Dr. Sentamu prepared to ordain women bishops

Dr. Sentamu prepared to ordain women bishops

New Vision

LONDON, Friday — The first black archbishop in the Church of England, Dr John Sentamu, has told the British Guardian newspaper he would have no difficulty ordaining women bishops if the Church of England permitted him to do so.
He also condemned the language used by some in the Anglican communion about gay men and lesbians.

The Ugandan-born Sentamu, 56, who was formerly Bishop of Birmingham, was confirmed in his appointment as Archbishop of York, the second most senior post in the Church of England, in a ceremony laden with medieval formularies and legal jargon before his fellow bishops at the City of London Church of St Mary-Le-Bow.

At Lambeth Palace before Wednesday’s ceremony, he spoke of more modern concerns afflicting the Anglican communion, which is in danger of self-destructing because of divisions over the place of homosexuals in the clergy and, more parochially, whether women clergy, ordained in the Church of England for more than a decade, can one day proceed to appointment to the episcopacy.

He told the Guardian how much he disapproved of the language in which the church’s gay debate is being conducted, particularly by some African archbishops who have spoken of homosexuals as a third sex threatening social unrest and have warned they will sever connections with the Church of England.

“Some of our disagreements are not Christian really... It seems to suggest that all the great evils of the world are being perpetrated by gay and lesbian people, which I cannot believe to be the case. What is wrong in the world is that people are sinful and alienate themselves from God and you do not have to be gay to do that. To suggest that to be gay equals evil, I find that quite unbelievable.

“Is somebody saying a gay and lesbian can’t live in Christ? What matters in the end to me is to do what my mother said to me as a little child: John, never point a finger at anybody because when you do three other fingers are pointing back at you. All of us are sinners, all of us have baggage. Why should my baggage as a heterosexual be more acceptable than the baggage of a gay person?”

He said he would be prepared to consecrate women as bishops if the Church of England eventually permitted him to do so. “No, I don’t see any obstacle to my doing it. I will do what the church feels is right. How can you not say, unless you just concentrate on the gender question, that women cannot be bishops? I cannot logically see that is sustainable.”