Episcopalians Grapple With Divide Over Gay Ordination

BY GARY STERN
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

NEW YORK -- Bishop Mark Sisk, leader of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, believes the debate about homosexuality that could ostracize Episcopalians from the Anglican world is a good thing. Productive.

Meaningful. Necessary.

He says the Episcopal Church will survive whatever happens at its General Convention, which opens Tuesday in Columbus, Ohio, and closes June 21.

"People say there is going to be dissension at the convention, but that doesn't bother me a bit," Sisk says. "Easy agreement is sort of self-congratulatory. Debate helps you move ahead."

It has been almost three years since the church consecrated an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, drawing fire from bishops across the 77 million-member Anglican Communion. This week, the Episcopal Church will try to decide how far it will go to repair the breach with its nearly 500-year-old Anglican family.

Sisk, the leader of the New York diocese since 2001, said last week that he does not foresee the Episcopal Church being thrown out of the Anglican Communion, a popular prediction these days even if no one is quite sure how such a divorce would happen.

"Relations could, however, become quite strained," he says with typical understatement.

Sisk, 63, is soft-spoken and thoughtful, someone who measures his words carefully because he wants to say exactly what he means. He is a strong proponent of full inclusiveness of gays and lesbians in church life, and he leads a proudly liberal diocese where gay and lesbian priests feel mostly welcome. But Sisk is playing a high-stakes role in helping the national church chart its potentially treacherous course.

He is co-chairman of a church commission that recommended in April that dioceses use "very considerable caution" before electing bishops who would prove divisive. Some commission members wanted to ask dioceses to "refrain" from such decisions, but the more moderate wording won out.

The commission was appointed to respond to the 2004 Windsor Report, in which Anglican leaders asked the Episcopal Church to start a moratorium on gay bishops until a new Anglican consensus might be reached.

So what does "very considerable caution" mean?

"It is not simply a decision for your own diocese; it is a decision that has implications for the church and the communion," Sisk says in his Manhattan office, which looks up at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, his bishop's "seat" and a vast reminder of Episcopal tradition.

"Does that mean that a body could vote in favor of someone in a committed, same-sex relationship? Yes. It seems to me they could hear that and say 'I am using caution. I have paid attention. And I still want to do this.'"

Not surprisingly, the term "very considerable caution" falls flat for the Rev. Daryl Fenton, canon for operations of the Anglican Communion Network, a group of 10 Episcopal dioceses and close to 200 parishes that opposed Robinson's consecration.

"What they're saying is 'We're trying to be nice about this, but we still disagree,'" Fenton says. "It isn't enough. I think the word caution implies that this is not a moral issue, as we believe, but an issue of getting along."

Sisk's commission also recommended that the Episcopal Church offer "apology and repentance" for causing such division within the Anglican Communion, and that dioceses stop creating ceremonies for blessing same-sex couples.

The recommendations will be taken up as resolutions at General Convention. Although they are certain to be modified, Sisk hopes they will be adopted in spirit.

"If General Convention should choose to authorize, let's just say, a liturgy to bless a same-sex union, that would be a significant problem," he says.

Sisk is aiming for a higher profile in the public square, and the diocese has hired the high-powered Rubenstein Associates in New York City to that end. The Episcopal Church has seen its cultural influence fade in recent decades, but Sisk believes a moderate, progressive Christian voice is needed.

"People want to leap in with simplistic answers, often in the name of God," he says. "It's so far from the truth and, frankly, makes religion look silly."

Long term, he thinks the Episcopal Church will survive the current conflict, battered but stronger. He says gay priests will become accepted over time, as female priests have since the first controversial ordination of a woman in 1977.

Sisk also believes the current debate is changing minds in the Southern Hemisphere, where opposition to Robinson's consecration is based.

"If there is anybody in Africa or anywhere else who has discovered through these debates that they may not be quite the pariah they are depicted to be by their own culture, and they have discovered some sense of hope and personal dignity, I think t is well worth it," he says. "We've paid a price, but I don't regret the price."