ATLANTA (ABP) — The nation's largest Presbyterian and Episcopal bodies sent mixed messages on sexual-orientation issues in their just-concluded national meetings.
Leaders of the Episcopal Church voted June 18 to elevate a gay-friendly female bishop to the denomination's highest American office and passed resolutions encouraging support for gays and lesbians. But later they voted to discourage their dioceses from electing gay bishops.
Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Church (USA) made it easier for congregations to elect non-celibate gay ministers, elders and deacons but retained constitutional language officially banning the practice.
In a blow to conservatives in the Episcopal Church, the denomination's triennial general convention elected 52-year-old Katharine Jefferts Schori to a nine-year term as the church's presiding bishop. The convention took place in Columbus, Ohio.
Schori, who has been an associate bishop in the Diocese of Nevada, becomes the only woman to head a denomination in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, the worldwide body comprised of denominations that grew out of the Church of England. Only a handful of provinces, or member denominations, of the Anglican Communion allow female bishops.
Schori was one of the Episcopal leaders who voted in favor of the elevation of openly gay priest Gene Robinson to the bishop's chair in the Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003, at the denomination's last general convention. The move caused consternation among many conservative Episcopalians in the United States and abroad. Several U.S. congregations have left the denomination over the issue, and hundreds more have threatened to follow.
Other world Anglican leaders have threatened to cut the American church off from the communion if it does not “repent” of the act of elevating Robinson. During the recent convention, the church declined to apologize formally for the act. However, on June 21, delegates voted overwhelmingly to ask diocesan leaders to decline to agree to the elevation “of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.”
Delegates to the Presbyterian Church's general assembly voted June 20 to retain language in the church's governing documents that requires ministers and ordained lay leaders in congregations to abstain from sexual relations outside heterosexual marriage. However, they passed new rules giving more leeway to local churches and regional presbyteries if sexual orientation arises as an issue when examining a candidate for orientation.
Although presented by a special study committee as a compromise — the section of the church's rules in question has long divided progressives and traditionalists in the denomination — it did not seem to satisfy conservatives. A coalition of 13 self-described “evangelical” groups within the Presbyterian Church released a joint statement condemning the move.
The compromise “marks a profound deviation from biblical requirements, and we cannot accept, support or tolerate it,” the statement read.
In other news, Presbyterians also raised the ire of conservatives in the denomination by adopting new feminine language that churches may use when describing the Trinity, and the denomination earned praise from Jewish groups for backtracking on an earlier decision to divest any denominational funds invested in Israeli companies.
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