For years the Church of England has been racked by an internal debate over homosexuality: Is it morally reprehensible and a cause for repentance? Or is it acceptable and, when accompanied by love and fidelity, as positive a form of human expression as heterosexuality?
This week the debate exploded into the public arena as the bishop of London, the church's third-most senior cleric, revealed that he had been pressed by a militant gay rights group to proclaim himself a homosexual "voluntarily."Instead Bishop David Hope held a news conference on Monday to condemn the tactics of the group trying to pressure him. He said that his sexuality was "ambiguous" and that he was celibate.
His stand drew praise from the church's highest authority, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. George Carey, who also issued a special plea for tolerance.
"We reject homophobia in any form," the archbishop said at a press conference on Thursday. "Homosexuals must be treated as people made in the image and likeness of God."
Once every three years the 36 Anglican primates convene for mutual support and consultation. This year the issue of human sexuality and the churches' traditional biblical condemnation of sex outside the bounds of matrimony - and homosexual sex in particular - was high on the agenda.
At the end of the conference the primates released a pastoral letter, intended to guide discussions in the Communion's 500 dioceses, which called for a full but reasoned debate on the whole issue of human sexuality. The discussions will presumably range across questions that have long vexed the churches in various countries, including everything from extramarital sex to polygamy.
The issue of sexual morality is especially controversial in the United States, where the Episcopal Church is divided on various fronts.
In February, 10 bishops formally asked for a church trial for a retired bishop, accusing him of violating doctrine in 1990 when he was assistant bishop of Newark by ordaining a homosexual as a deacon.
The primates' pastoral letter contained language suggesting that at least some church leaders were prepared to consider a new and less traditional definition of morality. It said at one point, "We are conscious that, within the church itself, there are those whose pattern of sexual expression is at variance with the received Christian moral tradition, but whose lives in other respects demonstrate the marks of genuine Christian character."