LA diocesan bishop J. Jon Bruno has, however, stated, "to not consent in this country out of fear of the reaction elsewhere in the Anglican Communion is to capitulate to titular heads".

Notice the politicised language and assumptions. Nationalism - "in this country" - has no place in the Christian conception of koinonia. Lambeth, the other Instruments of Communion, and Anglicans across the globe are not "titular heads" - this is not how Anglicans refer to their pastors or brothers and sisters. Bruno's invocation of the spirit of 1776 signifies something of the cultural conformity in parts of TEC far more significant than differences over same-sex relationships.

Perhaps Los Angeles should be thanked. The diocese has now forced TEC to reflect on whether koinonia or independence are of greater significance.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

The Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed his concern at the election of the second openly gay bishop in the Anglican Church.

Rowan Williams said the move raised "very serious questions" for both the Episcopal Church in the US and the Anglican Communion as a whole.

But he noted that the election of the Reverend Mary Glasspool in the diocese of Los Angeles had yet to be confirmed.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts

“We celebrate the election today of the Rev. Mary Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles. During her twenty-eight years as a priest, Bishop-elect Glasspool has served rich parishes and poor ones, cities and suburbs, and people from all walks of life. For the last eight years, she has been canon to the bishops in the Diocese of Maryland. Elected by the people of Los Angeles from a strong field of well-qualified nominees, Mary will be an excellent suffragan bishop for her new diocese and for the wider church.

“At General Convention earlier this year, the Episcopal Church affirmed that God calls partnered gay and lesbian people to all orders of ministry in the Episcopal Church. God has clearly been calling Mary to challenging and important ministries over and over during the course of her career. While there may be a temptation in some quarters to use Mary’s election to foment further controversy in the Anglican Communion, those of us who know her understand that this is simply the next chapter in a lifetime of service to her church. We are grateful to her and to her partner, Becki Sander, for answering a new call in Los Angeles.

“As Christians, we know that we can only fulfill the promise of our baptismal vows when all of our brothers and sisters in Christ can fulfill theirs. Today the people of Los Angeles and Mary Glasspool have made it more possible for all Episcopalians to be the people God is calling us to be.”

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Riverside, CA--"Integrity salutes the election of the Reverend Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool as a bishop suffragan in the Diocese of Los Angeles, and as the second openly gay partnered bishop in the Episcopal Church." said Integrity President David Norgard. "Bishop-elect Glasspool brings to the diocese her experience of building strong congregations by providing pastoral care, vocational guidance, and support to clergy and their families. She brings to the House of Bishops her commitment to social justice. And she will bring to the Anglican Communion an incarnational witness to the Episcopal Church’s commitment to fully include all of the baptized into the Body of Christ. "

"It takes both a courageous candidate and a courageous community to fully embrace inclusion and to be prepared for the public attention this historic opportunity offers the Episcopal Church and the United States of America at this time," said Norgard. "Today’s election means the Episcopal Church has taken another step toward the full inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments becoming a reality in the Episcopal Church--not just a resolution of General Convention.

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We are saddened but not surprised by this announcement from TEC. Unless their diocesan bishops and their standing committees decline to endorse the election, it will confirm that TEC have no intention of respecting the mind of the Communion and halting their current trajectory. That is why tens of thousands of Anglicans, in order to witness to the Communion's common basis of faith, and particularly biblical teaching on Christian marriage, have had to leave TEC and form the Anglican Church of North America. For any who doubted whether that action was justified TEC's latest announcement, made in full knowledge of its negative effect on the Communion's Covenant process, will confirm that TEC, rather than wanting to remain within the Communion's bonds of affection, is determined to walk away and follow its own path.

Dr Philip Giddings (Convenor)

Canon Chris Sugden (Secretary)

Anglican Mainstream

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles elected a partnered lesbian as Bishop Suffragan today and demonstrated The Episcopal Church’s further departure from biblical Christianity.

“Unfortunately, this election provides further clarity to the rest of the Anglican Communion,” said Bishop David Anderson, president and CEO of the American Anglican Council. “Should the rest of The Episcopal Church consent to this election, there can be no more pretending that The Episcopal Church holds to Anglican Communion doctrine and 2,000 years of biblically based Christian teachings. Not only have they elected another non-celibate homosexual bishop, but they repeatedly defy the moratorium on same-sex blessings called for by the Windsor Report.”

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

"The General Convention's decision to approve the appointment of Gene Robinson will inevitably have a significant impact on the Anglican Communion throughout the world and it is too early to say what the result of that will be.
It is my hope that the church in America and the rest of the Anglican Communion will have the opportunity to consider this development before significant and irrevocable decisions are made in response. I have said before that we need as a church to be very careful about making decisions for our own part of the world which constrain the church elsewhere.
It will be vital to ensure that the concerns and needs of those across the Communion who are gravely concerned at this development can be heard, understood and taken into account."
August 6th 2003
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Archbishop to convene primates meeting

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is to convene an extraordinary meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion this autumn. The meeting will take place in London in mid-October and it is expected that invitations will be sent out in the next week.

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NPR: So the bottom line is it fair to say that at least the door has been opened for gay and lesbian bishops in addition to Bishop Robinson.

KJS: The door has been open for many years.

NPR: So if an openly gay or lesbian person were to make it through to the stage where he or she could be consecrated bishop you would go ahead with that.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Analysis

"I can't say it surprises me," said the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence, bishop of the South Carolina diocese, which has begun withdrawing from some of the national church's councils to protest the policies on gays. He said the split in the church is likely to endure:

"Is there anything that can be done to bridge it? No one has come up with it yet."

--From one version of an LA Times story

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Instruments of Unity • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * South Carolina

Included are comments from Bishop Gordon Mursell; and Christopher Landau, religious correspondent for the BBC, as well as Christina Rees, and Chris Sugden.

Listen to it carefully and listen to it all (slightly over 12 minutes).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles just elected someone whose homosexual behavior goes completely against the Bible. They are doing a disservice to people of faith everywhere.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

BBC religious affairs correspondent Chris Landau says that for an Anglican Communion already fracturing over the issue of homosexuality, this election is yet more evidence of the church's divisions.

He says that for many in the US, electing openly homosexual bishops is simply a reflection of the diversity long affirmed by that Church and that it would be very surprising if Mary Glasspool's election wasn't approved.

Episcopal Church leader, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, has said she will consecrate any bishop whose election follows the rules.

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Los Angeles' Episcopal Diocese elected an openly lesbian priest as assistant bishop on Saturday, a move likely to stoke more tensions in the global Anglican community over the divisive issue of gay clergy.

The Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, 55, of Baltimore is the first openly gay priest chosen as an Episcopal bishop since Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, whose 2003 consecration deeply strained church unity. Her election must be approved by the national church.

The ordination of gay clergy and related issues have prompted some congregations to leave the Episcopal fold and form a rival North American church that claims 100,000 believers. Anglican churches in regions like Africa have broken ties with their more liberal American brethren.

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The Rev Rod Thomas, the leader of the conservative evangelical group Reform and a member of the General Synod, said: ‘I feel deeply ashamed that this is happening in the Anglican Church.

‘I think a schism is absolutely inevitable.’

But St Paul’s Cathedral’s Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser, a leading liberal, said: ‘This is another nail in the coffin of Christian homophobia.’

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The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.

The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications.

The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Global South Churches & Primates • Instruments of Unity • Lambeth 2008 • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

A lesbian priest was elected an Episcopal bishop Saturday at the Los Angeles diocese's annual convention in Riverside, putting her on track to become only the second openly lesbian or gay bishop in the centuries-old denomination's history.

The Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool, currently an adviser to the bishops of the Diocese of Maryland, was chosen for one of two assistant-bishop vacancies in the Diocese of Los Angeles, which includes San Bernardino County and part of Riverside County.

She is the first openly lesbian or gay bishop chosen since the 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson as bishop of the New Hampshire diocese led dozens of conservative parishes and four dioceses to vote to leave the Episcopal Church. It also provoked condemnation from some of the other churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the 2.1-million-member Episcopal Church is a part.

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A period overseas included postgraduate study before he returned as the Vicar of Ellerslie. He was commissioned as Archdeacon of Auckland in 2006 and in 2007 was appointed Dean and Vicar General.

As Dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral Ross was thrust into the international spotlight when Sir Edmund Hillary died and the Cathedral was chosen for his state funeral.

"We're not just this little group in this particular parish. We also belong to something much wider than that: the diocese, the three Tikanga church here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the worldwide Anglican Communion."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia

The 2.1-million-member denomination paved the way for her election last summer when it lifted a moratorium on electing gay bishops after the election of New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson six years ago caused a split in the 70-million-member Anglican Communion.

The majority of world Anglicanism opposes openly homosexual clergy, and a majority of Anglican bishops voted against allowing them at the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in Canterbury, England.

But the U.S. Episcopal Church ignored that sanction, selecting Bishop Robinson in 2003, causing an estimated 100,000 Episcopalians to flee the denomination to more conservative churches. Four dioceses also have pulled out of the denomination in protest. They and an estimated 60 churches are entangled in lawsuits with the Episcopal Church in a fight to keep millions of dollars' worth of property and real estate.

Ms. [mary] Glasspool had 153 clergy votes, with 123 needed to win, and 203 lay votes, with 193 needed to win. Mr. Vasquez had 87 clergy votes and 177 lay votes.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • Windsor Report / Process