US vote triggers more trouble for Anglicans

Anglicans faced a new crisis yesterday after the US branch of the church elected a liberal female leader who said she believed homosexuality was no sin and homosexuals were created by God.

One English bishop warned that Anglicanism was in danger of splitting into "two religions" after the election in the United States of Katherine Jefferts Schori to lead the 2.3-million-strong US episcopal church.

The election came after the consecration of openly gay American bishop Gene Robinson and the blessing of same-sex marriages in Canada three years ago, which have deepened differences between liberals and conservatives among the world's 77 million Anglicans.

"It will be a great adventure," Schori promised after her election at the weekend - but the already battered and bruised Anglican community was not so sure.

"Having a woman primate is an exciting complication," said Church Times Editor Paul Handley.

"The problem is her views. She is quite permissive towards local churches giving blessing to same-sex couples and she supported the ordination of Robinson," he told Reuters.

But he felt talk of a definitive split, although African Anglicans are strongly opposed to homosexuality, was premature.

"The genius of Anglicanism is that it has been able to cope with huge variations in doctrine and practice. Talk of schism is exaggerated," he said.

But the Church of England Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said the divisions were now so deep that compromise was no longer possible. "Nobody wants a split but if you think you have virtually two religions in a single Church, something has got to give sometime," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the worldwide Anglican church, said Schori was taking up "a deeply demanding position at a critical time".

"We are continuing to pray for the general convention of the Episcopal Church as it confronts a series of exceptionally difficult choices," Williams said in a statement after talking to Schori by telephone earlier in the day.

In an interview with CNN, Schori said she did not believe it was a sin to be homosexual.

"I believe that God creates us with different gifts," she said. "Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."

The issue of a "stained glass ceiling" stopping women from rising in the hierarchy ranks alongside the ordination of gay clergy as one of the most disruptive in the Anglican Church.

Anglicans in Canada, the United States and New Zealand already have women bishops.

Archbishop Williams won backing in February for the ordination of women bishops in the Church of England but theological and legal hurdles remain to be cleared.

Traditionalists argue that as Jesus Christ's apostles were men, there is no precedent in the Bible for women bishops.