Episcopal leader says church has confidence

Christian Century, Feb 8, 2003

The Episcopal Church is "not obsessed with sexuality" and is brimming with "graced confidence," according to the church's top bishop. Frank T. Griswold III, in Washington to celebrate five years as presiding bishop, said that the 2.3-million-member denomination is healthy and not wracked by controversy.

"There is, at this point, what I would call a kind of graced confidence, a sense that the Episcopal Church does have something to proclaim," Griswold said in an interview January 10 with RNS. Griswold, 65, said the church has made progress in learning how to deal with differences, especially on the touchy subject of sexuality, particularly homosexuality.

Since 1998, Griswold has walked a perilous line between liberals, who want national policies on gay ordination and same-sex unions, and conservatives, who say the church cannot bless homosexual activity because the Bible condemns it as sinful. Some traditionalists were so upset with the church's stance that they left in late 1999 to form the Anglican Mission in America, a group with which Griswold says he has no contact.

When the denomination met in 2000, Griswold helped craft a compromise statement that affirmed committed relationships "outside of marriage" but did not specifically sanction rites for same-sex unions. Delegates will gather for the church's triennial General Convention July 30-August 8 in Minneapolis.

With sexuality likely to top the agenda again, Griswold did not endorse blessings of gay unions but signaled that they are perhaps inevitable. "If the spirit of God is truly at work in the lives of gay and lesbian people, then that's going to become ever clearer in the life of the church and present less and less of a problem," said Griswold. In his view, the church is likely to "eventually" develop rites for gay couples. At the halfway point in his ten-year term, the bishop said he has seen a "broadening of perspectives" on gay-lesbian issues.

Griswold said he finds it "curious" that some in the church are willing to allow the remarriage of divorced people--something Jesus specifically prohibited--while not allowing marriage for gays and lesbians, which Jesus never addressed.--RNS