KJS on the two-track communion

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori comments for the first time on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan William’s two-track proposal for the Anglican Communion in an interview Sunday with the York (Pa.) Daily Record. Full disclosure, the reporter is my wife. Here’s what KJS says: Q: The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the […]

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori comments for the first time on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan William’s two-track proposal for the Anglican Communion in an interview Sunday with the York (Pa.) Daily Record. Full disclosure, the reporter is my wife.

Here’s what KJS says:

Q: The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, wrote on his Web site just after the U.S. church voted to allow same-sex blessings and to gay bishops in late July.


He suggested that perhaps the church might have to accept a two-tier model in which believers hold different opinions about gay clergy and same-sex unions. What do you think of that model?

A: He wrote about it three years ago, too. It’s an idea that’s found some traction in some parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion but not a great deal of traction in other parts.

Q: Is there anything you see in that model that you like or don’t like?

A: The Anglican Communion is composed of 38 individual church bodies. Each of those provinces in the Anglican Communion is autonomous. … It governs itself. It’s in relationship with other members of the Anglican Communion because of our shared heritage, because of our shared form of worship and to a large degree to our shared theology and understanding of Scripture and tradition.

We don’t all believe everything in the same way. We never have and never will. There are parts of the Anglican Communion that don’t ordain women and think it wrong to do so, yet we remain in communion and relationship and in mission partnerships together.

We’ve always had a variety of ways of being in relationship together, and I don’t think that will change.

Q: It did seem like the archbishop was implying that the Episcopal Church and others like it might have a reduced role if the communion were on a two-track system. I understand it couldn’t represent the Communion in, say, ecumenical discussions or hold seats on the Communion’s governing body. Did you read it that way?


A: It’s an idea that he has promulgated. He doesn’t have the authority to impose it. No individual body in the Communion really has the authority to impose a structure like that. It simply is his theorizing about what he thinks the future may hold.

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