The Anglican Church of Canada has backed away from a controversial decision on the highly divisive issue of same-sex blessings, voting Wednesday night to put off a ruling until their next meeting in 2007.
Spirited debate lead to a narrow decision that the issue needed more study, with bishops, lay members and clergy voting to defer the matter 164 to 130.
The decision followed procedural manoeuvring that saw an earlier motion substantially watered down. Late in the afternoon, the activists behind the controversial push to have the church allow the recognition of same-sex couples offered a compromise.
Only hours before the original motion was to come to a vote at a meeting of the church's Canadian leaders, the people who had introduced it proposed referring the issue back to the House of Bishops for at least three years of study.
At the time, Anglican spokeswoman Lorrie Chortyk denied reports that the original motion had been discarded because of its divisiveness.
"Nothing's been tossed out or decided," she told globeandmail.com in a telephone interview from St. Catherines, Ont.
Ms. Chortyk said that the 300 delegates at the meeting would have to decide first whether to accept the motion as amended. If not, the original motion called for the issue to be left at the discretion of the individual bishops.
In comments earlier Wednesday, the new head of the Canadian church had predicted that the original motion wouldn't survive the day.
Primate Andrew Hutchison, a liberal who was elected leader Monday on the fourth ballot, acknowledged in an early-morning interview that he is not personally comfortable with same-sex marriage. That said, he told told CBC Newsworld that he doesn't "have any difficulty" with "two faithful Christian people who are serving in a congregation [who] simply want the community to say 'God bless you'."
He also played down the potential for a deep rift within the world community of Anglican churches if the Canadians decided to accept same-sex unions.
"There were difficulties when polygamy was still allowed in parts of our communion. There were difficulties when women were ordained in some parts of our communion and not others. So, we've been there."
The issue has polarized the Anglican community and has led to deep divisions between liberal and conservative branches. Although the global Anglican community is made up 38 autonomous member churches, a 1998 meeting of leading Anglicans from around the world formally opposed the blessing of rituals for same-sex couples, saying that it was "incompatible with scripture."
The issue is acrimonious enough that Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, head of the second-largest Anglican church in the world, stopped attending meetings with the leader of the U.S. church after it made a bishop of Gene Robinson, a gay priest living in a relationship.
With files from Canadian Press
