Gay issues drive U.S., Canadian churches from Anglican council

The U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada will withdraw from a key body of the worldwide Anglican Communion at the request of conservative church leaders who condemned their stands on homosexual issues.

The suspension from the Anglican Consultative Council was said to be temporary.

However, it's the first time the communion has split formally over the election of a gay bishop in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions in both countries.

The leaders of the communion, which is made up of 38 national churches and 77 million members, issued a statement Thursday calls on the two churches to voluntarily withdraw until 2008.

• FROM OCT. 19, 2004: B.C. bishop backs same-sex unions despite Anglican report

The statement, issued after primates met in Northern Ireland, also asks the U.S. and Canadian churches to explain their stands on homosexual issues at a meeting in June.

"In the meantime, we ask our fellow primates to use their best influence to persuade their brothers and sisters to exercise a moratorium on public rites of blessing for same-sex unions and on the consecration of any bishop living in a sexual relationship outside Christian marriage," it said.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Frank Griswold, said the church would continue to debate the issues, adding that his fellow church leaders had made room "for a wide variety of perspectives."

"I am grateful that the Anglican Communion is still able to make room for different points of view so we can avoid schism and fracturing and stay together for the sake of the Gospel," Griswold said.

Conservatives in the communion have criticized both churches for allowing blessings of same-sex unions, including in a high-profile report last October that specifically condemned a B.C. diocese's decision to sanction the unions.

The most divisive controversy in the communion's history, however, arose after the U.S. church elected the first openly gay Anglican bishop last August in New Hampshire.

• FROM AUG. 7, 2004: Anglicans debate appointment of gay bishop in U.S.

The primates' statement on Thursday repeated a resolution adopted by all Anglican bishops in 1998, which said gay practices were "incompatible with Scripture" and opposed same-sex blessings and gay ordinations.

The statement said that many of the primates who met this week were "deeply alarmed that the standard of Christian teaching on matters of human sexuality" reinforced in that 1998 resolution had "been seriously undermined by the recent developments in North America."