United States: The Anglican Church has avoided a new split after the US Episcopal diocese of California elected a heterosexual father of two rather than a homosexual candidate as its next bishop.
A meeting of 1,000 clergy and lay representatives of the diocese in the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco elected the Right Rev Mark Andrus of Alabama on the third ballot. His endorsement at next month's Episcopal general convention in Ohio is expected to be a formality.
The move, which had been hoped for by the leadership of the church nominally headed by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, averted a new confrontation over gay clergy.
In 2003, the Episcopal church precipitated a convulsion in Anglicanism around the world when it endorsed the election of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the church's history. Three of the seven candidates in the California diocese, which is centred on San Francisco, were homosexuals living with their partners.
There were fears that the election of another gay bishop would provide a new provocation to conservatives, particularly in the developing world, who have threatened to split the church, but none of them got more than a handful of votes.
Bishop-elect Andrus spoke to the meeting by telephone, saying: "Your vote today remains a vote for inclusion . . . of gay and lesbian people in their full lives as single or partnered people, of women, of all ethnic minorities and all people."
One of the delegates at the meeting, the Rev Mark Spaulding, told reporters: "This diocese would have been fine with any one of the candidates."
The election was greeted with some relief in senior church circles but not by the conservative American Anglican Council, which hopes to overturn the Episcopal leadership. A statement said that California remained a "bastion of amorphous Christianity" and criticised all the candidates for not pledging to withhold consent for "same-sex partnered individuals" as bishops.
- (Guardian service)