This is the 2,400 post on the DCNY blog. I hope that you've noticed that after a week of moratorium on posting news about the General Convention I have posted sparingly since. I will continue to spare you the hysteria that grips at least one other site; you can find a number of articles like this one at VirtueOnline, and TitusOneNine appears to be overwhelmed by traffic. ed.
by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6716407.ece
July 16, 2009
Bishops in the US dealt a death blow to hopes for unity in the worldwide Anglican Church when they gave their blessing to services for same-sex partnerships.
After years of increasingly tense debate the decision will finally split the Anglican Communion, confirming the finality of the rift between Bible-based conservative evangelicals and liberal modernisers.
The bishops voted 104-30 at the Episcopal General Convention to "collect and develop theological resources and liturgies" for blessing same-gender relationships, to be considered at the next convention in 2012.
The resolution notes the growing number of states that allow gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships and gave bishops in those regions discretion to provide a "generous pastoral response" to couples in local pari shes.
It came on Wednesday, just hours after The Episcopal Church voted on Tuesday to allow the consecration of gay bishops. The motion passed 99-45 among the bishops and by a 72 percent to 28 percent margin among the Church's deputies, made up of clergy and laity.
The decisions on gay consecrations and same-sex blessings brings to an end the uneasy truce agreed after the consecration of the openly-gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
The General Convention in 2006 agreed a resolution that pledged The Episcopal Church to abide by two moratoria on same-sex blessings and gay consecrations as requested by Dr Williams and the other 38 primates. The new resolutions will be seen in the conservative-dominated evangelical churches of the Global South as an open declaration of war.
It ends years of tense and costly ecclesiastical polity and finally kills the hopes of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams who has sacrificed his own liberal principles on the altar of church unity to no avail.
Dozens of meetings of bishops, archbishops, canon lawyers, clergy and lay theologians in Britain, Ireland, Jamaica and elsewhere, pages of dense reports and hours of prayer have been rendered redundant by this week's meeting of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church of the US in Anaheim, California.
Church leaders led by Dr Williams have strived to balance the scales of justice and tradition and maintain unity in the face of the Western embrace of liberal secularism and equal rights for gays.
They now face the unenviable task of managing the disintegration of a 70-million strong Communion of 38 provinces that can no longer maintain the facade of unity.
The US bishops ignored their colleagues who urged caution.
Bishop Dean Wolfe of Kansas warned that, "sometimes it takes very little [to] move us from agreement to division". He asked the bishops to practice a "generous orthodoxy" to the denomination's conservatives, who oppose same-sex blessings.
But many conservatives are not at the convention, which continues until Friday, because they have left to form a new parallel "province", the Anglican Church in North America, which is seeking recognition from Dr Williams.
A private member's motion to be debated at General Synod next February could confer this recognition, which will give Dr Williams his one hope of retaining a semblance of unity by permitting two provinces, one liberal and one conservative, to exist side-by-side in the US.
Many dioceses in the US already permit same-sex blessings but the Church's has never authorised a liturgy.
"We certainly feel a deep need to be able to proclaim the love of God in the midst of a changing reality," said Suffragan Bishop James Curry of Connecticut, one of six states that are legalising same-gender marriage.
At the start of the convention last week, Dr Williams said in a sermon to delegates: "I hope and pray that there won't be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart." At General Synod in York at the weekend, he told friends he was confident that Episcopal Church leaders would take his concerns seriously.
Lambeth Palace declined to comment today as the latest vote at the Convention showed that, in reality, the leaders of The Episcopal Church remain relatively unconcerned about the effects of their actions on the wider Anglican Communion and see no reason why they should place the concerns of the "mother church" back in England above the demands from their own worshippers for justice and parity for gays.
"For many, this is the final straw with members of the wider Anglican Communion," said Bishop William Love of Albany, New York. "It's breaking my heart to see the church destroy itself in the manner in which we seem to be doing."
END
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