Reeling in the rainbow?
The New York Times
February 21, 2007
News Analysis
Many Episcopalians Wary, Some Defiant After Ultimatum by Anglicans
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
There was a time when the Episcopal Church in the United States was known as “the Republican Party at prayer,” but in the last 30 years it has evolved into the Rainbow Coalition of Christianity.
There are hip-hop Masses, American Indian rituals to install a new presiding bishop and legions of gay and straight priests who don the rainbow stoles of gay liberation. Its pews are full of Roman Catholics and Christians from other traditions attracted by its aura of radical acceptance.
Now the conservatives who numerically dominate the global Anglican Communion have handed their Episcopal branch in the United States an ultimatum that requires the church to reel in the rainbow if it wants to remain a part of the Communion.
It’s all here …
Episcopal Leaders Expect Anglican Schism
American Church's Support For Gays Draws International Ultimatum
By RINKER BUCK
Hartford Courant Staff Writer
February 21 2007
Is the American Episcopal Church headed for a schism with its worldwide Anglican parent?
Connecticut Episcopal leaders said Tuesday that a final break with the international Anglican body could well be the outcome of a communiqué issued from Africa over the weekend demanding that the American church renounce its support for gay clergy and blessing civil unions.
The demand was made on Monday, at the end of a five-day meeting in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, of the 38 primates - or archbishops - of the international Anglican Communion. The primates gave the U.S. Episcopal Church until Sept. 30 to formally renounce its policies on homosexuals.
Bishop Andrew Smith, the head of the Episcopal Diocese in Connecticut, doubts the U.S. bishops will reverse their stand.
It's all here ...
washingtonpost.com
Some U.S. Bishops Reject Anglican Gay Rights Edict
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 21, 2007; A03
Several leading liberal Episcopalians said yesterday that they would rather accept a schism than accede to a demand from leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion for what they view as an unconscionable rollback of the U.S. church's position on gay rights.
The defiant reaction to the communique issued by the primates, or heads, of the Anglican Communion's 38 national churches on Monday at the conclusion of a weeklong meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, reflected a growing feeling on both sides of the dispute that time for compromise is running out.
"Yes, I would accept schism," said Bishop Steven Charleston, president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. "I would be willing to accept being told I'm not in communion with places like Nigeria if it meant I could continue to be in a position of justice and morality. If the price I pay is that I'm not considered to be part of a flawed communion, then so be it."
It’s all here …
latimes.com
U.S. Episcopalians react to church ruling
Relief and anger follow the Anglican directive that the church in the U.S. stop blessings of same-sex unions.
By Rebecca Trounson and Louis Sahagun
Times Staff Writers
February 21, 2007
With pain, joy, anger and in some cases, relief, Episcopalians across the nation reacted Tuesday to a stern directive from Anglican leaders that the American wing of the church refrain from sanctioning blessings for same-sex unions and take other steps to heal tensions that may yet splinter the global Anglican Communion.
In a crucial meeting in Tanzania that ended Monday, Anglican leaders gave the U.S. Episcopal Church until Sept. 30 to state unequivocally that its bishops will not authorize blessings for homosexual couples and will stop consecrating gay bishops.
The three dozen Anglican leaders, or primates, also set up a special council and vicar to oversee, at least temporarily, conservative American dioceses that have rebelled against the Episcopal Church's relatively liberal views on homosexuality and Scriptural teachings.
It’s all here …
Episcopal Leader Asks for Time
Wednesday February 21, 2007 4:46 AM
By RACHEL ZOLL
AP Religion Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - The head of the Episcopal Church asked church members for patience Tuesday after fellow Anglican leaders demanded the U.S. denomination step back from its support of gays or risk losing its full membership in the world Anglican fellowship.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in a statement that Anglican leaders are asking all sides in the fight over the Bible and sexuality to ``forbear for a season'' until the 77 million-member Anglican Communion can forge a compromise.
``Each party in this conflict is asked to consider the good faith of the other,'' Jefferts Schori said. ``Each is asked to discipline itself for the sake of the greater whole.''
It’s all here …
SFGate
Same-sex edict worries Bay Area Episcopalians
Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, Chronicle Religion Writer
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Anglican Communion's directive this week that its Episcopal branch in the United States ban the blessing of same-sex unions is a direct rebuke to the Bay Area, where the Diocese of California has blessed the practice for nearly three decades.
The Episcopal Church risks being severed from the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, the largest, most unified Protestant denomination in the world. The question roiling the global body is whether it can be multicultural enough to include literal believers in Nigeria as well as liberals in the Bay Area.
In the Bay Area diocese, which is believed to have performed more same-sex unions than any other in the country, many Episcopalians say unity must not come at any cost.
It’s all here …
"Each is being asked to forbear for a season." ++KJS
Golly, is that all?! Just one MORE season? Well, ok,...as long as it's just one. It IS just one, right?
Posted by: David Scott Drane | February 21, 2007 at 10:39 AM
Viewed from outside the Episcopal Church the disputes between conservative and liberal church leaders are seen for what they are: religious people—people who believe in fantastic fictions--struggling with themselves to drag themselves into the modern world.
Their disputes are not about proper doctrine or confronting their own bigotry. What they are actually doing is struggling themselves out of religion itself however slowly and inefficiently. Their problem is religion, or ought to be, not matters of Episcopal faith and practice.
Atheists like me look at these outdated belief systems promulgated by institutions with their hierarchies, rituals, and leaders dressed in silly-looking uniforms with a mix of indifference, curiosity, impatience, and disgust. I am indifferent to these people because their concerns are meaningless to me; I am curious because the strange usually invokes curiosity; I am impatient and disgusted because religious people are so numerous, and because they constitute the greatest drag on social progress and the greatest cause of many severe social ills.
They are an embarrassment to enlightened people. They deserve neither my respect nor my toleration. They deserve nothing but derision because in a modern world they willingly hold ideas about the universe that are not supported by fact or reason, and that are world- and life-denying.
What is most curious to me in all this is why homosexuals, the most hated and persecuted subgroup in our culture, would want to associate with people who are the last ideological holdouts for moral discrimination of sexual preference.
Posted by: D. White | February 21, 2007 at 02:30 PM
Thanks for all the links - one stop shopping.
Posted by: Ann Fontaine | February 21, 2007 at 04:12 PM