Tension as Episcopal bishops meet

Starting Thursday in New Orleans, they'll discuss communion demands over gay issues.

from the September 19, 2007 edition

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On Thursday, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and a committee of global Anglican leaders will meet with the House of Bishops in New Orleans to discuss the crisis. Most observers expect the bishops will not make the commitments the Anglican leaders have requested, but will say instead that they alone cannot speak for the church – that the general convention involving lay people and clergy must give any official response. The convention doesn't meet again until 2009.

"Those who pushed for this response knew it would be difficult to deliver on those requests," says the Rev. Ian Douglas of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. "They are hoping, I suspect, this is another line in the sand."

Episcopal leaders invited people in the pews to communicate their views to their bishops before the meeting. About one-third of dioceses submitted responses. According to the Episcopal news service, they expressed strong commitment to staying in the Communion and to maintaining unity, but differed greatly over how to respond.

(The church has been asked to accede to the requests until the Communion completes the process of drawing up an Anglican Covenant, which would define the principles of membership.)

Meanwhile, those who have rejected Episcopal leadership since 2003 don't expect the House of Bishops to change course now and are preparing to move on.

"This is an extraordinarily significant moment in the history of our church and the Communion, and indeed in the life of the whole Christian church," says Bishop Robert Duncan, conservative leader of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Immediately following the bishops' meeting, he is hosting the first gathering of Common Cause Partners, an alliance of 10 orthodox Anglican ministries in the US and Canada that could eventually form the core of a new entity.

"We want to maintain Anglicanism as practiced worldwide," he says. "The Episcopal Church was a great church with an incredible role in our society ... but it is destroying itself."

The great majority of Episcopalians, though, yearn to hold onto that historical church despite the differences. Liberals who support full inclusion of gays and lesbians have emphasized unity for years. And some people point out that the church has never authorized a rite for same-sex blessings, though some clergy do perform them in a pastoral role.

"The general convention has never authorized such rites, but people on both sides have an investment in misrepresenting how often clergy do blessings," Dr. Douglas says.

Yet Dr. Levenson, a conservative who wants to continue to be Episcopalian and Anglican, says he's baffled by what he calls a "growing liberal fundamentalism." "A decade ago, liberals wanted to find a way for everybody at the table to live together," he says. "Now that they are in the leadership, they seem to be saying you really have to come on board."

Sure, he adds, it would be easier to split, but he's convinced that isn't the answer. What guides him is Jesus' last prayer for his followers – "that they would all be one, as we are one."

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