Read it all.

(Please note that the page from the diocese introducing the letter with accompanying links may be found there).

This summer’s General Convention may authorize the use of a blessing service for those dioceses where the bishop gives permission, but that matter has yet to be decided.

Read it all.

This year we will send our deputation to General Convention. General Convention is normally a source of some anxiety for people. I am not anxious. I am not fearful. I am not concerned. And, the reason is that for me my faith in Jesus Christ, and my belief in the unique witness of the Episcopal Church to offer Good News is not dependent upon General Convention. It just isn’t….

Let me remind you that your faith in Jesus Christ and your love for this Church and your belief in its worship and witness to Jesus are not going to be changed by an act of General Convention. At General Convention they will pass a liturgy for same sex blessings. They are going to pass it. I will vote against this liturgy. Your deputation will more than likely be divided on the question and in so doing cast a vote against it as well.

On another topic, the Anglican Covenant will come before General Convention for ratification. I will vote in favor of the Covenant. Your deputation will probably be divided. And, Convention will probably not support it. I am working in advance with other bishops to propose a way through our division on the Anglican Covenant…

Read it all.

At the General Convention in 2009, the General Convention tasked the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music with developing theological and liturgical resources for the blessing of same sex couples. These liturgical resources will be presented to the 2012 General Convention and voted on for trial use by the Church. If approved for trial use, what would that mean for the Diocese of Georgia?

Bishop Benhase cannot support the current version of the proposed trial rite because he does not believe it is sufficiently distinguished from the rite of marriage found in the Book of Common Prayer. There may be, however, a provision in whatever resolution is approved that would allow alternative rites from the one proposed to also be authorized. If that happens, then there is a good possibility that a rite of blessing may be available that meets the Bishop’s criteria.

Read it all.

On Thursday, February 23, the Maryland General Assembly voted 25-22 in favor of Senate Bill 241, the Civil Marriage Protection Act, which is summarized as: “Altering a provision of law to establish that only a marriage between two individuals who are not otherwise prohibited from marrying is valid in the State; prohibiting an official of a religious institution or body authorized to solemnize marriages from being required to solemnize any marriage in violation of the constitutional right to free exercise of religion; etc.” The law is scheduled to go into effect Jan.1, 2013.

The Episcopal Church acts as an agent of the state when its clergy officiate at marriages. The Church also has its own theology and canons, or laws, regarding what Christian marriage is. Our Episcopal Church governing body, the triennial General Convention, passed Resolution C056 at its last meeting in 2009, allowing bishops to provide “generous pastoral response” to members in dioceses where the civil authority has legalized same-gender marriage. The resolution also called for the collection and development of theological and liturgical resources for blessing same-gender unions for review by the next General Convention in 2012….

Read it all.

Check it out.

From here:

General Convention Day of Education
This event is cancelled

Due to low sign-up, this event has been cancelled. If you would like to express thoughts or concerns to the deputation from this diocese, please contact [info. provided]…

There is enough energy – human, the earth’s, the infinite energy of the divine, to cope with the enormous problems of the world today, chiefly climate change and related human poverty and suffering. It is necessary, though for this energy to be applied and applied wisely for the saving effects to be brought forth. It is too bad that the Roman Catholic Church has chosen to expend funds of its available energy (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/us/catholic-church-unveils-order-for-ex-episcopalians.html) including what might be viewed as a kind of low-level creativity on making a national refuge for disaffected Episcopal priests and the lay people who follow them.

Make no mistake, these angry ex-Episcopal priests and their flocks are not victims; they have not suffered persecution of any sort other than that they are repulsed by the stance of The Episcopal Church on the status of women and of lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people in the Church and in the world. I can speak with some authority on this, having served in the Episcopal House of Bishops since 2002, a period spanning the explosive events around the election, confirmation, and consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

Read it all.

The Episcopal bishop in Western Washington, in sharp disagreement with Catholic prelates, believes that same-sex marriage is “a conservative proposal” that should be adopted “not only in our society but in our church.”

“It seems to me we have held our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in a Catch-22,” the Rt. Rev. Greg Rickel, Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Olympia, argues in a blog post published without fanfare to the diocesan website….

Read it all and take the time to read the bishop’s blog post as well.

Jennifer Haemmerle, co-Chancellor, moved for adoption of this revision. The motion was seconded and Jennifer went on to explain the rationale for this proposed change. The 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church adopted substantial revisions to the Canons for Ecclesiastical Discipline and this revision of the Diocesan canon will bring it into compliance with the general Canons of the National Church. This change also allows for the Diocese to enter into and implement an agreement with one or more neighboring dioceses to share assets and resources consistent with the provisions of Title V. Bishop Thom gave a brief summary of the process that is being put in place (that will, hopefully, never have to be used). He reported that he and Jennifer are working with the Diocese of Montana to create a shared a disciplinary panel. He will appoint two clergy and two lay persons to serve on this nine-member Board. In addition, two people (one male and one female) will be appointed to serve as intake officers. After a brief discussion, a vote was taken and the canonical change was accepted.

Read it all (see page 14).

The film follows Robinson as the church grapples with how to handle lesbian and gay issues. Robinson’s election brought to a head divisions between liberal and conservative Episcopalians, and between the U.S. church and more conservative members of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Filmmakers followed Robinson to England in 2008, where he was excluded from the Anglicans’ Lambeth Conference of bishops. And they followed him to the Episcopal Church’s 2009 General Convention, where leaders voted to allow blessings of same-sex marriages, civil unions or domestic partnerships (where legal) and allow gay men and women to become bishops.

Along the way, they interviewed Robinson, his family and other church leaders, many of whom supported his quest for equality and some of whom did not. In one scene, a woman sobs that she is torn between wanting to do what’s best for the people around her while also remaining true to Scripture.

Read it all.

Pondering a gender change began with his doctoral studies at Harvard Divinity School in the ’90s. “I was out as gay at that point,” he recalls. The run-up to his change was not the turmoil-filled time you might expect. “I’m not a huge fan of the trapped-in-the-wrong-body narrative” of some other transgendered people, Partridge says. “I know it’s true and real for some folks, but I never felt like God made a mistake. I’ve not had a problem with God about this, I really haven’t. I just had a sense of this growing””discomfort, disjunction.” With the change, “I felt like I was able to kind of reclaim the body that God had given me.”

Seeking a unisex name, he was stumped until he went for take-out sushi one day when he was still a woman and the clerk misheard the name, asking, “Cameron?” Partridge looked the name up and learned it meant “crooked,” just the name, he thought, for someone who believes gender is not linear.

As for his agenda as chaplain, he’s exploring ways to involve students in environmental justice, an interest that has come up in conversations with them.

Read it all.

To sum up the current anomalies, as presented in this post:

1. The Episcopal Church (USA) currently defines marriage, both canonically and in its rubrics, as the “physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman.”

2. There is no current measure proposed in the governing bodies of the Episcopal Church (USA) which would alter or amend its definition of “marriage” so as to incorporate therein the joining in “marriage” of two persons of the same sex.

3. Notwithstanding the Episcopal Church (USA)’s Book of Common Prayer and its associated Canons, certain clergy (including diocesan bishops) have performed, or have allowed to take place within their Diocese, rites of “holy matrimony” for same-sex marriages within the Episcopal Church’s liturgy.

4. The resulting spectacle of lawlessness is undermining the Church from within.

Read it all.

“If the threat of property disputes is the only thing that holds us together, what sort of mission do we have?” he said. “Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom, not the keys to the building.”

He does not believe the quitclaim deeds will make congregations more inclined to separate from the diocese.

“Frankly, the people already believe they can leave because of the All Saints’, Pawleys Island, decision” by the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Distributing the quitclaim deeds was a liberating decision, the bishop said.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Stuff and nonsense, Mr. Gerns. A complaint is made up of allegations. Allegations are charges — claims that what is stated is true. Bishop Lawrence has been charged by persons undisclosed with “abandonment of communion” under Canon IV.16. Had he not been so charged, the Disciplinary Board for Bishops would never have gotten involved. (And by the way, Mr. Gerns: just how does a Bishop go about abandoning his Church by “inaction”? Wouldn’t that happen only if the Church in question first abandoned that particular Bishop, and he did “not act” so as to follow them?)…

More stuff and nonsense. The charges have already been filed — that is how the Board gets to investigate them. (What? — you thought they acted only on rumors, and not charges? Well, actually, the Canon lets them act on anything that comes to their attention. But in this instance, as Bishop Henderson stated, they are acting on complaints brought by persons unknown — to us, but not to the Disciplinary Board — within Bishop Lawrence’s Diocese.)

And the charges will not get “filed” again. Instead, by a simple majority vote of its members, the Board will either certify that “abandonment” has occurred, or it will not. There will be no further investigation. There will be no “attempts at reconciliation.” And there will certainly be no hearing, because the Canon (IV.16) does not provide for one.

Read it all (being sure to follow the link to Mr. Germs piece to which it is responding).

ECUSA’s General Convention in those days had as its primary function the hearing of reports on the status of the Church in each Diocese. Occasionally it was called on to admit another new diocese into union with the Church, or appoint a bishop to supervise a missionary diocese, and now and then it adopted amendments to the Canons. But its role on the national scene was largely ephemeral, and entirely forgettable.

What changed ECUSA structurally from its original model was the slow but steady growth in the size of its House of Bishops, as more and more territory came under ECUSA’s jurisdiction, and also the advent of powerful new social forces. The first factor forced a change in the office and functions of the Presiding Bishop; following that change, the second factor transformed the character of the Church itself, under the active leadership of the new breed of Presiding Bishops.

Read it all.

A theological approach to General Convention’s scope of authority will note several important realities, among them:

That General Convention’s constitution and canons place in a primary way the clergy under the Scripture as “God’s Word.”
That the Book of Common Prayer, which General Convention guards and potentially amends, binds the Episcopal Church to the “essential” doctrine, discipline, and worship (though not the sanctions) of another church, that is, of the Church of England (BCP, p.11).
That the same Book of Common Prayer binds the Episcopal Church’s bishops to other churches and bishops and to their teaching and discipline from different ages and places, not even necessarily Anglican ones (cf. p. 510 on “recognizability” and p. 517 on the apostolic and universal “heritage” shared by Episcopal bishops and to which they are accountable).
That these bonds themselves, variously linked to elements of the Scriptures and their teaching ”” according to what the prayers of the BCP teach (e.g., pp. 215, 218, 236, 240, 243) ”” are viewed as divinely imposed and upheld.

None of these points simply answers the question of General Convention’s authority. But taken together ”” along with other elements not mentioned here ”” they indicate a shape and limit to that authority: the Convention and the Episcopal Church it somehow serves are under the authority of the Scriptures, are properly guided by the teaching of bishops subjected to a larger worldwide tradition, are nourished by clergy similarly ordered in their teaching and example, and are embodied and extended by a people so nourished whose scripturally informed lives mold the whole.

Read it all.

Note the reference to the denominational membership–3.5 million–and note that the vote was 79 to 56

Read it all.

The Rev. Peter D’Angio, rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, said the Episcopal church ruled in 2009 to allow same-sex blessing ceremonies on a national level.

In states that legally recognize gay marriages, episcopal churches are allowed to perform the actual marriage ceremony when the bishop in that district gives the OK, he said.

“I think religion has a part to play in same-sex blessings,” the Rev. D’Angio said. “People have the desire for a member of the clergy, whatever religion, to invoke God’s blessing on their relationship.”

Read it all.

Read it all.

An 18-member Disciplinary Board for Bishops has been established as required by the revised version of the Episcopal Church’s canons on clergy discipline, which go into effect July 1.

The board consists of 10 bishops, four clergy and four lay members. Eight of the bishops were elected by the House of Bishops at the group’s March meeting; two were later appointed by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori when vacancies occurred, according to a press release from the church’s Office of Public Affairs.

Read it all.

Jesus disarms and makes a spectacle of the power of money in the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1-15). A steward accused of embezzlement is told to settle the accounts one last time. He uses the opportunity to “forgive” his master’s debtors and ingratiate himself with them, so he can seek help after his threatened dismissal. The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, ridiculed Jesus. He replied that what people prize can be an abomination in the sight of God.

Let the litigious bureaucracy have the money it wants. We keep the Gospel and proclaim it, in season and out of season. The money the Episcopal Church raises from coerced offerings, from Pyrrhic legal victories or from those who believe its new gospel will do no more to save it on its appointed day of judgment than the wealth of Herod’s temple protected it from Roman soldiers in A.D. 70. In the end, money is of no account, mere dust on the scales.

Read it all.

You may find the key page here with many links.

The deadline has been extended for submitting comments through an online survey to the Episcopal Church Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) about a possible revision of The Hymnal 1982 through Saturday, April 30.

The online survey in both English and Spanish is available at here.
The Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers, chair of the SCLM, noted comments are invited from the entire church in this discussion. She previously said, “We have established this survey as part of the Episcopal Church’s ongoing work with liturgical materials and in compliance to Resolution B004 as approved at General Convention 2009. This is important work in the life of our church and we are grateful for participation as our church embraces this task.”

Resolution B004 “authorize(s) Church Publishing Incorporated, working with the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, to conduct a feasibility study on the need for revision of The Hymnal 1982 by speaking to congregations, dioceses and all seminaries of this Church, and to report its findings to the 77th General Convention.”

The survey is coordinated by the Church Pension Fund’s Office of Research.

The survey results, along with recommendations for next steps, will be presented to General Convention 2012 as part of the SCLM report.

The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music briefed nearly 200 invited General Convention deputies in Atlanta March 18 and 19 on how it is preparing a proposed rite for blessing same-sex couples. The SCLM invited two deputies, one lay and one clergy, from each of the Episcopal Church’s dioceses to attend the consultation.

“We are making history on a couple of levels,” said Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, because deputies are “meeting together outside of General Convention for the first time and discussing a topic outside of General Convention.”

Anderson reminded deputies of the limitations on General Convention’s authority, in that it “cannot change the core doctrine of the church,” but said that “the topic [rites for blessing same-sex couples] itself is history-making.”

Read it all.

Notice how the conclusion does not even begin to follow from the premise. Because the Constitution does not circumscribe the authority of the Presiding Bishop does not mean either (a) the authority must be unlimited; or (b) that General Convention has the power to define the authority of that office — or to add to, or detract from, its authority on its own. And since duty flows from (and is defined by) authority, having the power to prescribe duties appropriate to the authority that has been given is not the same as having the power to create new authority by creating new “duties.”

Can anyone today seriously argue that the office of the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA is without any limits on its authority? The Title IV Task Force II seems to think so — and they defend their extension, sub rosa, of metropolitical authority to that office on the ostensible ground that such authority is “nothing new,” because General Convention “has never considered that office to be limited as the Runyan & McCall paper states.”

Only persons who were determined to ignore the evolutionary history of the office of Presiding Bishop could make such an outlandish statement….

Read it all.

Thus, the justification offered by the “Task Force II” on Title IV has no historical basis in fact, and constitutes a misreading of the intent of those who enacted the language. And as argued at the outset of this post, there is no rational basis for dividing the power to establish courts from the power to define their jurisdiction, constitution, and procedures. Read in that way, Article IX becomes a mere fig leaf: the real power to create the courts, notwithstanding the language of Article IX, lies in General Convention.

And so to read Article IX, in a paper submitted by the authors of the revisions to Title IV, is to express everything that is wrong with the current views of the leadership of ECUSA as to its polity. In the state court lawsuits, over and over again, that leadership has beat the drum for ECUSA’s “hierarchical” polity, when — as shown in the first post in this series — there is no such hierarchy as between the dioceses themselves, or when assembled in General Convention. The proof of this point lies in the latest revisions to Title IV themselves. On the “Publications” page of General Convention may be found links to various documents regarding the revisions, including a set of “model” canons for the dioceses to enact in order to implement the revisions.

Without the dioceses enacting those (or similar canons) in their own separate conventions, the changes to Title IV approved at the national level in 2009 could never take effect….

Read it all.

Before taking up their memorandum in detail, however, I want to put some of the matters involved into a proper perspective. Some of what I will now say may come as a surprise to those who are unacquainted with how ECUSA came into being….

First proposition:

General Convention is not the “supreme” (highest) authority in the Church — it never has been, and (unless the current liberal takeover is perfected) never will be….

Second proposition:

As formed in 1789, and as continued in existence ever since, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America is a voluntary confederation, and not a forever indissoluble union, of dioceses….

Read it all.

Both important resolutions passed [for the second time as required] on the necessary vote by orders by more than the specified 2/3 vote margin necessary for their passage.

The Bishop’s address focused on church vitality, church planting, stewardship, and our collective future–KSH.