The resolutions are a reaction to a decision during last spring's 2003
General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA to elect the Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion, as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. The vote has prompted some Episcopalians to leave the denomination or curtail contributions to their churches, requiring budget cutbacks.

"Whether the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia remains united or whether it shatters as members and perhaps entire parishes leave it will be decided by (the) diocesan convention vote," says Dr. Matt Vester, senior warden of Trinity Episcopal Church in Morgantown and a WVA organizer. "Membership in the Diocese has declined50 percent over the past 30 years.

Should the Diocese of West Virginia fail to pass resolutions that distance
it from the actions of the national church, this demographic and financial
decline will likely accelerate."

Vester says that 19 of 38 provincial Anglican churches and archbishops have declared broken or impaired community with the national Episcopal Church after the convention's vote and its decision to give dioceses the option of allowing same-sex blessings. Members of more than 15 parishes have joined West Virginia Anglicans, and the group has been experiencing steady growth each month since its creation in December 2003, Vester said.

More than 200 families in the diocese have expressed support for the group's aims.

But the group's views are far from being universally accepted.

"The polity of the church is like the United States of America," says the
Rev. Donald Vinson, rector of St. John's Episcopal Church on Washington Boulevard.

"For a diocese to disassociate itself or declare void an action of the church is similar to a state like West Virginia declaring a national
law void. I see those resolutions in that light."

The Rev. Mark Seitz, rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Wheeling, is sponsoring a financial resolution that permits parishes to redirect the money that would normally go to the national church to a ministry designated by the diocese.

Another resolution sponsored by Seitz dissociates itself from the actions of the General Convention that it says were "contrary to Holy Scripture" and that had the effect of "separating the church from the Anglican Communion and from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The Rev. Kirk Haas, rector of Trinity Church in Morgantown who is
sponsoring the resolution to reaffirm traditional teachings, says it
is "not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's
Word written."

"The crisis that has been created in the Episcopal Church USA and in the
worldwide Anglican Communion by the actions of the 2003 General Convention is primarily a crisis of how Christians can know spiritual truth," Haas says.

"Without the universal authority of Holy Scripture, the Church is reduced to personal opinions that may be manipulated by the prevailing
culture."

Vester adds that the General Convention vote in effect established that the leaders of the national Episcopal church have the power to excise some parts of the Bible and substitute cultural prescriptions.

"These actions also establish that a plain reading of the Bible is no
longer possible, since what might seem obvious to a lay reader may now be deemed irrelevant or even repulsive by some leaders within the national structure," he says.

The Right Rev. W. Michie Klusmeyer, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, says that West Virginia Anglicans have no status in the diocese or the national church.

"They are not an official body of any kind in the church," he says.

The convention, which opens at 1 p.m. Friday in the Marshall Student
Center, is open to the public.

END