The much-awaited day for discussion of human sexuality at the Lambeth Conference July 31 did not produce any dramatic conversion, but the tone of the conversation was kinder and gentler, according to Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, Primate of Australia.
 
“The problems are not all solved, but there is significant difference in my view and with the bishops I’ve spoken to since the indaba this morning regarding the tone that’s gone on,” he said during an afternoon media briefing.
 
“Ten years ago, people were distressed at some of the reactions to some of the things that were said in the Lambeth Conference 1998. There were occasions when bishops actually booed and hissed what other bishops said in the gathering.” The archbishop said 2008 is dramatically different. “In my indaba group this morning, the same degree of difference was very evident in the views held by the bishops,” he said, “but at the end of the indaba group bishops from opposite ends of the spectrum on these issues actually embraced each other and thanked each other for helping them understand better what was at stake in these issues.”
 
Although Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire is not present, Bishop Colin Johnson of Toronto said the hopes and concerns of homosexual persons are represented.
 
“I come from a community that is as diverse as it could possibly be and I hope I’m not speaking only for one body, but for a range of people from within my diocese,” he said. “We’re a diocese that is hugely multicultural, has a very large gay, lesbian, transgendered and bisexual population, so I’m speaking that into the sessions and I’m also representing the fact that our diocese has a large very conservative body too. It’s not one side versus another side in a debate that is polarized. It’s trying to hold various paradoxes in appropriate tension.”
 
One of the few moments of public tension during the conference came later in the afternoon when Bishop Keith Ackerman of Quincy held a press conference outside the building set up for the media. Meanwhile, around the corner from the hexagonally-shaped building an Episcopal News Service briefing was underway. The simultaneous media briefings also demonstrated just how far apart the conference participants remain.
 
Bishop Ackerman was joined midway through his media briefing by Bishop Matthias Mededues-Badohu of Ho (Ghana) in the Church of West Africa. Bishop Matthias said the middle way was for Bishop Robinson to step aside.
 

Steve Waring

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