DENVER, USA - A revolt has broken out in the Episcopal Church, pitting it against a breakaway group that denounces gay marriage and calls for a return to what its members deem traditional values and beliefs.
Even strong condemnation by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the titular head of Anglicans and Episcopalians worldwide, could not stop the ultraconservative Anglican Mission in America from consecrating four priests as bishops in the new movement earlier this week in Denver. The four join two other bishops in the breakaway group.
To be sure, the numbers who have deserted the 2.3 million member Episcopal Church USA have been small to date, 38 U.S. parishes out of 7,368, but they underscore a growing resentment among conservative members who feel the mainstream church has lost its moorings.
"A good part of the leadership has drifted from the truth. It's come to the place where nobody in authority is willing to say that (bishops who question dogma) are wrong," Alexander Greene, one of the new bishops, told Reuters.
"They believe Jesus was an extraordinary man, but not God," Greene said, alleging they are repeating one of the earliest heresies in the Christian Church.
The conservatives say they are concerned about the authority and sanctity of scripture and the way scripture is interpreted on such issues as gay unions.
While the Episcopal Church does not officially allow gay unions or ordination of non-celibate gays, some U.S. bishops have allowed them.
Rev. David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council, a conservative group that remained in the Episcopal Church, said there is too much of a rush to change doctrine. "It's suspect when you point to the latest poll or the latest article and say this is truth. If you don't get next month's copy you won't know the next month's truth. It keeps changing," he said.
Other mainstream Christian denominations in the United States have also had to grapple with the issue of gay unions, which has resulted in a patchwork of conflicting decisions.
BANS GAY MARRIAGE
The breakaway group, which now has about 72 priests, bans gay marriage, saying scripture forbids it. Also, the new group will not ordain women as priests until the matter is studied further. The group with headquarters in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, went nationwide in July 2000.
Two church leaders -- one from from Rwanda and the other from Singapore -- came to Denver to consecrate the new bishops thumbing their nose at Colorado's Episcopal bishop Jerry Winterrowd.
"It's unheard of," retired professor John Booty said. Booty, who wrote "Crisis in the Episcopal Church" in the late 1980s, characterized the "disaffection" of the Anglican Mission as one "rooted in cultural issues," such as sexuality and whether women should be ordained priests.
Not so, say members of the Anglican Mission, who maintain the debate goes to the heart of what it is to be Episcopalian and that gay marriages and women's ordination are just part of the equation.
"Whenever there is more outcry over challenges to turf and territory than over challenges to the essentials of the faith, then the church will fail in its mission to bring Christ to the World," one of the original two bishops, Charles Murphy, said a day after the Denver ceremony.
The breakaway group resents the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, for condemning them while not going after Episcopal bishops who have questioned the divinity of Jesus, considered the linchpin of Christianity.
The Archbishop of Canterbury did not mince words when he wrote the two archbishops. "Are you ... aware that action of this kind takes you perilously close to creating a new group of churches, at odds with the See of Canterbury and the rest of the (Anglican) Communion?" Carey wrote to Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda and Datuk Yong Ping Chung of Singapore, the two archbishops who flew to Denver to conduct the consecration.
16:04 06-27-01
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