Take comfort in this: The items on the following “to do” list do not apply to all teens today.

Lie to your parents about those wild weekend plans — check.

Steal that scarf you want at the mall — check.

Download that term paper off the Internet and add a few mistakes to confuse the teacher — check.

Inflate your volunteer hours at your church’s soup kitchen to pump up that college application — check.

The problem with the Josephson Institute’s latest survey — the 2008 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth — is that it contained so many bad numbers that many depressing readers were tempted to pin an “all of the above” verdict on most teens.

Consider the numbers on stealing. Nearly of third of the students surveyed — 29,760 in 100 randomly selected public and private high schools — admitted stealing from a store during the previous year. Also, 23 percent said they stole from a parent or relative. The numbers were lower for honors students and those who attended religious schools, but around 20 percent of them stole something from someone.

It’s easy to criticize the young, but it’s also important to know that they’re learning these behaviors from the adults around them, said Michael Josephson, founder of the Los Angeles-based ethics center.

“Did you lie about your child’s age to save money? Did you provide your child with a false excuse for missing school? Did you lie about your address to get your child into a better school?”, he asked, in a commentary about the survey. “Most of us stray from our highest ethical ambitions from time to time, but we usually do so selectively, convincing ourselves that we’re justified and that occasional departures from our ethical principles are inconsequential when it comes to our overall character.

“Most of us judge ourselves by our best actions and intentions, but the children who watch everything we do may be learning from our worst.”

The sobering numbers leapt into headlines nationwide, while the researchers said the truth was almost certainly worse — since 26 percent of the participants admitted that they lied on at least one or two of the prickly questions. Students took part in the survey during class sessions, with guarantees of anonymity.

Other results noted by the institute included:

* More then eight in 10 students — 83 percent — admitted that they lied to a parent about an issue of some importance, while 43 percent of the students in public and private schools said that they have lied to save money.

* In a 2006 survey, 60 percent of the students said they cheated on at least one test and 35 percent cheated two or more times. This year, the numbers rose to 64 percent and 38 percent on the same issues.

* The Internet makes plagiarism easy, with 36 percent of the students confessing that vice — up from 33 percent in 2004.

* Self-esteem is not a problem, since 93 percent of the students reported that their ethics and character were satisfactory and, in a popular quote from the survey, 77 percent said, “when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.”

Buried deep in the survey form was another question that would be of special interest to clergy and other religious leaders who work with the young. When asked if they had done “things in violation of my religious beliefs” during the past year, 48 percent of those polled affirmed a simple answer — never. Another 15 percent confessed to one violation of their personal religious beliefs.

This survey is more proof that something has gone wrong with the way Americans are teaching their young people the meaning of right and wrong, said evangelical activist Charles Colson.

“Instead of being rooted in an objective moral order that exists independently of ourselves, right and wrong are subjective — they’re the product of the person’s ‘values.’ In that case, it makes perfect sense that people can lie, cheat, and steal and still be ‘satisfied’ with their ethics,” he said, in a radio commentary.

“After all, they are not answerable to God or the community, only to themselves. The question isn’t, ‘How shall we live?’ but, ‘How do I feel about it?’ “

NEXT: The theological content of “whatever.”

Send article as PDF to

So Pope Benedict XVI visited the White House and proclaimed “God bless America!” Then he noted that, in this culture of radical individualism, “Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility.”

The former theology professor, speaking to Catholic college leaders, enthusiastically embraced academic freedom. Then he stressed that traditional doctrine — as “upheld by the Church’s Magisterium” — should shape all aspects of a truly Catholic “institution’s life, both inside and outside the classroom.”

The former prisoner of war, speaking at the United Nations, hailed the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then he dared to claim that the document’s defense of universal truths is built on “the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations.”

The pope spoke to a wide variety of audiences during this visit and he emphasized words of praise and encouragement, not judgment. After all, Benedict could speak to gatherings of U.S. politicians and global diplomats, but he knew that he had no real authority over them. Also, as strange as it sounds, the pope’s control over what happens on Catholic campuses is limited, at best.

Thus, the message that mattered the most came when Benedict faced the 350 American bishops in the crypt under the soaring Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. In theory, the bishops answer directly to the pope when it comes time to explain what happens at their altars and in the pews.

The sound bite that dominated the news afterwards focused on the sexual abuse of children and teens by Catholic clergy, with the pope agreeing with Chicago Cardinal Francis George’s verdict that the scandal was “sometimes very badly handled” by the church hierarchy.

“Many of you have spoken to me of the enormous pain that your communities have suffered when clerics have betrayed their priestly obligations and duties by such gravely immoral behavior,” said Benedict. “Rightly, you attach priority to showing compassion and care to the victims. It is your God-given responsibility as pastors to bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust, to foster healing, to promote reconciliation and to reach out with loving concern to those so seriously wronged. …

“Now that the scale and gravity of the problem is more clearly understood, you have been able to adopt more focused remedial and disciplinary measures and to promote a safe environment that gives greater protection to young people. While it must be remembered that the overwhelming majority of clergy and religious in America do outstanding work … it is vitally important that the vulnerable always be shielded from those who would cause harm.”

A leader of a support group for victims pressed on. The pope’s statement that the scandal was “somewhat mishandled” is inaccurate, because “this is a current crisis, not a past one,” said Barbara Doris of St. Louis, speaking for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “The phrase obscures the unassailable fact that hundreds of bishops willfully and repeatedly deceive parishioners, stonewall police and leave children at risk.”

But there was more to this speech than one big quotation. While the pope’s address challenged the bishops to keep wrestling with the sexual-abuse scandal, he also put these evil acts in a wider framework — an era of revolt against the church’s moral teachings. And who is in charge of defending these doctrines, while finding ways to strengthen marriages and families?

That would be the church’s bishops, said Benedict. Thus, he urged them to address the sin of abuse within the “wider context of sexual mores,” thus setting an example for society as a whole. This crisis, he said, calls “for a determined, collective response,” a response led by the bishops.

“Children deserve to grow up with a healthy understanding of sexuality and its proper place in human relationships,” he said. “They should be spared the degrading manifestations and the crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today. … What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?

“We need to reassess urgently the values underpinning society, so that a sound moral formation can be offered to young people and adults alike.”

Send article as PDF to

After all, he was one of the top sex researchers in a nation known for its freewheeling, laissez faire attitudes about matters of the heart. However, Giami silenced her when she used a dangerous word.

“What do you call ‘infidelity’? I don’t know what ‘infidelity’ is,” he said, in what the former Wall Street Journal correspondent later described as a “rant.”

“I don’t share this view of things, so I would not use this word,” he added, and then delivered the coup de grace. “It implies religious values.”

Thank goodness Druckerman didn’t say “adultery.” For most researchers, this term has become a judgmental curse that cannot be used without implying the existence of the words “Thou shalt not commit.” This issue came up over and over as she traveled the world doing interviews for her book “Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee.”

“If I asked someone, ‘Have you ever committed adultery?’, it was like God entered the room at that moment,” said Druckerman, reached at her home in Paris. “That really is the religious word, ‘adultery.’ I had to start saying ‘infidelity’ or use a more careful combination of words.”

While she didn’t set out to write a book about sex and religion, Druckerman found that in large parts of the world — from Bible Belt cities to Orthodox Jewish enclaves, from Islamic nations to post-Soviet Russia — it’s hard to talk about infidelity without talking about sin, guilt, confession, healing and a flock of other religious topics.

However, she also reached a conclusion that many clergy will find disturbing. When push comes to shove, cheaters are going to do what they’re going to do — whether God is watching or not.

What does faith have to do with it? Not much. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is evidence that adultery is nowhere near as common as most religious people think it is.

Take, for example, the numbers that many consider “gospel” on this issue — the claims by sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in the mid-20th Century that half of American men and a quarter of women have cheated on their spouses. While some writers keep using these statistics, Druckerman said they are “extremely problematic.”

Recent studies offer a vivid contrast. In the early 1990s, she noted, 21 percent of American men and 10 percent of women said they had cheated while married. In 2004, 21 percent of men and 12 percent of women said they had strayed at least once.

Meanwhile, 3.8 percent of married French men and 2 percent of married French women say they’ve had an affair during the past year — in one of the world’s most secular nations. And in highly religious America? The parallel figures are 3.9 percent of the married men and 3.1 percent of the women.

While Americans remain obsessed with adultery, this now seems to be rooted in this culture’s commitment to an “ubermonogamy” built on the all-powerful doctrines of modern romance, argued Druckerman. Lacking shared religious convictions — while living in the era of no-fault divorce — millions of Americans have decided that having a happy, fulfilling, faithful marriage is an entitlement, a kind of sacrament in and of itself.

If a marriage crashes, both religious and non-religious Americans usually place their faith in another substitute for the old structures of faith and family. They turn to professional counselors linked to what Druckerman calls the “marriage industrial complex,” where, for a price, repentance and restoration can take place in public or in private. Ask Bill Clinton about that.

All of this represents the reality of America’s “sexual culture,” which, while it may have Puritanism in its DNA, has also been shaped by the modern sexual revolution.

“Even when I talked to religious people about adultery, they weren’t really worried about God, about God striking them down for their sins,” concluded Druckerman. “Americans just don’t think that way now. Even the religious people were more worried about what their families, or perhaps the people in their religious communities, would think of them. …

“When it comes to matters of infidelity, Christian Americans act more like Americans than they do like Christians.”

Send article as PDF to

The simple blue letters declare, “My daddy’s name is Donor.” You can buy a baby bib with the same proclamation.

For a self-proclaimed “marriage nut” like David Blankenhorn, it’s hard to see this consumer product as a positive statement about modern family life.

Of course, America has been evolving for several decades after the cultural revolutions that changed how millions of people live together, break up, get married, get divorced, have children or some combination of all the above.

Thus, the president of the Institute for American Values keeps hearing this big question: “What is the future of marriage?” It’s a logical question, since his most recent book is called “The Future of Marriage.” There is no easy answer, however, other than stating the fact that elite opinion makers and academics are convinced that old-fashioned, especially religious, traditions about marriage are fading.

“The smart money says, ‘Down the tubes,’ ” said Blankenhorn, speaking recently at Gordon College, an evangelical Protestant campus near Boston. “The big word is ‘deinstitutionalization.’ … It’s this notion of redefining marriage into just being a kind of Hallmark greeting card that says, ‘We’re in love, we have a commitment, oh special us.’ That’s what marriage is.”

This trend can be seen in current definitions of “marriage” — legal and otherwise. During his two years of research on the question, he ran into several breezy answers to the question, “What is marriage?”

For some people, it is a “unique expression of a private bond and profound love,” while others prefer a ”private arrangement between parties committed to love.” If that doesn’t work, try a ”specific relationship of love and dedication to another person” or even ”committed, interdependent partnerships between consenting adults.”

The highest court in Massachusetts, in its majority opinion in 2003 backing gay marriage, strategically called marriage the “exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other” offering “love and mutual support.”

This last variation on the theme is crucial, because debates about the future of marriage are now — like it or not — part of our culture’s bitter conflicts about the legal rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals. Meanwhile, divorce rates remain high and millions of children are being raised in single-parent homes.

Blankenhorn consistently identifies himself as a Christian and as a political liberal who supports what he calls the “equal dignity of homosexual love” and of gay relationships. In an interview with the conservative magazine World, he bluntly said: “I know that many Christians believe that any sex other than sex between married spouses is wrong. I respect that view, but I do not share it.”

However, Blankenhorn also argues that all attempts to define marriage as a vague, private, self-defined relationship will inevitably weaken an institution that — across a wide range of cultures and faiths — has emphasized the importance of children being raised by their natural fathers and mothers. Thus, he stressed, marriage has always had a civic and even legal dimension.

Contemporary definitions of “marriage” also strive to avoid two crucial words.

The first, Blankenhorn noted, is “S-E-X. Heat. Lust. Passion. Bodies entangled. Sex, behind closed doors in the bedroom. You know, because in the whole history of the world everybody — up until about three minutes ago — has always acknowledged that marriage is the social recognition of a sexual relationship that involves sex.”

The second missing word is “children.” Anyone who studies history and anthropology, he said, would quickly conclude that discussing marriage without mentioning children would be like having a “long discussion about General Motors and nobody mentioning cars.”

But today, individual adults are convinced that marriage is all about them and that this means that they should be able to make their own rules. Thus, the key question is whether Americans believe that the individual couple is bigger than the institution of marriage or that “the marriage is bigger than the couple,” said Blankenhorn.

“We have completely forgotten this idea that maybe there is something transcendent, maybe there is something bigger than us that shapes us,” he said. “Maybe the vow shapes us. Maybe we don’t simply come up with the vow ourselves and say, ‘Here’s our marriage — wonderful sexy us.’ No, there is something bigger than us that tells us what to be and that big something else is marriage.”

Send article as PDF to

This branch of the Anglican Communion stretches from Algeria to Iran, a part of the world in which there are few Anglicans, but millions of Muslims, Jews, Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Nevertheless, the archbishop of this tiny Anglican flock dared to bring a blunt message to the powerful Episcopal Church this past week — please be candid as well as careful.

American bishops may believe that God wants them to modernize ancient doctrines about sex, marriage, salvation and the authority of scripture, said Archbishop Mouneer Anis of Egypt. But it’s getting harder for other Anglicans to explain news about same-sex unions and gay bishops to their ecumenical and interfaith neighbors at home.

“You may believe you have discovered a very different truth from that of the majority in the Anglican Communion,” said Anis, speaking to the men and women of the U.S. House of Bishops gathered in New Orleans. “It is not just about sexuality, but about your views of Christ, the Gospel and the authority of the Bible.

“Please forgive me when I relay that some say you are a different church, others even think that you are a different religion.”

This meeting of the U.S. bishops was even more tense than usual because the world’s Anglican primates, in a Feb. 19 communiqu

Send article as PDF to

The most popular answers sound something like this: “Ten. One to change the bulb and nine to start a newsletter about the irreplaceability of the original bulb.”

Episcopalians do love their traditions, a trait that they share with everyone else in the Anglican Communion. Nevertheless, the reason the world’s 77 million Anglicans fight so much is that many cherish some traditions more than others or sincerely believe that, in changing times, some traditions trump others.

Consider, for example, the recent letter from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to Nigerian Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, urging him not to visit the United States to lead rites installing a bishop here to minister to those who believe the Episcopal Church has veered into heresy.

Send article as PDF to

It’s the rite at the end of the white wedding, long after the symbolic handoff of the blushing bride from the father to the groom, the litany of modernized vows and the lifting of the bride’s veil. That’s when the minister gives the new husband permission, at last, to “kiss the bride.”

“What patsies these poor clergy members must feel like,” quips journalist Caitlin Flanagan, in her saucy, yet poignant memoir “To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife.”

The typical minister must feel a flash of shame as he or she is “forced into the role of a sexual naif primly instructing a young man who has been living with his girlfriend for the past three years that he may ‘kiss the bride.’ Well why not? He’s been doing God knows what else to her since the night they met at the softball league happy hour.”

Consider, she added, the bride-to-be who “spent down her sexual capital a little too early in the game.” She shared her dilemma in Brides magazine: “I promised my fianc

Send article as PDF to

America’s third-largest flock just survived another quadrennial General Conference rocked by media-friendly fighting over sex. Now it’s time to dissect the numbers.

Delegates voted 570-334 to affirm the historic doctrines of the Christian faith.

Efforts to back laws defining “marriage as the union of one man and one woman” passed on a 624-184 vote. Same-sex union rites fell — 756-159. Should the church delete its “faithfulness in marriage and celibacy in singleness” standard for clergy? Delegates voted 806-95 to say “no.”

The big news was a 579-376 vote against weakening the Book of Discipline’s law that self-avowed, practicing homosexuals cannot be clergy because homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” Delegates also rejected a resolution from gay-rights supporters that said: “We recognize that Christians disagree on the compatibility of homosexual practice with Christian teaching.” That vote was 527-423.

After three decades of pain, it seemed the numbers were stacking up for United Methodist conservatives, whose churches are thriving in the American Sunbelt and the Third World.

But a final plot twist remained in Pittsburgh. A key leader caused fireworks by saying it’s time to end the war over the Bible and sex — by separating the armies.

“Our culture alone confronts us with more challenges than we can humanly speaking confront and challenge. That struggle, combined with the continuous struggle in the church, is more than we can bear. Our people, who have been faithful and patient, should not have to continue to endure our endless conflict,” said the Rev. William Hinson, retired pastor of the 12,000-member First United Methodist Church of Houston, at a breakfast for conservatives.

“I believe the time has come when we must begin to explore an amicable and just separation that will free us both from our cycle of pain and conflict. Such a just separation will protect the property rights of churches and the pension rights of clergy. It will also free us to reclaim our high calling and to fulfill our mission in the world.”

To understand the roots of this move — which parallels divisions looming in other oldline Protestant churches — it helps to dig a little deeper into the United Methodist numbers.

Hinson is president of the “Confessing Movement,” with 1,400 churches with 650,000 members. Gay-rights supporters have a Reconciling Ministries Network of 192 churches, with 17,000 members.

But there are 35,000 congregations in all, with 8.3 million members. Sickened by decades of decline — membership was 11 million in 1970 — the last thing Methodists in the institutional middle wanted to hear was the word “schism.” Before the conference closed, delegates linked hands, sang a hymn and passed a symbolic call for unity, 869 to 41.

And there was another number that deserved study. General Conference voted by a narrow 455-445 to clarify which Discipline violations can lead to a trial. The list of chargeable offenses now includes failing to be “celibate in singleness or being unfaithful in a heterosexual marriage; being a self-avowed practicing homosexual; conducting ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions or performing same-sex wedding ceremonies.”

But leaders on both sides noted that about 20 percent of the delegates this year came from Africa, Asia and Latin America — where churches are more conservative. Efforts to enforce the Discipline’s teachings might fall short, if left to delegates from North American churches. United Methodist progressives also continue to dominate the church’s bureaucracies and seminaries.

So be it, said theologian Thomas Oden, a former United Methodist liberal who now is a conservative strategist. The key during the next four years is for local church leaders to weigh options for how to end the national warfare over the Bible and sex.

“We don’t particularly care about the powers that be. What we care about is the doctrine and the Discipline in our church,” he said. “That’s were our focus is and that’s where it will stay. … But the actual enforcement of those teachings remains a problem for us, as it is for most Protestant churches today.

“We know that we will be struggling with that issue for decades. That’s the question: We know what our church teaches, but do we have the will to enforce it?”

Send article as PDF to

The bishops defrocked the priest, bulldozed the church and burned the wreckage.

“Father Vladimir Enert, who married the gay couple, committed a sin in doing so,” a church spokesman told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. “He desecrated the place. We therefore needed to destroy the chapel.”

They call it the Orthodox Church for a reason. This is why ecclesiastical politicos gasped when they read that an Orthodox bishop attended rites consecrating Bishop V. Gene Robinson as the Episcopal Church’s first noncelibate, openly gay bishop.

This was an historic occasion and the whole ecumenical world was watching.

“Frankly, I have been surprised that so many people are upset about this,” said Bishop Paul Peter Jesep of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church-Sobornopravna. “I believe Bishop Robinson was duly and prayerfully elected and, besides, I think it’s inappropriate for one church to try and tell another how to fulfill its mission.”

The 39-year-old bishop — a former lawyer, journalist, U.S. Senate aide and founder of ModerateRepublican.net — stressed that acted on his own and that his church has not addressed Robinson’s consecration.

Orthodox leaders also noted that Jesep serves a tiny splinter church that plays no role in the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas. There are dozens of non-canonical “Orthodox” flocks, including at least 16 other Ukrainian bodies.

Meanwhile, the American bishops are standing their ground. The conference proclaimed: “The Orthodox Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality, firmly grounded in Holy Scripture, 2000 years of church tradition, and canon law, holds that marriage consists in the conjugal union of a man and a woman. … Neither Scripture nor Holy Tradition blesses or sanctions such a union between persons of the same sex.”

Greek Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh was blunter: “Do these Anglican thinkers realize that an evil spirit may be behind all these things? What the Orthodox denounce in these false practices and teachings is that they are the practices and teachings which oppose the Will of God as taught by the Bible, thus, being the result of our fallen, sinful, human ‘experience!’ “

Nevertheless, the New Hampshire rites drew many mainline clerics. The ecumenical procession included representatives of the American Baptists, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Unitarian-Universalists, United Methodists and others.

Lutheran Bishop Krister Stendahl of Sweden took part and it was announced that he also represented the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said Father Robert Stiefel of the diocesan transition team. This was symbolic, because of an ELCA and Episcopal accord to share sacraments and clergy.

Apparently no Catholic clergy took part, although Jesep said several Catholic lay leaders joined the procession. Catholic bishops have often been observers at Anglican consecrations — but not this time.

Pope John Paul II recently warned Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams that the ties that bind them are at the breaking point. “New and serious” obstacles block the path to unity.

“These difficulties are not all of a merely disciplinary nature,” said the papal text. “Some extend to essential matters of faith and morals. … Faced with the increasing secularism of today’s world, the church must ensure that the deposit of faith is proclaimed in its integrity and preserved from erroneous and misguided interpretations.”

No additional commentary was needed, especially in a time when the powerful Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is showing a willingness to build new bridges to Anglican traditionalists in America and England. Might there even be a new “Anglican rite” in communion with Rome?

Whatever happens will happen, said Jesep. While the New Hampshire consecration may rattle other altars and pews, critics of Robinson’s ministry must realize that the U.S. Episcopal Church has made its choice and acted on it.

“The larger issue is not who participated and who did not participate,” he said. “The real issue is that there is a gay bishop — period. The issue now is how the church reacts to this as a Christian family.

Send article as PDF to

their vows.

“I take you to have and to hold from this day forward, to love and to

cherish, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, as my

companion, lover and friend.”

The congregation responds: “Blessed be God who appears to us in their love.”

There is the exchanging of rings, familiar scriptures, a kiss and a

blessing on the couple’s “acts of tenderness and intimacy.” They may be

crowned or anointed before Holy Communion. The priest may lead them in a

procession around the altar, cover them with a veil or tie their hands with

a cord.

This is not a wedding.

Nevertheless, “A Rite for the Celebration of Commitment to a Life Together”

features a barrage of symbols from centuries of marriage rites. This 1996

text is an American example of the same-sex union rites that are shaking

the 70-million-member Anglican Communion.

“This rite is clearly parasitic on marriage,” said Edith Humphrey, a

Canadian Anglican who teaches at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. “At least

this American rite is in your face, so you know what is being communicated.

That kind of candor is refreshing. … This certainly looks like a marriage

rite.”

But most supporters say these rites merely bless existing same-sex

relationships. This distinction is crucial, according to Vancouver School

of Theology liturgist Richard Leggett.

“Despite some similarities to the marriage rite, the underlying theology

and the distinctive liturgical elements define a covenant that is unique

and that poses no threat to marriage as the sacramental union of a

heterosexual couple,” argued Leggett, commenting on a new Canadian rite.

Instead, this gives “liturgical expression to a new thing that God is doing

in our midst, life-long stable and covenanted relationships for gay and

lesbian disciples of Christ.”

There is fire behind these academic words. After decades of guerrilla

tactics, open Anglican warfare has erupted on three fronts.

In Canada, Bishop Michael Ingham — after numerous delays — on May 23

issued a same-sex union rite for use in his Diocese of New Westminster.

Meanwhile, the Diocese of New Hampshire elected Father Gene Robinson as the

Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop, guaranteeing pre-consecration

debates at the U.S. General Convention that begins July 30 in Minneapolis.

That gathering also faces a California resolution seeking rites to express

the church’s blessing on “all couples living in life-long committed

relationships of mutuality and fidelity outside the relationship of

marriage, which mediate the grace of God.”

Then Oxford Bishop Richard Harries appointed Father Jeffrey John, a gay

theologian, as bishop of Reading. Nine evangelical bishops in England have

publicly vowed a fight. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called for

dialogue, yet signaled he will not oppose John’s appointment.

What is at stake? Sixteen Third-World archbishops from Kenya, South India,

Uganda, the Philippines, Sudan, Tanzania and elsewhere responded to Ingham

by declaring a state of “severed communion” with his diocese.

Archbishop Peter Akinola told the BBC that Nigeria — with 10 archbishops,

81 bishops and 17.5 million Anglicans — would “sever relationships with

anybody, anywhere, anyone who strays over the boundaries” of traditional

church doctrine. Robinson’s election, he told the Guardian in Lagos, is “a

Satanic attack on God’s church.”

But there is more to this debate than sex, said Humphrey. The new Canadian

rite makes a crucial claim: “All human relationships have the potential to

be agents of God’s purpose. Regardless of the specific characteristics of

the relationship, the act of blessing does not make the relationship more

holy but rather, in giving thanks to God and invoking God’s holy name,

releases the relationship to realize its full potential as an expression of

God’s love.”

This raises all kinds of questions about words such as “fidelity,”

“covenant,” “sacrament” and “union,” she said. In a marriage rite, God and

the church create something new — a sacred union that changes the

relationship between the man and the woman. These new rites insist that the

church is merely “blessing” an existing same-sex relationship.

“The whole premise is different. The relationship is already holy. It is

already sacramental,” she said. “The church is merely celebrating what the

couple is already doing.”

Send article as PDF to