How to interpret D025. It depends who you ask.
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.
BBC:
Bishops of the Anglican Church in the United States have voted to overturn a three-year moratorium on the election of gay bishops.
The decision seems likely to lead to the Episcopal Church’s eventual exit from the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Dr Williams’s appeal for restraint is ultimately untenable. It cannot override a simple and direct acknowledgment that homosexual clergy, including bishops, belong in the Church.
Dr Williams should state that principle, even aware of its divisiveness. Churches that insist on the inerrant word of Scripture, notably the Pauline epistles, will not accept the consecration of open homosexuals. Yet social attitudes to homosexuality have shifted radically in the past generation. The sources of Christian inspiration are diverse. They do not derive only from a private response to Scripture.
It is possible to maintain that the Episcopal Church has been impolitic in its vote, but still maintain that it is right.
Many may interpret this proposal as a unilateral lifting of the moratorium on gay bishops—a restraint repeatedly requested by the Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury said as much after the Deputies passed D025 on Sunday.
The key question is whether those Communion concerns can be assuaged by the first three resolves of D025, all of which deal with reaffirming “the abiding commitment of The Episcopal Church to … the Anglican Communion” and our Church’s desire “to live into the highest degree of communion possible.”
When it comes to formal Church declarations, that’s about as close to a love letter as you can get.
The resolution, despite the headlines of a number of news organizations, was descriptive and offers a vision of where the Episcopal Church is at this time. It speaks to the fact that we are not of one mind on the issues of sexuality, that there is disagreement within the church on issues of ordination, marriage/unions. I think it reflects the reality that there are differences of opinion on how to deal with our differences.
I do not believe the house intended the passage of the resolution to be prescriptive.
DO YOU THINK… more people will leave — or will join –the Episcopal Church because of this?
It is hard for me to see that the conservatives/traditionalists have been anything but routed. All these General Conventions do is bounce the rubble, and all that remains to be negotiated is the terms of the trads is the terms of their surrender. TEC is not a church that has any interest in adhering to Scripture or Christian tradition on sexual morality.
Other reports: