With two crucial meetings ahead that could determine whether the Episcopal Church splits over homosexuality, the leader of the church defended his support for an openly gay bishop yesterday in an interview with The Associated Press.
The leader, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, said he voted at the church's General Convention last month to confirm the gay clergyman, Bishop-elect V. Gene Robinson, because Episcopalians in New Hampshire had overwhelmingly chosen him in an election. Bishop Griswold also said Scripture did not condemn same-sex relationships, a position that conservatives vehemently reject.
Bishop-elect Robinson has lived with his male partner for more than 13 years and worked in the New Hampshire Diocese for 15 years.
"I wasn't settling the question of sexuality," Bishop Griswold said in his office in Manhattan. "I was affirming the choice of a diocese."
Later, he said that in biblical times there was no understanding that homosexuality was a natural orientation and not a choice.
"Discrete acts of homosexuality" were condemned in the Bible because they were acts of lust instead of the "love, forgiveness, grace" of committed same-sex relationships, the bishop said.
"Homosexuality, as we understand it as an orientation, is not mentioned in the Bible," he added. "I think the confirmation of the bishop of New Hampshire is acknowledging what is already a reality in the life of the church and the larger society of which we are a part."
The comments were made at a critical time for his leadership of the 2.3-million-member church. Next week, the conservative American Anglican Council will gather more than 1,400 lay Episcopalians, bishops and other members of the clergy in Dallas to decide whether to break from the denomination over Bishop-elect Robinson.
On Oct. 15 and 16, Bishop Griswold will join fellow leaders of the world Anglican Communion at an emergency meeting in London in an effort to prevent the association from fracturing over the gay bishop and other issues related to homosexuality.
The Episcopal Church is the United States branch of the Anglican Communion, with 77 million members representing churches that trace their roots from the Church of England. The spiritual leader of the communion, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, summoned the other 37 church primates to London after several overseas bishops threatened to sever ties with the Americans. Archbishop Peter J. Akinola of Nigeria called electing Bishop-elect Robinson "a satanic attack on God's church."
Conservatives in the United States have asked Archbishop Williams to consider authorizing a separate Anglican province in North America. Bishop Griswold would not say whether he thought that the idea would be approved, but said he believed that it would require a vote by the General Convention of the American church, not a decision by Archbishop Williams, to authorize it.
"It would involve our own decision-making processes, our own constitution," the bishop added. "So most likely it would require action by the General Convention."