[Times Online] 22 Jul 2008-- The Archbishop of Canterbury has continued his quest for Anglican unity with a strong statement against living in sin and gay sex.
He was speaking as the Church of England's Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement distributed copies at the Lambeth Conference of his 1989 essay The Body's Grace at the conference, in which he adopted a liberal stance towards homosexual love, arguing that the Bible did not necessarily legislate only for "reproductive sex".
The Archbishop's move from a liberal to conservative stance will be reinforced tomorrow when bishops are given the "observations document" of an internal church group set up to resolve the crisis.
The Windsor Continuation Group was formed at the start of this year to take forward the proposals of an earlier report, which called on the US church to roll back its liberal agenda. The report also urged conservative provinces of Africa and Asia to desist from boundary crossing.
A source said the follow-up document, which will be finished and published in full at the end of the year, contained a "sober realism" about the crisis threatening to split the Anglican Church.
The new document is expected to be equally critical of conservative primates who are "poaching" evangelical congregations from the US church by illicitly consecrating of bishops to serve them.
Liberals in The Episcopal Church, which prompted the crisis with the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003, are determined to engineer a backtracking on its commitment not to consecrate any more gay bishops when the next General Convention meets in the summer of 2009.
But tomorrow’s document will spell out in clear terms the disastrous consequences should The Episcopal Church take that direction.
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