Dissenting Episcopal Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan on CNN

BY Soledad O’Brien

Duncan explains why he and his group are challenging the Episcopal Church leadership over the ordaining of the first gay bishop.  He says they are basing their challenge on the scripture, not opposition to homosexuality Dissenting Episcopal Bishop

Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan on CNN

BY Soledad O’Brien

Duncan explains why he and his group are challenging the Episcopal  Church leadership over the ordaining of the first gay bishop.  He says they are basing their challenge on the scripture, not opposition to homosexuality.

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: One of the dissenting Episcopal bishops joins us this morning from Pittsburgh.

The Right Reverend Robert Duncan, who’s been named moderator of the rival network, is with us.

First, give me a sense of how much support do you have for your organization?

RT. REV. ROBERT DUNCAN, BISHOP OF PITTSBURGH, NETWORK OF ANGLICAN COMMUNION DIOCESES & PARISHES: Well, there are 13 bishops who came  together to make a commitment to form this network and those 13 bishops represent 13 dioceses, which are dioceses from coast to coast and from the Canadian to the Mexican border.  We estimate that about a third of the members of the Episcopal Church across the country stand in clear opposition to what the Episcopal Church did this summer.

O’BRIEN: You’re challenging the church leadership.  We heard from Susan Candiotti a list of some of the issues. What specifically do you think is the main issue that your rival group has problems with?

DUNCAN: Well, the main issue actually is the authority of scripture and the person and work of Jesus Christ.  While the outward symptom or sign is the consecration of a man who’s in a same sex partnership and the blessing of same sex unions, what this really is symptomatic of is a disregard and even an abandonment of fundamental clarity in scripture.

And it’s a movement for the whole...

O’BRIEN: So you -- so forgive me for interrupting you.

DUNCAN: Yes?

O’BRIEN: I’m just trying to clarify here.

DUNCAN: Sure.

O’BRIEN: You’re saying it’s not that you have a problem that the bishop is openly gay, you feel the scripture does not support it?

DUNCAN: Yes, that’s exactly right.

O’BRIEN: Does the scripture support open gay members?

DUNCAN: The -- again, what scripture does is to call people to a life of holiness and self-sacrifice and taking up the cross.  So what scriptures do is saying that God's love is for absolutely everybody. So, of course, God's love is for gay people, as it is for folks with any kind of falling or failing or sin.

O’BRIEN: So you wouldn’t oust your gay members but you would like to oust your gay bishop?

DUNCAN: Well, no, let’s be clear. What we’re asking of our gay members, like we’re asking of our straight members, like we’re asking of those who are tempted to adultery within a marriage and those who are tempted to steal or cheat or lie, any of that list of moral failures, what we’re asking of them is to turn and live a new life.

O’BRIEN: So you’re saying that the bishop who’s been consecrated is living a life of moral failing and all your homosexual members are moral failures?

DUNCAN: Well, I’m saying that I’m a moral failure, that we’re, you know, Christianity has a view of human beings that says we don’t do what god wills for us to do.  And this is why what’s happening in the Episcopal Church is so off track, because the Episcopal Church is saying that you don’t have to change, you don’t have to be transformed.  Just as you are is just fine.

And you’re just as you are, sort of in god’s love, is one thing.  But once you receive God's love, God asks you to live a new way, to live for him, to mirror him, to live in a kind of holiness that’s so different from the way things are in the world.

O’BRIEN: There’s been a proposal -- and we only have a few seconds -- that would, under the conservative parishes, those who are uncomfortable with the authority of the liberal bishops would be allowed to sort of have a different leadership.

Would you agree with that kind of proposal?  Would that be something that would work toward solving the dispute between the two sides? 

DUNCAN: Well, absolutely.  That’s one of our, one of the main things we are working for.  And it’s one of the things that the international leaders of our Anglican Communion called for.  Very important for people who are, who are actually, in some cases, being persecuted, being told they have to change. What it is Christians have understood in every age, in every place, and that the Episcopal Church has moved in a way that’s just totally innovative and unconnected.

O’BRIEN: The Right Reverend Robert Duncan joining us this morning.

Thank you.

END