Justin Welby has made a valiant attempt to placate both sides of the Anglican divide. He has insisted that the official conservative teaching on sexuality, agreed at the Lambeth Conference of 1998, is still valid. But he also said that provinces that dissent, and affirm same-sex marriage, should not be disciplined. In effect, he is calling their dissenting view an authentic expression of Anglicanism.
At the end of the speech he ducks the question
In the crucial passage of his speech that he delivered this week, he asserts that, ‘for the large majority of the Anglican Communion’, to question the traditional teaching is ‘unthinkable, and in many countries would make the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For many churches to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence.’ But he goes on:
‘For a minority, we can say almost the same. They have not arrived lightly at their ideas that traditional teaching needs to change.
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