In an interview with TIME magazine, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori remarked, "We who practice the Christian tradition understand him (Jesus) as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box."

Bishop Duncan has now declared the See of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference -- two of the four Instruments of Communion within our tradition - to be "lost". He has said that God is "doing a new thing" in allowing these elements to founder and be let go.

I find this judgment to be dangerously precipitous and unfair under circumstances when current, faithful, and hard work is being done by many to bolster these Instruments as servants of our common life in Christ.

It is clear that a generation of debate on human sexuality has served not to enlighten and build a new consensus fidelium, as revisionists promised, but rather to divide churches deeply and irreparably.

In his recent comments, the Archbishop of York (23 July 07) has stated that sexuality does not involve "core doctrines" of the faith and hence should not be a church-dividing issue. This language of "core doctrine" is reminiscent of the Righter verdict. The address I presented to the bishops at this conference was aimed to show why the Episcopal Church's position on sexuality was and is indeed a heresy and a threat to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. SN