Bishops hope stance on gays mends schism

NEW ORLEANS — Episcopal leaders, pressured to roll back their support for gays to keep the world Anglican family from crumbling, affirmed Tuesday that they will "exercise restraint" in approving another gay bishop and will not authorize prayers to bless same-sex couples.

The statement mostly repeated earlier pledges by the church, and it will not be known for some time whether the bishops went far enough to help prevent an Anglican schism.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said she believed the document met the requests of Anglican leaders. But some Episcopal conservatives rejected the statement as too weak because it does not bar gays and lesbians from becoming bishops.

Bishops released the statement in the final hour of a six-day meeting and at a crucial moment in the decades-long Anglican debate over how the Bible should be interpreted.

The 77 million-member world Anglican Communion has been splintering since 2003, when Episcopalians consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the United States.

Anglican leaders had set a Sunday deadline for the Americans to pledge unequivocally not to consecrate another gay bishop or approve an official prayer service for same-sex couples.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, took the unusual step of attending the meeting for the first two days, pushing bishops to make concessions for the sake of unity. Anglican lay and clergy representatives from overseas also participated, scolding Episcopal leaders for the turmoil they've caused.

Robinson said the talks with Williams and Anglican leaders were "the two hardest days since my consecration." But he said he thought the document was fair.

However, Episcopal conservatives noted that many priests will still conduct same-gender blessing ceremonies, despite the lack of an official prayer. Critics also said the bishops aren't doing enough to provide alternative leadership for conservative dioceses.

"This is a 'try to keep your foot in the door' maneuvering effort," said Canon Kendall Harmon, a leading conservative from the Diocese of South Carolina.

The Rev. Alan Mack, a chaplain for Integrity/Puget Sound, the local chapter of a national organization for gay and lesbian Episcopalians, said, "I guess I'm happy that they didn't go back on what they've done. That's kind of what everybody was afraid of, that they would get pressured."

But the Rev. Duncan Clark, rector of St. Charles Episcopal Church in Poulsbo, one of two churches in Western Washington that had pulled out of the Episcopal Church to align with a traditionalist bishop in Brazil, had his doubts about the New Orleans statement.

"My experience is the language that comes out of the Episcopal Church is crafted these days to allow a great deal of operational wiggle room," Clark said.

Indeed, in practice, dioceses may differ in such areas as whether to allow priests to offer blessings for same-sex unions.

That U.S. bishops don't have the power to unilaterally impose policies on all the dioceses is one of the things the statement is intended to clarify, said Bishop Gregory Rickel, who heads the Olympia Diocese, which has about 31,000 Episcopalians in Western Washington.

In the document, the bishops reconfirmed a resolution passed last year by the Episcopal General Convention, urging bishops "to exercise restraint" by not consenting to a candidate for bishop "whose manner of life presents a challenge" the church and the communion.

Episcopal leaders also demanded that overseas Anglican leaders stop coming into the United States to take oversight of breakaway conservative Episcopal parishes. Anglican leaders from Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere have consecrated bishops to oversee congregations in the United States.

Seattle Times reporter Janet I. Tu contributed to this report.