Episcopal Leader Urges Unification

The head of the Episcopal Church--often considered the bridge between the Roman Catholic and Protestant faiths--is challenging churches to jettison outmoded attitudes and strip away nonessentials for the sake of church unity.

Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold said Wednesday that Episcopalians are facing calls from Catholics for “clarity and consistency in our theological discourse” and from Lutherans an “insistence upon transparency of the Gospel” in ordaining bishops.

But, Griswold said in a service at Grace Episcopal Church in New York, an insistence on conformity between church bodies points to “the continual need for all of us to yield our corporate life and our several histories to the purifying fire of the spirit of truth.”

The presiding bishop, who was installed in January as head of the 2.5-million-member church, said those dedicated to the unity of Christianity are in “the process of stripping away those things in our several traditions which occlude this unity which underlies not only the life of the church, but the whole of creation as well.”

He said that in stripping away the nonessential elements in today’s church bodies, church members must look first at what is “authentic and enduring” and then at “what may have once been essential, but is now in danger of becoming an idol of denominational singularity.”