"We're disappointed that it had to come to this," said Jeff Brodeur, spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. "It's been an emotional situation for everyone."

Melnyk's wife, the Rev. Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk, led services yesterday at her church in Malvern, St. Francis-in-the-Fields, Brodeur said, but still faces possible discipline. Telephone messages left at St. Francis were not returned.

The Bishop said that it was the deepest hope of the Standing Committee that invoking this provision might help everyone understand the gravity of what is at issue, and that there must be some better way than Christians suing one another in court.

The bishop stated in making the announcement that he hoped this would actually move forward a process of reconciliation and restoration.

"I hope that by your election victory, these ordained men and women will feel rebuked and be forced to repent of this grievous sin of repudiating the word of God, and to seek genuine restoration," he added.

Akinola has become the most outspoken critic within the Anglican church of moves in some north American and British dioceses to tolerate gay priests and bishops and to conduct marriage-like blessings of same-sex partnerships.

Our President has consistently named his religious faith as the guiding force of his decisions, and our nation proclaims in the "Pledge of Allegiance" that we are one nation "under God." Such obedience to God obliges us to look always to the well-being of a world broken and bleeding, which God loves so much that he came among us in the person of Jesus to reconcile to himself and to save.