A Great Schism?

http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=4816

[Fort Worth Weekly] 3 May 2007--But this rich tapestry, threaded with strong strands of tolerance and freedom from clearly defined dogma, is threatening to unravel. The American-based Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion of which the church is a part are engaged in a bitter struggle over the roles of homosexuals and women within the church. This long-simmering disagreement broke out into open warfare in 2003 with the consecration of the openly gay V. Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire. Since then, the events in this intense and increasingly less polite fight have often seemed more like something you might read while standing in the checkout line in the grocery store than in the annals of a denomination that intuitively searches for the “middle way.”

In North Texas, the drama is playing out in many sanctuaries, as divisions within the church threaten to shatter the brittle mosaic that is modern Anglicanism. In one Tarrant County church a few years ago, the pastor walked on the Episcopal Church flag. A vicar west of Fort Worth claimed — wrongly, as it turned out — that vandalism in his church was retaliation for his rejection of “biblical revisionists.” In the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, a Plano church has left the Episcopal Church entirely. And Fort Worth’s bishop has declared that some actions of the national church are null and void in his diocese.