Gay bishop reaffirms role

[SunWuKong]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3205464.stm

Gay bishop reaffirms role

The gay Anglican bishop-elect of the US state of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, has reaffirmed his belief his consecration scheduled for 2 November should go ahead.

This is despite a warning from church leaders of the worldwide Anglican community that his status as a homosexual bishop could split the Church.

Canon Robinson, who was addressing a congregation at a church in Manchester, New Hampshire, was chosen by members of his New Hampshire diocese and backed by a majority of US bishops.

He told his highly supportive audience that, despite urging from worldwide Anglican leaders not to go ahead with his consecration, he felt called by God to do so.

'Not responsible'

Some people, he said, felt scared by change but they should not be.

Anglicans disagreed on a lot of issues and, he said, if some people felt obliged to split away on this one subject of homosexuality then, while he would not want this, he could not be held responsible.

Canon Robinson added he believed the Bible does not address the issue of same-sex relationships, but felt there were some who wanted to take historically specific Old Testament texts literally.

In a BBC interview, Canon Robinson admitted that his consecration "will be a moment of crisis for the Anglican communion".

"That doesn't mean we aren't going to learn from it... I'm not fearful, this will be hard, painful for all of us, difficult, but I don't think we need to be fearful of it," he said.

"I believe with my whole heart that it is God's will", he added.

Despite overwhelming support for the bishop-elect in New Hampshire, the opposition is not solely abroad.

There is great concern the US Church will be forced out of the worldwide Anglican communion.

"I'm neither the devil that one side would make me out to be, nor the angel that the other side would make me out to be", Canon Robinson stressed.

[Faithless]

And then there's this:

Leaked paper shows rebel overthrow plans for Church (http://uk.gay.com/headlines/5657)
Episcopal clergy opposed to the consecration of the openly gay New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson are planning to challenge the authority of the church's US leadership, according to a leaked memo from a conservative cleric.

On Wednesday the Washington Post ran a story about the six-page memo, which said, "Our ultimate goal is a realignment of Anglicanism on North American soil committed to biblical faith and values. We believe in the end this should be a 'replacement' jurisdiction ... closely aligned with the majority of world Anglicanism."

The memo was reportedly written by Rev. Geoffrey Chapman of the diocese of Pittsburgh, who sent it to his supporters on December 28. Chapman is a member of the American Anglican Council (AAC), which is helping to organize the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, a group of conservative Episcopalians meeting next week in Texas.

In the past anti-Robinson forces have denied that they would try to usurp the control of the church's current American leadership. Robinson's ascendancy to bishop has become an international issue for the Anglican Communion, with Anglicans in Africa and South America calling on like-minded church leaders to take control away from any church elders who would support the consecration of an openly gay bishop.

The US church's official leadership responded to the memo by criticising any plan to circumvent the authority of diocesan bishops.

"I was very disappointed to read the AAC's strategy statement, which seems to contemplate disobeying canons, going around bishops and seizing property," said Dan England, the Episcopal Church's director of communications. "I should think that many ordinary Episcopalians, who may well be disappointed with the election in New Hampshire, will be even more disappointed with the AAC's statement when they read it."

The memo encourages conservative Episcopalians opposed to Robinson's consecration to resist the current leadership structure and set up an alternative system where dissenting parishes could announce a separation and negotiate their way out of a relationship with their current bishop.

The Rev. Susan Russell, president of the Episcopal Church's GLBT group Integrity USA, said Chapman's memo finally reveals his group's true intentions.

"The American Anglican Council, in the internal memo, has been outed as a force more interested in division than proclaiming the Gospel," Russell told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network. "None of this information is surprising, and in some ways I'm relieved that the agenda for the radical conservative fringe has been brought to the bright light of day."

"The Episcopal Church has traditionally been a church that celebrates the diversity of opinion," Russell said. "It makes me so sad that there are people so willing to make the church into their own image that they destroy it in the process."