U.S. Anglicans
stand behind decision to ordain gay bishop

At this week's meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham, England, the U.S. Episcopal Church reaffirmed its support for the 2003 ordination of gay bishop V. Gene Robinson and appealed to the bishops, priests, and laypeople present to not allow the contentious issue to split the 77 million-strong Anglican Communion. "We believe that God has been opening our eyes to acts of God that we had not known how to see before," the church said in a document prepared for the council. It affirmed "the eligibility for ordination of those in covenanted same-sex unions." Some Anglican conservatives said that stance made a schism inevitable. "There's going to be a divorce," said the Reverend Canon David Anderson, president of the traditionalist American Anglican Council. "The question is whether it's going to be a strictly North American divorce or whether it's going to be Communion-wide." The issue of homosexuality has opened a rift between Anglican liberals--many of them in North America--and conservatives, who are strongest in Africa and Asia but include many North American traditionalists. Many fear it is unbridgeable. In February, leaders of the 38 national Anglican churches chastised the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, asking them not to attend this week's meeting of the council, an international body of bishops, priests, and laypeople that meets every three years. But Anglican leaders also asked the North American churches to send representatives to explain the theological reasoning behind the consecration of V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire as well as the decision by the western Canadian diocese of New Westminster to authorize the blessing of same-sex unions. Official church policy declares gay sex "incompatible with scripture" and opposes gay ordinations and same-sex blessings. Delegations from the two churches addressed a tense and divided meeting, with U.S. liberals and conservatives sitting on opposite sides of a stifling university auditorium. Many on the conservative side cooled themselves with paper fans emblazoned with the words "Christ's love changed me." Setting out the U.S. case, Bishop Suffragan Catherine Roskam of New York said the church believes "a person living in a same-gendered union may be eligible to lead the flock of Christ." The U.S. church presented its position in a 130-page document, "To Set Our Hope on Christ." It argued that "members of the Episcopal Church have discerned holiness in same-sex relationships and have come to support the blessing of such unions and the ordination or consecration of persons in those unions." In this, the document said, Episcopalians were in a theological tradition of debate and difference stretching back to the early Christians. Presiding bishop Frank Griswold, head of the Episcopal Church, acknowledged that "our actions around the question of homosexuality have deeply distressed a number of you." However, he said, "the overwhelming majority of Episcopalians are committed to living a life of unity in difference." The Canadian team was more conciliatory, pointing out that the church's governing General Synod had yet to take a position on same-sex unions and calling for more discussion. "It is true that we are still seeking clarity, but it would also be true to say that we have not changed our minds" about official church teaching, said the Reverend Stephen Andrews, a member of the Primate's Theological Commission. "The burden still rests with those who would revise the church's teaching to make their case." Unifiers fear conservatives will set up parallel parishes and dioceses to bypass the church hierarchy, a move that could speed a permanent split. Anglicans' spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has called for listening and reflection during the Consultative Council meeting, which runs through June 28. Any decisions the council makes must be accepted or rejected by national Anglican churches. Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana, the only member of the six-person U.S. team at the meeting who opposed Robinson's ordination, said he felt the church had "made a wrong move" in appointing an openly gay bishop. But he appealed for Anglicans to stay together. "I do not wish to walk separately from you, and I pray you will not walk separately from me," Jenkins said. (AP)