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Note #7878 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Anglican leader calls crisis meeting to avoid schism over gay bishop
03330
August 12, 2003

Anglican leader calls crisis meeting to avoid schism over gay bishop

By Cedric Pulford
Ecumenical News International

LONDON - The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader
of more than 70 million Anglicans, said Aug. 8 he would call a crisis meeting
of church leaders following the election of an openly gay bishop by the U.S.
Episcopalian Church.

"I am clear that the anxieties caused by recent developments have reached the
point where we will need to sit down and discuss their consequences," said
Williams in a statement which named London as the venue for the mid-October
meeting.

The Anglican Communion is a grouping of 38 independent churches around the
world and Williams has no authority proscribe to churches, although Anglican
churches have in the past differed on the ordination of women as priests and
on the appointment of women as bishops.

"I hope that in our deliberations we will find that there are ways forward in
this situation which can preserve our respect for one another and for the
bonds that unite us," said Williams, while not elaborating in the statement
on the precise agenda of the meeting.

The general convention of the U.S. Episcopal Church, meeting in Minneapolis,
elected Robinson Aug. 5, provoking angry condemnation from churches and
groups opposed to gay clerics and threatened a schism in the Anglican
Communion.

In Britain - where another openly gay priest, Jeffrey John, recently withdrew
as a bishop-designate - traditionalists reacted angrily to news that Robinson
was scheduled to be a keynote speaker in October at a conference organized by
the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement

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