In Thursday’s RNS report, National Correspondent Daniel Burke reports from Columbus, Ohio, where Episcopalians are meeting in an effort to hold the church together: The packed hearing room overflowed with Episcopalians of every stripe on Wednesday (June 14) as delegates to the denomination’s General Convention debated how to hold the fragile American church together. In language by turns intensely spiritual and parliamentarian, myriad speakers on Wednesday, including a number of bishops, testified to the momentous decisions that face the church at its 75th General Convention in Ohio June 13-21. “How wonderful it was that everyone was at the table,” the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, bishop of New Hampshire, said in an interview Thursday morning. Robinson is openly gay, and his election to bishop sent threats of schism shivering through the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church, as well as the worldwide Anglican Communion of which it is part. “Reconciliation isn’t possible unless there is contact and communion. And I intend to stay at the table until I drop,” Robinson said.

Burke also reports on how Episcopalians are preparing to elect a new top leader: With so much attention focused on how the Episcopal Church will deal with schism and sexuality at its General Convention in Ohio this week, it almost seems an afterthought that the denomination will also choose a new presiding bishop. Elected for a nine-year tenure, one of seven candidates will succeed the Most Rev. Frank Griswold and become the American church’s 26th presiding bishop. In addition to becoming the public face of the Episcopal Church, the presiding bishop combines the roles of “chief operating officer” as well as “chief pastor” to the nation’s 2.3 million Episcopalians.

Presbyterians have also kicked off their General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala., reports Greg Garrison: Thousands of Presbyterians converged on Birmingham Thursday (June 15) to kick off an eight-day national meeting, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). It will be a series of business sessions and worship services for the nation’s largest Presbyterian body, which has 2.4 million adult members and 3.1 million including children, making it one of the 10 largest U.S. denominations. More than 500 voting commissioners will debate such thorny issues as how to deal with churches that want to ordain openly gay clergy, and a controversial proposal to divest church holdings in companies that do business with Israel as a way of promoting peace in the Middle East.

And Adelle Banks in Greensboro, N.C., reports that Baptists vow a `godly influence’ on public schools: Southern Baptists overwhelmingly passed a resolution Thursday (June 14) that calls on churches to exert “godly influence” upon the nation’s public schools, sidestepping a proposal that called for an “exit strategy” from the schools. “We realized that we simply cannot abandon the public schools,” said Tommy French, chairman of the resolutions committee and pastor of Jefferson Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, La. The adopted resolution affirmed the “hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women who teach in our public schools” and urged Southern Baptist churches to encourage members to run for local school boards. It also stated that “public schools continue to adopt and implement curricula and policies teaching that the homosexual lifestyle is acceptable.”

Banks also reports on young Baptists who see a `new day’ in the church’s life: On the eve of this year’s annual meeting of Southern Baptists, Micah Fries spoke of how he, as a 27-year-old pastor, often feels left out of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. But with the presidential election of Frank Page, a self-described “normal” pastor, Fries and other young pastors and bloggers say they have greater hopes for inclusion. The election of the 53-year-old pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., is giving young leaders hope about their recent influence and their future involvement in the 16.2-million-member denomination.

Ayesha Akram writes about gay and lesbian Muslims who seek out “marriages of convenience” in order to keep up appearances: On a Web site for gay South Asians, 27-year-old Syed Mansoor uploaded the following testimony during the summer of 2005. “Hi, I am looking for a lesbian girl for marriage. I am gay but I would like to get married because of pressure from parents and society. I would like this marriage to be a `normal’ marriage except for the sex part, please don’t expect any sexual relationship from me.” With a click of his computer mouse, Mansoor dispatched this plea from his family home in India into the hinterland of cyber-world. Across the globe and especially in America, hundreds of other gay Muslims have started to pursue marriages of convenience-in which gay men marry lesbian women-in an attempt to keep up appearances.