VISITING C OF E BISHOP WANTS END TO RHETORIC ON GAY CLERGY

By Steve Levin

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

3/28/2004

Rt. Rev. N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham (Church of England), believes the crisis over gay ordination is linked to American unilateralism:

“America has been screwing the world into the socket” for years—on land mines, debt, environment, trade… yet acts alone on Iraq—or on changing church law.

“So why should the world listen to [Episcopalians] when changing Episcopal Church law? It is bound to be perceived as, ‘There you go again.’ It’s more of the same.”

Wright, fourth in seniority in the C of E, speaks with global weight. He is on the 19-member Lambeth Commission tasked with preventing Anglican disintegration after Robinson’s consecration and Canada’s same-sex blessings.

The primary question, he says, is communion—not homosexuality:

“We’re looking at questions of how you hold the church together when that happens. Only secondarily is the question of homosexuality.”

His well-known position:

“It is inappropriate to ordain to regular ministries those who are active, practicing homosexuals.”

The key? Dispense with rhetoric.

“We need to claim the right and the duty to think through individual issues on a case-by-case basis… a lot of real listening—all around… not to rhetoric, but to what the real issues are: Scripture and the church’s creation doctrine.”

He is less sanguine about the future:

“The communion… simply could come apart at the seams. We really don’t know what that would look like.”