WHEELING, Ill. — A moderate church leader, the Rev. Jeffrey Lee, was elected the 12th bishop of Chicago at the diocese convention on Saturday over seven other candidates, one of them an openly lesbian priest.
In a statement distributed to the more than 500 delegates before the vote, Lee said he wanted to keep a conversation going with conservatives on the issue of gay clergy. But he also said he has stood for “the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the church.”
“He would be perceived as someone who is qualified for the job, but not polarizing as other candidates might have been,” said the Rev. Canon Mike Stephenson of the Diocese of Chicago.
If the Rev. Tracey Lind, dean of Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, had been elected, she would have become the second bishop living with a same-sex partner in the Episcopal Church, which is the Anglican body in the United States. The 2003 consecration of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, who has a male partner, pushed the world Anglican Communion to the brink of schism.
Lee, rector of St. Thomas Church in Medina, Wash., was elected on the second ballot, after winning the most votes on an earlier ballot without achieving the needed majority.
Lind was fourth on both ballots.
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