Anglicans ready to ostracise US church over gay bishop

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The London Times

THE Episcopal Church in the United States faces exclusion from the worldwide Anglican communion as punishment for ordaining a gay bishop, The Times has learnt.

The draconian disciplinary measure is expected to be recommended by a commission set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to resolve the crisis over homosexuality.

The suspension of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, known as Ecusa, from the 75-million strong Anglican Church is expected to be recommended at the final meeting of the Lambeth Commission in Windsor next week.

It comes after an outcry by evangelicals and Anglican churches in Africa at the ordination of a divorced gay father of two, the Right Rev Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire. The commission’s findings, which will not be published officially until October, will cause widespread dismay among liberals and Anglican-Catholics in the West, who will regard it as a sign of capitulation to the conservative evangelical lobby.

But its not just liberals who get bit evidently:

Already, some church leaders and provinces have declared themselves “out of communion” with America and Canada. The Nigerian Church is “planting” or founding new evangelical Anglican churches in America in response to the crisis, and bishops in Uganda have taken three parishes in America into their “care”.

The restructuring is the most radical of a number of options that have been considered by the commission. Another way forward would have been to persuade all provinces to agree a joint code of canon law, but it would have taken many years for all the separate synods to agree. This would also have turned the Anglican Communion into a pale shadow of the Roman Catholic Church, with the Archbishop of Canterbury an Anglican pope in all but name.

Instead, it is expected that the Anglican Communion will be reformed into a federation similar to that of the worldwide Lutheran Church.

So, basically, this is pathetic: we take a huge step backward and move from communion to federation. What a crock. I had hoped to see a conciliar movement in the Anglican Communion. Well, I’ll be praying for the intervention of the Spirit.

[Listening to: When I'm Gone - 3 Doors Down - Away from the Sun (4:20)]