As reported earlier today in The Lead, when Bishop Peter James Lee retires from the Diocese of Virginia in the fall he will become interim dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
He was recently interviewed by the Washington Post and portions of that interview appear in tomorrow’s print edition. Some excerpts:
Q: What are the most important ways in which the Anglican Communion, the worldwide church Episcopalians are a part of, has changed in the past 25 years?
A: “The awareness of each other, largely because of technology . . . the violence in Darfur, for example, would not have had the impact it had in the United States. It’s good and bad. It means when a gay bishop is ordained in the United States, it’s on CNN in Africa that day, but without any context.
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The current upheaval, which has centered on human sexuality and how to read Scripture, has drawn your diocese into what some experts believe is the priciest litigation in the history of the Episcopal Church, over who controls church properties: the diocese or the congregations that have broken away.
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“I want to raise the strengths and uniqueness of what it means to be an Anglican Christian — of holding Orthodox views, but doing so in a way that remains open to all sorts of conditions of people. The separatists seem to have an emphasis on disciplining people who have different lifestyles than they do. That’s alien to the Anglican Communion.”