Convention issues raise tensions among Anglicans

By Peter Smith
July 31, 2009

By many accounts, votes at the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church raised the already-high tensions between the predominately liberal denomination and its more conservative partners in the global Anglican Communion.

Bishop Ted Gulick of Kentucky sees the convention as finding "a very Anglican middle way" in these controversies, which have prompted several overseas Anglican leaders to declare their communion with the American church to be broken. Some American conservatives have created a rival Anglican denomination in the United States — including the former bishop of Fort Worth, where Gulick is now doing double duty as interim bishop.

In an interview in his Louisville office recently, Gulick discussed controversies in and around the 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church. Its General Convention, held every three years, took place earlier in July in Anaheim, Calif. the rest