Ugandan primate ‘resigns’ from key body of Anglican Communion

Anglican Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda is said to have resigned from the standing committee of the 77-million-member Anglican Communion, and cited the appointment of a lesbian bishop by the U.S. Episcopal Church as part of an unacceptable “revisionist theology.” At the same time, Orombi called for an urgent meeting of the primates, or senior bishops, of the Anglican Communion without their colleagues from the United States and Canada, “and with an agenda set by the participants themselves.” His announcement was made in an April 9  letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It follows that of Archbishop Mouneer Anis of Jerusalem and the Middle East, who resigned in February, when he said his presence has, “no value whatsoever” and that his voice was, “like a useless cry in the wilderness.” The standing committee, which functions as an executive body, consists of 14 members of the Anglican Communion, and includes the chairman and vice-chairman of the communion’s council.Orombi said that meetings of the standing committee, “have included the primate of the Episcopal Church and other members of TEC [The Episcopal Church], who are the very ones who have pushed the Anglican Communion into this sustained crisis.” “How can we expect the gross violators of biblical truth to sanction their own discipline, when they believe they have done nothing wrong and further insist that their revisionist theology is actually the substance of Anglicanism?” Orombi commented.”We have only to note the recent election and confirmation of an active lesbian [Canon Mary Glasspool] as a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Los Angeles to realize that TEC has no interest in ‘gracious restraint,’ let alone a moratorium on the things that have brought us to this point of collapse.”Britain’s (Anglican) Church Times newspaper reported that Orombi’s letter was ambiguous about whether he has resigned. He writes, “I stand with my brother primate Bishop Mouneer Anis in his courageous decision to resign from the standing committee. Many of us are in a state of resignation as we see how the communion is moving away further and further into darkness.”Orombi sent his letter to the communion’s primates, moderators and other members of the standing committee. In it, he noted it was the primates of the Anglican Communion who in 2003 had called for the Lambeth Commission on Communion that ultimately produced the Windsor Report at the time of the election of V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay divorcee living with a partner, as the bishop of New Hampshire in the United States.