He said: "The thing that unites all Christians is our faith in the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and what makes us Christians is that we participate in the death and resurrection of Christ.

"The other thing to remember is that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace.

"As long as someone does not deny the very basic doctrines of the Church - the creation, the death, the resurrection of Christ and human beings being made in the image of God - then the rest really helps but they are not the core message.”

Sentamu then reiterated a central theme of his that he had not found that neither The Episcopal Church nor the Anglican Church in Canada had any doubts in their understanding of God whichGod, which is not very different from anybodyeveryone else’s. "What they have quarreled about is the nature of sexual ethics," he said.

Not so, says David Phillips, the leader of Church Society , David Phillips whose organization puts out “Evangelical News”. "In the view of Church Society the revisionist attitude as seen in ECUSA (TEC), in particular endorsing the acceptability of homosexual sexual practice, is sufficiently seriously, and a core issue, that it is imperative to break fellowship.

“In our view homosexual practice breaks the direct commands of God, it denies the purposes of God in creating us male and female, and it denies the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification. For these reasons we consider it to be a core issue. Therefore in our view the Global South Bishops are right to refuse to be in fellowship with the revisionists and an outworking of this is refusing to attend the Lambeth Conference."

Sentamu nevertheless emphasized that Dr Williams does expect those who attend Lambeth to abide by the decision-making processes of the Anglican Communion.

"The Archbishop of Canterbury is very clear that he still reserves the right to withdraw the invitations and that those who are invited are accepting the Windsor process and accepting the process about the covenant.”

"But in another sentence, he said that attending Lambeth is not also a test of orthodoxy.

"Church regulations and Church legislation should not stand in the way of the gospel of love your neighbor.

"You are members of one body and therefore you should listen to one another and find a way out.

"I want to say to both sides, you would do well to come to the Lambeth Conference for us to hammer out our differences.

"It will be no good for either side to say, it doesn’t matter now, we can just do anything we like."

Sources say that Sentamu does not speak for the Archbishop of Canterbury who is on sabbatical until September. These are his own thoughts.

END