Anglican Church Asks U.S., Canada to Leave  

LONDON - The U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada withdrew Thursday from a key body of the global Anglican Communion under pressure from conservative church leaders distressed by the election of a gay bishop in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions in the two countries.

Though the suspension of the two churches was said to be temporary, it marked the first formal split in the communion over the explosive issues of sexuality and biblical authority.

The statement, which also summoned the two churches to explain their thinking on gay issues at another Anglican meeting in June, was issued by primates a day earlier than planned, after a week of meetings in Northern Ireland by leaders of the national churches.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Frank T. Griswold, said the debate would continue and that his fellow church leaders had made room "for a wide variety of perspectives."

The U.S. church precipitated the most serious rift in the communion's history when it affirmed the election of V. Gene Robinson, who openly lives with a male partner, as bishop of New Hampshire. Both churches have been criticized by conservatives for sanctioning blessings of gay unions.

The statement said the two churches were withdrawing from the Anglican Consultative Council, a key body for contact among the national churches, at least until 2008.

"In the meantime, we ask our fellow primates to use their best influence to persuade their brothers and sisters to exercise a moratorium on public rites of blessing for same-sex unions and on the consecration of any bishop living in a sexual relationship outside Christian marriage," the statement said.

Griswold issued a brief statement stressing that discussions were continuing:

"These days have not been easy for any of us and the communique reflects a great deal of prayer and the strong desire to find a way forward as a communion in the midst of deep differences which have been brought into sharp relief around the subject of homosexuality.

"Clearly, all parts of the communique will not please everyone. It is important to keep in mind that it was written with a view to making room for a wide variety of perspectives."

The primates' communique reaffirmed a resolution adopted by all Anglican bishops in 1998 which declared that gay practices were "incompatible with Scripture" and opposed gay ordinations and same-sex blessings.

The communique said many of the 34 primates, or leaders of national churches, who met this week were "deeply alarmed that the standard of Christian teaching on matters of human sexuality" expressed in that 1998 resolution had "been seriously undermined by the recent developments in North America."

The Anglican Consultative Council is the body through which leaders of the national churches meet and consult in between the once-every-10-years Lambeth Conferences. The U.S. and the Canadian churches each send three delegates to the council, which is the only global Anglican body which includes bishops, priests and laity, said James Rosenthal, spokesman for the Anglican Communion.

The Americans and Canadians voluntarily withdrew, Rosenthal said.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the communion, was making no comment Thursday but planned to appear at a news conference on Friday.

Before the Northern Ireland meeting, Williams said the dispute had "weakened, if not destroyed, the sense that we are actually talking the same language within the Anglican Communion."

A commission headed by Irish Archbishop Robin Eames sharply criticized the American church for forging ahead on the gay issue without fully consulting the rest of the global communion, which is rooted in the Church of England.

However, Eames' final report also criticized African and other bishops who have offered to serve as bishops for disaffected Episcopal congregations in the United States.

To some in the church, a break in the 77-million-member Anglican Communion is not unthinkable.

"There do come times when the authority of the Bible is at stake - and this is one of those times - where to stay together becomes a great difficulty," Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney said in a British Broadcast Corp. radio interview on Thursday.

"I hope we can stay together (but) ... there are times where strong views are held and where division does occur," Jensen said.