Having selected the most liberal of four candidates to be their new leader, delegates to an Anglican Church of Canada meeting turned to a disputed proposal that would give dioceses the go-ahead to perform church blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples.
"We are a church that fundamentally affirms love and justice," Toronto laywoman Phyllis Creighton, who supports the proposal, said during Tuesday's debate on the measure. Delegates will vote on it Wednesday night.
"There is hurt when everything else can be blessed, but not the lives of persons who, through their relationships, show that they are blessed," Creighton said.
But the Rev. Sean Murphy of Whitehorse, Yukon, said approval of the bill would defy "the united and consistent testimony of Scripture that heterosexual marriage and abstinence in singleness is God's created order."
Montreal's Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, selected Monday as the church's new primate, favors same-sex blessings — though not gay marriages in church. He told reporters he won't try to impose his thinking on the church and is actually uncertain how he'll vote on the same-sex issue.
Asked whether his church will eventually accept blessings across the nation, Hutchison responded, "I suspect that's true." But he said he's not sure he could support gay marriage in church, even though Canada's secular law has moved in that direction.
The gay question has divided not only Anglicans in Canada but the 77 million members in the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Until now, the major flashpoint was last year's consecration of an openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, in the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism. The 2002 decision of Canada's Vancouver area diocese to approve same-sex blessings also provoked fury overseas.
The proposal here would "affirm the authority and jurisdiction" of any diocese and its bishop "to authorize the blessing of committed same-sex unions." A companion bill would order preparation of denominational resources on same-sex blessings.
Some officials argue that these "local option" bills do not set new church policy on gays. But conservatives say facts on the ground will do just that, effectively altering the church's view of sexual morality and the authority of the Bible.
In the U.S. Episcopal Church, some bishops are not only allowing but participating in same-sex rituals in the wake of a more ambiguous resolution approved at last year's church convention.
In the leadership voting Monday, Hutchison scored a fourth ballot victory over Bishop Ronald Ferris of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, who had joined a third of the divided hierarchy in declaring that the Bible forbids acceptance of same-sex behavior.
Hutchison styled himself as an option for electors seeking an interim leader because — at age 65 — he will likely serve only one three-year term. Retiring primate Archbishop Michael Peers and his predecessor, Edward Scott, both identified with the church's liberal wing, held office for 18 and 15 years respectively.
Hutchison, who speaks French fluently, has headed the Montreal Diocese since 1990 and later added the post of archbishop, supervising one of four sectors in the denomination.
He now joins the body of 38 primates who lead Anglicanism's self-governing national branches. Months from now, a special commission is due to report to the primates on how to keep world Anglicanism together.
The London-based secretary of the commission, Canon Gregory Cameron, warned delegates that their Wednesday decision will be momentous.
A "no" vote might disappoint thousands of gay Anglicans, Cameron said. But a "yes" would make his commission's work "horribly complicated," because 22 of the 38 Anglican branches have already denounced the United States and Vancouver actions.
"The implications of your decision for the unity of the Anglican Communion, perhaps even its very survival in its current form, are just about as serious as it could get," he said.
Even if the meeting votes down the proposed bill or postpones the decision for another three years, same-sex blessings may continue anyway in Vancouver, and other dioceses are considering whether to move ahead.