Bishops consider response to Lambeth decision not to invite same-sex spouses to 2020 gathering

Mar 15, 2019 by

by Mary Frances Schjonberg, ENS:

The Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops spent time on March 14 in both open and closed sessions considering how to respond to the decision to exclude same-sex spouses from the 2020 Lambeth Conference of bishops.

“We are not avoiding it. We are being prayerful, thoughtful, strategic about what is the loving action for us,” Presiding Bishop Michael Curry told Episcopal News Service after the closed session ended. “We as a house are now thinking and considering what are the creative possibilities and loving ways that we can bear witness to the Way of Love that we are committed to as the way of following Jesus.”

Diocese of New York Bishop Assistant Mary Glasspool addressed the house in open session to begin the day, with New York Diocesan Bishop Andrew Dietsche and New York Bishop Suffragan Allen Shin at her side. She is The Episcopal Church’s only actively serving bishop who has a same-sex spouse. Glasspool asked for her colleagues’ continued support, while also urging them to listen to their spouses and to consider what it would mean if “we are not at the table to bear witness” to the love of Christ that “lives and bears fruit in the lives of married LGBT people.”

Before he closed the house, Curry asked the bishops to enter “the vision that Mary has invited us into” with two questions that she had just put to them: How will they continue to be a “hospitable house” and welcome new bishops with same-sex spouses? And, What is the best way and most creative way to bear witness to God’s love and justice at Lambeth?

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