A House Divided

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Such a meeting of the church's leaders on a single, urgent topic is "very, very rare," says the Rev. J. Robert Wright, official historiographer of the Episcopal Church. "To my knowledge it has never been done before."

Other Protestant churches are carefully watching developments in the Episcopal Church. "In the past the struggle around homosexuality in one denomination has presented a template for the struggle in other churches," says the Rev. Eileen Lindner, a historian with the National Council of Churches. Lindner points out that Presbyterians, United Methodists and Evangelical Lutherans all have "substantial, active, gay faithful caucuses" that now will push to re-examine the question of gay clergy. In fact, Reverend Wright, who escorted "ecumenical observers" from other churches at last week's conference, said the prevailing view was that "a logjam had been broken."

Scholars feel that mainline U.S. Protestantism has been on a long, anguished but inevitable path toward completely including homosexuals. "Many people say, well, it's a matter of time," says Lamin Sanneh, professor of religious history at Yale. But fast-growing churches in the Third World and evangelicals are unlikely to follow this path. Some Protestants, he says, take their cue from evolving "cultural standards," others from set ideas about Scripture and tradition. For the Anglicans, it will take a considerable leap of faith to bridge the divide.