WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Episcopal Church USA, on the verge of a split with its worldwide religious body over homosexuality, is being “pushed toward a decision by impatient forces within and outside this church,” according to the group's head.
But other current and former Episcopalians in the United States are welcoming the ultimatum that the heads of the world's 37 other Anglican denominations are forcing on the American church. Together, the denominations make up the Anglican Communion, which has 38 national and regional member bodies.
Pro-gay Episcopal groups, meanwhile, have urged church leaders not to view worldwide Anglican unity as a reason to retreat from gay rights. Much of the undue pressure, they say, comes not only from domestic dissidents but also from Third-World Anglicans who hold more conservative views on homosexuality than their American counterparts.
Katharine Jefferts Schori, the recently installed presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, held a live Internet discussion with church members Feb. 28. She shared her opinion of a Feb. 19 communiqué to the American church.
The communiqué, issued after a meeting in Tanzania of the Anglican Communion's primates, set a Sept. 30 deadline for Episcopalians to inpose a moratorium on the consecration of any more openly gay bishops in partnered relationships. It also demanded that the church stop its policy of giving local dioceses and congregations significant leeway in deciding whether to bless same-sex relationships among members.
The world's Anglican primates “heard the pain and anger of those in the minority in this church [the ECUSA], who feel that their understanding of biblical morality is undermined by recent developments around human sexuality,” Schori said in the Web discussion.
She continued: “The primates also heard that the bulk of our church, and our ecumenical partners, do not see these issues as centrally important to our understanding of salvation and the gospel. The majority of this church is willing to live with where we are in regard to human sexuality, or to continue to move ahead in recognizing the full and equal dignity of gay and lesbian Christians, and the appropriateness of serving in all orders of ministry in this church.”
But she also noted that such a view is “a distinct minority within the Communion.”
Schori is the church's first female presiding bishop. Her election was controversial because of her support for full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of the church.
Her election also brought to a head U.S. conservatives' simmering discontent over the 2003 election of Gene Robinson as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. Robinson is the first bishop in the Anglican Communion who is both openly gay and openly involved in a same-sex relationship.
Recently, 11 congregations in Virginia voted to leave their diocese and denomination to place their churches under the authority of Archbishop Peter Akinola of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. Two of the dissident congregations — the Falls Church, Episcopal, in Falls Church, Va.; and Truro Parish, in Fairfax, Va. — were among the ECUSA's largest and most historic. Virginia is the Episcopal Church's largest district.
Schori urged understanding for the dissidents in the ECUSA, including those who have rejected her authority. “To live together in Christian community means each member takes seriously the concerns and needs of other members,” she said.
When asked during the discussion if she is retreating from her support of gay and lesbian Episcopalians, she said, “My view hasn't changed, but I'm called to be pastor to the whole church.”
In an earlier message to the church, Schori likened assenting to the communiqué's demands to the fasting in early Christian churches by spiritually mature members in order to protect weaker members.
“Each is asked to discipline itself for the sake of the greater whole and the mission that is only possible when the community maintains its integrity,” she wrote.
But other Episcopal leaders had much harsher assessments of the ultimatum. In a March 1 message to his diocese, Robinson said that, while he loved and respected Schori, he questioned her rationale for assenting to receive the primates' communiqué.
“Is there even a single instance in which Jesus was willing to forego ministry, love and inclusion of the marginalized in order to protect the 'sensitivities' of the Pharisees and Sadducees?” he wrote. “What would Jesus' reaction have been to those same Pharisees and Sadducees if they had claimed to be the victims of Jesus' insensitivity?”
Robinson said gay and lesbian Episcopalians can't afford to “fast” from God's love.
“While the vast majority of the Anglican Communion and the vast majority of Episcopalians may be willing to 'forbear for a season,' the world's gay and lesbian Anglicans long to hear the words spoken to Jesus at his baptism: 'You are my beloved. In you I am well pleased,'” he wrote. “Who will speak those words to them while the rest of the church forbears for a season? How will we explain this 'forbearance' to all those gay and lesbian Christians who have come to the Episcopal Church because, for the first time ever, they have believed that there is a place for them at God's table, not simply beneath it, hoping for fallen scraps?”
But Martyn Minns, rector of a departed Virginia church and an Akinola-appointed bishop for the dissenting congregations, said the issue is whether the ECUSA aligns with the theological orthodoxy embraced by the vast majority of the world's Anglicans.
The primates are “determined to do all that they can for the unity of the church, but … will not give up biblical truth for the sake of a false unity,” he said in a statement from the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. The convocation is the new umbrella group for Virginia's dissident churches.
“We have been distracted for too long by the endless struggles” of the Episcopal Church USA, he wrote. “We are no longer a part of [the ECUSA] and our call is to show the world a new way of living and a new way of loving.”
The ECUSA House of Bishops will begin considering the church's response to the communiqué at a meeting March 15.
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