Jensen's bad news for the Queen

By Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent
THE AUSTRALIAN

THE Queen is "deeply concerned" that the Church of England may be about to tear itself apart 467 years after it was created by her ancestor Henry VIII.

A rift over the appointment of gay bishops is threatening to become the biggest blot on Elizabeth's 50th year as head of state and supreme governor of the church. She is so worried, London's Sunday Telegraph reported yesterday, that she has raised the issue with Prime Minister Tony Blair in their past two weekly meetings and is anxious for senior
clerics to settle their divisions.

But the Australian most deeply involved has little comfort to offer the Queen. Peter Jensen, the conservative Archbishop of Sydney and a fierce
foe of appointing gay bishops, says meetings with like-minded Anglicans in London over the past week have left him more convinced than ever that the church faces a historic realignment over the issue of gay clergy.

"It is going to be a crisis which will set the (Anglican) communion on a different evolutionary path," Dr Jensen said in an interview in
London.

The appointment of an openly gay priest as bishop in the English city of Reading has been approved by the Queen, who did not know he was gay, and similar controversies have erupted over the election of a gay
bishop in the US and a Canadian bishop's decision to approve an informal version of gay "marriage" blessings.

"The communion is not what it was," said Dr Jensen, who is in London lecturing to evangelical Anglicans. We are looking at a major realignment of the Anglican church. The future may see . . . different
major groupings of Anglican churches emerge. They will probably all still be connected in some way or other but the present sort of cosy club mentality will go." Dr Jensen has already announced that some
clergy from the English, Canadian and US dioceses in question are not welcome to preach in his Sydney diocese, Australia's largest and richest.

He is at odds with the church's spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and the Australian primate, Peter Carnley.

Rejecting calls by Dr Carnley and Dr Williams for outside bishops to butt out of the controversies in Oxford, Canada and the US, Dr Jensen said both men had underestimated the international anger over the issue of gay priests.

After talks with Nigerian and other bishops, Dr Jensen warned that some of the more conservative dioceses in the developing world might formally break away from the church.

While not suggesting Sydney would do so, he forecast a new structure in which conservative parishes would leave their present geographically based dioceses to pay allegiance to like-minded bishops.

That could lead to liberal and conservative bishops competing for parishes across traditional geographical boundaries, creating fertile ground for a formal rift.

There would also be closer ties between like-minded dioceses within the international church, with the heavily evangelical Sydney diocese strengthening its links with churches such as those in Nigeria, and
moving away from liberal dioceses such as those in England, the US and
the rest of Australia.

The concept of parishes switching allegiance outside their traditional diocese was "a shattering notion" for Anglicans, Dr Jensen said.

"What is significant is the long-term refusal of parishes to relate to their bishop if that is what happens, and I think it will," he said. "The link with the bishop may override the actual geography."

There had already been discussions among Australian evangelicals about swapping bishops because of the the issue of women bishops, he said.

Conservatives had so far shied away from taking such a drastic step over the ordination of women bishops "but in regard to practising
homosexuals we are in new territory and that will be something that requires rearrangement.

"If there is any realignment of world Anglicanism, places like Nigeria are going to look to Western friends such as Sydney for fellowship, support and theological help." Dr Jensen was scathing about the
church's professed commitment to "unity in diversity".

"Unity in diversity is a slogan, recently invented - it has little to do with the churches, really," he said.

"We are dealing with a fundamental breach in the ethics of the church which is based on the authority of the Bible, and the moment comes, no matter what diversity there may be, for us to say this has gone too far. This is that moment."

If Dr Williams went ahead with the ordination of Canon Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading, "it will increase the difficulties that we have with
his ministry", Dr Jensen said. "I have told the archbishop personally that in my own ministry, whenever the matter of homosexuality arises I
am going to have to distance myself from him.

"If he ordains the bishop in October, this is a sort of a dramatic step of him declaring support for that agenda and it will create further difficulties between people like myself and him. I can't at the moment predict where that will take us."

It was absolutely crucial, Dr Jensen said, that Dr Williams allow parishes that wanted to break away from their bishops over the issue to do so and remain within the church. If he did not, he would be leaving
a leadership vacuum "to be filled by others".

Dr Jensen rejected an opinion article by Dr Carnley in The Sydney Morning Herald in which the head of the Australian church delivered a thinly veiled rebuke to Dr Jensen for "empty moralising (and) galloping
into the grandstand of self-righteous indignation".

END




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