The BBC reports Church split over gay bishop election including the news that the Diocese of New Hampshire will proceed with the consecration of Gene Robinson.
TV report (needs Real Player), Robert Pigott, watch here
Alex Kirby, BBC News Online religious affairs correspondent. has filed Is the Church too timid to act? in which he says
The Church of England and the other Anglican churches around the globe are sometimes unfairly caricatured as vague and unworldly.
This time, though, it really is hard to think they share the same planet as most of humanity.
Whichever side of the debate about homosexuality and the church you find yourself on, this meeting has actually solved nothing.
The threat of a split remains as potent as it ever was, and the crisis will come very soon.
The Times says Church heads for schism over gay bishop and All sides claim victory over gay priests . . . for now.
The Independent has Clergy avert schism but say gay bishop will damage church
The Telegraph has Anglican Church at breaking point over gay bishop
The Guardian says Church heads for schism
The Daily Mail, 17 days to save the Anglican Church
Press Association report via the Scotsman, Anglicans ‘Agree to Disagree’ over Gay Clergy
Reuters:Anglican leaders fear split
Update: the Financial Times, Anglican leaders defer action over gay clergy
International Press
Washington Post, Top Anglicans Warn Against Plan to Install A Gay Bishop
New York Times, Anglicans Warn of a Split if Gay Man Is Consecrated
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Church split avoided for now
Associated Press via Atlanta Constitution, Anglican Leaders Warn Against Gay Bishop, and U.S. Episcopalians Welcome Summit Outcome
Updates
My favourite American religious affairs correspondent, Larry Stammer in the Los Angeles Times, Anglicans Say Split May Occur if Gay Man Ordained as Bishop. He has a quote from the AAC president David Anderson:
Referring to the ordination service in which bishops place their hands on a bishop-elect’s head in an act of consecration, Anderson said, “For many people, the hands that are placed upon his head in consecration become contaminated hands.”
Muriel Porter in the Melbourne Age discusses Why Anglican schism would hurt those who force it
In the “Is the Church Too Timid ?” article, the ABC mentions that “divisions over whether gay and lesbian Christians could join the clergy would continue to cause Anglicans “pain, anger and resentment”. “
Everytime I’ve read about this so-called “pain, anger and resentment” that the fundamentalists are supposedly going through, I get the same mental image (which I experienced first-hand as a child). I see all of the white people of the U.S.A.’s Deep South wailing about the “pain, anger and resentment” they have over the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement for African Americans…
The second sentence in Alex Kirby’s article which I quote has changed this morning from what it was last night. It now reads
“This time, though, critics may well argue they are out of touch with some hard realities of life.”
Hmm. I’ll leave the record stand as I found it.