The Conference welcomes every sign of the revival of Bible study within the common life of the Church. It calls on all Church people to re-establish the habit of Bible reading at home, and commends the growing practice of group Bible study.
–Resolution 5 from the Lambeth Conference of 1958
In the afternoon the second of two hearings was held by the Windsor (Report) Continuation Group (WCG). About twenty speakers from around the Communion spoke to the third part of the group’s proposals following up on the Windsor Report. As you may remember, the Windsor Report called for three moratoria: (1) on same-sex blessings; (2) on the ordination of partnered gay priests to the episcopate; and (3) on the incursion of foreign bishops into territories outside of their jurisdiction. In the Windsor Report, the first two of these moratoria are to last until such time as the Communion as a whole reaches consensus. You can pretty much imagine, I suspect, how the conversation proceeded: very strong opinions expressed on all sides of the matter. The comments will feed into the WCG who will issue a report in anticipation of the meeting of the Anglican Consultation Council in May 2009.
It was particularly striking for me to hear the witness of two bishops in particular. The first was Bishop Michael Ingham. He reminded the hearing that the Windsor Report is exactly that, a report. It was requested by a body with no jurisdiction and one that has no authority to impose its positions on any of the 38 self-governing churches (or provinces) of the Anglican Communion. Unfortunately, Bishop Ingham reminded us, the Windsor Report has been elevated to be the standard by which Anglicans are to live together and has become such without our input or consent, and its interpretation seems to get more rigid by the day. Some suggest that the Windsor Report is the only way to save the Anglican Communion. Others suggest that it’s having the opposite effect and that the increasing dogmatism toward the proposals of the Windsor Report will kill the generous spirit of historic Anglicanism even if the Communion holds together structurally. The all-or-nothing manner in which the Windsor proposals are being embraced might well hold the Anglican Communion together, but we will be a faint shadow of the great missionary movement for Christ we have cherished through the centuries.
The other bishop whose words were particularly inspiring was Duncan Gray, the Bishop of Mississippi. Bishop Gray spoke powerfully about his own journey of “discovering church” among those with whom he disagrees on issues and how important it is to him to stay in fellowship and communion with them. He witnessed to the fact that he has “discovered church” in lots of surprising places in the Episcopal Church and is deeply grateful for all that means. I can say, without qualification, that I have “discovered church” in the life and witness of Bishop Gray.
Some in the Anglican Communion may have found themselves a little irritated by the amount of rhetoric that has issued from the Vatican in recent weeks on the divisions facing the church. The Anglican Representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Holy See, the Very Revd David Richardson, says that instead, the concerns of the Roman Catholic Church should be taken as a very positive reminder that the unity of the church is God’s will.
While the Pope was in Australia celebrating World Youth Day, he urged the Anglican Church to avoid schism, and Cardinal Dias warned in his address to the Lambeth Conference about the dangers of disunity to evangelism.
“My take on it at this stage,” says Revd Richardson, “is that there is a lot of investment from the Roman Catholic Church in the Anglican Church cohering, for a whole range of reasons ”¦ the last thing they want to see is a church structurally split.” Schism, from the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church was therefore, he said, “a really much more serious issue than the discipline or moral theological issues with which we’re wrestling.”
There are a number of serious and deeply held misconceptions operative throughout the conference.
One, stated by the Windsor Continuation Group, “the proliferation of ad hoc Episcopal and archiespiscopal ministries cannot be maintained within a global Communion.” Translation: Communion leadership is angry with Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, the Southern Cone et al., for consecrating bishops and charging them with the development of their missionary outreach in the States and Canada.
No one adds to this condemnation a simple statement of fact that these actions were taken because the Communion stood by and did nothing substantive while abusive actions against believing clergy and parishes (now whole dioceses) on the American shores continued….
Two, the word “inclusive” has completely replaced an older and historically more familiar word “comprehensive” which, frankly, is the familiar word one used to describe a far healthier Anglicanism. The two words are not synonymous…..
Three, the Global Anglican South Conference, is spoken of with disdain….
Incredibly powerful address from Rowan Williams to bishops at Lambeth tonight….
Dr Rowan Williams warned liberals who have elected a gay bishop and blessed same-sex unions that their actions are felt as a “body blow” by some, and create “literal physical risk” in countries where Christians are persecuted for tolerating homosexuality.
But he also told conservatives, some of whom have defected from their national churches in protest at the liberal developments, that their reactions are felt as an “annihilating judgement” that “pours scorn” on the whole church’s legitimacy.
He repeated his belief that only new rules and guiding bodies to set the boundaries for members of the 80 million-strong Communion can prevent “further disintegration”.
Friends, I stand before you as a Jew, which means not just as an individual, but as a representative of my people. And as I prepared this lecture, within my soul were the tears of my ancestors. We may have forgotten this, but for a thousand years, between the First Crusade and the Holocaust, the word ‘Christian’ struck fear into Jewish hearts. Think only of the words the Jewish encounter with Christianity added to the vocabulary of human pain: blood libel, book burnings, disputations, forced conversions, inquisition, auto da fe, expulsion, ghetto and pogrom.
I could not stand here today in total openness, and not mention that book of Jewish tears.
And I have asked myself, what would our ancestors want of us today?
And the answer to that lies in the scene that brings the book of Genesis to a climax and a closure. You remember: after the death of Jacob, the brothers fear that Joseph will take revenge. After all, they had sold him into slavery in Egypt.
Instead, Joseph forgives — but he does more than forgive. Listen carefully to his words:
You intended to harm me,
but God intended it for good,
to do what is now being done,
to save many lives.
Joseph does more than forgive. He says, out of bad has come good. Because of what you did to me, I have been able to save many lives. Which lives? Not just those of his brothers, but the lives of the Egyptians, the lives of strangers. I have been able to feed the hungry. I have been able to honour the covenant of fate — and by honouring the covenant of fate between him and strangers, Joseph is able to mend the broken covenant of faith between him and his brothers.
It is the absence within the Communion of a clear and adequate authority, a clear and adequate theology and a clear and adequate ecclesiology which are at the root of the present crisis, and will likely lie at the root of crises yet unforeseen. One may point to the Windsor report, and behind it to the Virginia report and the work of the Eames Commission, as beginning to address these issues. But it remains the case that, apart from ad hoc declarations such as Lambeth I.10, there is no clear understanding of the common theology (including moral theology) of the Communion. There is no clear understanding of what it means to be a Communion, of the balance between the “autonomy” claimed (‘though not necessarily to the same degree) by the several Provinces, and the accountability of those Provinces to the whole. And there is as yet no body which is clearly empowered by the Communion as a whole and recognized by the Provinces as possessing the authority to intervene, and intervene even in the affairs of a particular Province, for the good of the whole.
The WCG proposes practical solutions, meant to lessen tensions and buy time as the Anglican Covenant is shaped. But it does not deal with the fundamental issues. It is unlikely but not inconceivable that The Episcopal Church might accept a moratorium on consecrating gay or lesbian bishops: but that does nothing to address the underlying theological dysfunction which led it to do so in the first place.
But it is hard to believe that The Episcopal Church would in fact agree to such a step. And it is likewise hard to believe that a well-established initiative such as the Rwandan-sponsored Anglican Mission in America, which is actively planting new congregations around North America, will risk the loss or reining-in of its inertia by placing itself in trust with the Communion, when the stated goal is to reconcile it with a Province which has succumbed to such dysfunction.
Earlier in the day the Windsor Continuation Group held a second hearing about what steps to take in light recent provincial incursions, blessings of same sex relationships, and suitable candidates for ordination to the episcopate. Hundreds of bishops attended, and speakers were allowed to address the group’s members, each person receiving up to three minutes; this process lasted well over an hour.
As you might imagine, comments varied not simply widely, but extremely. Perhaps the most disturbing one I heard was that there is only “one interpretation of scripture.” If that were indeed the case, preaching would have ceased over 1900 years ago; the reality is that every generation, indeed, every preacher has been called by God to interpret Holy Scripture in light of the concerns of the day. The most hopeful comment was from someone in the Episcopal Church who is committed to staying in the church in spite of disagreeing over the appropriateness of recent actions, and who wondered why the rest of the Communion couldn’t act similarly.
I ended up being the “clean up hitter,” the last person to speak. My comments were brief. I told the assembled people that my fear is that we are raising issues of church government, finding suitable candidates for ordination, and the pastoral response of the church to its members to the level of creedal authority. Doing so will eventually turn us into a confessing church, not a catholic one, and that is bad for the long term health of the Anglican Communion.
I finally realized today that the Lambeth Conference is a marathon and not a sprint.
–Bishop Thomas Ely of Vermont, writing 8 days ago
3. It seeks to impose a singular uniformity upon the complex diversity of our Communion. I quite understand that in some parts of the Anglican Communion homosexuality is subject to criminal law and cultural prohibition. However, I live in a country where homosexual people enjoy the same rights and responsibilities under the law as every other citizen. To discriminate against homosexual people, as this document suggests, is no more acceptable in Canada than to discriminate against women, black people or Jews. If this becomes the position of the Communion, it will put the Anglican Church of Canada in the position of having to support and defend irrational prejudice and bigotry in the eyes of our nation.
We already live with a good deal of diverse practice across the Anglican Communion ˆ in the ordination of women, the re-marriage of divorced persons, and the admission of the baptized and unconfirmed to Communion. Why can we not live with a similar diversity in this matter too?
4. It ignores reality. Whatever this document says, illegal incursions will continue. We have heard already how they continue to happen even in places that maintain the traditional position of the Church on homosexuality. And furthermore, gay and lesbian people will not go away, nor will they be healed, because they are not sick. It is the church that is suffering from blindness and prejudice, and it is we who need to repent and be healed.
Bishop Ssenyonjo was deposed because of his consecration of a Ugandan priest “under discipline,” a Ugandan spokesman said. “One of the co-consecrators was another deposed Uganda Bishop, the former bishop of North Mbale. He had been deposed because he took a second wife. So, Ssenyonjo was not deposed because of his association with Integrity.”
On July 11 the Church of Uganda released a statement saying it had been assured by Lambeth Palace that Bishop Ssenyonjo “will not be seated with Bishops at the Lambeth Conference and will not participate in the deliberations during the Conference.”
The statement was released after a Kampala newspaper New Vision reported on July 7 that Ssenyonjo, the second bishop of West Buganda, would be the sole Ugandan bishop attending the Lambeth Conference.
The church’s provincial secretary, Canon Aaron Mwesigye, said, “We can only conclude that Christopher Ssenyonjo was invited by one of the gay lobby groups to be part of their demonstrations. He would, after all, need a letter of invitation from someone to get a UK visa.”
However, the “Official Programme & Event Guide” for the Lambeth Conference listed the self-select session on the official conference agenda, and Bishop Ssenyonjo was granted access to the bishops-only area of the conference on the tightly policed campus, prompting queries from the Church of Uganda.
The suggested ”Pastoral Forum” is more problematic. It’s to be chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury and serve as an advisory group to the various Provinces when there are internal disputes and difficulties which affect the whole Communion. Such schemes have been tried (or at least floated) in recent years and have always failed. I’m not sure why this one will have any greater chance of success.
I believe we should ask everyone to do the best they can to honor the spirit of the Windsor Report while the Covenant process continues and ”˜cut each other some slack’ until that time. All of us are working hard to maintain Communion while responding faithfully and fairly to our local contexts. That’s what Anglicanism is supposed to do and be, it seems to me.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s decision to have this a “non-legislative” Conference was a very wise one. If we were “voting” on such matters this week, we would leave here as divided and wounded as we were in 1998. As it is, we will discuss all the ”˜hard issues,’ give our input, and leave the matter for cooler heads to digest and deal with through the “Covenant Design Group” and the “Windsor Continuation Group.”
As always, any final decision will have to come through our separate Provincial structures (in our case, General Convention) for a vote by all the people of God, not just bishops and Primates! Thank God for a Communion which is “episcopally-led” but finally “synodically-governed!”
The other thing I have been musing on today is how different people approach a conference like this – especially when they are used to running things and cannot control this one. I attended a conference in Wittenberg, Germany, last year when the German Church (EKD) addressed its ten year reform programme under the title ‘Church of Freedom’ (Kirche der Freiheit). The ‘Impulspapier’ divided the church’s task into twelve elements that then formed the content of the conference. At the first plenary session a longstanding, more traditional bishop stood up and took the document apart. He claimed that the Church is not the ‘Church of Freedom’, but the Church of Jesus Christ. This clever statement then enabled several people to dismiss the report and the whole process. They had found the gap – the error – and therefore were absolved from any responsibility to engage with it.
I am reminded of this not because I think this a German problem, but because I think this is how powerful people behave when they don’t like being powerless. I think there are bishops here who are behaving like this and find endless fault in everything. I would like to go on a conference organised by them and show them what it is like to have people identify (oh so cleverly) all the other ways in which it could have been done.
I think this process has been remarkable….
If others haven’t engaged with it and gained from it, that’s too bad. But it is only by engaging with it that you stand any chance of getting any gain from it. Furthermore, I am fully committed to getting stuck into whatever we come out with at the end of this conference – whether that be something good or something a bit hopeless. The Church has gone through two millennia of ups and downs and threats and challenges and now is no different. After all, the Church is not the kingdom of God – we are called to be a sign of the Kingdom and that impacts (drives?) not only what we believe but how we live together.
This is significant in the light of this afternoon’s second ‘hearing’. Of 27 speakers, 23 were westerners (American, English, Irish, Canadian and Australian[)]. Of those 23, 15 were from TEC and they ran the gamut of TEC complexions. Once again, they spoke with passion and clarity, but what was not said about their province was as significant as what they did say. What I think was most significant about this was that the Americans cannot say that their voice has not been listened to and heard. (The other speakers were from Sudan, South India and Egypt.)
Read it all (timestamp of entry is Monday 28 July 2008 – 06:24pm)
Bishop Clive Handford, WCG chair and former primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, clarified that “retrospective” did not imply that Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, would have to resign.
“We are not anywhere intending to imply that Bishop Gene Robinson should resign. We are aware that (he) was elected bishop according to the processes of The Episcopal Church, whatever we may think of that,” said Bishop Handford.
Bishop Michael Ingham, whose diocese ”“ New Westminster ”“voted to allow same-sex blessings in 2002, reacted strongly to the WCG’s proposals, describing it as “an old-world institutional response to a new-world reality in which people are being set free from hatred and violence.”
In a statement, Bishop Ingham called the WCG document ”“ copies of which were distributed to bishops for discussion ”“ “punitive in tone, setting out penalties and the like, instead of inviting us into deeper communion with one another through mutual understanding in the body of Christ.” He added that the suggestion of a pastoral forum “institutionalizes external incursions into the life of our churches.”
[A] different way of trying to solve the problem maybe, but Preliminary Observations Part Three continues to misdescribe what the Communion’s problem is, and therefore gets us no nearer to a solution.
The basic assumption was the same in the Windsor Report, the Nassau Draft and the St. Andrews Draft. They all describe the threats to the Communion as being the blessings of same-sex unions, the consecration of openly gay bishops and to a lesser extent cross-border interventions. To call for a moratorium on all three, as though they all caused disunity, is to fly in the face of reality. Cross-border interventions undermine institutional unity by creating competing jurisdictions. New Westminster’s same sex blessings and New Hampshire’s consecration of a gay bishop do not.
The ethics of homosexuality is cause for disagreement, not disunity.
The Pastoral Forum to be headed by Dr Rowan Williams is a last-ditch attempt to bring rebel Anglican provinces into line and prevent a total split in the 80 million-strong Communion.
It is designed to provide a rapid response to crises, by offering guidance either to liberal churches that break guidelines by ordaining gay clergy or blessing same-sex unions, and also traditionalist churches that cross borders to ordain bishops in other provinces. A halt to all these practices has been demanded.
The forum will allow parishes that have defected from their national churches to be looked after in a “holding bay” until they can be returned to their previous home.
But it will also have the power to “diminish the standing” of rebel churches, which could mean their heads being thrown off the Primates Meeting of worldwide Anglican leaders, or being barred from the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of bishops that is taking place in Canterbury this week.
Check it out (hat tip: JS)
Although the idea of a forum is still in its infancy it is unlikely to appeal to conservatives or liberals. One US Episcopal Church insider was heard referring to it as “dead in the water”.
A US bishop, the Right Rev Sergio Carranza-Gomez of Los Angeles, said: “If it’s really a pastoral thing that will advise and uphold the authority of the body [national church] then it will be OK, but we don’t want to have tribunals or a group that enforces doctrine. If it’s something that will punish or discipline then I don’t think it will work.”
The Right Rev Henry Scriven, a conservative evangelical assistant bishop in Pittsburgh, said: “We’re a bit beyond extra committees that don’t do anything.
A group of senior Anglican clergy has told the Lambeth Conference that liberal churches must end the ordination of gay bishops and stop blessing same-sex relationships if the Communion is to arrest its slide towards a permanent split.
The working party given the task of finding possible solutions to the rift told the 650 bishops meeting in Canterbury that traditionalist churches in Africa must also stop setting up parallel church bodies in the United States as homes for congregations splitting away from the American Church because of the dispute.
The group, headed by the former Archbishop of the Middle East Clive Handford, said in the long term some sort of statement of shared beliefs and an agreement to abide by them would be necessary.
But in the short term, a ban on gay bishops and blessings was needed to prevent “irreparable damage” to the Communion.
TEC bishops Catherine Roskam, Suffragan, New York and Kirk Smith, Arizona, spoke first about the theme of the day: the Bishop and Interfaith dialogue. Both noted that they have a new respect for the bishops here who live in multi-cultural and multi-faith worlds and really need to dialogue so that all may live peaceably together and get along. Both described their efforts at dialogue as much less serious business.
Moving on to the third session today from the Windsor Continuation Group, both said that they would prefer to see the statements made in a positive and much less negative wording. Bishop Smith said that affirming their relationships as bishops in a positive way would be more acceptable; because it sounds like if you don’t accept this thesis and/or the Covenant, you can’t be part of the group.
(ENS) Reaction to the proposals was swift. “There is no willingness to give us a middle ground, to find the via media,” Bishop Sergio Carranza, assistant bishop of Los Angeles, said in an interview. “They are blaming the Episcopal Church and the Canadian church for all the problems.”
Arizona Bishop Kirk Smith, one of the day’s Episcopal Church media briefers, said that the church will discuss the proposals over the next few days.
Speaking personally, he said he “would have liked to have seen something initially a little more positive and less punitive.”
“Our time together has given me wonderful feelings about the communion, strengthened friendships around the world and I’d like to see us at the end of the conference come up with a common statement affirming what we stand for in a positive way and less a statement that if you don’t accept certain things you can’t be part of the group,” he added.
Diocese of Pittsburgh Assistant Bishop Henry Scriven told ENS that if the pastoral forum “delivers what it promised and does what it says it’s going to do, from our point of view, that would be very helpful.”
We can all feel the Archbishop as the big poppa as an instrument of unity (1); his performance at this Conference has been flawless giving him rock star favor. But at the end of the day there is the balance of the Lambeth Conference itself (2), the Primates (3), and the heretofore neglected, and lay represented, Anglican Consultative Council (4).
The Tablet reporter was correct for despite this recital of the instruments of unity (all 4 of them) there seemed to be an immobility in recent years when it came to responses to the blessing of gay and lesbian unions, the ordination of practicing homosexuals, and unwanted incursions from other other bishops. This is a bare bones critique of the Windsor Report. Moreover, we have two bunches of the Faithful, side by side, who read the bible differently. So, was another instrument needed, sort of an code of conduct which could mobilize an ecclesial swat team quickly?
That’s why everyone is breathy around two undeviating compass azimuths during this last week. Will they intersect? The first is the growing feeling that we like being a worldwide family but the second, from another direction, is that there will be an agreement which tells us how to behave and when we are bad. To make it worse, there may be some we don’t know or elect who tell us so and determine our future.
With regard to those dioceses and congregations which have left their original provinces and joined themselves to others, the Group recommends that the Pastoral Forum “develop a scheme in which existing ad hoc jurisdictions could be held `in trust’ in preparation for their reconciliation within their proper Provinces”. Such a scheme might reflect the way religious orders relate to the wider Church, or the way an extended family cares for children from a dysfunctional nuclear family, or the way escrow accounts hold monies in trust for their original owners.
In his prepared remarks, Bp. Hanford explained that the groups which had pulled apart might be placed in a “holding-bay” not dependent on any other Province, but linked to the Pastoral Forum. In response to questions, he explained that this provision is meant to deal only with those who are already out, not for further withdrawals. Asked if this might take the form of provincial oversight from Canterbury, Bp. Hanford stated that this possibility “will doubtless be considered”.
“Ways of halting litigation must be explored”, the Group asserts, “and perhaps the escrow concept could even be extended to have some applicability here”. In response to a question about whether this meant those who had pulled out might get their property back, Bp. Hanford replied that this “would require working out”.
In response to a question about the fairness of providing a safe space for conservatives, but not for lesbian and gay people like the Nigerian man recently given asylum, Bp. Hanford said that he heard what was being said, but noted that this is a preliminary report, and drew attention to the final section. Reaffirm Commitments
Finally, the WCG calls upon the bishops to “reaffirm the commitments expressed” in two statements. The first is Lambeth 1998’s call for “all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialisation of sex”. The second is the Primates’ statement at Dromantine that “the victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us. We assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and valued by him, and deserving of the best we can give of pastoral care and friendship”.
LGBT Anglicans are back on the chopping block based on the work of the Windsor Continuation Group. While we recognize that this is a long-term process, sadly, what was continued today was the process of institutionalizing bigotry and marginalizing the LGBT baptized. Acceptance of these recommendations would result in de facto sacramental apartheid.
“We applaud the strong testimony in today’s hearings from TEC bishops who are committed to be pastoral to all the sheep in their flock, not just the straight ones. We call on them to take that witness to their Indaba groups. We ask them to remember the 1976 commitment of the Episcopal Church to ‘full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church’ for the LGBT baptized.
“It is a sad thing indeed that the message today’s report sends out from the Anglican Communion to the world is that homosexuals getting married in California are of more concern to the church than are homosexuals being mugged in Nigeria.
“As Integrity continues to offer our witness here at Lambeth Conference, we demonstrate our deep commitment to our ongoing relationship with the rest of the global Anglican Communion. At the same time, we will witness to our conviction that the vocations and relationships of the LGBT baptized are not for sale as bargaining chips in this game of global Anglican politics. At the end of the day, too high a price to pay for institutional unity.”
Watching the press conference today it was clear that the organizers of Lambeth think that they can solve the Communion’s problems by creating yet another of their Little Englands (despite the fact they’ve been warned that the Colonial Days Are Over) – an England where everyone is polite, every one remembers their manners, everyone remembers what Nanny taught them in the Nursery, everyone remembers their station and the rules and are gentlemen and ladies and quite accommodating to English sensibilities, and everyone remembers the British are in charge. After all, what is the sense of being Anglican if one doesn’t want to emulate the English! All will be well, all will be solved, let us create a safe space, a Little England and shut out all that dreadful unpleasantness that causes the Locals to riot.
It’s almost endearing. Almost. The problem is – we Americans are revolutionaries. We can’t help it. It’s in our blood – we were never disappointed by despots storming the Bastille and chopping heads off aristocrats and their flunkies. We manage to retain elements of our English forebears who reminded us that manners are helpful and order is necessary, but that is more to be tolerated than embraced. We put cowboys in the Oval. We do stuff and ask questions later.
Watching the Press Conference today was like watching the Old Guard trying to contain a revolution. But revolutions are like tornadoes – and this is an ecclesiastical tornado. Tornadoes are neither contained nor controlled. You learn to watch for them, to learn the signs of their approach – and when they come, you either you find shelter quickly or you run fast.