find a way forward that avoids the route of a split. However, we are faced with a serious challenge," said Gomez.
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