The Christian Century

By some gracious irony, the death of Robert Runcie came while the U.S. Episcopal Church’s General Convention was in session. As archbishop of Canterbury, Runcie led the Church of England and the Anglican Communion through the turbulent 1980s, seeking to hew to a “middle way” when issues of women’s ordination and modernized liturgies threatened to split his church.

At least two other denominations are dealing with issues related to homosexuality at meetings this summer.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16-17).

When the Anglican Church in North America was launched last year, its founders were clear on what they didn’t want to be: the Episcopal Church that they had left.

But as the ACNA marked its first anniversary in early June with a meeting in Amesbury, Massachusetts, members found that carving out a new identity requires a good dose of patience—and more money than they have on hand.

Virginia’s Supreme Court has sided with the Episcopal Church in its dispute with breakaway conservatives over historic and valuable parish property—a partial but important victory for the embattled denomination.

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has forcefully defended her church’s embrace of gays and lesbians and firmly rejected efforts to centralize power or police uniformity in the Anglican Communion.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has called the confirmation of a second openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church “regrettable” and said it will have “important implications” for the U.S. church’s role in the wider Anglican Communion.

Shortly after same-sex marriage became legal in the District of Columbia, Bishop John Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington said that its priests may preside at such civil marriages in the nation’s capital.

A majority of dioceses in the Episcopal Church have confirmed the election of an open lesbian as a bishop in Los Angeles, bringing her one step closer to consecration. The Diocese of Los Angeles, where Mary Glasspool was elected as an assistant bishop three months earlier, announced confirmations from 61 of the denomination’s 110 dioceses on March 10.

When my daughter became a teenager, she was invited to serve as an acolyte at our Episcopal church. I thought it would be a wonderful thing to do with her. With her permission, I became an acolyte too—in my mid-forties.