Conservative Anglican Leader Says ECUSA's 'Blessing' Rite Not Scriptural

by Jim Brown
April 8, 2004

(AgapePress) - A conservative Anglican leader is denouncing the Episcopal Church USA's plan for a same-sex "blessing" rite.

At their General Convention last summer, Episcopal Church leaders passed a resolution which said the blessing of extramarital relationships was "within the bounds of our common life." That decision by the denomination's leadership was somewhat overshadowed by the decision -- and the resulting controversy -- to consecrate the Episcopal Church's first openly homosexual bishop, Vicki Gene Robinson.

Robinson has since been officially installed as bishop of the New Hampshire diocese. Now, following up on the other issue, a church task force in the ECUSA is developing a liturgy for same-sex blessing ceremonies. The Episcopal bishop of Washington, John Chane, has asked the task force to report back to him by the end of May so the blessing ceremonies can begin in June -- the traditional "marriage month."

However, Dr. Kendall Harmon with the American Anglican Council (AAC) says there is no place in the denomination for such activity.

"A huge majority of world Anglicans would be totally opposed to it," Kendall contends, "and a significant chunk of the Episcopal Church would be opposed to it or would not at all be ready for it because it's against the clear teaching of scripture."

According to the AAC spokesman, Chane and other Episcopal bishops of his ilk unabashedly disregard the authority of scripture. Kendall traces it back to changes in seminary education over the last 50 years during which the Episcopal leadership, as he describes it, "got a way of looking at the Bible where they got to call the Bible into question, but the Bible didn't get to call them into question."

"And we're sort of reaping the harvest [of that style of biblical leadership] as are the other mainline denominations, like the Methodists and the Presbyterians, for example," he says.

Harmon says Bishop Chane, who claims God and Allah are one in the same, does not believe Jesus is a unique revelation of God or that the cross is a once-for-all event.

One of the priests heading the Episcopal task force is the former national chairman of Integrity, the homosexual caucus within the denomination.