Anglican leader wants two tiers for fellowship of churches

LONDON — The leader of the world's feuding Anglicans suggested Tuesday that the divided fellowship of churches could stay together under a system in which members with nontraditional views on issues such as gay clergy accepted a lesser role in the group.

"Some actions — and sacramental actions in particular — just do have the effect of putting a church outside ... the central stream of the life they have shared with other churches," Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote to the Anglican Communion's 38 leaders, called primates.

His proposal could compel the U.S. Episcopal Church and other Anglican provinces to decide whether they should maintain full membership in the Anglican Communion by adhering to the views of a majority of its leaders, or to accept a lower-level status.

Most Anglican leaders believe gay relationships violate Scripture, though that's the minority opinion in the American church.

Williams' letter was billed as a "reflection" on where the Anglican Communion stood after last week's General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Episcopalians brought Anglican differences over sexuality to a crisis point in 2003 by elevating V. Gene Robinson, who has a male partner, to be bishop of New Hampshire.

Rejecting demands from conservative Anglicans overseas and at home that they elect no more gay bishops for now, Episcopalians voted instead to call for "restraint." And in a communion where female bishops are the exception, Episcopalians ruffled some Anglicans by electing Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who supports ordaining gays, as their first female presiding bishop.

Williams suggested a two-tiered model of full-member churches that would "limit their local freedoms for the sake of a wider witness" and other "churches in association" that would have no restrictions on actions such as ordaining gays but would have "no direct part in the decision-making" of the communion.