Anglican gay deadline looms in New Orleans
Posted by Gay News Desk at 10:32 AM. Filed under: Gay News
NEW ORLEANS, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Episcopal Church is in the middle of a wrenching debate that could end with its departure from the worldwide Anglican Communion over the issues of gay clergy and same-sex unions.
Episcopal bishops are expected to wrap up six days of meetings and ministry in New Orleans on Tuesday with an answer to a request by senior Anglican bishops who met in Tanzania earlier this year.
They have asked that the U.S. church, by the end of this month, renounce the blessing of same-sex marriages and agree not to allow more non-celibate gays to become bishops.
The stakes are high not least because the Episcopal Church, with 2.4 million members, provides 40 percent of the budget for the operating costs of the 77-million-member global Anglican Communion and a substantial amount of the funds for overseas mission and relief work.
“If the Episcopal Church is isolated from the broader community or chooses to isolate itself, the work of the global communion will suffer greatly,” said Jim Rosenthal, communications director for the Worldwide Anglican Communion.
The gay issues conflict was prompted in 2003 when the U.S. church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of church history.
That has caused dissension within the U.S. church and angered Anglicans in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which combined now account for half of the world’s Anglican followers.
The New Orleans convention is viewed as a possible showdown because of the bishops’ request.
The consequences of not complying with the Sept. 30 deadline were not spelled out in the Dar es Salaam meeting. They could lead, however, to the Episcopal Church losing full membership in the Anglican Communion, religious leaders say.
MORE INTENSE THAN ORDAINING WOMEN
As Rosenthal spoke on Saturday, Episcopal volunteers from the Diocese of Louisiana scurried in the background to provide food and refreshments for the community in the parking lot of a former drug store in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward that was converted into a church.
The neighborhood was devastated by Hurricane Katrina two years ago.
For several people there, the issue of sexual orientation was a distraction from what they saw as the church’s core mission of spreading the gospel and helping the needy.
“What we’re about here in Louisiana is relief, development and reclaiming the dignity of every human being,” said Mark Stevenson, operations director for the Diocese of Louisiana.
For others, issues of sexuality go to the heart of their spirituality, and it is clear that the division between more liberal Episcopalians and conservative Anglicans elsewhere, especially in Africa, will not easily be bridged.
“This is more intense than the Episcopal conflict over ordaining women in the 1970s,” said one Episcopal bishop.
The spiritual head of the world’s Anglicans, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, joined the House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans on Thursday and Friday and pledged to do everything in his power to resolve things.
“The need that we have for each other is very deep,” he said on Friday before he left.
Some members of the African clergy have been among the most outspoken on the issue for the conservative camp. With about half of the Anglican Communion’s members, the world’s poorest continent is viewed as a growth area.
But what the Episcopal Church lacks in numbers it makes up for in money and some would say energy, given its commitment to relief and humanitarian work.
Source: reuters.com