As the Anglican Communion Office has taken initial disciplinary steps toward the Episcopal Church, tensions have escalated between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori regarding the nature of Anglicanism.

On May 28, Archbishop Rowan Williams suggested in a Pentecost letter to the Anglican Communion that the Episcopal Church’s representatives on inter-Anglican ecumenical commissions should become consultants instead of continuing as full members.

The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, released a statement on June 7 about dismissing five Episcopal representatives from their memberships on commissions.

Bishop Jefferts Schori responded forcefully to both the archbishop’s letter and the subsequent removal of Episcopal representatives.

In a pastoral letter to the Episcopal Church, distributed on June 2, she wrote that efforts to “impose a singular understanding in such matters represent the same kind of cultural excesses practiced by many of our colonial forebears in their missionizing activity.”

“Native Americans were forced to abandon many of their cultural practices, even though they were fully congruent with orthodox Christianity, because the missionaries did not understand or consider those practices exemplary of the Spirit,” she added. “The uniformity imposed at the Synod of Whitby did similar violence to a developing, contextual Christianity in the British Isles. In their search for uniformity, our forebears in the faith have repeatedly done much spiritual violence in the name of Christianity.”

At a news conference during the General Synod in Canada, the presiding bishop called the demotion of Episcopal representatives “unfortunate” because “It misrepresents who the Anglican Communion is.”

“We have a variety of opinions on these issues of human sexuality across the Communion,” she said. “For the Archbishop of Canterbury to say to the Methodists or the Lutheran [World] Federation that we only have one position is inaccurate. We have a variety of understandings, and no, we don’t have consensus on hot button issues at the moment.”

Archbishop Williams has written of repeated requests by the Instruments of Communion that, until a new consensus emerges, provinces show restraint on matters under dispute.

“In our dealings with other Christian communions, we do not seek to deny our diversity; but there is an obvious problem in putting forward representatives of the Communion who are consciously at odds with what the Communion has formally requested or stipulated,” he wrote in the Pentecost letter. “This does not seem fair to them or to our partners. In our dealings with each other, we need to be clear that conscientious decisions may be taken in good faith, even for what are held to be good theological or missional reasons, and yet have a cost when they move away from what is recognizable and acceptable within the Communion.”

The Most Rev. Frederick J. Hiltz, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Canada, said he shared the presiding bishop’s concerns about the Pentecost letter by Archbishop Williams.

“One is left wondering if provinces whose primates continue to interfere in the internal life of other provinces and extend their pastoral jurisdiction through cross-border interventions will be contacted,” Archbishop Hiltz said in his presidential address to General Synod. “To date I have seen no real measure to address that concern within the Communion. I maintain and have publicly declared my belief that those interventions have created more havoc in the Church, resulting in schism, than any honest and transparent theological dialogue on issues of sexuality through due synodical process in dioceses and in the General Synod.”

In his letter of June 7, Canon Kearon also mentioned that he has written to the Most Rev. Gregory Venables, Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, to ask for a clarification on his relationship with churches outside of his province.