The new media and the mainstream media continue to cover reactions to the news of Canon Mary Glasspool’s election as Suffragan bishop over the weekend. Glasspool, who is a partnered lesbian priest would be the first lesbian elected to serve as a bishop in the Anglican Communion.
Riazat Butt points out, writing in the Guardian
As recently as July the US Episcopal Church announced its decision to open “any ordained ministry” to gay and lesbian people. Last weekend they did just that – congratulations Mary Glasspool. You never wanted to be a “single issue person” but you are anyway. Not to be outdone on the flouting of the moratoria – three laughable “bans” aimed at keeping the Communion together – malcontents on the conservative evangelical side last year announced their decision to launch a parallel network for like-minded Anglicans, and there were accusations of heresy and apostasy thrown about in Jerusalem with gay abandon.
Although the existence of the Global Anglican Futures Conference (Gafcon) in itself is not breaking a ban, conservatives, whether in Pittsburgh, Abuja or Oxford, like rattling their sabres, threatening to break away because of the progressives ruining “their” church. Before the launch of Gafcon and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Foca), Anglican churches in Africa intervened in US parishes where there was a difference in opinion over homosexuality by providing religious leadership that is more conservative, a practice that continues to this day.
How else to describe then, other than broken, a Christian denomination that offers alternative oversight for those who cannot stand their fellow Anglicans? The conservatives have their own church-within-a-church – even if they themselves will not admit it – and the liberals are forging ahead in an inclusive direction as befits the 21st century.
The Philadelphia Inquirer follows much of the rest of the U.S. mainstream media’s treatment of the news, focusing on the stress the election places on the relationship between the Episcopal Church and the rest of the Anglican Communion. You can find thousands more articles along this line here.
English Bishop Alan Wilson writes today on his blog:
Of course there are boringly obvious reasons why the two questions at issue don’t quite square up alongside each other: The Los Angeles one is an in-house bishoppy thing, where the Ugandan issue involves weighing into a touchy foreign legislature, incredibly still on the rebound from Empire after 47 years. It would be a bit odd if both were responded to in the same way. Still, the squirmfulness of all this is unavoidable.
A part of me would love the Archbishop to swing in, Pope style, with quick auto-da-fés all round, preferably enforcing my own eminently reasonable views of both matters. Bang a few heads together. Send the Ugandans to Los Ageles for six months, and the Angelinos to Uganda. That may not be such a bizarre idea… However, bishops in autocephalous churches don’t do auto-da-fé.
[…]That messy, mainly voluntarist place, is where the C of E has been since the Reformation, increasingly choosing the ecclesiastical methods of St Paul and the early Church rather than those of Pope Innocent III and the Holy Inquisition. It’s to be hoped, however, that all proceed with open eyes — remembering the simple fact that the motive for anti-discriminatory behaviour, as well as the deep revulsion people here feel about the Ugandan proposals, are moral objections with missional implications, not just some taste or lifestyle choice…
An Australian bishop, Abp. Peter Jensen is quoted in Sydney:
Calling the election of Reverend Canon Mary Glasspool ”sad but not surprising”, Dr Jensen said yesterday the Episcopal Church leadership had ”chosen to walk in a way which is contrary to scripture” and ”contrary to historic Anglicanism”.
…”I think this will confirm the view of people who say the communion is already broken, let’s face up to the facts, let’s not pretend,” said the Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth.
”There is deep division here on profound principle, about which I can see no middle ground.”