Anglicans suspend US Episcopal Church over gay stance: Alabama bishop reacts

Mr Welby made the comments after a four-day meeting of 39 Anglican primates in Canterbury, in which Anglican leaders agreed to restrict a liberal US-branch of the church, including banning it from decision-making for three years.

The worldwide Anglican Communion met this week in Canterbury, England, and voted to suspend the American-based Episcopal Church over its support for same-sex marriage.

Referring to the treatment of gay and lesbian Anglicans, Welby apologised personally “for the hurt and pain in the past and present that the Church has caused”.

However, he then defended the decision for the Anglican Church to distance themselves from the US Episcopal church, saying: “It is not for us to divide the body of Christ, it is not for us to divide the church”.

Before the meeting at which the decision was taken there was much speculation over whether the Communion would be rent apart entirely, as African and Asian Primates threatened to walk out unless the Episcopal Church “repent” of having ordained an openly gay Bishop. “The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching”, said the primates.

The unilateral decision by the Americans, the communique says, has created great pain and mistrust among the different parts of the Communion. The Episcopal Church has 109 dioceses in the U.S., Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe.

“It’s going to send others a message to rethink what they’re doing in changing the doctrine of marriage”, Beach said in a telephone interview.

This decision has been felt all the way down to the local level, as Father Danial Robayo, Rector for Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Harrisonburg, also expressed disappointment, but not discouragement.

The Archbishop made the surprise announcement at the end of a week-long meeting of bishops and archbishops from around the world in Canterbury dominated by discussion over deep rifts within the 85 million-strong Anglican Communion over homosexuality. “We are offering a pastoral ministry for people who think this is important”.

Q: What is the relationship of the Episcopal Church to the Anglican Communion? In the immediate future, he will need to do some reconciling within the Church of England, as liberals fume over the fact that he has purchased a precarious global consensus by taking the conservative side at a time when British society is moving in the other direction.

In the event, just one Primate left the meeting early.

“The Church can’t agree on anything from women bishops to gay marriage so it’s not likely they will sort this out in a hurry, which is a shame because it would be good to have a fixed date like Christmas”.

The primates could have used this opportunity to initiate a communion-wide consultation, so that the Anglicans could have had more say in this matter. These consultations, held in South Africa in 2011, Kenya in 2013, and Ghana in 2015, have given me the gift of friends and colleagues across Anglican Africa who are deeply committed to our communion, to the dignity and inclusion of LGBTI people in the church, and to justice for all of God’s people.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, head of the Episcopal Church, said in a phone interview that the USA church would not roll back its acceptance of gay marriage. “These are the principal themes of our dialogue and have become visible now in the Anglican Communion”. There is no single leader, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, although the archbishop of Canterbury is considered by the archbishops, or primates, to be the “first among equals”.