Nov 4, 2003 / 22:00 pm
The opposition to the ordination of the first openly gay bishop in the United States this week isn’t about sex but about Scripture, said Canon Kendall Harmon of South Carolina, a leading voice in the opposition to gay ordination.
"It's about the authority and interpretation of Scripture, about who gets to make decisions and how they make them," he told to New York's Newsday.
The concern, he said, is "about whether Christianity at the beginning of the 21st century is going to be shaped by wealthy, mainly white, shrinking Western churches or by the simple, faithful, growing churches of the Global South."
In fact, many of the growing African, Asian and Latin American churches in the Anglican Communion condemned Gene Robinson’s ordination as bishop of New Hampshire, less than 24 hours after the ordination.
In the statement, the churches said they would not recognize Robinson as bishop and called for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, to create an oversight, which would allow churches to remain in communion but separate from the New Hampshire church. A decision on the oversight has not yet been taken.