Anglican Showdown Over Gays Looms in New Orleans

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

Anglican showdown over gays looms in New Orleans
By Ed Stoddard
Sun Sep 23, 2:51 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS (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 disagreements about 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 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.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070923/us_nm/religion_episcopal_gays_dc

[MasonJar]

1. They have it backwards; the American church is following the dictates of

Jesus. The others are asking too much. With the loss of American funds many poor people will be harmed. The Anglican Church needs to relent on this absurd position. The greatest irony is that it is the bishops and Anglican leaders in Africa who are insisting that the Episcopalians retreat on their stand of equality for all and bend to their ideas of right and wrong and yet it is the African people who will suffer the consequences.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[JerseygirlCT]

11. These men (the ones fomenting the trouble and funded by

the likes of Ahmanson and Scaife) are not representative of the broader Anglican Communion and most definitely not of the US church.

Should the US church voluntarily leave, we'd probably soon have much company: Canada, New Zealand, most of Europe, Ireland, Scotland, and of course, the mother church in England all come to mind.

[ohio2007]

13. Life in "the Cresent city" would be a joke if you think of alternative lifestyles

practiced by another faith with a following of well over a billion imposed their laws concening gays on "The Big Easy" .

just saying, be careful what you wish for ;)
things could be a lot worse unless... you would like them imposing their laws over the evil we already know



The Star and Crescent Badge,
unique to NOPD has been worn by members of the NOPD since 1855.
The crescent represents the shape of the city, as the Mississippi River forms a crescent shape around the city. This is where the nickname "Crescent City" comes from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Police#History

[JerseygirlCT]

9. The thing is

I don't think the people of Africa WILL suffer the consequences. The US church, should it feel compelled to leave the AC (and there isn't a way to force it out right now), would simply find other ways to continue our work in supporting the needy people the world over. The money might be directed through hands other than Peter Akinola's, but I'm certain it would continue to come.

[struggle4progress]

2. Nigerian archbishop, foe of gay clergy, visits church gathering

Associated Press - September 23, 2007 1:34 PM ET

WHEATON, Ill. (AP) - Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola .. a strong critic of gay clergy and blessings for same-sex unions ... spoke this morning in Wheaton to several hundred people at a gathering called the Midwest Anglican Awakening.

His appearance also drew about 30 protesters who carried signs outside the Wheaton College chapel where Akinola spoke.

Among the protesters was Gini Lester, a lesbian and a member of the Episcopal Church. She says Akinola is trying to draw churches away from the U.S. Episcopal Church ...

http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=7116110

[struggle4progress]

3. Bishop Steenson Will Become a Roman Catholic

09/23/07

The Rt. Rev. Jeffrey N. Steenson, Bishop of the Rio Grande, will resign from his position and become a Roman Catholic ...

Bishop Steenson was attending the House of Bishops’ meeting in New Orleans and plans to make an announcement concerning his decision on Monday ...

Bishop Steenson said he had spoken with the Presiding Bishop “for her counsel and prayers,” and said he would ask the House of Bishops for permission to resign as the ordinary of his diocese. He said he would do this by the end of the year, and added that he hoped then to be released from his ordination vows in The Episcopal Church ...

Bishop Steenson will be the third bishop of The Episcopal Church to become a Roman Catholic this year. Bishop Dan Herzog of Albany moved shortly after his retirement in January. Bishop Clarence C. Pope, retired Bishop of Fort Worth, returned to Roman Catholicism in August.

http://www.livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=3825

[Benhurst]

5. What an idiot. He's leaving the Episcopal Church for the world's biggest closet.

[JerseygirlCT]

10. Better they move than try to harm TEC, IMO nt

[struggle4progress]

4. Archbishop of Canterbury: Homosexuality is not a disease

23rd September 2007 12:02
PinkNews.co.uk writer

"I do not assume that homosexual inclination is a disease," the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, told bishops of the American branch of the Anglican Communion.

He warned that "violence against gay and lesbian people is inexcusable," adding: "Gay and lesbian people have a place in the Church as do all the baptised."

Mr Williams, is in New Orleans meeting with his American counterparts in order to avoid a split in the Anglican Communion over the ordination of gay clergy and more widely over the treatment of homosexuality ...

Asked if the church was prepared to let some congregations break away, Mr Williams answered: "I think it would be rather an admission of defeat if we said that we were incapable of working together on the issues that divide us ...

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-5526.html

[xchrom]

7. some people are talking about an episcopal church they don't really know.

we have church wide conventions.

the episcopal church usa is INDEPENDENT but participates in the world wide communion.

the episcopal church usa is acting in accord with the folk who sit in the pews.

also for those who don't know -- this is as much about the ordination of women as it is about gay folk.

when our arch bishop went to africa to talk to the church of the south -- the african bishops would not take communion with her.

there are several american diocese where women cannot be ordained, and women cannot serve the eucharist.

that argument precedes this phony outrage over gay clergy by many years.

more -- conservative churches in liberal dioceses have appealed to african bishops -- been folded into them and sent back with new bishops -- interfering with the episcopal church usa chain of authority.

it is the conservative Churches sin the us who are break away -- not the other way around.

IF the world wide church because of outlandish and back-wards thinking want to break with our relationship -- fine.

get it over with.

but i think england won't stay long in that company.

[JerseygirlCT]

8. There are lots of implications out there that are simply untrue

Because the media finds it more satisfying and easier to portray this in simplistic terms.

I'll just correct the idea left by the second paragraph in the OP -- that the primates are somehow "senior" to the US bishops, or have any sort of authority whatsoever over the US church. They do not.

The Anglican Communion is an association. A voluntary association of national churches, all sharing descent from the English church, all (for the most part) sharing a history of finding a "middle way" between Catholicism and Calvinist Protestantism.

In the US, the church was formed at the same time as our country (with some of the same people, too). We are a very democratic organization, not an authoritarian one, such as those in Nigeria. I really think at bottom, that, and not Gene Robinson's openness about his sexual orientation and committed partnership, is the problem.

The US church has sought to correct a wrong and is moving in the direction of true inclusion of all its members -- including GLBT. These authoritarian churches are watching what happens here, and HOW it happens, and I think they fear for their own power bases.

Let's face it, the people in many of the African countries represented by the most outspoken bigots on this issue certainly have bigger worries than an openly gay bishop in the US. But the very idea challenges Peter Akinola (Archbishop of Nigeria) and his cohorts. Not to mention the funding these men receive from US conservative groups set on taking down most of the mainstream Protestant churches. Ahmanson and Scaife sound familiar? Their money behind all this.

[muntrv]

12. Yeah, go ahead and break up from the Episcopal Church. 5 years from now

the "conservative" wing will be begging for reunification due to lack of funds.

[ohio2007]

14. Ten years from now we will be a lot like

European churches are today;
Big,empty cathedrals with aged followers in an ever dwindling population.
Doesn't leave much going into the collection plate

[Slyder]

15. Vox populi, vox dei

In the late Middle Ages some churchmen held that ecumenical councils of the Church had authority over bishops. The voice of the people is the voice of God. And when the representatives of the New Hampshire Episcopal diocese met and elected Bishop Robinson, it was the voice of the people of the church. He was confirmed by the national church's convention. He had apostolic consecration by at least three consecrated bishops. Robinson is a bishop of the Church Universal. No other churchman in the Anglican Communion, not even the titular head, the Archbishop of Canterbury, can say otherwise. Churches that try to tell the independent Protestant Episcopal Church in the US what to do have not the authority. The 39 Articles, that remain the heart of Anglican doctrine dating to the reign of Elizabeth I, state: "The Bishop of Rome hath no authority in this realm of England." Episcopal parish churches that break away from the American Church and place themselves under foreign bishops, like my former church here in Kansas, has done, is a travesty and contrary to tradition and the will of God as spoken through his people.