Anglicans to tackle homosexuality issue this week

"On this matter, it can't be live and let live. This is about the authority of Holy Scripture on which the church universal is agreed."

Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh

For years, the 38 national churches that make up the worldwide Anglican Communion have been distinguished by their eagerness to coexist despite their differences over issues like the ordination of women, the method of selecting bishops and whether worship should be conducted in formal "high church" tradition or the evangelical "low church" style.

But now conservative Anglicans are saying that the era of collegial coexistence is over. They are threatening to divide the worldwide Anglican Communion over the issue of homosexuality. Leaders of the 38 Anglican provinces from around the world have been called to London on Wednesday to attend an extraordinary closed meeting intended to resolve the crisis.

The daunting burden of keeping the 77-million-member Anglican family intact will rest primarily on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, a Welsh theologian and philosopher named to the post nine months ago.

"It's his job as the chief pastor to keep his flock together," said David Steinmetz, a professor of the history of Christianity at Duke University's School of Divinity.

"I feel really sorry for the archbishop, the poor guy. He's a real intellectual, very learned and exceedingly kind, and to have this happen on his watch just seems like tough luck," Steinmetz said.

On one side are the liberal-leaning archbishops from the US, Canada, Australia and parts of Africa and Asia. They are expected to support the Episcopal Church USA, the American branch of Anglicanism, in decisions to permit union ceremonies between people of the same sex and to approve an openly gay bishop, Canon Gene Robinson, for the diocese of New Hampshire.

These church leaders say that the real issue is honesty: There are gay Anglican priests, bishops and churchgoers in many countries, and the American church has merely allowed them to come out of the closet.

Presiding Bishop Frank Gris-wold said in a recent interview with AP: "I think the confirmation of the bishop of New Hampshire is acknowledging what is already a reality in the life of the church and the larger society of which we are a part."

On the other side are conservatives from most of the provinces in Africa, Asia and Latin America who maintain that Scripture forbids homosexual relationships. Their churches, established by Anglican missionaries, have flourished and now account for about two-thirds of the Anglicans worldwide.

They say that a gay bishop not only violates Christian teaching, but repels church members and potential converts in developing countries and strains relationships with Muslims and other Christians who do not accept homosexuality.

"If we kept quiet, we would lose a lot of people," the Archbishop of Lagos, Adebola Ademowo, said in a recent interview. "They would feel the Anglican Church is not a biblical church."

The Americans and their supporters argue that each national province is autonomous and has the juridical right to choose its own bishops and set its own standards. But Ademowo rejected that notion.

"If we notice the Bible is being elbowed to the background, we have a right to speak out," he said.

"People are wrong to say: `What right do they have to talk about what happens in the church of America?'" he said.

Church rules, in fact, say that each province is autonomous.

Conservative bishops from the developing world have joined forces with conservatives in the US. Since the Episcopal Church's general convention voted in August to support Robinson and allow, though not endorse, the blessing of gay unity ceremonies, six of 109 dioceses in the US have passed resolutions condemning the Episcopal Church.

And last week, more than 2,700 dissidents called together by a conservative group, the American Anglican Council, met in Dallas and announced their intention to reorganize themselves into an entity separate from the Episcopal Church USA.

They vowed to redirect their contributions toward a "biblically orthodox mission and ministry" instead of the Episcopal Church. They asked the conservative primates meeting in London to support them and to discipline Episcopal church leaders.

In a manifesto delivered in Dallas, Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh called the meeting "the defining battle of the war for Anglicanism's soul."

"On this matter, it can't be live and let live. This is about the authority of Holy Scripture on which the church universal is agreed," Duncan said on Thursday.

He said the Episcopal bishops who had voted in favor of Robinson had in effect removed themselves from the Anglican Communion and until they repented they should not be allowed to return.

"It's as if they've committed adultery," Duncan said.

The pressure on the archbishop of Canterbury to distance the Anglican Communion from the Episcopal Church's decisions has come not only from within his own ranks, but from other Christian churches. Orthodox bishops registered their disapproval of a gay bishop, and in a meeting at the Vatican a week ago, Pope John Paul II warned the archbishop that "new and serious difficulties have arisen on the path to unity."

Unlike a Roman Catholic pope, however, the archbishop of Canterbury does not have the power to determine doctrine or decide disputes in the member churches of the Anglican Communion.

Experts say that the archbishop could theoretically withdraw his recognition of a wayward province, but he has no juridical authority over other provinces.

Before he was enthroned, Williams was known for a tolerant stance toward homosexuality and for ordaining a priest he knew to be gay.

But in July, when a furor erupted over Jeffrey John, a gay cleric selected as bishop of Reading in England, Williams resolved that crisis by persuading John to step aside. He made it clear that the unity of the communion was his highest priority.

"The estrangement of churches in developing countries from their cherished ties with Britain is in no one's interests," Williams said.

"It would impoverish us as a church in every way," he said.

Several conservative Anglicans said in interviews last week that they were confident that Williams had already sought to resolve the crisis by asking Robinson to step aside. But Robinson said that was untrue. He declined to say anything else before the end of the London meeting.

Upstairs in the offices of the New Hampshire diocese, half a dozen volunteers were stuffing envelopes inviting churchgoers to attend Robinson's consecration ceremonies in November.