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From Rev鈥檇 Richard Coles, cleric and broadcaster:

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I ran into a divorce lawyer the other day, rushed off her feet. Apparently the weeks after Christmas and New Year are her busiest time, as numberless married couples take down the tinsel in the realisation that for them the festivities are over.

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We, in the Anglican Communion, may be needing the services of someone like her ourselves. Next week the Primates meet - not a conference of apes, but of Archbishops from around the world, invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss the future of the Communion. It may be sticky.听 On the agenda are urgent issues like religiously-motivated violence, the protection of children and vulnerable adults, the environment, and 鈥� the sticky one 鈥� what churches call 鈥榟uman sexuality鈥� but everyone else calls gay stuff.

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It possibly may not have escaped your attention that the churches, particularly those in the Anglican fold, have been at war over what our proper attitude should be to LGBT people. Traditionally the church has thought and taught that sexual relationships outside the marriage of a man to a woman are sinful and therefore not to be tolerated. But quite a lot of of us now think that鈥檚 wrong, and want to offer gay people in relationships that don鈥檛 fit that pattern the blessing of the church. It is difficult to think of a more divisive issue, and many are predicting that the marital breakdown will be irretrievable, the liberals going one way, the conservatives the other, the Anglican Communion disintegrating to a chorus of 鈥楨very Day I Love You Less and Less鈥�.

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I hope not. God calls us all into relationships, enduring relationships that can survive the pitch and toss of our passions, and the squalls that blow up in the shallows of our deepest convictions; by God鈥檚 grace enduring with one another beyond the point we think togetherness is unendurable. We are narrow in our thinking, and ungenerous in our attitudes, and limited in our imagination, being human (if you doubt that, just ask a divorce lawyer), but we are called to do better than that, even if we don鈥檛 know what that will look like and how we鈥檙e going to bear it.

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For, as the Bible insists, we are commanded to do that very simple, very difficult thing: to love one another as Jesus loved us.

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