The House of Bishops voted Monday to adopt an amended version of Resolution D025, legislation that Bishop Henry Parsley of Alabama asserted “will be interpreted internationally as a rejection of B033.”
 
B033 was the controversial resolution approved at General Convention in 2006 that calls on “standing committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on the communion.” Just a day earlier, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams had urged the House of Bishops to reject Resolution D025.
 
Bishops voted 99-45, with two abstentions, for the revised resolution, which goes to the House of Deputies world mission legislative committee. The committee must make a recommendation to the full house about whether to concur in the amended resolution, amend it further, or defeat it.
 
The bishops amended the fourth resolve, which originally read "that the 76th General Convention affirm that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church which call is tested through our discernment processes acting in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church." They inserted the words "and that God's call to the ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church is a mystery which the church attempts to discern for all people" after the words "to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church" and deleted "which call is tested."
 
Bishop Parsley, who voted against the resolution, said passage would not be well-received by some members of the Anglican Communion.
 
"I long for us to be an inclusive church, but not a polarized church," he said. "We need to be a part of the larger Anglican Communion in what we do in this matter. I think it will be interpreted internationally as a rejection of B033. I actually think it's more nuanced and subtle than that.”
 
Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island had advised bishops to reject the measure because it could threaten a proposed Anglican covenant and undermine "mission at home and abroad because it presumes a theological understanding that we have not in fact established."
 
But Bishop Mark Hollingsworth of Ohio, who authored the amendment, said the vote is "an honest reflection of who we are as a church and where we are. B033 was about moratoria and about restraint, and I think it remains to be seen if this affects those two."
 
Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington said D025 and B033 together offer "a true picture of where our church stands at the moment: That our canonical process is open to all people, including gay and lesbian people. We are concerned about our relations in the communion, and we have asked people to exercise restraint while we get that worked out.
"I think that's probably an advance, and I think people will know we're through exercising restraint when we've stopped doing it."
 
Episcopal News Service contributed to this report.
 
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