War, Mideast issues face Episcopal church votes

By Michael Conlon

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) – While debate over homosexuality
dominates news coming from the U.S. Episcopal Church’s
triennial convention, matters ranging from opposition to the
Iraq war to a demand that the Guantanamo prison be closed are
also on the agenda.

Those and other issues are among dozens of proposed
resolutions working their way through legislative-style
committees.

On Thursday, one panel took up a number of disparate Middle
East resolutions. One urges Israel to “end the isolation of
East Jerusalem and Bethlehem from the West Bank created by the
continued construction of Israeli settlements, settler roads
and the (security) wall” and to remove the wall.

But another apologizes to the Jewish community for past
church pronouncements that it says were “consistently
unbalanced” because they portrayed Israel as an aggressor in
the Mideast.

The fate of the proposals is uncertain. Many may never come
before the convention’s two deciding bodies — one house of 230
bishops and a second house of more than 800 diocesan
representatives.

The same process faces a package of resolutions designed to
respond to the turmoil created three years ago when the
church’s last convention consecrated the first known openly gay
bishop in 450 years of Anglican history. The proposals
addressing those issued are likely to be voted on by the main
decision-making houses on Saturday.

On Friday, a panel has slated testimony on a number of
war-related issues, including a reaffirmation of the
2.3-million-member church’s stand that the Iraq war was unjust.
One proposal calls on church members to oppose and resist the
war through “advocacy, protest and electoral action” and urge
the U.S. Congress to end it.

That panel also has before it a measure strongly urging the
United States not to make a pre-emptive military strike against
Iran.

Another measure suggests the Guantanamo prison has become a
“source of anger” throughout the world and should be closed,
and urges Washington “to oppose the use of secret detention
centers around the world, and to cease the practice of
‘extraordinary rendition,’ in which terror suspects are sent
without judicial review to states where they may be tortured.”

Another proposal urges the U.S. government to press Turkey
to allow the Eastern Orthodox church to re-open its theological
seminary on Halki Island for the training of Orthodox clergy
and restore all properties confiscated from the Greek church in
the country.

On the domestic front, there are measures being discussed
that would provide for a formal apology from the church for the
role its forefathers played in slavery, and to explore possible
reparations.