GREENVILLE, SC: Episcopal leader Jefferts Schori says anger over gay ordination has eased

By Ron Barnett, staff writer
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/
May 22, 2010

The Episcopal Church USA and its sister churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion have stronger relationships in many ways now than before the American church angered the more conservative members by consecrating a gay bishop, the church's presiding bishop said Friday.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the national leader of the Episcopal Church in 16 countries, including its 2.4 million members in the U.S., is in Greenville for the consecration today of a new bishop for the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, the Rev. Andrew Waldo.

She said fallout from the 2003 decision to consecrate Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire appears to have settled out for the most part.

"The reactivity right now is much, much less than it was seven years ago," she said during an interview at Christ Church, where Waldo's consecration will take place.

"I think the church, and certainly the part of the church in the United States, is reasonably clear about where we're going, even though everybody doesn't agree. And those in the church, I think, are willing to live with that tension."

Some Episcopalians who believe Scripture is clear in condemning homosexuality have left the church and formed an alternative province, while some parishes, including one in Aiken County, have left the denomination.

Others, such as Jefferts Schori, believe the gospel, taken in context, doesn't condemn monogamous homosexual relationships.

"There are certainly parts of the Anglican Communion that continue to be unhappy with the Episcopal Church and the church in Canada," she said, "but we continue to build relationships across the communion, mission partnerships, and I think those are probably stronger than they were 10 years ago, and there are more of them.

"So we're beginning to understand each other's contexts a little bit better."

Jefferts Schori, a former oceanographer and native of Panama City, Fla., on the Gulf Coast, said she is concerned that the oil spill off the Louisiana coast will create another disaster of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the same area five years ago.

"It's just tragic," she said. "A whole lot of denial about the difficulty of drilling in that way and a whole lot of denial, apparently, on the part of agencies that were supposed to be watching and protecting things.

"There's a whole lot more oil in that gulf than people have acknowledged, and it's going to do a whole lot of damage."

The accident is a dramatic example that humans "don't control creation," she said.

"I think the other lesson is that we're going to get a remarkable demonstration of how interconnected all parts of creation are when you can't buy shrimp in the grocery store because they're likely to be polluted; when the cost of fuel rises yet again because we haven't paid enough attention to green energy and alternative forms of energy production.

"The impact in Louisiana and on the Gulf Coast on people who make their livings from the sea is immense and it's going to get worse," she said.

"And it always impacts the poorest among us."

The church, she said, will continue to advocate for effective regulation, for environmentally sound practices, green energy "and on behalf of the people who are the most affected."

Waldo, a native of Montgomery, Ala., who has served in churches in New Hampshire, Georgia and Minnesota, will become the bishop of the Upstate's 26,000 Episcopalians, some 1,700 of whom will be on hand to witness his consecration.

More than 20 bishops from across the country and clergy and lay leaders from churches where he has served, as well as members of his extended family, will be there, he said.

"It just feels like a really wonderful expression of the diversity and breadth of God's community," he said. "I'm just enjoying every bit of it."


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