Legion of Angels News Archive

LONDON - The first openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop was barred from a once-a-decade Anglican meeting so he wouldn’t become a focus of the global event.

Anglicans on all sides of the issue agree: The strategy has backfired.

New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson has been embraced by sympathetic Anglicans in England and Scotland who view his exclusion as an affront to their Christian beliefs.

Robinson plans several appearances on the outskirts of the Lambeth Conference to be what he called a “constant and friendly” reminder of gays in the church.

“I’m just not willing to let the bishops meet and pretend that we don’t exist,” Robinson said in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press before preaching at St. Mary’s Church Putney. “They’ve taken vows to serve all the people in dioceses, not just certain ones.”

The Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, did not include Robinson and a few other bishops in the conference as he tried to prevent a split in the world Anglican Communion.

The 77 million-member fellowship — the third-largest in the world behind Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians — has been on the brink of schism since Robinson was consecrated in 2003. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the U.S.

Robinson and Episcopal leaders had tried for years to negotiate a role for the New Hampshire bishop at Lambeth, but were unsuccessful. He resolved to come to England anyway.

“I’m not storming the pulpit to wrestle the microphone from the archbishop,” Robinson said. “My agenda is this: What does the church’s treatment of gay and lesbian people say about God? You’ve got all these people talking about gays and lesbians being an abomination before God. Does that make you want to run out and go to an Anglican church and sing God’s praises?”

Robinson preached Sunday at the 16th-century parish on the Thames River, despite a request from Williams that he not do so. A protester briefly interrupted the sermon, waving a motorcycle helmet and yelling “Repent!” and “Heretic!” before he was escorted out.

An emotional Robinson resumed preaching, asking parishioners to “pray for that man” and urging them repeatedly not to fear change in the church.

On Monday night, Robinson will join Sir Ian McKellan at a London literary festival for the British premiere of “For the Bible Tells Me So,” a documentary about gay Christians that features Robinson.

Next Sunday, after the Lambeth Conference holds its opening worship in Canterbury Cathedral, Robinson will join Anglican gays and lesbians in a separate service nearby. He will then sit in the public exhibition hall near the assembly sessions to be available for conversation.

A group of Episcopal bishops have organized two private receptions where Anglicans from other parts of the world can meet him. When the conference ends Aug. 3, he heads to Scotland where he has been invited to preach at Anglican parishes.

Robinson was a target of death threats at his consecration and wore a bulletproof vest throughout the ceremony. He said the threats resumed a few months ago when he published a book about his religious views. He has arranged personal security in England, but said he could not disclose details. Donors are covering the cost for the extra protection, he said. His partner of two decades, Mark Andrew, is traveling with him but declined to be interviewed.

Bishop Martyn Minns, a former Episcopal priest who now leads a breakaway network of U.S. conservatives, said in a recent interview that although organizers of the Lambeth Conference intended to move the topic off Robinson, their plan was bound to fail.

“He will end up getting all the attention,” Minns said.

Minns was also barred from Lambeth. He was consecrated by the conservative Anglican Church of Nigeria, which created the U.S. parish network despite an Anglican tradition of respecting the boundaries of other provinces.

For many theological conservatives, Robinson’s consecration was the final straw in a long-running debate over how Anglicans should interpret Scripture. Last month in Jerusalem, traditionalists created a worldwide network of conservatives to separate from liberal Anglicans without fully breaking away from the communion. More than 200 conservative bishops are boycotting Lambeth because Episcopal leaders who consecrated Robinson will be there.

Robinson said he felt “pretty devastated” when he learned he would not be allowed to participate in the conference, a key meeting that affirms membership in the communion.

He said he was also worried that he would flub his appearances in England this month.

“I so want to be a good steward of this opportunity. I want to do God proud,” he said. “I have this wonderful opportunity to bring hope to people who find the church a hopeless place.”

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On the Net:

Lambeth Conference: http://www.lambethconference.org/index.cfm

New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson: http://www.nhepiscopal.org

Source — Yahoo!

NEW YORK - Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was installed as head of the American branch of the Anglican Communion less than two years ago, inheriting a mess not of her own making.

The global Anglican church was in an uproar over the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Long-simmering differences over Scripture and the global Anglican fellowship erupted into a threat of full-blown schism.

Jefferts Schori, a theological liberal who supported Robinson’s election, has tried to ease the tensions in meetings with other Anglican leaders.

Starting next Wednesday in Canterbury, England, she will be explaining the church’s actions in her broadest venue yet: the Lambeth Conference, a once-a-decade meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world. Jefferts Schori said she’s looking forward to the “face-to-face conversation” at the event.

“We’re far more diverse than we’re presented in some quarters,” she said in a recent interview with The Associated Press at Episcopal headquarters in New York. “We have people all over the theological spectrum and liturgical spectrum.”

It won’t be an easy sell.

About 200 conservative Anglican bishops won’t even be there. They are boycotting the 18-day event southeast of London because the U.S. bishops who consecrated Robinson were invited. (For the sake of unity, the Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, barred Robinson and a handful of other bishops from the assembly.)

But that won’t mean a conflict-free Lambeth for Episcopal bishops.

Tradition-minded church leaders who want the Anglican family to stay together despite its rifts will attend. They will undoubtedly ask Jefferts Schori about complaints that the 2.2 million-member U.S. church is mistreating its conservative minority.

Of the tensions within the American church, Jefferts Schori said “we’ve attempted to deal with it in the Christian community” but haven’t always been successful.

Although the exact figure is in dispute, Episcopal officials say that fewer than 100 of the more than 7,000 U.S. Episcopal parishes have voted to split off since Robinson was elected.

The entire Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno, California, voted to withdraw from the denomination, and the Diocese of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, is poised to do the same this fall.

The national church is suing to retain hold of the San Joaquin diocese and its many millions of dollars in property. Another lawsuit is moving through the courts over 11 breakaway churches in Virginia. Critics have called the legal fights “un-Christian” and have asked Episcopal leaders to halt the lawsuits.

But Jefferts Schori said, “We really don’t have the authority or the moral right to give away those gifts that have been given by generations past and for the benefit of generations now and the benefit of generations to come.”

Last month in Jerusalem, conservatives from around the world held the Global Anglican Future Conference and said they hoped to create a North American province for breakaway conservatives in the Episcopal Church and the liberal-leaning Anglican Church of Canada.

Already, Anglican archbishops, called primates, from Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and South America, have taken oversight of seceding U.S. parishes. At Lambeth, Jefferts Schori said she will ask Williams “to encourage other parts of the communion to cease their incursions.”

“It’s totally opposed to a traditional Christian understanding of how bishops relate to each other,” she said. “That’s the biggest difficulty. They’re setting up as something else in the same geographical territory.”

Williams has already spoken out against the idea of a North American province, but Anglican conservatives defend the idea as critical for the spiritual well-being of traditionalists.

While Robinson won’t attend the Lambeth meeting, he will be just outside the event.

He is preaching at a British church, despite a request from Williams that he refrain from doing so. A group of Episcopal bishops will host two receptions for Robinson outside the Lambeth Conference grounds so other Anglican bishops can meet and speak with him.

Jefferts Schori said she didn’t ask Robinson to refrain from preaching and said his presence on the outskirts the conference “doesn’t make my life more difficult.”

“I think it’s an opportunity for others to meet him as a human being, as a member of this church, as an honored member of this church,” she said.

Liberal Christians believe that committed same-sex relationships are permitted under the Bible’s social justice teachings. Conservatives disagree — and they are a majority in the 77 million-member Anglican fellowship. The communion, a group of churches that trace their roots to the Church of England, has a long tradition of accommodating different views, but it’s unclear whether that broad practice will continue.

“Some people think that you can read the Bible without understanding the original context and simply take literally what you read. We will interpret — and it’s an important part of faithful living,” Jefferts Schori said. “To assume there is only one way of reading is hubris.”

To prepare for the meeting, the presiding bishop said she has been speaking and praying with other Episcopal leaders. She is urging them to have realistic expectations for the event.

“Conversations that are challenging can’t be solved in one meeting,” she said. “These issues aren’t going to be finished by the end of the summer.”

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On the Net:

U.S. Episcopal Church: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/

Lambeth Conference: http://www.lambethconference.org

Source — MSNBC