The gray drizzle outside lifted and milky sunlight streamed through the high Gothic windows of Greyfriars Church Sunday morning as the last chords of the welcoming hymns echoed through the ancient sanctuary.
The parish children, excused from the adult service to go to the recreation center next door, swarmed merrily out the aisles. By contrast, the lay preacher, Philip Giddings, approached his pulpit with a cheerless stride.
"I have to tell you, we are in for a very difficult time," he told the parishioners.
Giddings is the leader of a large and vocal group of Anglicans who are protesting their church's decision to name a homosexual priest, Jeffrey John, as the new Bishop of Reading.
John, 50, is the first openly homosexual bishop nominated by the Church of England. The action, coming after a similar move by Episcopalians in New Hampshire, US, earlier this month, has stirred a deeply divisive reaction that goes well beyond this community in suburban Berkshire.
A group of 80 clergy and 20 leading laity from the Oxford Diocese, of which Reading is a part, have called on the Most Reverend Rowan Williams, the newly installed archbishop of Canterbury, to block the appointment. Nine bishops from around England have also signed an open letter criticizing the appointment as a threat to church unity.
Their joint communication drew a response from eight other bishops whom express confidence in John.
They added, "Our belief is that the proper and traditional response of bishops to the announcement of the appointment of a new bishop is prayer and thankfulness, hope and expectation."
In an open letter to the archbishop, the Reverend Peter Selby, bishop of Worcester, turned the criticism back on those urging John to withdraw.
"What they are doing helps people who are homophobic bigots, because what it does is to supply religious rationality for their attitudes and behavior," he said. "And although they would not go out on a Saturday night with a broken bottle and attack a homosexual person and would be appalled if anybody did, the problem is that the instrument they are using, which is a pen, is very powerful to achieve a similar end."
The Reverend Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, tried to calm the dispute.
"This is not between goodies and baddies," he said. "It is between two sets of principled people who passionately hold, with integrity, two opposing points of view."
The Anglican Communion, a global association of churches that trace their heritage to the Church of England, has 79 million members internationally, and the growth of the church in the developing world is tipping it toward theological conservatism on issues like homosexuality. The Sunday Telegraph reported that the Reverend Peter Akinola, the archbishop of Nigeria, home to 17.5 million Anglicans, had written to Williams threatening to sever ties with any part of the church that elected a non-heterosexual bishop.
Both sides are directing their appeals to Williams, who formally took office in February and is scheduled to ordain John in Westminster Abbey on Oct. 9. It is unclear whether Williams has the power to veto the appointment. The new archbishop has previously argued for tolerance for homosexuals and has acknowledged ordaining a priest he knew to be gay, but he has also insisted that he intends to abide by traditional teachings.
Greyfriars is known as a center of the large and increasingly active evangelical wing of the Anglican church The church, a dark oaken space in the 14th century, is today a light and airy nave, with brightly colored banners hanging from its timbered ceiling, a red, orange and yellow pastel curtain above the altar and upbeat piano and guitar accompaniment for hymns.
The gospel is central to the evangelicals' faith, and a statement handed out to departing parishioners on Sunday said, "The Bible is clear that the only place for sex is within heterosexual marriage. Every single biblical text which speaks of same-sex sexual activity is negative."
Giddings based his sermon on a New Testament admonition not to be ashamed of holding to your beliefs.
"The cost of belief is that people may call you killjoys, bigots and fools," he said, "and let's be honest -- that hurts."
He pulled a Bible from his lectern and held it aloft. "This is the authority, all of it," he declared. "You can't pick and choose. And you just can't say, as some people put it, `Well, the world's moved on.'"
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