Evangelical Christian Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., joined conservative members of the Anglican Communion last week in warning that a split over gays in the church may be imminent.
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Friday, November 18, 2005
PITTSBURGH — A schism in the Anglican Communion looms if the Episcopal Church does not renounce the consecration of gay bishops and blessing of same-sex unions, conservatives warned last week in a New York Times report. Right-wing members of the Episcopal Church USA and their Anglican counterparts from other countries issued that warning as some 2,400 church leaders met for a three-day session prior to the upcoming general church convention. A split in the church is all but inevitable if the Episcopal Church does not vote to change course next year, leaders of Anglican congregations from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean said. “The primates will decide” if the Episcopal Church’s response is “adequate,” Archbishop Drexel Wellington Gomez, primate of the West Indies, told the Times. Well-known American evangelical Christians, including Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and author of “The Purpose-Driven Life,” joined the conservative voices regarding a possible split of the church.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Baptist congregations that approve of homosexuality or are affiliated with organizations that do will be denied membership in the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina under a new proposal, the Baptist Press, a social conservative news service, reported. The motion is expected to be debated at this week’s annual convention. The measure comes after the rejection of proposed nominees from congregations affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, which “condones homosexuality” and “supports ‘gay marriage,’” the Baptist Press reported. Convention President David Horton, of Jamestown, N.C., supports the motion. “The Alliance of Baptists has made statements that do endorse the homosexual lifestyle,” said Horton. ... “We just feel that is out of step with the Bible and certainly out of step with what North Carolina Baptists believe on that issue.”
HANOVER, N.H. — Stalled gay civil rights are a result of conservative ideologues, lesbian rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum said in a speech last week at Dartmouth College, the Dartmouth reported. Kleinbaum’s address, sponsored by the Jewish studies department, began as she held up a copy of the New York Times that included an article on six major leaders of Christianity, Judaism and Islam who gathered in Jerusalem to protest a planned Gay Pride festival. “Somehow their hatred and opposition to gay people brought them together,” Kleinbaum said. According to Kleinbaum, gay rights focus on the question of who determines what is religious and what is moral. “[The major religious leaders] believe that the world shares their views and as the heads they are to reinforce them,” said Kleinbaum, of New York City’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torahk. “[But] what is not acceptable is the religious point of view to be codified into United States law.”
LONDON — Although the Anglican Church now allows British priests to register a civil partnership with someone of the same sex, it denies such unions are a “birthright blessing,” according to the Purple Pew, a group that purports that neither the Bible nor God condemns homosexuality. Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, said recently that any priest who wants to register a gay partnership and is found active in a sexual union is “liable to the discipline of the Church,” Purple Pew reported. The church assumes that such unions are sexually active, instead of assuming they are celibate, because “the ambiguities surrounding the character and public nature of civil partnerships” create “perceptions and assumptions which … inevitably accompany a decision to register such a relationship,” the group said, quoting church policy. According to Purple Pew, this is part of the church’s denial of the full birthright blessing to civil partnerships. The birthright blessing is the acknowledgment and blessing of God that occurs when two people come together intimately via marriage.
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