Anglican meet holds key to future

Rarely have the bishops and bureaucrats who lead the world's 77 million Anglicans awaited a moment with such intense anticipation.

On Monday, a 17-member emergency panel called the Lambeth Commission will issue recommendations on how the Anglican Communion can remain a coherent, united segment of global Christianity despite severe disagreements over homosexuality and interpretation of the Bible.

At stake may be the long-term future of the Communion, the international association of churches with roots in the Church of England.

And the findings will resonate even further — to Christians in all denominations who believe their faith has unfairly oppressed gays and lesbians, and equally for those who consider changes a direct attack upon the Bible and 2,000 years of Christian teaching.

Two of London's leading newspapers last month reported that the commission would call for disciplinary measures against the Episcopal Church, Anglicanism's U.S. branch, for consecrating Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who lives openly with a gay partner.

Robinson's elevation isn't the only explosive matter. Openly gay priests are increasingly common in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada. Last year's U.S. church convention recognized that Episcopalians "within the bounds of our common life" conduct same-sex blessing ceremonies, and this year's Canadian synod affirmed the "sanctity" of gay couples.

Those events have divided North American parishes and dioceses, and created acrimony among the Anglican Communion's 38 self-governing national churches.

The global consensus is clearly conservative. A 1998 conference of all Anglican bishops declared gay practices "incompatible with Scripture" and opposed gay ordinations and same-sex blessings in a 526-70 vote with 45 abstentions.

There's talk that Monday's report will run 80 pages. If it follows Anglican custom, there will be language to assuage both sides that allows various interpretations. The implications will play out through 2006, when the next U.S. Episcopal convention is held, 2007 (Canada's synod) and 2008 (Anglican bishops' world conference).

Pronouncements ahead of the report have offered competing concepts of the Anglican heritage.

According to 45 liberal U.S. clergy and lay activists, "the Anglican tradition of living in tension and diversity of thought" should be maintained.

The group also said the commission shouldn't recommend penalties against the Episcopal Church because it was only mandated to discern how to hold Anglicans together "in spite of our expressed differences."