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Loading ...Episcopal church to affirm gay clergy
07.14.2009 8:03am EDT
(New York) The Episcopal Church moved Monday toward affirming their acceptance of gays and lesbians for all roles in ministry, despite pressure from fellow Anglicans worldwide for a decisive moratorium on consecrating another openly gay bishop.
Bishops at the Episcopal General Convention in Anaheim, Calif., voted 99-45 with two abstentions for a statement declaring “God has called and may call” to ministry gays in committed lifelong relationships.Lay and priest delegates to the meeting had comfortably approved a nearly identical statement, and were expected to adopt the latest version before the meeting ends Friday.
Leaders of the Anglican Communion have been pushing Episcopalians to roll back their support for gays and lesbians since 2003, when the U.S. denomination consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. Anglican body.
Robinson’s election brought the 77 million-member Anglican fellowship to the brink of schism. Last month, breakaway Episcopal conservatives and other like-minded traditionalists formed a rival national province called the Anglican Church in North America.
To calm tensions, the Episcopal General Convention three years ago passed a resolution that urged restraint by dioceses considering gay candidates for bishop. No other Episcopal bishops living openly with same-sex partners have been consecrated since then.
Drafters of the latest statement insisted that the resolution only acknowledges that the Episcopal Church ordains partnered gays and lesbians and is not a repeal of what was widely considered a moratorium on consecrating gay bishops.
“The constitution and canons of our church as currently written do not preclude gay and lesbian persons from participating,” in any part of the church, said the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, on the committee that drafted the statement. “These people have responded to God’s call.”
However, the Episcopal gay advocacy group Integrity, said in a statement Monday night that the declaration “effectively ends” the temporary prohibition on gays in ministry. Integrity called the vote “another step in the Episcopal Church’s `coming out’ process.”
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who leads the Episcopal Church, was among bishops who voted to approve the declaration. The statement also affirms the Episcopal Church’s commitment to participate in and help fund the Anglican Communion, the third-largest grouping of churches worldwide, behind the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Christian churches.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, had attended the Episcopal national meeting in Anaheim, Calif., in its opening days last week. He said, “I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart.”
So, now the conversations have gone to INclusivity V. EXclusivity. All I know is that Exclusivity has push out the Negro,Women,&Homosexual persons. At one time no women were to not to even speak in church, but By the loving grace of God via our Lord Jesus we have women Bishops(who are Godly in word,deed, and thought). At another time African-Americans were excluded from the Episcopal as well as many other denominations within the body of Christ(it is the reason for the formation of the AME denomination) but we worked through this once again by the loving grace of God via our Lord Jesus Christ.Now Christianity is finding itself growing in love even more as it faces embracing homosexuals in the love of God as equals in going forth and preacing the Gospel unto all nations.The other side of the situation is for the homosexual community to embrace the opportunity to redefine our expression of self (sexual and nonsexual) by the guidelines of CHrist; that is to walk in the Holy Spirit and love one another not merely lust one another. Is it easy ? No. Is it possible? Yes. there is a lot for us all to reflect upon about our invidual as well as our collective conciousness concerning we treat ourselves and how we allow others to treat us. May God help us all gay and straight alike. “We are much more alike than we are unalike.”
Now, if only I could believe in a personal god, I might return to the church I was brought up in.
Gail, there is only one way to a Hemorrhoid and thats thru an asshole!
She must get milky and oozy over her bible. She sounds like the biggest of all FREAKOS!
Why can’t people so wet over being with Jesus just die already? Go On SHOO, Scatt, away, be gone before a house falls on you!
Jesus is and has been dead people. Let it be. Let him rest.
Religion is truly the root of the world’s problems. Of course thats all others, but Morgan’s Church in MD.
Americans for Seperation of Religion and State for true and absolute freedom!
gail, the Episcopal Church isn’t changing to please people but to reflect God’s love for everyone. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever: a God of unwavering love and faith, not hate and condemnation (John 3:16-17). You know his ways are just. Then why practice injustice toward his children? Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” Then would you have the Episcopalians ban Jesus from the ministry, by banning “the least of these”?
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
Rejecting gay and lesbian persons in church life makes as much sense as rejecting all straight persons because some are remarried.
This is a false church, God is holy and He is the same as He was yesterday, today and forever. This is a delusion, dont’ fall for it, read the bible for God’s truth, His way’s are just. You live for the world or you live your life for Christ. Jesus already knows who will answer His call. The church can’t save you, they should not be changing too please people, There is only one way to God,and that’s through Jesus Christ
OKAY, here from a friend, a retired Episcopal Bishop..who has had a lot of practice recently in explaining this to me and othrs.
“here are several points of view not expressed in the commentaries that I have read here.
Succinctly stated, Anglicanism has always been defined as a voluntary and honourary association of churches emanating from the Established Church of England. The Georgian rite is the more evangelical, and the Sarum Rite is the more catholic, speaking both theologically and liturgically.
The Episcopal Church USA was initially given Apostolic validity from the Sarum rite of the Scottish Episcopal Church, while in Canada, the Church of England in Canada was replaced by its own primacy as the Anglican Church of Canada in 1947, when the Canadian Citizenship Act was put into effect on New Year’s Day.
I was born roughly six months earlier. The Lambeth Conference, again is honourary. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Cantuaris) is not the Anglican pope. Like the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, he is primus inter pares, first among EQUALS.
Dr. Rowan Williams was nominated Cantuaris by former PM Tony Bliar. The PM was an Anglican, and after leaving Downing Street, joined his wife and children into Roman Catholicism. Williams was a phony liberal and closet uberconservative. At least, he realised that the majority of Anglicans live in subsaharan Africa.
Many nation states divide their populations among various Christian groups, and Islam. The hypocrite-in-chief is the Archbishop of Lagos and Nigerian primate. There is a total disregard for the retired Archbishop of Johannesburg and South African Primate, to say nothing that South Africa has total marriage equality as one of the eight nations in the world.
Rowan Williams is the theological equivalent of Barack Obama. Truth is sacrificed for a false sense of “unity”. Integrity is informed by the retention of Church property and wealth and international gravitas. The Via Media is reduced to immoral compromises and false rights of conscience.
Since the 19th century, in the United States, several significant schisms occurred. The Reformed Episcopal Church in the late nineteenth century was a schism of the Evangelicals. The several bodies who fought the “new” BCP and retained the 1928 edition was the raison d’etre for others.
There were other schisms informed by the ordination of women.
It should be noted that some Anglican national churches ordain women to the grades of deacon and priest, but not the episcopate, while others do all three. It seems that some staunch conservatives from both parties were willing and able to accomodate women in the HOB, but when their brother, active Ordinary, became bishop, all of their Hell was leashed upon the American and Canadian churches. Other bishops, both within and without the official Communion, waited until retirement to come out, and even legally and civilly marry.
LET THEM GO….the absence of either the ECUSA or the ACC….and the recognition of extracanonical jurisdictions in Africa on these shores by Lambeth should stand for what it represents. Again, Anglicanism, with an affirmation of GLBT persons of faith within Christ’s Mystical Body, will bear testament to the Great Decalogue and to the Beatitudes.”