Church Split?

By Jonathan Petre

Gay bishop must go 'or the church will split'

Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop was invalidly consecrated and must be stripped of his post if the worldwide Church is to avoid schism, a leading conservative demanded only a few short months ago.

In an extraordinary twist in the civil war over homosexuality, the Primate of the West Indies, Archbishop Drexel Gomez, said Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire must be replaced or the Church would split in two.

The ultimatum by Archbishop Gomez, a member of the Lambeth Commission set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury to broker peace between the warring factions, will outrage liberals and further polarize positions.

It would be unprecedented for a bishop to be stripped of his post after his consecration. Dr. Jeffrey John, the gay cleric named as Bishop of Reading last summer, withdrew before the ceremony.

But a paper prepared for Archbishop Gomez by prominent theologians, thought to include the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, uses arguments similar to those by Dr. Rowan Williams during the Dr. John furor.

The proposals were presented to the 17-person-strong commission during a critical meeting in America in mid-June. The commission's final report, on which the future of the worldwide Church will hang, was due to be published in October.