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Episcopal
church faces divisions over gay issues
04 May 2007-Nigeria
- A new conservative African-led group will provide a home for members
of the splintered U.S. Episcopal Church who are upset over gay issues
and looking to leave, the head of the new group said on Thursday.
The body, under
the auspices of a Nigerian archbishop, is an alternative for American
followers who do not support the 2003 elevation of the first gay
Episcopal bishop and other liberal stances.
"We are what the
church used to be," said Bishop Martyn Minns, who on Saturday will be
installed -- over protests from the Episcopal Church leadership -- as
head of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America.
"Our desire is not
to interfere with what they're (the Episcopal Church) doing. We just
don't agree with it," he said in a conference call with reporters. The
U.S. branch of the 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Church has been
splintered since the Americans consecrated Gene Robinson of New
Hampshire as the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of
Anglican church history.
Some parishes in
the 2.4-million-member U.S. church have already formed alliances along
orthodox lines, and others have placed themselves under the jurisdiction
of conservative bishops in Africa. The group Minns will head was put
together by Nigeria's Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola, who will
formally install him as "missionary bishop" of the group in a ceremony
on Saturday in Woodbridge, Virginia.
Minns is rector of
Truro Church in Virginia, an historic Episcopal congregation which
numbers both George Washington, the first U.S. president, and his father
as former members of its vestry. Akinola is a staunch defender of
traditional Christianity and a leader of the Anglican Communion's
"Global South," churches in Africa, Asia and Latin American that now
account for half of the global Anglican church membership. He
consecrated the British-born Minns a bishop at a ceremony in Nigeria.
Minns said he
planned to work closely with other groups of disaffected Episcopalians
to end the current fragmentation among them. His group initially has
about 30 churches and 50 clergy.
'Broken Relationships'
The Episcopal
church -- the U.S. branch of the Worldwide Anglican Communion -- has
said only 45 out of its more than 7,400 congregations, 7,200 of which
are domestic, have voted to break away from it and put themselves under
different oversight. The American Anglican Council, which espouses
orthodoxy, has said that number is low. No diocese, which represents
multiple churches, has yet left though one in California may.
Minns, asked if
there already was a schism, said "The word schism sounds kind of ugly
but clearly there is a broken relationship ... It has torn the church
apart." For him personally, he added, it has been a "nightmare time."
His group, he said, will "support the folks who are trying to live out
their faith at the grass roost level" and make them once again part of
the global Anglican community.
Episcopal Church
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori sent Akinola a letter earlier
this week asking him to stay away. His visit would, she said, not only
show "division and disunity" but violate ancient church customs which
prevent one bishop from poaching on another's territory.
Akinola, in a
response published on his church's Web site, told Jefferts Schori the
custom she cited was intended to protect flocks from false outside
teachings, not the care and concern of another bishop.
"I also find it
curious," he said, "that you are appealing to the ancient customs of the
church when it is your own Province's deliberate rejection of the
biblical and historic teaching of the Church that has prompted our
current crisis.
Minn's Truro
church is one of several in Virginia which have left the Episcopal
Church but are trying to take buildings and property worth millions of
dollars with them, triggering a number of lawsuits. |
