Ed Vitagliano

AFA Journal news editor

May 2006 – With all its troubles over the last three years, the Episcopal Church, USA (ECUSA) may be on the verge of another major storm as the issue of homosexuality again surfaces.

With one of the current bishops of the Diocese of California set to retire, five candidates have been nominated as successor. Two of the nominees are active and unrepentant homosexuals. Quite soon, the name of one of those gay candidates – the Rev. Bonnie Perry or the Very Rev. Robert Taylor – could once again bring talk of schism to the lips of the 2.4 million members of ECUSA, the U.S. branch of the 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.

The diocesan election is scheduled for May 6, and if either homosexual candidate is elected, ECUSA bishops will have to decide whether or not to consecrate the electee at the denomination’s national convention in June.

While the ECUSA has had a conservative-liberal rift for decades, the crack widened and threatened to engulf the denomination in 2003, when a practicing homosexual man, the Rev. Gene Robinson, was consecrated as bishop of New Hampshire.

In response, 22 of the 38 Anglican branches worldwide broke off relations with the ECUSA, according to USA Today. The titular head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has been trying to head off schism ever since.

Here in the U.S., more than three dozen congregations have left the ECUSA since the ordination of Robinson. They left the authority of U.S. bishops and placed themselves under the authority of conservative bishops from Latin America or Africa.

According to USA Today, for example, the Anglican Mission in America, a branch of the Anglican church in Rwanda, Africa, has 87 congregations in this country. Half were once members of ECUSA.

Moreover, the Robinson decision gave birth to the Anglican Communion Network (ACN), which describes itself on its Web site as “a united, Biblically driven missionary movement dedicated to bringing the ‘true and legitimate’ expression of Anglicanism to North America.”

In early 2004, 13 bishops of the Episcopal Church signed a Memorandum of Agreement. The document “stated the intention of these bishops to begin taking steps toward organizing a network of ‘confessing’ dioceses and congregations within ECUSA,” the site says.

ACN claims that leaders of the “international Anglican Communion, representing 75% of the world’s 60 million Anglicans, have offered their recognition and pledged the full weight of their ministries to the Anglican Communion Network.”

In the U.S. currently 10 dioceses belong to ACN, representing 200,000 Episcopal Christians in more than 800 congregations, and the number of affiliated parishes continues to grow.

Still, the growth is slow, and ACN clearly represents only a minority of Anglicans in the U.S. For liberal Episcopalians – who supported Robinson’s election and consecration – that is proof that the ECUSA will survive the controversy.

“In 50 years, this will blow over, and there will be attempts to reconcile,” said Rev. Bill Coats of the liberal Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N.J. “The whole country is changing on the subject of gays and lesbians.”

But for many conservatives, that’s just the problem – the U.S. church has departed from the faith to follow the spirit of the age. “We’ve assumed that we’re a minority position in the Episcopal Church,” said Canon Daryl Fenton. “We are not, however, a minority within the worldwide Anglican Communion.”

That’s why the ACN will continue to hold fast to Biblical orthodoxy. “For many Episcopalians, the ACN has come to represent the hope for a return to the historic faith and order of Anglicanism,” the ACN says on its Web site.

Furthermore, ACN conservatives doubt that there will ever be a reconciliation on the issue of homosexuality. For one thing, following the Robinson consecration, the worldwide Anglican Communion told the ECUSA to hold off on any more ordinations of homosexual bishops. So why, in light of that fact, would two more homosexuals be nominated?

“This action from the Diocese of California appears to be an open act of defiance,” said Cynthia Brust, a spokeswoman for the conservative American Anglican Council (AAC), an independent Anglican group advocating spiritual renewal within the ECUSA.  

“It’s the beginning of the tear,” said David Anderson, director of AAC. “The tear will take a while to tear all the way across the fabric, but the rip has started and is moving.”  Three hundred churches are affiliated with the conservative group.  

Conservative Web sites for Episcopalians
• American Anglican Council 
www.americananglican.org

• American Communion Network

• Institute on Religion and Democracy
www.ird-renew.org

• Anglican Mission in America
www.anglicanmissioninamerica.org