The annual convocation of the Navajoland Area Mission adopted overwhelmingly an amended resolution to defer the election of an interim bishop until September. The convocation met June 12-14 at Good Shepherd Mission in Fort Defiance, Ariz.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori presided and officiated at the opening Eucharist, which was attended by about 150 persons, including 40 delegates. Prior to the start of the convocation, Bishop Jefferts Schori had nominated the Rev. Canon David Bailey, canon to the ordinary for the Diocese of Utah, as a possible choice for interim bishop. Her proposal also included identifying and training Navajo leadership, and fund raising in conjunction with the Episcopal Church Foundation.

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The reign (a word I use advisedly) of ECUSA’s current Presiding Bishop has been marked thus far by a some striking characteristics in contrast to anything that ever came before:

1. First and foremost, the number of lawsuits in which the Episcopal Church (USA) is a plaintiff in court against its own—the initiator of litigation against fellow Christians—has multiplied enormously….

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The national leader of 2.4 million Episcopalians — including 20,600 in Oregon — hung out Sunday at a Northeast Portland church, participating in what she defines as old-school conversation.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, who’s been at the center of an often-tense conversation about the ordination of gay clergy, told a full house on Sunday at Grace Memorial Episcopal Church that the word “conversation” slipped into English usage in the 1300s.

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A member of the drafting committee sat in each small group session and was tasked with reporting the sessions view’s to the committee. Dr. [Mouneer] Anis stated that all but one of the small groups “were supportive” of the Covenant, but the drafting committee imposed its contrary interpretation upon the meeting.

The slick parliamentary tricks used by opponents of the Covenant discouraged many delegates from the developing world, he said. Reintroducing a motion that had sought to delay the Covenant, after it had been defeated by a vote was a “shock.” “Many of our African and Asian brothers and sisters were confused by this especially after they rejoiced when resolution A was rejected. Then I objected and requested a legal advice in this matter but the chairman decided not to deal with my request.”

In the midst of this “defeat”, Dr. Anis said there remained “a great opportunity to turn around the whole situation. We can do this if we, as dioceses and Provinces, started to discuss, make comments and adopt the Covenant without any further delay.”

The Primate of Uganda, Archbishop Henry Orombi””a member of the Primates Standing Committee, but absent from the meeting””concurred.

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The last Lambeth Conference proceeded without resolutions, and the result was far deeper and richer because of the focus on conversation, dialogue and building relationships. This ACC meeting conducted some of its business in that way, but a great deal of time and energy was devoted to hearing reports and dealing with resolutions.

The members of the ACC arrive and are inundated with long and complex papers on a great variety of subjects ”“ resolutions from the different networks, the recent draft of an Anglican covenant, the Windsor Continuation Group report, a 256-page book on ecumenical relations and many others ”“ and are expected to make decisions after brief opportunities for small-group discussion.

The details of decision-making would surprise most Episcopalians. A small group develops material ahead of time and then offers it to the group with relatively little opportunity for deliberation or alteration. The resolutions presented for deliberation are vetted and edited by a resolutions committee.

The pace of work is leisurely, with 40 hours of formal work spread over 11 working days. The chair exercises a great deal of discretion in referring or declining to entertain resolutions; elections are not straightforward ballots for a single individual; discussion of any proposed amendment requires the support of 10 members; the president (the Archbishop of Canterbury) steps in fairly frequently to “steer”; and the rules are quite evidently not Robert’s!

The contrasts with General Convention are significant….

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The [Episcopal Church General] convention’s host, the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, has tried to send a message by approving a policy at its December convention that gives local priests permission to officiate at rites of blessing for same-sex couples.

“I think it’s about time we get about the business of having marriage equality in the church,” said the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Los Angeles Diocese. “I am waiting with bated breath to see what happens” at the Anaheim meeting.

Conservative Episcopalians argue that liberalized policies will not only alienate U.S. parishes but will also add further strain to the church’s troubled relationship with church leaders in Africa and elsewhere in the global Anglican Communion.

This month, one of the communion’s worldwide leadership bodies affirmed its support for moratoriums on consecrating non-celibate gay bishops and on blessings for same-sex couples. The group was led by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion’s spiritual leader, who is scheduled to attend the Anaheim convention.

Resisting those mandates will “turn up the flame,” said the Rt. Rev. Edward S. Little II, bishop of the Diocese of Northern Indiana and a leader in a group of clergy trying to strengthen Episcopal ties to the Anglican Communion. “If we take a step at General Convention that takes us down the road, we will lose more people,” he said.

Still, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, said she believes the U.S. church and its global partners can co-exist even if they disagree on the rights of gay men and lesbians in the church. She also said she did not expect this year’s convention, at which bishops, clergy and lay leaders are allowed to vote, to reach a decision on the issue of same-sex blessing rites.

“We’re not afraid of people watching over our shoulders,” Jefferts Schori said. “We live with diversity on issues that get people charged up.”

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Several questioners asked about possible repeal or other action on Resolution B033, the controversial measure passed on the last day of the 2006 General Convention that called for restraint on the part of the church in electing or consenting to the election as bishops of persons whose manner of life may present a challenge to the wider Church””a measure widely seen to apply only to gay or lesbian candidates.

“I’ve been very clear in my public communications for the last few months that my hope is that we not attempt to repeal past legislation at General Convention””it’s a bad legislative practice,” said Jefferts Schori. “I would far more prefer us to say where we are today, in 2009, to make a positive statement about our desire to include all people fully in this church and that we be clear about who we are as the Episcopal Church.

Twelve resolutions concerning B033 have been submitted, said Anderson, and all have been assigned to legislative committees, as is the practice for all resolutions. “We can’t really predict what will happen in regards to B033, which is the beauty of General Convention,” she said. “It is up to the participants at General Convention to take those resolutions under consideration, to hold open hearings with regards to the resolutions, gather the voices of everyone present that wishes to speak ”¦ and we also pray for the intervention of the Holy Spirit as we debate in the House of Deputies.”

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A number of viewers wanted to know how results from the recently concluded meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council might affect convention. Bishop Jefferts Schori said the need to debate the proposed Anglican Covenant obviously was a moot point since it failed to pass during the ACC meeting in Jamaica last week.

In response to a question regarding the repeal of B033, the resolution approved at General Convention in 2006 that recommends caution in consecrating bishops whose manner of life might cause distress to other members of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Jefferts Schori said B033 would be debated, but that she opposes its repeal.

“I would far more prefer that we say here is where we are today,” she said, adding that it was a more positive way to express the mind of the church.

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[Katharine] Jefferts Schori seems to delight in drawing such unexpected connections between her scientific background and her religious duties. She compares Episcopal bishops to humpback whales because they gather for a few days each year, learn to sing a new song together, then head home to teach the song to others. She says “gravity” is an apt translation of “kabod,” the Hebrew word for God’s glory, because it suggests something pervasive, substantial, and inescapable. And while God shouted down Job’s doubts by pointing to His awesomely fashioned hippopotamus, Jefferts Schori urges Episcopalians to consider the anableps (left). These four-eyed fish can see above and below water simultaneously””a good example for Christians conflicted about whether to salvage this world or just wait for the next one. The point of such examples, Jefferts Schori says, is to encourage the church to see itself with new eyes, stop bickering about finer points of doctrine, and get about the business of healing the sick, clothing the naked, and relieving the impoverished.

Ultimately, religion and science speak the same language, and impart the same lesson, she says. Each teaches that the world is made of connections and that actions in one place have consequences, often unforeseen, in other places and times. And nowhere are the effects of our deeds as grave as in how we care for the environment, a dear subject for the nature-loving presiding bishop who once trolled the seas. Numerous times, she has passionately urged believers, politicians, and all people of good will to make care of God’s creation their topmost priority. As she explained in testimony before the U.S. Senate in 2007, “As a priest, trained as a scientist, I take as a sacred obligation the faith community’s responsibility to stand on the side of truth””the truth of science as well as the truth of God’s unquenchable love for the world and all its inhabitants.” In the beginning, Katharine saw the world, and saw that it was good; in the end, she is trying to save it.

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JESUS is a way, but not the only way to salvation, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori has told members of the Diocese of Quincy….

“If Billy Graham or Pope Benedict” were asked the questions the presiding bishop were asked, they would respond that “Jesus is the way, the truth and life,” South Carolina theologian Canon Kendall Harmon said. In a time of doctrinal confusion, “good leadership claims its particular identity from the stability of its historical faith,” he argued.

“It’s the leadership of this church giving up the unique claims of Christianity,” Canon Harmon said. “They act like it’s Baskin-Robbins. You just choose a different flavour and everyone gets in the store.”

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Bishop Duncan echoed the insistence of the Primates that theirs was not a breakaway movement. “I’m a cradle Anglican. My grandfather was a boy chorister. . . My theological views haven’t changed. The problem is that folks who have become the leadership of the Episcopal Church in the United States have pulled the rug out from under me. The person who is our Presiding Bishop, she didn’t begin as an Anglican. I did. She represents something very different. I don’t think I’m a breakaway.

“I don’t believe I have divided the Church. I believe the innovators are the ones who are dividing the Church. I love them, and I want to behave in a godly way towards them, and I will do everything I can to convince them about the truth that’s been delivered; but my focus now has to be on those who don’t know Jesus.”

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Her sense is that the worst of the schism is over and that those who intend to leave have stated their intentions.

“We lament their departure because we are diminished by it,” she said. “But we will keep on being who we think God is calling us to be.”

In her view, the challenges are not all bad, even though the conflict is nothing anyone would choose.

And she predicted that parishes will come back with a new sense of mission.

All this “may drive some of us absolutely crazy, but my sense is that this is where God is calling us to be,” she said. “We haven’t reached consensus because the spirit is still at work. There is still conversation to be had.”

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From her recent visit to Delaware we read this:

She also pointed out that white Episcopal congregations are not growing. “No single diocese in the United States has grown in recent years,” she said.

If this is an accurate quote, it is an error as blog readers perhaps will know. You can look here to see the figures for yourself. I have no desire to elevate South Carolina as we have all sorts of problems and struggles here, as do other dioceses, and, as you can see, there are other places where there is growth (i.e. North Carolina)-KSH.

An unprecedented visit to Peoria on Saturday by the top leader of the Episcopal Church was welcomed by some local churches but was largely ignored by the 19 that have broken away from the national organization.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, called a special synod at St. Paul’s Cathedral to name new leadership within the Peoria-based Diocese of Quincy and “to get the diocese back on its feet.”

“It was remarkable to experience this synod,” Jefferts Schori said after the special convention. “Everything passed unanimously, which is rare.”

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The Diocese of Central Florida is thankful to the Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. (ACI) for taking the initiative in making a statement (see below) about the nature of hierarchy and governance within the Episcopal Church. We fully support and are grateful for The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, The Rt. Rev. Bruce MacPherson and the other signatories to the statement.

We fully share the concerns expressed in the statement regarding recent court filings and arguments made by the Presiding Bishop’s chancellor to “turn The Episcopal Church’s governance on its head.”

We oppose any attempt, in this civil litigation or in any other secular forum to turn Dioceses into “subordinate units” of the General Convention, the Executive Council or the office of the Presiding Bishop–something they never have been and must not become.

We are deeply concerned that the Presiding Bishop is seeking to reinterpret the Constitution and Canons of this Church and overturn 220 years of settled church custom and law by appealing to an outside secular court.

We welcome and encourage other dioceses within the Episcopal Church to stand with us in resisting this redefinition of our ecclesiastical polity through the use of the secular courts by the Presiding Bishop and her chancellor.

Claims that the Israel discriminated against Jerusalem’s Anglican and Lutheran bishops by blocking their attempt to enter Gaza last month are unfounded, the Israeli government has declared.

On March 10, the Israeli Embassy in Washington released a statement chiding US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Lutheran Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson for erroneously concluding the two bishops had been singled out.

The two church leaders wrote Ambassador Sallai Meridor on Feb 6 to express their “grave concerns” and to seek an explanation for “the denial of entry to Gaza” on Feb 4 of the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt Rev Suheil Dawani, and the Lutheran Bishop of Jordan and the Holy Land, the Rt Rev Munib Younan.

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The presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church is scheduled to visit Peoria next month.

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I really do not know anymore what is coming next. How things are done and not done are as haphazard as people’s ideas; or so it seems.

Now I read that the “New” Diocese of Fort Worth passed a $632,466 dollar budget for a part-time bishop, a little over 19 priests and 62 delegates who represent way less than a thousand people, and $200,000 is from the General Convention budget!

First, I did not see that in the GC budget that was passed in 2006. Where did it come from?

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A few of the speakers yesterday connected the decision in 1989 to approve a woman bishop to the later decision to approve a gay bishop.

“After Feb. 11 [1989], how could we not consent to the election of Gene Robinson?” asked Byron Rushing, a Massachusetts state representative who is also an active Episcopal layman. “Today we celebrate that we have been changed. Although we are not what God, and we, want us to be, thank God we are not what we used to be.”

And later, during the liturgy, the Rev. Stephanie Spellers added an audible prayer “For Brother Gene – another first, but not last.”

Jefferts Schori said the significance of the anniversary is that “we’re marking the fact that transformation is real, and it lasts.”

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As I watch the sad saga of our bishops’ legalistic and punitive response to “traditionalist” bishops, dioceses, and parishes who are attempting to leave the Episcopal Church in order to form a new North American Anglican province, I am reminded of the defensive and dismissive response of the Church of England bishops to the Methodist Movement in the eighteenth century. The result of course was the founding and development of a separate Methodist Church, which is now much larger than the “Anglican” Church (at least as we are now constituted) on this continent. Imagine the strength and witness of Anglicanism today if the Methodists were welcomed as a preaching order within the Church of England. Surely, they would be more “orthodox” and we would be more “vibrant,” and together we would be much larger and much more effective for the Gospel in the world than we are divided. This, by the way, is exactly what Innocent III achieved when he embraced St. Francis and welcomed his friars into the ministry of the Catholic Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century, despite the fact that they were preaching such a dangerous “new” doctrine.

Now what I wonder is this: what would happen if the Presiding Bishop with the support of the House of Bishops were to welcome the formation of a new province for “traditionalists” within the Episcopal Church, allowing every diocese, parish, and church institution to join this province with a two-thirds vote by the appropriate parish meeting, convention, or governing body? She could even stipulate an acceptable window of a year during which this vote would be required to happen.

In this way, both “sides” of our church could continue in dialogue from protected positions of mutual respect without the present feelings of distrust and fear. Both would also be encouraged to grow by teaching the doctrines and practicing the liturgies they believe in, which they could proceed to do with conviction and enthusiasm. We could, for instance, continue to share the Church Pension Fund and Episcopal Relief and Development, and our primates and bishops could continue to meet on an annual basis to look for areas of agreement, common witness, shared costs and joint projects, but in a way which is more representative, more conducive to collegiality, and more focused on results than our present General Convention. I also wonder if it would not be appropriate for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Consul to ask us to do this in one final attempt at unity and civility before they are forced by our actions to actively establish or passively recognize a permanent state of schism between us.

I would hope that the traditionalists would find such an arrangement better than what is now proposed as it would allow clergy, parishes and dioceses to reorganize without the loss of their properties and the cost of legal action. The risk for the Presiding Bishop, of course, is that too many will want to leave, but at least they will not be completely leaving and no one will remain because they have been bullied and threatened into submission. There is also the obvious advantage pointed out by others who have written to this magazine before me that such an action on her part and on the part of the rest of the House of Bishops would show true Christian humility and a more genuine openness to the power of the Holy Spirit to build the Church and thus to lead the Church in His, if not necessarily our own, direction.

–The Revd. Dr. D. Stuart Dunnan is Headmaster of Saint James School in Maryland; this article appears as a Guest Column in the February 8, 2009 Living Church on page 10 and is used with the author’s kind permission

Decades before she was elected presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, when even the priesthood seemed an unlikely calling, a teenage Katharine Jefferts Schori wrestled with big questions through the night.

In the darkness of the Stanford University chapel, she pondered the usual puzzles of young adulthood: Where do I belong? Why am I here? But Jefferts Schori was also hunting bigger fish””how to reconcile her Christian faith with the science she was learning as a biology major.

“How to make sense of the wonders of creation and the scientific descriptions of how they came to be,” Jefferts Schori recalled in an interview in her office here, “I hadn’t had any conscious assistance in how to deal with that as a child.”

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Among the many quotes that are mistakenly attributed to William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott’s “Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive . . .” is surely one that ranks among those which are the most frequent to be so cited. (It in fact comes from his epic poem “Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field” [scroll down to Canto VI, Stanza XVII, lines 532-33], written in 1808.) Be that as it may, the quote has proved its worth by describing so aptly the results of deception as a “tangled web”, which all too frequently catches up the deceiver who spun it.

In this post, I want to point up a classic example of the improviser’s art, and to show how it will most likely catch up the improvisers in ways they surely did not imagine at the moment. At the same time, however, the facts I am about to show should let no Episcopal bishop remain comfortable in occupying his or her see. For the truth is that the innovation in this instance sets a most dangerous precedent. And given the manner in which the Episcopal Church (USA) reveres illegal precedent, as in the case of citing the depositions of Bishops Davies and Larrea to justify its subsequent “depositions” of Bishops Cox, Schofield and Duncan, the establishment of any precedent so egregious and illegal as the one I am about to relate should, as I say, be enough to make any Episcopal bishop insecure. For this precedent involves the transformation of the office of the Presiding Bishop from a “primus inter pares”, or first among equals, into a Metropolitan of the Church: a primate not in name only, but one in fact, who can swoop into any diocese and assume the Ecclesiastical Authority there.

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Mary E. Kostel has been named special counsel to the Presiding Bishop for property litigation and discipline, according to an announcement by the Rev. Canon Charles Robertson of the Presiding Bishop’s office.

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About 400 delegates and overflow visitors who filled the 116-year-old Trinity Church and its parish hall on Fort Worth’s south side for a February 7 special organizing convention celebrated being “called to life” anew and getting back to the business of being the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

About 19 clergy and 62 lay delegates representing 31 congregations unanimously elected the Rt. Rev. Edwin “Ted” Gulick, bishop of Kentucky, as provisional bishop by a voice vote in clergy and lay orders. Gulick, who will serve as provisional bishop until at least mid-year while continuing to serve the Diocese of Kentucky, received a standing ovation and sustained applause.

“I cannot tell you how moved I am by your trust and how awed I am by this responsibility,” Gulick told the gathering. He offered thanks to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, as well as to the people of the Diocese of Kentucky.

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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told ENS that she is encouraged by the tone of the communiqué, but acknowledged that “the long-term impact of ‘gracious restraint’ is a matter for General Convention,” the Episcopal Church’s main legislative body that next meets in July in Anaheim, California.

“We are going to have to have honest conversations about who we are as a church and the value we place on our relationships and mission opportunities with other parts of the communion and how we can be faithful with many spheres of relationship at the same time,” she said. “That is tension-producing and will be anxiety-producing for many, but we are a people that live in hope, not in instant solutions but in faithfulness to God.”

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Bishop Ted Gulick of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky will likely serve as caretaker of a Texas diocese following the decision by that diocese’s bishop and many of its members to leave the denomination for a more conservative Anglican province.

Gulick was nominated by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church to be “provisional bishop” of the Diocese of Fort Worth. If approved at a special meeting of what remains of the Fort Worth diocese on Feb. 7, Gulick would serve until this summer while continuing to lead the Kentucky diocese.

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Defenders of the Presiding Bishop claim that by her actions she has merely deprived him of a licence in the Episcopal Church. But surely the whole point is that after the deposition of Bob Duncan last September, Bishop Scriven’s ”˜licence’ was revoked. No, in fact it looks like Presiding Bishop Schori is attempting something much more sweeping here.

The Anglican Communion Institute again comments: “The Presiding Bishop’s action has profound consequences for TEC’s status as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion and its communion with the Church of England.” Her Declaration of Removal touches upon the ”˜ordinations’ conferred on him by the Church of England, not by The Episcopal Church, and therefore she is going down a very dangerous road by pretending to have the authority to pronounce on them. Furthermore, by prohibiting a bishop in good standing within the Church of England from ministering in The Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Schori is opening up the way for a diplomatic row.

Bishop Scriven, no doubt, will be laughing about this bizarre overstep by the Presiding Bishop, but the ramifications of this move should be examined further by English canon lawyers. It seems that The Episcopal Church is claiming to have an authority that it does not. And that, after all, is the root of the problem in the Anglican Communion.

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Bishop Scriven remained as a bishop in good standing in the Episcopal Church after Pittsburgh diocese realigned with the Southern Cone in November last year. He believed the diocese had democratically made its decision and ”” in a response to the Church Times which came too late for publication ”” described the Convention’s vote as conducted “in a very fair and grace-filled way”. He made himself available as a bishop to all congregations who invited him, regardless of how they had voted.

He said at that time: “We still pray sincerely that further lawsuits can be avoided, and I certainly intend to maintain all my close friendships with the vast majority of those who have chosen not to stay with the diocese.”

Bishop Scriven described the letter he received in November releasing him from his orders as “really weird”. He retained it but did not respond to it. The promised certificate releasing Bishop Scriven from his orders did not reach him personally, “though, to be fair, she might have tried as I was wandering round the world,” he said on Wednesday.

The correspondence is now in the public domain. “I had no desire to publish these letters until the thing was announced but was then very happy for them to be released,” Bishop Scriven said. “Hers was a very gracious letter but I was kind of boggled by the language really….”

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Defenders of the Presiding Bishop are scrambling to re-interpret her extraordinary action of depriving a bishop of the Church of England of the gifts and authority conferred in his ordination and removing him from the ordained ministry of The Episcopal Church. For example, the group supporting the Presiding Bishop in Pittsburgh stated that “[t]his is a routine way of permitting Bishop Scriven to continue his ministry.” In the strange world of TEC, renunciation of orders has become a routine way of continuing one’s ministry.

But it is not routine. Indeed, it has not been used for those transferring from TEC to another province in the Anglican Communion until the Presiding Bishop began what resembles a scorched-earth approach to her opponents within TEC. Not surprisingly, in the past such matters have been handled by letter. One can see the evolution of the Presiding Bishop’s “routine” policy in the treatment of Bishop David Bena, who was transferred by letter by his diocesan bishop to the Church of Nigeria in February 2007. A month later, the Presiding Bishop wrote Bishop Bena and informed him that “by this action you are no longer a member of the House of Bishops” and that she had informed the Secretary of the House to remove him from the list of members. That was all that needed to be done. A year later, however, as her current strategy emerged, she suddenly declared in January 2008 that she had accepted Bishop Bena’s renunciation of orders using the canon she now uses against Bishop Scriven. In other words, if this is now sadly routine, it has only become routine in the past year.

Not only is this not routine, it was not necessary.

“This action reflects profound confusion” say the authors. Is there a better phrase to describe the common life of TEC at present? Doctrinal and Structural incoherence abound. Read it all–KSH