The crisis over homosexuality has passed, Jefferts Schori says: The Church of England Newspaper, May 28, 2010 p 7.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

The crisis in the Anglican Communion over homosexuality has passed the US Presiding Bishop told a South Carolina newspaper last week, as the Episcopal Church has come around to accepting the normalcy of ‘gay’ bishops.

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s statement to the Greenville News follows upon similar remarks made by the Archbishop of Sydney earlier this month that decisions have been finalized and the crisis has passed within the Communion.  For Bishop Jefferts Schori—an outspoken supporter or the mainstreaming of homosexuality—-and Dr. Jensen—a champion of the traditional Biblical view of human sexuality, the decision by the American Episcopal Church to go ahead with the consecration of a second gay bishop has changed the Communion.

Speaking in advance of the consecration of the Bishop of Upper South Carolina on May 22, Bishop Jefferts Schori said the American decision to go ahead with gay bishops and blessings had actually strengthened the church’s relations with some portions of the Anglican Communion.  She also contrasted the silence from Canterbury and large sections of the overseas church over the consecration of Mary Glasspool with the furore that followed the 2003 consecration of Gene Robinson.

“The reactivity right now” over the consecration of Mary Glasspool in Los Angeles “is much, much less than it was seven years ago,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said .

American Anglicans had come around to her point of view, she added.  “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,” she said.

Bishop Jefferts Schori conceded “there are certainly parts of the Anglican Communion that continue to be unhappy with the Episcopal Church and the church in Canada, 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.”

In a statement released after the April 28 Singapore Global South to South Encounter, Dr. Jensen stated Dr. Rowan Williams’ pledge to do something about the Glasspool consecration was moot.

The Archbishop of Canterbury “seemed to suggest that the consecration of a partnered lesbian Bishop will create a crisis. In fact the crisis itself has passed. We are now on the further side of the critical moment; the decisions have all been made; we are already living with the consequences,” he said.

The split between left and right within the Anglican Communion had its first public airing at the 2003 emergency primates meeting at Lambeth Palace, shortly before the Robinson consecration.  A number of Global South primates led by Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola declined to participate in a Eucharist with US Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.  Dr. Williams was able to convince the Global South group to relent, but at the 2005 Primates Meeting in Northern Ireland, and at all subsequent primates meeting, no corporate Eucharists were celebrated.

At the Alexandria primates meeting in 2009, Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone told The Church of England Newspaper that the Global South group did not consider Bishop Jefferts Schori “to be a Christian as we understand it.”

In Singapore last month, the Global South’s view that the American and Canadian churches taught a false gospel that led to damnation was spelled out.  “In recent years the peace of our Communion has been deeply wounded by those who continue to claim the name Anglican but who pursue an agenda of their own desire in opposition to historic norms of faith, teaching and practice,” the Singapore communiqué said.

The embrace of the gay agenda by the US and Canada was a rejection of “the Way of the Lord as expressed in Holy Scripture,” and the election of a second gay bishop “demonstrated” a “total disregard for the mind of the Communion.”

The North Americans have continued “in their defiance as they set themselves on a course that contradicts the plain teaching of the Holy Scriptures on matters so fundamental that they affect the very salvation of those involved.”

These “actions violate the integrity of the Gospel, the Communion and our Christian witness to the rest of the world,” the Global South said.