Abp. Tutu: "We are Most Like God When We are Welcoming"

From Episcopal Life:

Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu has appealed to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to invite all bishops to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, "even those irregularly consecrated or actively gay."

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate's plea came in a letter to the present Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, in which he also called on all Anglican bishops to be "more welcoming and inclusive of one another."

"Our Communion has always been characterized by its comprehensiveness, its inclusiveness, its catholicity," he said. "...we are really family, held together not so much by law as by bonds of affection. There is no family that is unanimous on every single subject"...

..."In a world where difference has led to alienation and even bloody conflict, the Church is God's agent to demonstrate that unity in diversity is in fact the law of life," Tutu said in his letter to Ndungane. "...We are most like God when we are welcoming and when we are as inclusive as possible, when we have broken down all middle walls of partition"...

..."Our Lord is weeping to see our Communion tearing itself apart on the issue of human sexuality when the world for which he died is ravaged by poverty, disease, war and corruption," Tutu said. "I beg you all in our Lord's name agree to disagree, argue, debate, disagree, but do all this as members of one family."

J.