KIM LAWTON, managing editor: In a ceremony filled with pomp and pageantry, Justin Welby was installed as the new spiritual leader to nearly 80 million Anglicans around the world. The 57-year-old Welby is a former oil company executive who became a priest in his mid-30s. He had been a bishop for just a year when he was chosen for the Anglican Communion’s highest post. One of his toughest challenges may be helping the Communion stay together amid profound differences over theology, gender, and sexuality. The Anglican body has more than 40 separate branches, including the Church of England, the Episcopal Church in the US, and numerous churches across Africa, Asia, and South America.

ARCHBISHOP JUSTIN WELBY (Archbishop of Canterbury): We are struggling with very, very significant divisions, different ways of looking at the world coming out of our context, coming out of our history, and learning how we deal with those differences, which are of themselves valuable things, is really significant.

LAWTON: Welby told me as archbishop he intends to promote reconciliation as one of his top priorities.

WELBY: It is the key theological concept for Christian faith, reconciliation with God and the breaking down of barriers between people. And therefore for me, I have this sense that part of the church’s role is to be reconciled reconcilers.

LAWTON: He has already created a new position on his staff at Lambeth Palace, Director for Reconciliation, and appointed Canon David Porter from the historic Coventry Cathedral to help oversee his agenda.

CANON DAVID PORTER (Coventry Cathedral): I see my work in conflict areas, in helping people deal with differences, and to celebrate the diversity as a profound expression of the good news of Jesus and as a profound expression of my faith in practice.

LAWTON: But it will be no easy task. For the past decade, the Communion has been in turmoil after the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay bishop and approved blessings for same-sex unions. Some African and Asian jurisdictions accused the US church of heresy. Many conservative American congregations have broken away from the Episcopal Church and aligned themselves with African Anglicans. There have been a series of contentious lawsuits over church property, and some congregations are now worshiping in schools. Bitterness still prevails in many quarters throughout the Communion. Welby concedes in such circumstances it’s difficult to even think about reconciliation.

WELBY: Reconciliation is extraordinarily painful for those involved in the conflict.

LAWTON: Some people have a fear maybe that when one talks about reconciliation, what they might really mean is just papering over differences in order to…

WELBY: Yes, absolutely.

LAWTON: …just get along. You know, the most important thing is that we get along.

WELBY: Oh, fuzzy wuzzy tolerance, sort of fluffy, where it would all be nice if we were nice to each other sort of rubbish. Yes, that’s not at all what we’re talking about. It’s not a magic wand that you wave over people, and suddenly everyone’s happy, and when they are I’m usually slightly suspicious.

LAWTON: True reconciliation, Welby says, requires courage, honesty, and integrity.

WELBY: It is the process of enabling, of making yourself sufficiently transparent that people trust each other, of putting your most valued and passionate beliefs out for them to be examined, attacked, and then finding a way to love the person with whom you are dealing, quite probably not agreeing with each other, but disagreeing in love.

LAWTON: On two of the most controversial issues, Welby opposes gay marriage, and he supports allowing women to be bishops. He acknowledges many of the current divisions in the Communion stem from differing views of how to interpret scriptural truth.

WELBY: We need a certain integrity about where we get our truth from. Now I’m not saying that truth is up for grabs. There are truths. I believe passionately in that. There are things I believe passionately are deeply wrong.

LAWTON: But, he says, he sees another need as well.

WELBY: The need for not only theological orthodoxy, but relational orthodoxy. In other words, right relationships as well as right understandings and ideas.

LAWTON: Welby also wants to emphasize peacemaking in conflicts outside the Church, such as in places like Nigeria, where he has traveled many times.

WELBY: The Church is there in a sense as sometimes the least dysfunctional part of a conflicted society, destructively conflicted society, but very often is the only functional part. And that’s where we bring a passion for reconciliation, for enabling people to continue their dispute without violence.

LAWTON: Over the next few months, the new archbishop plans to spend time listening to members of his flock around the world. He hopes to soon visit the US.

WELBY: I really genuinely believe that the United States remains one of the world’s great hopes and potentials for development and peace under God. And so that’s my prayer for the States is continue to find this radical and exciting location that’s been yours for 230 years and challenge us.

LAWTON: Welby is optimistic about the future of the Anglican Communion, mostly, he says, because he believes in the grace of God.

WELBY: When God is left out of it then all we’re left with is our own ideas, and we defend those to the death and preferably the death of the other. When God is in the middle of it, there is a transforming power and presence.

LAWTON: And he says he’ll be praying for that grace every day.

I’m Kim Lawton in the UK.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Kim, welcome back. You did a great job.

KIM LAWTON: Thanks.

ABERNETHY: Justin Welby says he’s going to try to reconcile things in the Anglican Communion. Does he really have power enough to do something there?

LAWTON: Well that’s the big question. The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t have, you know, a lot of authoritative power to make things happen. He has the moral authority to set a tone which is what he’s trying to do, set a tone for dialogue, peacemaking but the divisions are really, really strong. Anglicans have long talked about being unified amid diversity but the question is, is that diversity, are those differences so great that unity is just not possible. And also the level of acrimony, especially here in the U.S. that we’ve seen is still very, very strong between some of the breakaway churches and the official Episcopal Church and attempts at peace building have not been successful.

ABERNETHY: And let’s turn to Pope Francis. You got sort of close to him.

LAWTON: Sort of.

ABERNETHY: What were your impressions?

LAWTON: Well, I was, I was in a meeting with several thousand other journalists. We got to “meet” him and certainly I saw what a lot of people talk about, that quiet warmth. He doesn’t have a big personality. He’s not jovial in that sense. But there’s a warmth that really comes through. He connects with people that he’s with. He went off his text, his script, many times in his talk and made some jokes with the journalists and another interesting thing I found, he, instead of doing a tradition blessing with the cross, making the sign of the cross, he acknowledged that many people in the room weren’t Catholics and probably weren’t even believers so he said I’ll pray for you in my heart out of respect. That was something interesting from a pope.

ABERNETHY: Many people say that the number one thing that Pope Francis needs to do is something about the sex abuse scandal.

LAWTON: I hear that a lot, from U.S. Catholics in particular. They want to see something from him. He’s said in the past that he has a zero tolerance policy. They want to see him embrace that as pope. I hear a lot of Catholics talking about there are changes he could make in the bureaucracy. He could meet with victims. He could meet with victims’ advocacy groups. So they are hoping he really does take a firm stand on that issue.

ABERNETHY: There have been several stories and opinion columns about whether, when he was in Argentina, he did enough to stand up to a very oppressive, cruel government. Is that going anywhere?

LAWTON: You know, who knows what may come out. Certainly there have been questions, there have been questions for a long time now about that. People say he at the very least didn’t stand up as much as he could have. There were some suggestions that maybe he in some way created or enabled some of the persecution but those seem to, other people have come out and said no that’s not the case.

ABERNETHY: And very quickly, many people hope for what they call evangelization in this papacy. Quickly, what does that mean?

LAWTON: Well for Catholics they would like to see their faith spread. And so whether you’re talking moderate and liberal Catholics hope that Francis’s emphasis on issues like the environment and the poor, things that have always been important to the church but maybe not emphasized, maybe that will appeal to some people. Conservatives hope that his pastoral demeanor, his clear love of God, of Jesus, that maybe that will be appealing and help bring Catholics back to the church.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

BOB ABERNETHY: The 77-million-member Anglican Communion is getting a new leader. Later this month, Justin Welby will take his seat as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader to Anglicans and Episcopalians around the world. Kim Lawton was in the UK this week and spoke with Welby about this important moment in these two Christian traditions.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the historic Coventry Cathedral, Archbishop Justin Welby was attending a conference this week about faith and reconciliation. Welby told me he’s watching the events in Rome closely. He says he believes Catholics and Anglicans have much in common, despite their sometimes tense relationship.

ARCHBISHOP JUSTIN WELBY, Archbishop of Canterbury: We have major differences over the ordination of women, things like that. We have historically different understandings of the nature of the church and the authority of the church. But we have a common basis around the need to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

LAWTON: He says he hopes dialogue between the two will continue. Welby will be enthroned as the next Archbishop of Canterbury on March 21, when he officially takes the helm of one of the largest bodies of Christianity. The former oil-executive-turned-clergyman acknowledges it’s interesting that the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church will both have new leaders within the next few weeks.

WELBY: I don’t read too much into it. Benedict XVI was a very remarkable, has been a very remarkable pope. He took over at the age of 78; that’s not the age which most of us would feel we wanted to take on a major new task, and he gave himself, he spent himself on this. But I do look forward very much to meeting the new pope later in the year, and I’m confident that we will find in each other a common love for Christ.

LAWTON: Archbishop Welby says he hopes to attend the installation ceremony for the new pope in Rome depending on when it takes places.

I’m Kim Lawton at England’s Coventry Cathedral.

ABERNETHY: We’ll have more of Kim’s interview with the new Archbishop of Canterbury in coming weeks.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: The Vatican announced plans to make it easier for disaffected Anglicans to convert to Catholicism. Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, said new structures will be created to accommodate growing numbers of Anglicans who want to leave the worldwide Anglican Communion because of disputes over homosexuality and female clergy. Under the new plan, those Anglicans can become Catholics while still maintaining some of their distinctive beliefs and practices, including the tradition of married priests. Our managing editor, Kim Lawton, is here, and so, from Denver, is John Allen, longtime Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. Welcome to you both. John, what’s the Vatican up to here? Is it fishing for converts?

JOHN L. ALLEN, JR (National Catholic Reporter): Well, officially, Bob, the answer to that question is no. I mean, some Anglicans may see it that way, but the Vatican’s position is we didn’t go looking for these folks. They came to us. That is, there is a small but significant number of more traditionalist Anglicans who very publicly have asked to be received into the Catholic Church, and the Vatican’s line is that even though we didn’t solicit them, when people knock on our door we have a responsibility to open it up.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, what do you hear—reaction from the Anglicans?

KIM LAWTON: Well, officially, the spiritual head of the 77-million-member Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has been, you know, somewhat positive about this. He says he does not see it as an act of aggression from the Catholic Church, but certainly his church body has been under enormous pressure from a lot of fronts, and this one more front, one more sort of exit possibility for many Anglicans who are unhappy with what’s been going on in their church.

ABERNETHY: What do you both think, John first, what do you think about the numbers that will be involved here? Will it be a lot of people that are switching, or just a few?

Cardinal William Levada

ALLEN: Well, the signals from the Catholic side, at least, is that expectations are this is going to be a fairly small number of folks. When Cardinal Levada was asked this question at a Vatican briefing earlier in the week, he said that there were 20 or 30 Anglican bishops in various parts of the world who had put out feelers, but of course putting out feelers is different than signing on the bottom line. And at the grassroots the expectation is that at least in the early stages you’re talking about fairly small pockets of people who will be coming over.

LAWTON: And especially, well, here in the United States, the people that are unhappy with the Episcopal Church, which is the US branch of the Anglican Communion—they come from two different wings of the church. One certainly are those who are more Catholic in their traditions and their style of worship, but there are also evangelicals, who are conservative theologically but not so comfortable with the idea of Rome and the pope, and those two groups here in the US have come together. They’ve formed their own structure, the Anglican Church of North America, and they’re really focusing on building that. So I think a lot of the traditionalist Anglicans here in the US may not immediately head to the Catholic Church.

ABERNETHY: But is there a possibility that out of this, Kim, will come a more conservative Catholic Church and a more liberal Anglican Communion?

LAWTON: Well, of course, if a lot of conservatives leave the Anglican Communion it will become more liberal overall, but another scenario is that it puts more pressure on the worldwide Anglican Communion to itself become more conservative so it doesn’t lose more members.

ABERNETHY: John, what about the effect on the Catholic Church of having more Anglicans in it, and especially with regard to married priests? I mean, is it a step, inevitably, toward a change in that position? If you let in a lot of married Anglicans, don’t you then have to change your position about existing Catholic priests?

ALLEN: Well, that’s certainly an argument some people are going to make. I mean, what we know for right now is the Vatican has clearly said that current Anglican ministers who become Catholics and become ordained as Catholic priests, if they’re currently married can remain married. The Vatican has also clearly ruled out married bishops. But what the policy is going to be going forward we don’t know. I mean, we should say that while the Vatican has made this announcement, they haven’t yet given us the legal document that provides all the fine points, and this is certainly one of those fine points people will have their eyeballs on. What Vatican officials are saying on background is that, whatever happens, they want to make sure that this doesn’t become a loophole that in the short term erodes the broader discipline of priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church.

ABERNETHY: And, John and Kim, very quickly, Kim first, what do you see as any larger effects, very quickly?

LAWTON: Well, certainly Christianity is realigning in many ways around the world, and you’re finding people grouping together in new and different ways than they had in the past.

ABERNETHY: John, what do you see?

ALLEN: Well, I think in many ways ideology has replaced theology as the thing that drives Christian behavior at the grassroots. I mean, in the old days it was debates over things like the authority of the pope versus the Bible. These days it tends to be where do you stand on the culture wars, and that in many ways is what’s in play here.

LAWTON: Although a lot of the traditionalists would say those are theological issues, too.

ABERNETHY: Yeah. Kim Lawton, John Allen—many thanks.

BOB ABERNETHY, Anchor: After decades of debate and division, the US Episcopal Church this week said overwhelmingly that gays and lesbians are eligible to become bishops or serve in any other ordained ministry of the church. At their General Convention, Episcopal leaders also moved toward developing an official rite for blessing same-sex unions. These decisions are likely to widen the divide between Episcopalians and the worldwide 77-million-member Anglican Communion of which they are a part. Kim Lawton has our special report from Anaheim, California.

KIM LAWTON: At their meeting in Anaheim this week, Episcopal bishops, clergy, and lay representatives tackled a host of social issues, from global poverty to justice for Disneyland hotel workers. But the most divisive topic, once again, was homosexuality.

REV. IAN DOUGLAS (Episcopal Divinity School): It wouldn’t be a meeting of the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion if we didn’t somehow engage matters of human sexuality.

LAWTON: Despite concerns from many global Anglican partners, convention delegates overwhelmingly voted to move ahead on two of the most contentious questions: whether to ordain gay bishops and whether to bless same-sex unions. On the issue of gay bishops, the delegates asserted that “God has called and may call gays and lesbians to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.” The vote effectively ends a de facto moratorium that was approved three years ago, although it does not guarantee that more gay bishops will be consecrated.

Separately, the delegates also voted to move forward in developing liturgies for blessing same-sex relationships. The issue will be taken up again at the next General Convention in 2012. In the meantime, the measure allows local clergy leeway in blessing same-gender relationships, especially in states where gay marriage is legal.

Reverend Susan Russell is the outgoing president of Integrity, a group that works for the full inclusion of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people in the Episcopal Church.

REV. SUSAN RUSSELL (Integrity): I think the overwhelming message coming out of this convention, not only for LGBT people but for all who are looking for a community that that embraces peace, justice, tolerance, compassion, and the good news of God in Christ Jesus, is that the Episcopal Church welcomes you.

LAWTON: The measures passed in part because many conservative Episcopalians have left the denomination. Those remaining feel increasingly isolated.

BISHOP WILLIAM LOVE (Diocese of Albany, at press conference): It is very sad for me because I am a lifelong Episcopalian, I’m a lifelong Anglican, but first and foremost I am a lifelong Christian, and it is breaking my heart to see the church destroying itself in the manner in which we seem to be doing.

LAWTON: Many delegates here said they voted for the direction they believe God is calling their church to go in. But those votes pose new challenges for a global Communion that has already been strained close to a breaking point. There’s a lot riding on how what happened here gets interpreted around the world.

Many Anglicans, especially in Africa, Asia, and South America, were outraged in 2003 when the Episcopal Church approved the consecration of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the church’s first openly gay bishop. An emergency Communion report called on the US to ban on any future consecrations of gay bishops until an international consensus emerges.

The Communion’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, attended this meeting before the controversial votes took place.

ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS: Along with many in the Communion, I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart.

LAWTON: Much of this week’s debate centered on balancing Communion concerns with a desire to move forward.

BISHOP GENE ROBINSON: I believe with my whole heart that we all know where this is going to wind up. It is going to wind up with the full inclusion of all of God’s children in God’s church.

BISHOP PETER BECKWITH: I would concede that if indeed that it is the right thing to do, we should do it now. I do not believe it is the right thing to do.

BISHOP NATHAN BAXTER: While I am very, very much concerned about our covenant with the Communion and our mission, I am also concerned about our covenant with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

BISHOP SHANNON JOHNSTON: The Communion, for me, is too much to lose. There is too much at stake with mission and our ability to apprehend larger, wider truths that go way beyond our own small church and setting in the Western world.

LAWTON: Shannon Johnston, coadjutor bishop in the Diocese of Virginia, said he personally supported the gay ordination resolution, but voted against it because he didn’t want to further divide the Communion.

JOHNSTON (Diocese of Virginia): It was quite wrenching, because it took two of the core values of the church and juxtaposed them against each other, mission and inclusivity on the one hand and then the unity of the church on the other, which is no less a core value of the Gospel.

LAWTON: Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said her church is not fomenting division.

BISHOP KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI: Schism is not a Christian act.

LAWTON: The approved resolutions reasserted the Episcopal Church’s desire to remain an active member of the Anglican Communion. But Bishop Jon Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles says that doesn’t mean total agreement with overseas churches about homosexuality.

BISHOP JON BRUNO (Diocese of Los Angeles): I think I would explain it to them that the context that we live in is totally different and that they have to be tolerant of our context as well as we are tolerant of their context. I still want to be in relationship with them fully.

LAWTON: Reverend Ian Douglas, a representative from Massachusetts, described the votes as being honest with the rest of the world about what the Episcopal Church stands for.

DOUGLAS: There’s no Communion without genuine relationship, and there’s no genuine relationship without truth-telling. So I see commitments to being in Communion and telling the truth about who we are as being of a whole.

LAWTON: Conservative Anglicans already don’t like what they’re hearing.

BISHOP DAVID ANDERSON (American Anglican Council): I think it signals to the rest of the Communion, the Anglican Communion, that the Episcopal Church wants to be a member only on its own terms, and that if terms are applied to it, then they will go their own way and have things the way they wish, and others can be with them or not.

LAWTON: David Anderson is among the Episcopalians who left the denomination over theological issues. He was ordained a bishop in the Anglican Church of Kenya. Disaffected Episcopalians, including four breakaway dioceses, have formed a rival jurisdiction called the Anglican Church in North America. They’re seeking recognition from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

ANDERSON: I see that as The Episcopal Church continues to go through these earthquakes of adopting things there is going to be a constant stream of both people and churches, perhaps more dioceses, that wind up leaving and coming over into the rest of the Anglican Communion.

LAWTON: But at the same time, many Episcopalians believe their actions here will help bring in other people who may have felt alienated in the past. Both sides say they’re anxious to focus on mission rather than division. I’m Kim Lawton in Anaheim, California.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church says the worldwide Anglican Communion is holding together despite deep divisions over homosexuality interpretation of Scripture. Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori returned home from England this week after attending the once-every-10-year Lambeth meeting of Anglican bishops. In a webcast Thursday (August 7), she said the diverse group of bishops built a great understanding of one another.

Presiding Bishop KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI (U.S Episcopal Church): We got quite quickly into very significant and deep conversations. We certainly didn’t all agree with each other about various issues, but we listened respectfully.

Kim Lawton

ABERNETHY: About 650 Anglican bishops from around the world were at the meeting, but more than 230 others stayed away. The bishops didn’t vote on any resolutions, but instead held a series of small group discussions about the many issues that divide them. Our managing editor Kim Lawton covered the meeting. Kim, welcome home. What happened, or perhaps, didn’t happen?

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY): Well, I think the big news from the meeting was that there wasn’t any big news. A lot of people feared that there might be some kind of an actual split at this meeting. That didn’t happen. About a third of the bishops boycotted. That did have an impact, but there wasn’t any big explosion. They’re still hanging together, but this sort of uneasy stalemate continues.

ABERNETHY: And what does the stalemate mean for the typical American Episcopal parish?

LAWTON: Well, not much in the short term. There are — the majority of the worldwide Anglican Communion is upset that the U.S. elected a gay bishop, that same-sex blessings occur inside some Episcopal churches. The Communion would like that to stop. But the bishops that are doing that in the U.S. say, “We’re not going to stop.” The majority of the Communion is not happy that some Americans have said, “We don’t want to be part of the Episcopal Church,” and so they’re affiliating with these African churches in some cases. The Communion says well, we don’t like that, that isn’t done in the Anglican Communion. That should stop. But it probably will continue. And so the question is, can all of this still happen within one Anglican umbrella?

Bob Abernethy

ABERNETHY: You had the feeling, I think, one had the feeling that the American Episcopal Church was very much in the minority. You felt that sense of it’s being in a minority, at least I did from here.

LAWTON: Well, indeed, the U.S. — and there are a few other member churches, Canada, some places in England that would agree with the U.S. But by and large many of the members are concerned with what’s happening here in the U.S.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Six-hundred-and-fifty bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion assembled in Canterbury, England this week for the Lambeth Conference, a three-week-long meeting that’s held just once every decade. But more than 200 other bishops are boycotting the event. The 77-million-member Communion has been threatened with schism because of longstanding divisions over homosexuality and the interpretation of Scripture. But organizers acknowledge that this Lambeth conference is not likely to end the crisis.

The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion, and parishes here continue to wrestle with the issues on the table at Lambeth. Kim Lawton has our look at three very distinct congregations.

KIM LAWTON: Anglicans have been a contentious crowd since the tradition was founded under King Henry VIII nearly 500 years ago. Anglicanism has long stressed unity in the midst of diversity. But now, diversity may be stretching the Anglican Communion to a breaking point.

At one end of the spectrum is All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, which has been at the forefront of advocacy for more inclusion of gays and lesbians.

Reverend ED BACON (All Saints Episcopal Church, at wedding): Dearly beloved, we are gathered together by the grace of God …

Ed Bacon

LAWTON: When California legalized gay marriage earlier this year, congregational leaders at All Saints immediately voted to offer the rite of marriage to same-sex couples.

Rev. BACON: We believe that God’s love is not discriminatory. It’s not bigoted. There are no second class citizens, and so the graces of the church should extend to everyone, regardless of who they are.

(at wedding): If any of you can show just cause why they may not lawfully be married, speak now or else forever hold your peace.

LAWTON: Many Anglican churches around the world, especially in Africa, Asia and South America, are strongly opposed to gay rights. The last Lambeth Conference in 1998 approved a resolution asserting that homosexual practice is “incompatible with Scripture.” International Anglican leaders had asked the U.S. Episcopal Church to exercise caution in moving ahead with gay issues. But Bacon says as a priest he must minister to the people in his pews.

Rev. BACON: By the authority of the Holy Spirit, and the state of California I pronounce that you are married.

So we have a responsibility here on the ground, at the grassroots level to move forward with justice, inclusion, love and compassion. And the bishops can talk about it, but we think the bishops will come around and see that we are exercising great pastoral responsibility.

Gene Robinson

LAWTON: All Saints also actively supports Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. Robinson’s 2003 consecration in the Diocese of New Hampshire set off a firestorm of controversy across the global Communion. Because of the turmoil, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of the Communion, asked Robinson not to attend the Lambeth meeting. But Robinson has gone to Canterbury anyway to advocate for gay issues outside the official meeting.

Bishop GENE ROBINSON (Diocese of New Hampshire): I go with a greater sense of focus on gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender people around the world. In an odd sort of way, not being included in the official meetings gives me that greater opportunity to focus on that.

Rev. BACON: The entire New Testament is about inclusion, about bringing more and more people in and understanding that there’s nothing God created which is inherently evil. And so the Bible itself moves toward inclusion.

LAWTON: But at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Tallahassee, Florida, Reverend Eric Dudley reads the Bible very differently. Dudley had been rector at nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church for 10 years, but was upset at what he saw as the increasingly liberal theological direction of the national denomination, especially on gay issues.

Reverend ERIC DUDLEY (St. Peter’s Anglican Church): When we moved to the place that it was no longer the occasional priest, bishop here or there, but it became the official stance of the Church itself under whose umbrella I stand as a priest, then I couldn’t do it anymore.

LAWTON: In 2005, Dudley announced he was leaving the Episcopal Church to start a new Anglican congregation. Rather than launching a lawsuit to keep the historic building, Dudley acquired an unused church building from another denomination. On the first Sunday, 800 people showed up. St. Peter’s still averages about 650 people every week and gets the help of local police for traffic and crowd control. They have numerous thriving programs, such as Vacation Bible School.

Eric Dudley

Rev. DUDLEY: I’d much rather pour my energies out into building some strong new church that’s still faithful to Anglicanism, but that’s strongly unapologetically orthodox. A church where I don’t have to be continually fighting battles for things that I think should be givens.

LAWTON: Because Dudley wanted to stay within the Anglican Communion, he placed St. Peter’s under the authority of the Anglican Church of Uganda.

Rev. DUDLEY: I think it’s wonderfully ironic that you’ve got a bunch of wealthy, white mostly, Americans who’ve found their salvation, so to speak, in a bunch of poor Africans. I mean, you know God smiles at that.

LAWTON: The Episcopal Church sees the Ugandan role as an unethical incursion into its jurisdiction. St. Peter’s bishop is John Guernsey, an American who was consecrated as a bishop for the Anglican Church of Uganda.

Archbishop HENRY OROMBI (Anglican Church of Uganda): John Guernsey has been duly consecrated as a bishop.

LAWTON: Guernsey and other American bishops for African churches have also been excluded from Lambeth, just like Gene Robinson. Uganda’s Archbishop Henry Orombi and more than 200 other conservative bishops are boycotting Lambeth. They held their own gathering in Jerusalem last month and called for a new North American church body that would officially be part of the Anglican Communion, but would not be affiliated with the Episcopal Church.

Rev. DUDLEY: They’re seeking to create a fellowship of confessing Anglicans, that is, those who want to be clear in their commitments to orthodox faith.

Reverend SAMUEL COLLEY-TOOTHAKER: My brothers and sisters, the Lord be with you

CONGREGATION: And also with you.

Rev. COLLEY-TOOTHAKER: Let us pray.

LAWTON: In Danville, Virginia, leaders at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany say they’ve been trying hard not to let church battles interfere with their local ministry.

Samuel Colley-Toothaker

Rev. COLLEY-TOOTHAKER: My personal opinions about the theological matters which are currently plaguing the Episcopal Church really are not so much of import if I keep my eye on the ball, which is to lead this congregation in the work that Christ is calling us to.

LAWTON: Epiphany has been in Danville since the 1800s and claims that Confederate leader Jefferson Davis is among those who’ve worshipped there. The church has struggled to maintain a strong Episcopal witness in a community hard hit by the demise of tobacco and textile industries.

Reverend COLLEY-TOOTHAKER: Mission is actually doing the work that Christ gives us to do. Because the parish is endowed and has resources, we would be able to establish an Episcopal school that is not geared solely to those privileged few who can afford the tuition. And nobody will be priced out of the education that we’re able to give here.

LAWTON: Although many mainline churches have been losing members, Epiphany has been growing.

Rev. COLLEY-TOOTHAKER: We decided that if we were going to be able to grow this church and continue to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then we needed to get people into the door however we could get them through the door.

LAWTON: The pastor says many members deeply value Anglicanism’s balance between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Rev. COLLEY-TOOTHAKER: We really do try to find the middle way in that we really are a bridge between the Roman tradition and sort of the more evangelical reform tradition.

LAWTON: The congregation tries to accommodate all people, including gays and lesbians. But Colley-Toothaker admits there might be some limits.

Rev. COLLEY-TOOTHAKER: If the Episcopal Church of the United States decided that it was going to tell us that we needed to begin to bless same sex unions using the sacrament of marriage that might be a line that I would draw in the sand.

Canterbury Cathedral

LAWTON: Anglicans around the world hope the bishops meeting under the shadow of Canterbury’s historic cathedral will find a way to hold all these disparate points of view together. But the structure of this year’s Lambeth conference makes decisive solutions unlikely.

Bishop KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI (Episcopal Presiding Bishop at press conference): It’s a global conversation. It’s not going to legislate. It’s not going to make final decisions about anything.

LAWTON: Still, even as they move forward with their own local ministries, U.S. churches recognize those Lambeth conversations could have important implications for their futures.

Rev. BACON: My message for the bishops who are meeting in Lambeth is to open the depths of their being to the movement of the Holy Spirit that leads them into all truth, and then to have the courage of the convictions that come from listening to the Holy Spirit.

Rev. DUDLEY: The overwhelming majority of Anglicans stand where I do on these issues. Go back and look through the last several hundred years of Anglicanism and where we stand is where they stood.

Rev. COLLEY-TOOTHAKER: Throughout the history of the hurch we have always found something to fight about, and those fights generally become so raucous that they lead to schism. I believe that is not in keeping in the teaching and the modeling of ministry of Jesus Christ himself gave to us.

LAWTON: The question for the bishops at Lambeth is whether it is still possible to hold all that diversity together.

I’m Kim LAWTON reporting.

by J. Peter Pham

Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies Are Reshaping Anglicanism. By Miranda K. Hassett. Princeton University Press, 2007.

The bishops and other leaders gathering this month in Canterbury for the fourteenth Lambeth Conference will be considering the future of the Anglican Communion. The last meeting ten years ago is best remembered for the major role which the bishops from the “global South” played, especially in the 526-70 (with 45 abstentions) passage of a resolution upholding as the “teaching of Scripture” the ideal of “faithfulness in marriage is between a man and a woman in a lifelong union” and abstinence “for those not called to marriage” as well as “rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture,” while calling for pastoral ministry and sensitivity to “persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation.”

Far from putting the matter to rest, the tensions raised during the often acrimonious debate leading to the declaration have only been exacerbated over the course of the ensuing decade. In fact, nearly one-quarter of the more than 800 bishops invited are snubbing this year’s conference in protest over the presence of prelates whom they accuse of sanctioning same-sex unions and ordaining non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy. In June, the boycotters held a separate summit in Jerusalem, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), where they were also joined by sympathizers who are nonetheless attending Lambeth.

As Philip Jenkins has argued in his recently completed trilogy of studies, a great deal of this theological contretemps can be explained by the fact that “the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa and Latin America,” where the approach to theological and moral issues is more traditional than in that found among more progressive believers in Europe and North America. Certainly there has been a decisive shift in the demographic center of the Anglican world in the last one hundred years. The fifth Lambeth Conference, which met under Archbishop Randall Davidson in 1908, represented a church 80 percent of whose communicants lived in the British Isles. In fact, the principal concern of that meeting was foreign missions to places like Africa, where less than 1 percent of Anglicans were then to be found. Today, the situation is the reverse: more than 55 percent of the world’s Anglicans live in Africa, while only 33 percent reside in the United Kingdom (the latter figure is somewhat deceptive, however, since, according to the Church of England’s statistics, only about 1 million of the 26 million nominal Anglicans attend church). The U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church, counts some 2 million members, a decline of more than one-third since the 1960s, who account for approximately 3 percent of the worldwide body. In fact, just between themselves, five of the archbishops not present in Canterbury–the primates of the Anglican churches of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and the Southern Cone of the Americas–represent nearly one-half the Anglicans in the world.

As simple and elegant as this demographic explanation is, it did not completely satisfy Miranda K. Hassett, who made the tensions in Anglican family the subject of her research as a graduate student in anthropology at the University of North Carolina. Anglican Communion in Crisis is distilled from her 2004 doctoral dissertation. Hassett has a personal stake in the object of her study: not only is she admirably forthright in disclosing that her “personal sympathies were with the liberal side,” but she was recently ordained a transitional deacon by the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina and has taken up the position of assistant rectors at a parish in the Diocese of New Hampshire, a jurisdiction whose choice of a gay man living in a partnered relationship, V. Gene Robinson, as its bishop in 2003 her own book notes “drew an intense outcry from Anglican leaders around the world” and led several Anglican provinces to downgrade relations with the Episcopal Church. These factors render all the more laudable Hassett’s treatment of the subject which, within its limits, is generally balanced and, unlike many other recent works, free from rancor. The volume’s subtitle–How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies Are Reshaping Anglicanism–hints at her conclusion: “The Episcopal Church’s [conservative] dissidents and their Southern allies are not merely carried along by global trends, but have actively shaped the character and impact of globalization on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.”

Hassett’s research opens in the period after the 1998 Lambeth Conference and focuses on the transnational alliances which were forged between some seemingly unlikely partners, “American social conservatives, commonly stereotyped as having little interest in including the marginalized, and Southern church leaders, whose demands for greater influence threaten the Northern-dominated status quo.” Her key insight is her appreciation that globalization is not an inexorable and impersonal force, but a dynamic process which can be shaped by human agents. Thus her research included extensive time with a congregation in the southeastern United States she pseudonymously calls “St. Timothy’s,” which had left the Episcopal Church to affiliate with the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) under the jurisdiction of the Church of the Province of Rwanda, as well as six months in central Africa, where she focused her efforts on the Uganda Christian University, an Anglican university and seminary with close ties to a number of more conservative U.S. parishes and organizations. (In accordance with the conventions of her discipline, Hassett protects the anonymity of her sources. While the discretion, especially in the case of laypeople, is understandable given the nature of some of the issues with which she grapples, it also makes impossible any independent assessment of the ecclesiastical weight to give to pronouncements she attributes to bishops and other prominent church leaders.)

From the narrative of the fieldwork as well as Hassett’s nuanced analysis of her observations, it is clear that she is a dispassionate scholar, willing to challenge widely held stereotypes about conservative Anglicans in both the United States and Africa.

While the members of St. Timothy’s originally joined AMiA as what Hassett describe as “a lifeboat” away from an Episcopal Church they perceived to be increasingly errant in its leftward drift while still maintaining their connection to the larger Anglican Communion through the archbishop of Rwanda, she found that the new relationship had a profound impact on both parish and parishioners that went far beyond canonical formalities to forge “a transnational relationship of significant local meaning.” Describing the congregation’s efforts to “think more seriously about what their connection to Rwanda might mean”–which ranged from a display and sale of African handicrafts to assisting an African priest raising money for AIDS orphans to a trip to visit their new provincial see by several congregants–Hassett notes that the “congregation’s experience of finding an alliance with an African church first thinkable, then desirable, involved more and more members’ coming to see African Christianity as a positive model.” As a result, members of St. Timothy’s “were coming not only to think about Africa in new and positive ways but also to look more critically on their own way of life as Americans.”

If “conservative dissidents point to the orthodoxy, zeal, and other desirable traits they perceive as characterizing the churches of the global South, and seek to bring that moral force to bear in transforming the Episcopal Church,” the Anglicans Hassett encountered in Uganda–the heirs of a colonial church if ever there was one, as Danish Africanist Holger Bernt Hansen’s monumental study Mission, Church, and State in a Colonial Setting: Uganda, 1890-1925, authoritatively documented–have been excited by the discovery that “Africans have something to teach American Christians.” According to Hassett, African Christians see this as an exchange not unlike that of economic globalization whereby “each region is envisioned exporting what it has in plenty, trading those goods for what another region can readily provide”–in this case, spiritual aid in return for material assistance. Consequently, Hassett posits broadly: This collective and individual rethinking demonstrates that globalization, as represented by the transnational Anglican dissident movement, is not simply Westernization, a one-way process in which the Southern partners take on the culture and ideas of Northerners. Instead the people of St. Timothy’s were influenced by their Rwandan allies to adopt new ways of thinking and talking, indicating that such global relationships have effects in both directions. While she cautions conservatives that an idealization of African Christianity “invokes concepts ultimately derived from older and negative views of Africans as childlike, primitive, and uncivilized,” Hassett reserves a stronger criticism for liberals who, long presuming on the solidarity of the developing world due to “the bias toward the Left in the scholarly literature on global movements,” have reacted angrily to the unexpectedly strong doctrinal stances of Southern bishops by describing them as “superstitious, ignorant, and opportunist.” In contrast to scholars like Ian Douglas, subsequently her professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as a member of the design group for this year’s Lambeth Conference, who propose a vision of globalization which she describes as “diversity globalism”–that is, “characterized by the affirmation of cultural and experiential diversity” and “nothing more clearly defined than general mutual good will”–Hassett writes that conservative Northerners and Southerners have together built various networks into the interconnected structure she labels “accountability globalism”: This is no veiled anti-globalism or reactionary vision, in which older authority structures of white male Euro-American dominance are reestablished to maintain order in an increasingly complex worldwide organization. Instead, this conservative vision embraces the diversity and complexity of the contemporary world…call[ing] for power to shift away from traditional centers and to locate instead in a worldwide network of church leaders united in their commitment to Anglican orthodoxy. New, global patterns of discipline are envisioned in the service of correction, help, and, above all, accountability among Anglican churches around the globe. While Anglicans, like Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, have historically organized their ecclesiastical polities around local bishops whose jurisdiction is largely defined by territorial boundaries, Hassett sees the potential of the nascent affinity networks which are manifestations of accountability globalism to radically transform relationships within the church: [P]articular connections between individuals, parishes, dioceses, and provinces…bypass and even subvert the centralized, nested geographical authority structure of the Communion. It remains to be seen whether the total “realignment” of the Communion into networked clusters of Anglican bodies defined by affinity rather than geographical proximity will come to pass…Today many believe that such networks will become, functionally if not officially, the new organizing structure of the whole Anglican Communion. Certainly there have been moves towards such realignments across the Anglican world. In the last year, the Nigerian, Ugandan, and Kenyan provinces have followed the Rwandan province in consecrating “missionary bishops” for work in the United States. More recently, the bishop and diocesan convention of the Diocese of San Joaquin, California, have voted to align themselves with the South America-based Province of the Southern Cone, and other Episcopal dioceses are reported to be considering “exit strategies.” And while strategic partnerships between Northern conservatives and Southern Anglican leaders and churches have clearly become more common, there is no reason to preclude moderates and liberals within the Communion from creating their own affinity networks. Hassett, for example, chronicles the founding in 2000 of a Ugandan branch of Integrity, an advocacy organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Anglicans, and the subsequent controversy within the province over the involvement of a retired bishop, Christopher Ssenyonjo, as the group’s counselor. The author’s most important contribution might well prove to be her disentangling of this bewildering collection of efferent strands and reweaving them into a comprehensible narrative heralding one vision of how today’s feuds might eventually be resolved.

As an academic work, Anglican Communion in Crisis is not without its share of problems. For example, while differing attitudes about homosexuals has certainly received a great deal of media attention, is it really “the defining issue in contemporary Episcopal Church (and, arguably, Anglican Communion) conflicts” that Hassett characterizes it as? A credible case can be made that the fault lines run much deeper into clashes over fundamentals of faith and that the controversy over homosexuality is perhaps better understood oftentimes as a proxy used by some on both sides of the revisionist/traditionalist divide. Despite serious efforts to “struggle against [her] eagerness to offer [her] own solutions or conclusions” and to “avoid adjudicating in matters of debate,” Hassett occasionally lapses into making assertions which are at the very least methodologically weak, undocumented, and possibly even inaccurate. To cite one case, since she correctly reports that most Episcopalians “are not particularly mobilized on the issue of gay rights” and that “public, outspoken activism for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) Episcopalians in the church is largely limited to the leaders of the Episcopal GLBT rights group, Integrity, and a few outspoken bishops, other church leaders, and scholars,” as a matter of social science how can she then claim that “the mobilized liberal camp represents a position with general support of a majority of Episcopalians” in the absence of any reference to survey data supporting that conclusion? Also, the book is bogged down at times in a tendentious disputation with certain conclusions in Philip Jenkins’s The Next Christendom, a conceit all the more disappointing since Hassett does not appear to have taken into account any of the subsequent work by the Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University that would have obviated a substantial part of the critique.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings and the fact, modestly acknowledged by the author, that its “account of current debates in the Anglican tradition is contestable,” Anglican Communion in Crisis is a must-read, not only by those most directly involved in what are, frankly, often unseemly fracases within the Anglican body politic–especially the mitered heads at Lambeth (as well as GAFCON) who are called, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer, “for the work and ministry of a bishop…the edifying and well-governing of the Church”–but also by anyone interested in the future of Christianity as a whole amidst constantly shifting global dynamics.

J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Virginia, is the author of many works on religion, international affairs, and African politics. An ordained priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, he has written for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on books by Pope Benedict XVI and Philip Jenkins.

Q: Tell us why your church decided to go ahead and officiate at same sex weddings in California.

A: I think that the central reason is that we believe that God’s love is not discriminatory. It’s not bigoted. There are no second-class citizens, and so the graces of the church should extend to everyone, regardless of who they are.

Q: This has been controversial within the Episcopal Church, and the dioceses in California aren’t all agreeing. Why is there still so much controversy about this?

Rev. Ed Bacon

A: Even within the Episcopal Church there is a lack of exposure to healthy relationships with gay and lesbian Christians, because people have not felt welcome in a church that discriminated against them and a church that they felt was abusive. One of our important lay leaders here who happens to be heterosexual says that where you stand on this issue depends on where you sit on Sunday morning, and by that he means whether or not you are worshipping with brothers and sisters in Christ who are gay and lesbian, who have been on your board with you, or the vestry, who have been in Bible study groups, who have been in prayer groups, and we’ve had the great benefit of that here at All Saints Church. And our children here have grown up understanding that that is the norm, so when our vestry had a called meeting after the California Supreme Court decision, one of our leaders said this is a slam dunk decision, this is a no brainer. Of course we’re not going to be bigoted. Of course we’re not going to be discriminatory. Let’s move forward now.

Q: I’ve talked to some clergy who are really wrestling with whether or not to perform same-sex marriages in their churches. What would you say to those who are struggling over whether this is the right thing to do?

A: I would tell them that Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God and its justice, or its righteousness — both of those words come from the same Greek word — and all these things shall be added to you. The first thing we seek is the kingdom of God and its justice. If we always take a stand for justice everything else works out, so I would encourage them to step outside their comfort zone and experience the joy that we have experienced here at All Saints.

Q: One thing you hear over and over again from different segments of the Christian community is God instituted marriage between a man and a woman, and the Bible says this is between a man and a woman. How do you respond to that?

A: I think it’s very clear that the Bible has an arc that moves towards inclusiveness. Peter himself had a conversion experience about his fixed certainties and the things he felt repugnant toward, and the entire New Testament is about inclusion, about bringing more and more people in and understanding that there’s nothing God created which is inherently evil, and so the Bible itself moves towards inclusion.

Q: Let’s put this issue and what’s happening here in the bigger context of the struggles going on within the US Episcopal Church, and even more broadly within the worldwide Anglican Communion. Have you thought about the impact what you are doing here may have on those wider decisions? Is there a worry or a thought at all that this might in some way exacerbate the tensions?

A: Rather than being worried about the impact of what we’re doing, I’m very excited about the impact of what we’re doing, because I’ve been in the church and have been a priest long enough to have seen the inclusion of women in ordination to the priesthood, and it took some pioneering leaders of the church to step out and say God is for all, and the church had to grapple with the reality of women who were ordained priests. The church will have to grapple with gay and lesbian members who are married, and it will cause some bit of chaos and some bit of rocking the boat, disequilibrium for a while, but the church is led by the Holy Spirit, and I have great excitement and great joy and great confidence that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth, which will be about embracing all people.

Q: Bishops from around the world will be gathering for the Lambeth Conference. Is there a sense that while the leaders are gathering and there are going to be conversations, Lambeth is all about conversation? Do you feel like, at the church level, you all are saying, “We’re moving forward while you all are talking”?

A: Absolutely. The church is moving forward. The church in its pastoral responsibilities to the people of the pew must be engaging, consoling, comforting, empowering rather than abusing its members. So we have a responsibility here on the ground, at the grassroots level, to move forward with justice, inclusion, love, and compassion, and the bishops can talk about it, but we think the bishops will come around and see that we are exercising great pastoral responsibility.

Q: For those who say this is a violation of Scripture and what they think Anglican tradition and historic Christianity teach, where does this leave them?

A: My experience, again, is quite lengthy, and I’ve seen people leave the church over the ordination of women and the change in the prayer book, and then I’ve seen those people come back after they grapple with issues of inclusion and justice. So I have every confidence that those who might leave would be leaving temporarily and then come back. I had a marvelous experience in my former post where I was called by a congregation in the city who had left the cathedral prior to my being the dean there, asking to come back, saying that they knew that the trajectory they were on was a dead end street, and it ended in anger and splinteredness, and they wanted to come back in. I have every confidence that’s going to happen with us.

Q: What is your message, then, for the bishops meeting at Lambeth?

A: My message for the bishops who are meeting in Lambeth is to open the depths of their being, their conscience, their hearts, their minds, and in their community to the movement of the Holy Spirit that leads them into all truth, that blows where it wills, it’s always leading toward inclusion, and then to have the courage of the convictions that come from listening to the Holy Spirit.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now the Episcopal Church divisions over homosexuality and the interpretation of Scripture. This week the U.S. Episcopal bishops went as far as they said they could to comply with the demand from the worldwide Anglican Communion that the U.S. church clarify its policies on gay issues. The bishops said they would “exercise restraint” on consecrating gay bishops and would not officially authorize same-sex blessings. Conservatives around the world say the bishops did not do enough. So the question remains: can the church avoid schism? Kim Lawton reports.

KIM LAWTON: The Episcopal bishops gathered in New Orleans amid intense pressure from inside their own church and from their fellow members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Top Anglican leaders had given the U.S. church until September 30 to state clearly that they will not consecrate any more gay bishops or authorize any sex-same blessings. Failure to do that, the leaders said, would have unspecified consequences for the Episcopal Church’s place in the Communion. Episcopal leaders said they answered those concerns, even if their document did not go as far as many Communion leaders had sought.

Bishop TOM SHAW (Diocese of Boston, at news conference): This document that we passed this afternoon shows how important inclusion in the Anglican Communion is for all parts of the Episcopal Church and how much we deeply respect the Anglican Communion.

LAWTON: But many conservatives say the response was inadequate. Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan didn’t stay at the New Orleans meeting for the final vote.

Bishop ROBERT DUNCAN (Diocese of Pittsburgh): It’s not enough for the dioceses like my own that really don’t see a way to go forward within the Episcopal Church.

LAWTON: One of the strongest international critics, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, said the U.S. bishops fell far short of what he was looking for. Akinola spoke at a conservative church gathering near Chicago this week. He was greeted by protesters who accused him of being anti-gay.

Anglican leaders from Africa, Asia and South America, the so-called Global South, have been building alliances with American conservatives who share their theological perspective. Overseas churches have consecrated several Americans as bishops who will work in the U.S.

Bishop JOHN GUERNSEY (Anglican Church of Uganda): I receive the authority given to me to oversee and care for the clergy and congregations of the Church of Uganda in the United States of America.

LAWTON: In New Orleans, the Episcopal bishops urged an immediate end to what they called these “foreign incursions.”

The bishops acknowledged their document doesn’t set any new policy. It’s not an outright ban on future gay bishops, but rather a promise to exercise restraint in consecrating any bishop whose “manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church.” Likewise, while the bishops promised as a body not to authorize public rites for blessing same sex unions, there is leeway for individual bishops to allow blessings in their dioceses.

Bishop KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI (Presiding Bishop, U.S. Episcopal Church, at news conference): Not everyone was 100 percent happy with every word in this document, as you might imagine. But together we believe that we have found a place that all of us can stand together.

LAWTON: Many bishops argued that the international leaders do not have the authority to determine positions for the U.S. church, which is self-governing.

Bishop PETER LEE (Diocese of Virginia): The Anglican Communion is not a juridical group where there is a clear method of kicking someone out, to put it bluntly. So if we are — if our relationship is stressed with the rest of the Communion to the breaking point, the break will come from others, not from us.

LAWTON: New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the church’s first openly gay bishop, says he believes the New Orleans meeting will ease the tensions plaguing the Church.

Bishop GENE ROBINSON (Diocese of New Hampshire): The prediction was that this would be like Katrina II, you know, some horrible storm that would tear the Episcopal Church apart, and what actually happened was that the vast majority of the bishops of all persuasions came together for this common statement. And it’s really, really a miracle.

It’s unclear whether the bishops’ statement will be enough to satisfy other members of the Anglican Communion. The Communion’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, was traveling and did not have an immediate comment. He had been in New Orleans for nearly two days of closed-door meeting with the bishops, but left before they issued their statement.

Bishop LEE: I think it gave us an opportunity to let him see more of who we are as bishops, in a very different context than where he usually works, and it gave us an opportunity to hear some of his concerns from his perspective looking at the whole worldwide Communion.

LAWTON: Robinson acknowledged he had some frank exchanges with the archbishop.

Bishop ROBINSON: I understood him to be saying that we had to choose between fidelity to our gay and lesbian members and fidelity to the process of what he called “common discernment.” And I said that, as a gay man, choosing a process over human beings felt dehumanizing to me. And perhaps there were people who were shocked that I said that, but after all, I’m the only openly gay voice in that room.

LAWTON: The New Orleans meeting seemed to solidify the decisions of those already contemplating leaving the Episcopal Church. New Mexico Bishop Jeffrey Steenson announced he was resigning in order to become a Roman Catholic.

Bishop JEFFREY STEENSON (Diocese of the Rio Grande): There are a lot of doctrinal matters that are being debated in the Episcopal Church that just astonish me, and I felt that it was really important for me now to be clear with myself about where I could be comfortable.

LAWTON: Four of the 110 U.S. dioceses have begun steps to break with the Episcopal Church. Conservative American bishops, including some who left the Episcopal Church decades ago, met together in Pittsburgh this week to discuss ways they can work together. Many are aligning with Global South Anglican churches.

Bishop DUNCAN: From the beginning, the message to me and to other leaders from the archbishops around the world has been get it together, find a way to work together, agree on a leader, agree on the way you’re going to work together and declare it. Move forward and we’ll go forward with you.

LAWTON: Meanwhile, Episcopal Church leaders spent a day of their meeting doing service projects around the Gulf Coast. They said they wanted to put the controversies aside and focus more on ministry and mission. And on this point, the conservatives agreed.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton is in Pittsburgh where the conservatives were meeting. Kim, most of the Episcopal bishops took a position of this week that many of the conservatives didn’t like. Some of the conservatives are leaving the church, they say. What’s changed? What’s new?

LAWTON: Well, in fact no new policy was set at this meeting. The U.S. Episcopal bishops restated the situation that’s been in play in their church for the last couple of years. They may have said it a little more clearly, which is what I think a lot of people in the Anglican Communion were looking for, but they have not set any new policy. For the conservatives I think, though, this was a line in the sand. This was a moment they were looking for, and it seems like it’s a point of no return for them, and so it seems to have solidified a lot of the decisions that many people were considering anyway.

ABERNETHY: So what are the possibilities now?

LAWTON: Well, the conservatives that met here in Pittsburgh this week are trying to put together what they’re calling a federation of all of these groups that have left the Episcopal Church over the years. And they’re trying to see if they can put aside all their many differences and have a united alternative Anglican body here in the United States that might in some ways rival the U.S. Episcopal Church, that they can present to the worldwide Anglican Communion as here’s a viable form of Anglicanism in the United States. They have a plan of planting up to1000 churches over the next year, and they really want to move forward with that plan, and they’re getting support from many of these conservative archbishops in the Global South.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.