If “the devil is in the details” when two groups seek a merger, where will he be hiding when the Vatican talks with disaffected Anglicans who want to join the Roman church? Neither the agenda nor the schedule for these talks are clear, but some issues are starting to emerge as possible hurdles to a smooth switchover for Anglicans who want to “swim the Tiber.”

(Photo: St. Peter’s Basilica and the Tiber River, 23 Dec 1999/Mario Laporta)

There is little clarity yet on either side. The Vatican has not spelled out the conditions of the “Apostolic Constitution” to accept Anglicans who want to join Catholicism while maintaining some of their own traditions. Additionally, there are varied faces of Anglicanism, which in its dogmas and practices stands somewhere between Roman Catholicism and Protestant traditions such as the Lutheran or Reformed churches. This will clearly take a while to work out.

The spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, played down any problems when the offer was announced. But several reactions from Anglicans to Tuesday’s announcement, including from some inclined to make the switch, have begun to trace the outlines of the looming doctrinal debates among Anglicans worldwide and between the Vatican and Anglicans knocking at its door.

Bishop Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), posted a succinct summary of sticky issues on his group’s website. This group of about 3,500 regular churchgoers is a diocese of the breakaway conservative Anglican Church in North America, which claims over 100,000 members across the continent. Harvey asked:

1. “Will the Roman Catholic Church require Anglican priests who choose this option to be re-ordained?

(NB:  The Vatican has traditionally said that Anglican ordinations are not valid.) 

2. “Will people who accept this invitation have to subscribe to Roman Catholic dogmas to which the Anglican Formularies are diametrically opposed – such as “Papal Infallibility”, the “Immaculate Conception” and Transubstantiation?

(NB: Papal infallibility says the pope cannot err when he rules on matters of faith and morals. The Catholic belief that the Virgin Mary was born without Original Sin is not a dogma in Anglicanism, although some Anglo-Catholics believe it. The Catholic dogma of transubstantiation says bread and wine actually become the flesh and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, while Anglicans believe this transformation is only symbolic.)

3. “Will Anglican priests – especially married ones – choosing to accept the Roman Catholic Church’s invitation have equal status with existing Roman Catholic clergy and will their ministry be interchangeable and welcomed in Roman Catholic parishes?”

In his statement, Harvey brought up another issue that could lead to disagreement — the meaning of the word “catholic.” Anglicans say they are a part of an undivided catholic (i.e. universal) Church, while Rome says it represents the true Church and churches that split off at the Reformation are not churches in the true sense. Pope Benedict has been quite clear on this point, most notably in his 2000 doctrinal document Dominus Iesus. Harvey quoted an ANiC priest as saying: “As for me and my house, we will remain ever faithful to the authority and primacy of the Holy Scriptures and the Faith and Order of the undivided Catholic Church. I need not become a Roman Catholic to be a Catholic Christian. As an Anglican, I am a Catholic Christian.”

(Photo: Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict at the Vatican, 23 Nov 2006/Alessandro Bianchi)

Bishop Jack Iker, head of the Episcopal (U.S. Anglican) diocese of Forth Worth, Texas, touched on the same issue in his reaction: “Not all Anglo-Catholics can accept certain teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do they believe that they must first convert to Rome in order to be truly catholic Christians.”

Pittsburgh-based Archbishop Robert Duncan, Primate of the Anglican Church in North America formed by that split off from the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada last year, wrote on the ACNA website: “This significant decision represents a recognition of the integrity of the Anglican tradition within the broader Christian church” and added that “our historic differences over church governance, dogmas regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary and the nature of Holy Orders continue to be points of prayerful dialogue.”

Another point is ecclesiology, or what the precise nature and role of a church are. The Roman Catholic Church is hierarchical, with an authoritative pope at its head, a set body of dogma and a clear chain of command through bishops down to the parish level. Anglicanism is organised around national churches with considerable autonomy and its spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has influence but not authority over them.

As Rev. Rod Thomas, chairman of the evangelical Reform group in the Church of England (C of E), noted on his website: “If priests really are out of sympathy with the C of E’s doctrine (as opposed to the battles we are having over women’s ministry and sexuality), then perhaps it is better they make a clean break and go to Rome. However, when they do, they will have to accommodate themselves to Rome’s top-down approach to church life, whereas the C of E has always stressed the importance of decision making at the level of the local church.”

(Photo: All Saints Cathedral Church in Nairobi, 3 Nov 2003/Antony Njuguna)

Reactions from Africa, where traditional Anglicans opposed to female and gay bishops are the majority, showed that some heads of the national churches there prefer the Anglican Communion’s “unity in diversity” to Roman discipline. “Anglo-Catholic Anglicans have been disillusioned by the liberal churches in the West that created a theological crisis with their liberal attitude to sexuality. Many of them would be happy with the Pope’s initiative. But the African Church does not need that because it is strong on biblical theology,” the primate of the Church of Uganda, Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, was quoted on the local New Vision website as saying. “The African Anglican Church has undertaken measures to deal with the excesses of liberalism that invaded the western church. We are a Bible-believing Church.”

What do you think? Where do you see potentials bumps on the disaffected Anglicans’ road to Rome?

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Episcopal Church leaders in Los Angeles on Sunday nominated an openly gay priest and an openly lesbian priest as bishops in a move sure to ratchet up tensions in the global Anglican Communion.

The move follows an announcement on Saturday by the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota of three candidates identified to become the Bishop of Minnesota, including a partnered lesbian priest in Chicago.

The nominations come just weeks after the 2 million-member Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism, lifted a de facto ban on the consecration of gay bishops that was seen as a “ceasefire” between liberal and conservative factions in the American church and the wider communion. You can see our story here.

Church unity has been strained since 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop in Anglican history known to be in an openly gay relationship. None have been elected since then but the subsequent truce now seems to be over.

This whole saga has provoked huge divisions and break-aways within the Episcopal Church and the 80-million member global Anglican Communion, where provinces or churches in the developing world, especially Africa, take a dim view of same-sex relations.

It is also unfolding against the backdrop of the wider American cultural debate about gay rights and related issues.

Polls consistently show gays and lesbians enjoying growing acceptance in American society. But fast-growing faiths in the United States, such as many evangelical Protestant churches and the Mormon church, regard homosexual relations as sinful and proscribed by scripture.

What does all this mean for the Episcopal Church, which like many mainline Protestant denominations in the United States has been struggling with aging congregations and stagnant or declining membership? Will its liberal take on sexual orientation issues help attract some people to its flock, especially young people? Or are conservative Christians right when they say many social liberals are secular anyway and unlikely to go to a church regardless of its cultural views? And how does one explain the divergence between growing social acceptance of gays and lesbians in America with the fast pace of growth of conservative denominations which regard their lifestyle and orientation as sinful?

(Photo: Cleve Jones (L) looks on as Bishop Gene Robinson kisses screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (R) as Robinson accepts the Kolzak award at the 20th GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles, California April 18, 2009. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation sponsors the awards which it says promote the accurate representation of gay and lesbian persons. REUTERS/Fred Prouser (UNITED STATES ENTERTAINMENT)

Robert Duncan, installed on Wednesday night as the first archbishop of the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), struck a decidedly evangelical tone in the sermon he delivered at his installation service. (You can see our coverage of the ACNA’s initial assembly here and here.)

The ACNA is mostly composed of conservative dissidents who have left the Episcopal Church — the main U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion — over thorny issues like gay clergy. It says it has 100,000 followers in 700 churches in Canada and the United States.

Like other mainline Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church — which is estimated to have more than 2 million members — has been shrinking while evangelical Protestant churches often have seen explosive growth (though some like the Southern Baptist Convention are also facing decline. We blogged on that issue earlier today). The ACNA seems to be in some ways emulating the evangelical movement by sticking to conservative principles (it would argue this means scriptural authority) and by stressing a renewed drive of evangelism.

Duncan at times certainly came across as something of a Southern evangelical (which some reserved Episcopal or Anglican audiences might find a bit jarring) but one wrapped in colorful Anglican robes. He called on his flock to “plant a thousand new churches in five years,” which will mark the end of his term in office. He talked about reaching the unchurched, relating the story of a recovering alcoholic whom he met on a plane and tried to introduce to Jesus. He also talked about the need to memorize scripture to live it.  

His take on Islam echoed the more strident tone of conservative U.S. evangelicals and not those who have called for “inter-faith dialogue” with Muslims. 

“We’ve got to be about the business of engaging Islam … secularism, and materialism, but especially Islam. Because there is only one way to the Father, it’s the only way. It’s a matter of life and death,” he said to warm applause.

On another note,  he evoked the Church of England’s founding father Henry VIII — crowned King of England 500 years ago – and held him up as an example of ”a ruler in the end gone astray, confiscating the property of a church in an almost contemporary way.”

This comparison of the legal battles between dissident dioceses and the Episcopal Church over property to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries was probably meant in a light-hearted way. But it could also be taken as a jab from a new alliance that wants to come out swinging.

(Photo: Archbishop Robert Duncan, courtesy of the ACNA)

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama attended his first Sunday church service as president on Easter Sunday, greeted by hundreds of onlookers at an Episcopal church a block from the White House.

Obama, wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha sat about halfway down the first row in the packed but intimate St. John's, across Lafayette Park from the White House.

Throngs of onlookers packed the streets around the church and behind police barricades, even though, according to a White House official, the location was not disclosed until Sunday.

There was intense competition among area churches to lure the Obamas, according to reports.

Known to many as the "Church of the Presidents," every president since James Madison has attended the church, either on a regular or occasional basis, according to St. John's.

Obama had not attended church in Washington as president since Inauguration Day, when he attended a service at the National Cathedral, according to an aide.

The service focused on allowing the skeptical come to their faith in time.

"Easter is available to believers as well as doubters," Reverend Luis Leon said in his sermon. "It's important that you believe in as much of God as you can today ... and that is good enough."

At one point, he led a prayer for the president, other elected officials, and people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and the Middle East, among others.

Several in the audience said they were unaware the president would be attending the service.

Obama was dogged during his campaign by controversial comments about race by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Chicago.  Obama later distanced himself from the pastor.

 For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque - President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama depart St. John's Episcopal Church after attending an Easter service in Washington on April 12, 2009.

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The author, Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, is a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and author of the novel A Delightful Compendium of Consolation.

By Burton L. Visotzky

On Wednesday, I went to church. It seemed right that on the morning after President Barack Obama’s historic inauguration as the 44th President of the United States I should pray for his and our success in the years ahead. We are a nation in crisis, depleted in so many ways by the last eight years. On the Tuesday of the inauguration, I stood with a million other Americans on the Mall in Washington, watching and cheering the transfer of power. The air was frigid, but filled with hope. We stood just behind the Capitol reflecting pool - far from the rostrum, but embedded in the great, diverse mass of people who make up America. Next to us were folks from Augusta, Georgia, who drawled their discomfort when George Bush was booed. On our other side were Washingtonians - African-Americans who proudly declared that on this day we were not black or white, but all of us were silver (the color of our tickets to the event).

(Photo: National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral in Washington, 21 Jan 2009/Larry Downing)

Truth be told, the inaugural was better viewed in front of a television. But for the experience of being an American on this auspicious day, the Mall was the best place in the whole world. There is something extraordinary about standing among a million others, staring up at the jumbotron, striving to catch the words our new president was speaking. Sharing our food, our stories, ducking down so someone behind us could snap a photo, making sure that kids were in the sight-lines of their parents, breathing free; we huddled, massed against the cold, embodying the passions that Emma Lazarus’ poem emblazons on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

On Wednesday morning, waking before the dawn, again in bitter cold, we headed to church to pray for our republic. We were invited to the magnificent Washington National Cathedral for the interfaith National Prayer Service, a long tradition, since the days of President George Washington. There among the crowd I spotted many familiar Jewish faces (not a long tradition). There were Muslims and Hindus, and, of course, an abundance of Christian clergy.

I had the privilege of shaking hands with Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. (the National Cathedral is Episcopal). I greeted Rev. Joseph Lowery, who had delivered the stirring closing benediction at the inaugural. The 3,000 proud Americans in the congregation included the incoming cabinet, as well as senators and members of Congress among the pews. From my seat I watched former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton work the room. I saw Vice-President and Dr. Biden enter the cathedral, mere feet from where I was seated. They were immediately followed by President and Mrs. Obama. Tall, even regal, they embodied the very grace that we all prayed God may grant them.

(Photo: Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Jill Biden, 21 Jan 2009/Larry Downing)

The program included music on the carillon, the organ, the brass ensemble of the Marine Band, and a children’s gospel choir. The kids sang “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” and encouraged us to sing along for the final verse. Dr. Wintley Phipps sang “Amazing Grace” in his deep bass voice, profoundly moving the congregation. And Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, President of the Disciples of Christ Church, preached an excellent sermon, charging President Obama to continue his moral leadership. We all heartily assented, “Amen.”

The service ended with the hymn, “For the healing of the nations,” another cause to say “Amen.” But for me, the most symbolic moment of the National Prayer Service, and perhaps even the entire inaugural, came when the cathedral choir sang their hymn, “America the Beautiful.” The first verse, “O beautiful for spacious skies,” was sung solely by the sopranos, who sounded like the celestial choir. The entire chorus sang verse two, “O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife/ who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life!” We all joined in, clergy, cabinet, Bidens, and Obamas, for the third and final verse, “O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years/ thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!” Except by then, my own tears were streaming down my cheeks.

“America, America, God shed his grace on thee.”

The “Is Obama a Christian?” discussion is starting up again, this time not by people who suspect he’s a Muslim but those who think he’s a phony follower of Jesus Christ. The occasion for this is the posting on Beliefnet of an interview he gave to the Chicago Sun Times in 2004, while he was still an Illinois state senator. Conservative Christians have taken his religious views as proof he’s not a real Christian, but there’s support from a more liberal corner for his views.

That there is disagreement isn’t really a surprise. Theologians have been debating who is a Christian almost since the dawn of the faith and still dispute where the dividing lines lie. What is more interesting is that critics are picking apart his views — or purported views — on theological issues that have no obvious importance for his job as president.

(Photo: Obama at Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, June 15, 2008/John Gress)

Bloggers Joe Carter and Rod Dreher read in Obama’s interview a denial of the Nicene Creed since he called Jesus “a bridge between God and man” rather than clearly saying he is the Son of God (hat tip to Steve Waldman). “Unless Obama was being incredibly and uncharacteristically inarticulate, this is heterodox. You cannot be a Christian in any meaningful sense and deny the divinity of Jesus Christ. You just can’t,” Dreher writes. Has Obama denied the divinity of Jesus Christ here? That’s not clear here. Another point that Carter notes is that he doesn’t believe that people who have not embraced Jesus as their personal saviour will automatically go to hell. “I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup,” he said.

Elsewhere on its site, Beliefnet quotes a prominent Catholic theologian saying the same thing: “…Everything we believe about God, and everything we know about man, prevents us from accepting that beyond the limits of the Church there is no more salvation … We are no longer ready and able to think that our neighbor, who is a decent and respectable man and in many ways better than we are, should be eternally damned simply because he is not a Catholic. We are no longer ready, no longer willing, to think that eternal corruption should be inflicted on people in Asia, in Africa, or wherever it may be, merely on account of their not having “Catholic” marked in their passport.” This came from none other than a certain Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI. The quote is from 1964, from the young Ratzinger, and is not what he would say today. But even he said it back then and many theologians would agree with Obama’s view today.

As Waldman points out, it’s a view that George Bush would also agree with. And apparently with him many Christians as well:“millions and millions of people call themselves Christian, worship at Christian churches and believe that acceptance of Christ is not required for entry into heaven. In a recent Pew poll, 70% said ‘many religions can lead to eternal life.’ 66% of Protestants and 79% of Catholics said they agreed with that idea.”

Over at the Episcopal Café blog The Lead, blogger JB Chilton reprints reprints Obama’s answer about his suspicion of dogma and cautious turn towards faith and says: “Sounds like a good Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church welcomes you.”

Do you think it’s important to know exactly which Christian teachings the president-elect embraces and which ones he doesn’t, even if they have no relevance to his performance in the White House?

(Photo: President Bush at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, August 29, 2006/Jim Young)

Can someone be Christian and Muslim at the same time? This came up over the weekend in two articles from almost opposite sides of the globe.

Rev. Ann Holmes Redding in Seattle thinks she can be both. Her Episcopal Church does not and is moving toward defrocking her if she does not renounce Islam. Redding, who has been an Episcopal priest for 25 years, first announced her dual faith over a year ago and was given 15 months to think it over. Now facing defrocking, she told Janet Tu of the Seattle Times that she is “still following Jesus in being a Muslim” and feels “privileged to see God in more places, rather than fewer places.”

Now take a Google Earth-style leap to Istanbul. There, Mustafa Akyol asked in the Turkish Daily News whether Islam required Christians and Jews to give up their traditions in order to be saved. The standard answer is yes, but Hayrettin Karaman, a professor emeritus of Islamic law, recently questioned that in the conservative Islamic daily newspaper Yeni Safak. “He noted that Islam does not necessarily ask Christians and Jews to abandon their traditions. It rather tells them to keep their traditions while respecting Islam as a sister faith,” Akyol wrote.

On the blog GetReligion, Mollie asks exactly where the doctrinal lines are. Judging from these two articles, it seems that Christians draw a clear line but Muslims may not. Is this the case? And if so, what does that mean for Christian-Muslim dialogue?

The June issue of “Harper’s Magazine” has a provocative essay by Garret Keizer called “Turning Away From Jesus: Gay rights and the war for the Episcopal Church.”

The split in the global Anglican Communion over the consecration of the openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson and the broader issue of the church’s take on sexual orientation and other social issues in general has been extensively reported on.

These fault lines are partly but far from exclusively geographical, dividing more traditional churches in the developing world — especially Africa — from those in the developed world. It threatens to undermine Anglican provinces like the Episcopal Church in the United States by creating competing authorities within them, one for a more liberal majority and another for a conservative minority.

Dissecting the jargon of the conflict, Keizer sees parallels between the corporate world and the shifting currents of globalization. “What is ‘provincial realignment,’ at bottom, if not the ecclesiastical version of a corporate merger? What is ‘alternative oversight,’ if not church talk for a hostile takeover?,” he writes, seeing these comparisons in the methods rather than the motives of those involved.

He also chimes in on a theme that has been raised in different ways elsewhere by others in dicussions of America’s Religious Right: “How does a Christian population implicated in militarism, usury, sweatshop labor and environmental rape find a way to sleep at night? Apparently, by making a very big deal out of not sleeping with Gene Robinson.”

Keizer is an Episcopalian, former priest and contributing editor to Harper’s.

The Anglican split will be back in the headlines in coming weeks as Gene Robinson marries his partner, conservative Anglicans meet in Amman and Jerusalem and the Anglican Communion — minus some conservatives led by Akinola — convenes for its once-every-ten-years Lambeth Conference. What do you think the Anglican Communion will look like after this rocky patch passes?

It has been spoken of as a setting for schism. But could the Lambeth Conference — the worldwide Anglican Communion’s once-a-decade global meeting beginning July 16 in England — be a bust when it comes to headline-making news?

That’s the way leaders of the U.S. Episcopal Church see it. There will be no grand pronouncements made or resolutions voted on, they say. The traditional Western parliamentary idea that produces winners and losers on debated issues has been scrapped for face-to-face meetings. Some of them have been baptized ”Indaba groups,” which Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has described as a Zulu term denoting “a meeting for purposeful discussion among equals.”

The Rev. Ian Douglas, a professor of World Christianity at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts who helped plan the meeting, recently told reporters at a briefing:

“I appreciate that it’s going to be a hard job for the media because there isn’t a focal point of up-down decison making, and that (much) of what’s really happening … is going to be happening in very small, very close one-on-one relationships and deep conversation.

“I  don’t envy your job. It’s going to be difficult to get ‘the story’ out of Lambeth unless you want to tell the story that as leaders come together to be better equipped in their service to God’s mission in the wider world,  not only is the Anglican Communion strengthened but God’s purposes are better fulfilled in the wider world. It’s a tough story to tell but I think it’s a story.”

The 1998 Lambeth Conference did produce news — a resolution known as Lambeth 1:10 that said homosexual practice is incompatible with scripture. That pronouncement became a major part of the splintering now going on in the worldwide church after the American branch in 2003 installed the first the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of Anglican history — Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Robinson was not invited to this summer’s meeting at Canterbury though he plans a fringe presence — after he weds his long-time partner in June.

The news at Lambeth ‘08 then may be more about who doesn’t come. Already 280 conservative bishops from Africa, Latin America and Asia have said they will attend a break-away summit in Jerusalem in June to “prepare for an Anglican future in which the Gospel is uncompromised and Christ-centered mission a top priority.” They expect about 1,000 conservative Anglican leaders to attend.

Bishops from Uganda, Kenya and Australia have said they plan to boycott Lambeth, to which more than 800 bishops have been invited. Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, a leader among the traditionalists, has said he may also skip Lambeth.

Douglas, in the briefing mentioned earlier, said the hope is that the bishops who attend the meeting in Jerusalem will also go to Lambeth. There is, he said, “no fear or concern” that the Jerusalem summit is an exclusionary Lambeth alternative.

Much of this reflects Anglicanism’s structure where federation trumps hierarchy. The Episcopal News Service noted at one point that there is no complete agreement on when any resolution passed by a Lambeth Conference becomes official church teaching. The Lambeth meetings, which date to the 19th century, do not have specific authority to require compliance with their resolutions, it said.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who joined Douglas at the briefing, also has a long-term view. One of the first Lambeth Conferences well over a century ago, she said, was called “to deal with issues like bishops teaching things that other bishops found uncomfortable, and bishops wandering into other bishops’ territories and how do to we transfer clergy from one part of the communion to another.

“And we still haven’t sorted that out. The gathering will continue to wrestle with some of the challenges of living together in a compex, diverse and sometimes challenging family. That is God’s gift to use and we celebrate it,” she said at the briefing (view webcast here).

It also reflects Anglicanism’s diversity, with half of its 77 million members now in Africa, Asia and Latin America, many with conservative views on issues that go deeper than just those involving gays. In terms of numbers, the bishops organizing the Jerusalem meeting claim to represent 17 countries and 35 million followers.

The road from Jerusalem to Canterbury will be closely watched.

The Episcopal Church has been riven by the issue of ordaining gay clergy and the broader issue of gay rights. Now Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has taken a stand on an issue which is probably not as divisive, at least in Episcopal and Anglican circles: climate change.

In a letter to the U.S. Senate on Monday, Schori urged the body to “take up climate change legislation at the earliest possible moment.”

“Climate change is a threat not only to God’s creation but to all of humanity,” Schori said, noting that her concerns were formed by both her faith and her training as a scientist. She has a background in oceanography, making her perhaps better qualified than most spiritual leaders to comment on the issue.

Schori said that climate change caused by carbon fuel emissions exacerbated poverty, creating a vicious cycle as poverty itself contributed to global warming as the poor felled forests and sought other sources of energy.

U.S. evangelicals have made similar points when calling for action on the issue. While America’s roughly 75 million evangelicals far outnumber the 2.4 million member Episcopal Church, the former are deeply divided on the issue.

The evangelical left and center have embraced it under the banner of “creation care” while the evangelical right remains suspicious of calls to reduce U.S. carbon emissions, partly because of their close ties to the business wing of the Republican Party, partly because some see humanity having “dominion” over nature.

But even the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest evangelical denomination, said recently that it had neglected the issue in the past but would take stronger though unspecified stances in the future.

The mainline Episcopal Church may not have such a sharp divide on the issue, which will be a welcome relief to many in its fragmenting fold.