From The Guardian-
Colin Slee, the dean of Southwark and one of the doughtiest and most outspoken liberals in the Church of England, died overnight, within a few weeks of suffering the galloping onset of cancer. When I last saw him, a couple of weeks ago in hospital, he told me all passion was spent and he felt he no longer had any enemies within the church, but I guess had he still been as hale as he was a few months ago and able to attend this week's general synod in London, of which he remained a member, he would have snorted in derision and despair at yesterday's goings on in the Anglican communion.
In brief, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, pleaded with the synod on Tuesday to vote in favour of the Anglican covenant, the compromise plan painfully drawn up over seven years largely to appease conservative evangelicals within the worldwide church who have been outraged over the existence of gay clergy. The covenant would comprise a set of agreed principles for Anglicanism and include mechanisms for censuring out-of-line provinces within the communion – for which read the American Episcopal Church which had the temerity to elect a gay bishop in 2003 – and exclude them from the inner counsels of the denomination. Liberals within the church have been decidedly sniffy about the covenant, believing it would undermine the traditional autonomy of national churches in making their own decisions and open the way for conservatives – such as the homophobic archbishops of central Africa – to veto innovations in other provinces they dislike.
More here-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/nov/25/liberal-anglican-colin-slee-dies
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