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COLORADO: Dissension, deficit conflict diocese
By Jean Torkelson
Rocky Mountain News
November 5, 2005
The Episcopal Diocese of Colorado passed its third consecutive deficit budget last weekend as the issue of homosexual rights continued to overshadow the chance of unity between liberals and conservatives.
About 600 delegates met in Grand Junction to pass a $1.7 million budget, which includes a deficit of about $77,000.
Parish donations in Colorado plunged $340,000 in 2004, widely seen as a reaction to resolutions passed the previous year by Episcopal Church USA that approved of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire and gave the OK for dioceses to develop same-sex blessings.
This year, parish-giving has seen a "modest increase of about three percent," said Beckett Stokes, spokeswoman for the diocese.
"We believe we have turned the corner," Stokes said.
The Rev. Don Armstrong, of Colorado Springs, from the church's most conservative wing, said he left the state convention discouraged because Bishop Rob O'Neill went on record again saying he personally supports gay rights although that view has been severely criticized by an international church body.
In the so-called Windsor Report, issued in January, the worldwide Anglican Communion, composed of 37 provinces, chastised the American province for causing "deep offense" to other Anglicans. It pointed out that same-sex policies are contrary to a 1998 declaration of the worldwide communion that homosexual acts were "incompatible with Scripture."
The Windsor document recommended that the U.S. put a brake on same-sex policies while theologians study the issue. O'Neill adopted that policy in Colorado.
Last weekend, in a statement to delegates and during a local newspaper interview, O'Neill said, despite his personal views, he is committed to upholding Windsor and to work for unity throughout the Anglican Communion."It's fair to say that I fall on the liberal side of moderate," O'Neill told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.
However, having a bishop with a "divided mind" makes it hard to raise money and draw people into the Episcopal Church, said Armstrong, pastor of Grace and St. Stephen Episcopal Church in Colorado Springs, one of the largest among the dioceses' 116 parishes.
Armstrong predicted a split in the Episcopal Church USA after next summer's next national convention, with conservatives and moderates winning control largely because they have the backing of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
However, other Colorado Episcopalians were more hopeful of uniting factions. They pointed to the fact that a coalition of liberal and conservative clergy collaborated at the Grand Junction meeting on an amendment calling for "charitable discussion" of the homosexuality controversy.
The original resolution merely called on members to "welcome the Windsor report" and "work fully to support its recommendations."
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