NEW YORK -- Anglican leaders on Thursday temporarily restricted the role of the U.S. Episcopal Church in their global fellowship as a sanction over the church's acceptance of gay marriage.
Episcopalians have been barred for three years from any policy-setting positions in the Anglican Communion while a task force is formed that will try to reconcile conflicting views over sexuality in the 85 million-member family of churches. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the United States.
The announcement came near the end of a weeklong meeting in Canterbury, England, called by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, to heal rifts over same-sex relationships and keep the Anglican Communion from splitting apart.
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who was installed in office less than three months ago, attended the meeting. He told the other leaders that their vote "will bring real pain" to gays and to Episcopalians "committed to following Jesus in the way of love and being a church that lives that love." Still, he said he was committed to the Anglican family.
The Global Anglican Future Conference, which represents theologically conservative Anglican leaders worldwide, had sought sanctions against the U.S. church, and some members said they would walk out of this week's meeting unless some penalty was applied. One leader, Ugandan Archbishop Stanley Ntagali, did so. In a statement Thursday, the conference said their leaders were pleased by the outcome of the meeting, but "this action must not be seen as an end, but as a beginning."
Anglicans, whose roots are in the missionary work of the Church of England, are the third-largest grouping of Christians in the world, behind Roman Catholics and the Orthodox.
The fellowship has been fracturing for decades over gay relationships, women's ordination and other matters. Those rifts blew wide open in 2003 when the New York-based Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire. Last year, the top U.S. Episcopal legislative body, the General Convention, voted to authorize gay marriages in their churches.
The press office for the Anglican leaders in Canterbury said the statement released Thursday affirmed the leaders' "unanimous commitment to walk together." The statement said the majority of the meeting's attendants "reaffirm" the teaching that marriage is only the union of a man and a woman. The leaders called the Episcopal Church's approval of gay marriage "a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching" of the majority of Anglicans, the statement says.
A Section on 01/15/2016