Pittsburgh Episcopal Diocese Votes for Split
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A wide majority of clergy and lay members of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted Saturday to leave the national church and align with a more conservative South American branch, adding to the fallout from the 2003 election and consecration of an openly gay bishop. –
The NY Times reports In a tense meeting at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Monroeville,
a suburb east of Pittsburgh, 119 of 191 lay members voted in favor of
leaving the national church, as did 121 of 160 clergy members.
The
result had been anticipated; a preliminary vote last November had
supported secession. The diocese has printed thousands of brochures,
titled “Realignment Realities — What You Need to Know” and including a
picture of Mr. Duncan, to be distributed Sunday to its parishes.
AFP reports “We deeply value our shared heritage and years of friendship with those
still within that denomination, but this diocese could not in good
conscience continue down the road away from mainstream Christianity
that the leadership of The Episcopal Church is so determined to
follow,” the diocese’s director of communications, Reverend Peter
Frank, said in the statement.
AP reports The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori,
presiding bishop of the U.S. church, criticized the vote in a
statement, saying, “There is room in this Church for all who desire to
be members of it.” She also said schism is not an “honored tradition within
Anglicanism” and is “frequently been seen as a more egregious error
than charges of heresy.”
Many who opposed the split said the national church erred by
disciplining Duncan before the vote. The Rev. James Simons — pastor of
one of at least 16 Pittsburgh-area churches that plan not to break away
— said it “created enormous sympathy” for those voting to split.