Blessing same-sex unions? Episcopal Diocese to consider giving parishes the option to celebrate homosexual couples
BY ALBERTA LINDSEY TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Jan 28, 2007
The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has cracked the door for allowing the blessing of same-sex unions.
Delegates to the diocese's 212th Annual Council adopted a substitute resolution that calls for a commission to look at a possible agreement on a local option for blessing same-sex unions.
Current diocesan policy prohibits blessing same-sex unions publicly. The commission is to report its findings at next January's annual council.
An overwhelming show-of-hand vote was taken yesterday during the closing business session of the council's two-day meeting at the downtown Richmond Marriott Hotel.
The original resolution called for the council to recommend that a policy of local option for parishes be adopted on a trial basis and be reviewed for final approval by the 2010 council.
During a news conference following the council meeting, the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, bishop of the diocese, said he was surprised that the resolution did not draw more discussion from the floor.
"I think the diocese is healthy and strong," Lee added. "There is a sense of clarity of who we are as Episcopalians."
Sanjiv Augustine, a lay delegate from St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Annandale, agreed.
"A lot of the animosity from the past has been avoided. We seem to be operating more as one church," said Augustine, who was attending his fourth council meeting. "The church is about so much more than the hotbutton issues. It's about the family, worship, spirituality. I think we are over a watershed. The people who feel strongly have left the church, and I wish them well. That allows the rest of us to focus on what is important."
Augustine referred to the 15 churches in the diocese that have left the denomination and the diocese over differences about the role of homosexuals in the church and biblical authority.
He is hopeful for the Episcopal Church. "We have stuck to our orthodoxy, and I think that will serve us well. We don't discern just from Scripture. We are not adrift from our core principles. We are very inclusive and relative," Augustine said.
The election of the Very Rev. Shannon Sherwood Johnston of Tupelo, Miss., to be the 13th bishop of the Virginia diocese was the highlight of this year's council, according to many people at the meeting. Johnston was elected bishop coadjutor Friday and will succeed Lee when he retires. Lee has said he plans to step down no later than 2010.
Johnston joined the Richmond news conference from his Tupelo home by speaker-phone.
The bishop-elect said he "greatly values the fact that the [Episcopal Church] is a very big tent. . . . We are able to be committed to each other regardless of our differences. It's that breadth that leads us more into how we are but one with Jesus. It's part of our holiness."
Johnston called Anglicanism the best tradition he knows. He likes the idea of a middle line in dealing with controversial issues. "That keeps us together rather than one side being over the other," he added.
Becoming a bishop was not a goal for him, Johnston said. He began to think about it when people at the denomination's 2003 General Convention asked if he would be interested. Then last year, the Virginia nominating committee approached him.
His interest in the priesthood dates back to his high school years.
As a ninth-grader, Johnston didn't care for church. But his mother insisted he attend either Sunday school or worship. He opted for Sunday school because the young people talked about football and the late University of Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, Johnston's childhood hero.
One day walking to a high school algebra class, Johnston heard a voice telling him he was going to be a priest. "It felt so natural, and I went on my way to algebra. But I paid attention to that voice."
Contact staff writer Alberta Lindsey at alindsey@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6754.
