This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

CHANGING TIMES 145divorce, contraception). For a “doctrinal teaching” to be binding on Episcopalclergy, the court maintained, there had to be a canon or General Conventionresolution that clearly expressed the intentions of the church on that matter. Thecourt ruled, therefore, that Righter had not violated any core doctrine of Christianitywhen he ordained Stopfel and that the Episcopal Church had no doctrinalteaching that unequivocally forbade the ordination of homosexuals. Although thisdecision was bitterly condemned in conservative circles, it effectively upheld theindependence of individual bishops and dioceses in deciding who would or wouldnot be ordained within any jurisdiction. 52The Episcopal Church, of course, was not the only American denominationthen struggling with issues regarding sexuality. In 1997 the Presbyterian Church(U.S.A.) approved a rule requiring all unmarried ministers, deacons, and eldersto be celibate, and three years later the denomination passed a similar resolutionbanning same-sex unions. In 1999 the Churchwide Assembly of the EvangelicalLutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted to continue the denomination’s generalpolicy of forbidding the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals. A year later,the United Methodist Church (the nation’s second-largest Protestant body) votedto uphold its policies against both same-sex unions and the ordination of sexuallyactive homosexuals. Although there was dissent and even an occasional act ofdefiance within all these denominations, the United Church of Christ and theUnitarian Universalist Association were the only major Protestant bodies thatofficially encouraged the ordination of gay and lesbian church members at theend of the twentieth century.The early years of the twenty-first century witnessed significant gains in therights of homosexual persons as Canada followed Denmark, the Netherlands, andBelgium in moving to legalize gay marriage, and the U.S. Supreme Court issueda landmark decision that struck down a Texas state law banning private consensualsex between adults of the same sex. These historic actions in 2003 formed partof the North American backdrop to a dramatic series of events in which theGeneral Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States consented tothe election of the denomination’s first openly gay bishop.The larger historical setting of this General Convention decision also includedtwo widely reported events within the Anglican Communion. In 1998 the LambethConference of Anglican bishops from around the world passed a resolutionthat, in effect, accepted gay persons as full members of the church but said thathomosexual conduct was incompatible with scripture and therefore that gaysshould remain celibate. Also, just two months before the 2003 General Conventionof the Episcopal Church, an openly gay—but celibate—priest in the Churchof England withdrew his acceptance of nomination to the see of Reading because,he said, his consecration might damage the unity of the Church, including theAnglican Communion.Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in August 2003, delegates to the GeneralConvention voted to confirm the election of the Reverend Canon V. Gene Robinson,a 56-year-old divorced father of two who for 13 years had been living in