Until Friday's decision, 93 US dioceses allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry in the church. Eight did not.

The decision by the Episcopal church's governing body overrides those local decisions.

Same-sex couples may request the church's approved gender-neutral marriage rites and will be able to marry in their home parish even if their local bishop has moral objections to gay marriage.

If the local bishop opposes same-sex weddings, the parish priest can still conduct the ceremony. If they wish, they can ask for pastoral support from a bishop in another diocese.

Clergy may also decline to bless or solemnise any marriage.

Bishop Lawrence Provenzano, who helped craft the resolution, said the arrangement provides greater inclusion for LGBT couples without alienating traditionalists.

"This [writing gender-neutral marriage rites] was really a pastoral solution ...one that was mindful of trying to hold on to everybody," he said.

A previous resolution would have effectively made same-sex marriage part of the official theology of the church by inserting the new liturgies in the Book of Common Prayer.

Provenzano said this would have been "a step too fast," for bishops who are biblically at odds with same-sex marriage and have threatened to leave the denomination over the issue.

Not all the bishops are at ease with the solution, however.

One says he is concerned LGBT Episcopalians would feel like second-class citizens without official adoption of the new marriage liturgies in the Book of Common Prayer.

Others said it was likely only a matter of time before the liturgies were added officially.

Opponents raised concerns about undermining bishops' authority and about possible schism within the church.

Bishop John Bauerschmidt, who banned same-sex weddings from the Tennessee diocese in 2015, said there is still "much to work out."

He said the resolution allows access to the liturgies for same sex marriage while preserving the rights and responsibilities of the parish clergy for the use of their buildings for any liturgy.

"It also preserves the ministry of bishops as chief pastors and teachers in our dioceses."

"We will be working out what it means for our diocese with clergy and congregations in the coming days," he said.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Tennessean
• Image: YouTube

Based on comments by the presiding bishop of the US Episcopal Church, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Irish Times reported the conference had been cancelled.

Bishop Schori said the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was "very clear that he is not going to call a Lambeth until he is reasonably certain that the vast majority of bishops would attend".

No planning or fundraising has taken place for a 2018 conference, she observed.

One blog reported her saying that the Archbishop of Canterbury had told her that the conference had been cancelled.

The Lambeth Conference, a gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world, traditionally takes place every ten years.

The 2008 conference was marred by a significant boycott over the gay clergy issue, the Irish Times article noted.

Bishop Schori said the next Lambeth Conference "needs to be preceded by a primates meeting at which a vast majority of primates are present".

As Archbishop Welby "continues his visits around the [Anglican] communion to those primates it's unlikely that he will call such a meeting at all until at least a year from now or probably 18 months from now", she said.

"Therefore I think we are looking at 2019, more likely 2020, before a Lambeth Conference."

But the Virtue OnLine Anglican news service said the blog which broke the story about the Lambeth Conference being cancelled failed to check with Lambeth Palace.

Lambeth spokesman Ed Thornton told VOL the cancellation hasn't been confirmed yet "and we won't be commenting at least until primates visits are completed".

An Anglican bishop subsequently told VOL that the Archbishop of Canterbury may well postpone Lambeth till 2020.

"It is by no means cancelled, it is still too early to say," the VOL article continued.

"2018 is four years away and anything can happen between now and then."

Sources

• Irish Times
• Virtue Online
• Anglican Ink
• Image: 40Yearsordained2000yearsministry.com

Bishop Gene Robinson's election in 2003 shocked the worldwide Anglican communion.

After entering into a civil union with his partner of 25 years Mark Andrews in 2008, Bishop Robinson announced the split in May this year, the Religion News Service reports.

"As you can imagine, this is a difficult time for us — not a decision entered into lightly or without much counselling," Bishop Robinson wrote in a letter.

"My belief in marriage is undiminished by the reality of divorcing someone I have loved for a very long time, and will continue to love even as we separate," Bishop Robinson wrote in a column for the Daily Beast.

"Love can endure, even if a marriage cannot."

But he wrote it is a comfort "as a gay rights and marriage equality advocate, to know that like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subject to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples".

Due to changes in New Hampshire laws on same-sex marriage, Bishop Robinson became legally married to his partner when they didn't opt out of the change in state law.

In 2003, hundreds of people left the Episcopal Church in protest at Bishop Robinson's consecration.

Critics said Robinson's actions defied scriptural authority and thousands of years of Christian tradition.

His divorce could fuel the fire, said Douglas LeBlanc, an Episcopalian and former editor at Christianity Today.

"I'm sure there might be some conservatives who might say, ‘We told you so all along, if you depart from church teachings on homosexuality, you're opening the door to all kinds of chaos,'" LeBlanc said.

"In many ways, I think you are. But I think it's imperative to say, the [Episcopal Church's] house of bishops is not lacking on heterosexual sin."

In 2012, the Episcopal Church voted to allow bishops to permit priests to bless same-sex marriages.

Bishop Robinson retired as Bishop of New Hampshire last year.

He went public with his sexual identity and divorce from his wife in 1986.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• The Daily Beast
• Image: Virtue Online

As a result, today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians. It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes. Read more

Sources

• Ross Douthat in The New York Times Sunday Review
• Image: God Discussion

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009.