Clergy threaten to leave Church of England over women bishops: report
Pastor Dale Morgan
Clergy threaten to leave Church of England over women bishops: report*
AFP - Tuesday, July 1
LONDON (AFP) - - More than 1,300 Church of England clergy have written
to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, threatening to leave the
church if proposals allowing women to be consecrated as bishops are
passed, The Times reported Tuesday.
Citing a copy of the letter that it had seen, the newspaper reported
that the signatories, 60 percent of whom are serving clergy, including
11 bishops, will only accept the plans if there are areas where worship
is led exclusively by males.
The letter comes with less than two weeks to go before the start of the
10-yearly Lambeth Conference meeting of bishops of the worldwide
Anglican Communion on Canterbury, southeast England.
The conference is already roiled in controversy with several
conservative members of the church having vociferously objected to the
ordination in 2003 of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the
US Episcopal Church.
"We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to
minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England which
has been our home," the 1,333 signatories wrote to Rowan Williams, the
head of the world's 80 million Anglicans, and John Sentamu.
"We do not write this in a spirit of making threats or throwing down
gauntlets. Rather, we believe that the time has come to make our
concerns plain, so that the possible consequences of a failure to make
provision which allows us to flourish and to grow are clear."
The General Synod, the church's governing body, is to hold a series of
debates on women bishops later this week in York.
On Monday, more than 4,000 Anglicans, including 1,276 women clergy and
1,012 male clergy, gave their support to the proposals for women bishops
without special legislation to protect opponents of the move.