World news briefs

Gays, lesbians host post-Lambeth dialogue on sexuality

(ENS)-An all-day After Lambeth conference organized by Britain’s Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement drew representatives from three-quarters of the Church of England’s dioceses – including 12 bishops – to the University of Derby campus in Derby, England, Feb. 6. Some 270 people attended the conference from the Church of England, the Church in Wales, and the Scottish Episcopal Church. Conference organizers said they planned the event to begin the dialogue called for in the Lambeth Conference resolution on sexuality, in which Anglican bishops pledged to “listen to the experience of homosexual persons.” The resolution also declared that homosexual activity is “incompatible with Scripture” and advised against ordaining active homosexuals or blessing their unions. The keynote speaker was Richard Holloway, Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a long-time supporter of lesbian and gay issues in the Anglican Communion.The sexuality resolution was a reflection of what he called “necessary compromises” with the revolutionary message of Jesus needed to insure the survival of the church as an institution. “People are better at guarding the process than the vision it serves,” said Holloway. He called for forgiveness on all sides of the controversy, and an acknowledgement that “we are more likely to be clear about others’ compromises than our own.”

U.S. conservatives petition primates

(ENS)-Conservatives in the Episcopal Church have sent a petition to the world’s Anglican bishops asking them for intervention to protect their orthodox status in the American church. They allege they are “increasingly marginalized and theologically offended” in their denomination.The petition asks the orthodox bishops of the Anglican Communion for “protection of orthodox Anglicans in the United States until the Episcopal Church of the United States of America is reformed or replaced as a province of the Communion.” Conservatives have raised this idea before but Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has sent clear signals that he would not recognize a separate jurisdication outside of the Episcopal Church.