A key Episcopal
Church panel defied conservatives Thursday, saying that
Episcopal leaders should not cede authority to overseas
Anglicans who want the church to halt its march toward
full acceptance of gays.
The Episcopal
Executive Council said that Anglican leaders, called
primates, cannot make decisions for the Episcopal Church,
which is the Anglican body in the United States.
"We question the
authority of the primates to impose deadlines and
demands upon any of the churches of the Anglican Communion,"
the council said in a statement after a meeting in
Parsippany, N.J.
The worldwide
Anglican Communion has moved toward the brink of splitting
apart since the Episcopal Church consecrated its first
openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire,
in 2003.
In February,
Anglican leaders demanded that Episcopalians allow a
panel--which would include Anglican conservatives from other
countries--to oversee conservative Episcopal parishes in the
U.S. Episcopalians also were given until September 30
to unequivocally pledge not to consecrate another
openly gay bishop or authorize official prayers for
same-sex couples.
The executive
council did not speak directly to the other demands in its
statement Thursday but said members have struggled "to
embrace people who have historically been
marginalized."
"Today this
struggle has come to include the place of gay and lesbian
people and their vocations in the life of the church,"
council members wrote.
The document
approved by the 38-member panel of clergy and laypeople is
not the final word from the U.S. church. Episcopal bishops
will give the denomination's official response during
a meeting September 20-25 in New Orleans. The prelates
strongly indicated at a March gathering that although
they wanted to stay in the communion, they considered the
demands unacceptable.
The 77
million-member communion is a loose association of churches
that trace their roots to the Church of England. Each
Anglican province is self-governing, and the
communion's spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury
Rowan Williams, has no direct authority to force a
compromise.
But in a series
of emergency summits and private negotiations over the
last four years, Williams has worked to prevent a schism.
Under pressure from Episcopal leaders, he has agreed
to attend the bishops' meeting in New Orleans.
Last month he
announced that neither Robinson nor conservative bishop
Martyn Minns, head of a group of breakaway U.S. Episcopal
parishes aligned with the Anglican Church of Nigeria,
would be invited to a once-a-decade Anglican assembly
called the Lambeth Conference. Minns's group, the
Convocation of Anglicans in North America, was formed by
Nigerian archbishop Peter Akinola to counter the
liberal-leaning U.S. denomination on its home turf.
In a recent
interview with Time magazine, Williams said a split
isn't inevitable. But he said the communion "feels very
vulnerable and very fragile, perhaps more so than it's
been for a very long time."
A split would
create a financial hardship for the communion. The small
but wealthy Episcopal Church provides a significant chunk of
the communion's budget. Even with a schism, Episcopal
leaders say they are committed to maintaining their
missions work with overseas Anglicans. (Rachel Zoll,
AP)