Mainline mess

Religion | This year could see many Protestant denominations fracture | Edward E. Plowman

Three embattled mainline denominations face critical decisions in 2006 that could lead to dramatic upheavals:

Episcopal Church (ECUSA)

The 2.3-million-member Episcopal Church (ECUSA) is scheduled to vote on whether it will apologize and repent for consecrating an openly gay bishop in 2003, as many top archbishops from the rest of the international Anglican Communion have demanded. ECUSA leaders, already banned from Anglicanism's chief policy-making body and disfellowshipped by many of the Communion's archbishops, have served notice they will not agree that what they did was wrong.

Enshrining that position in a vote at the 2006 General Convention this summer would most certainly lead to a breakup of the Communion into affluent minority liberal and underfunded majority conservative alliances within two years (at the next worldwide Anglican Lambeth Conference in 2008). In that scenario, many conservative ECUSA dioceses and churches would be named by the majority to replace ECUSA as the authentic Anglican presence in America. The legal haggling could go on for years.