You can find it over here. The segment begins about 1 minute and 45 seconds in and lasts around six minutes.

“Shaw, MA: Our diocese has had significant growth recently, in thanks to including all people. ”ª#gc77”¬” I was listening and it is certainly an accurate paraphrase, though not an exact quote.

Here are the figures–Massachusetts’ 2007 to 2010 ASA [average Sunday attendance]

20,121
19,351
18,130
17,903

Perhaps there are 2011 figures that show a [small?] increase, but still, there is a large disconnection here–KSH.

Update: You can find some of these statistics here and you can find a great deal more over there.

There have been a number of occasions over the years in TEC like this where a key document or statement has come out, and the response has been, shall we say, less than satisfactory. Therefore there needs to be some preparation on our part so as to try to react in a Christian manner. Herewith some suggestions:

(6) Expect the discernment to be a corporate activity. We still seek to be part of the Church of Jesus Christ, and we need one another. We are. as Ephesians says (4:15), to speak the truth in love. May the way we respond demonstrate this–KSH.

By the way–anyone recognize most of the language here? It is from something I wrote in 2007. Nick Knisely wrote [now Bishop-elect of Rhode Island] at the time that he found himself “pretty much full agreement with [my]suggestions”

Any Anglican theology of law is bound to use both pre- and post-Reformation authors such as Gratian, Aquinas, and Hooker. At the beginning of his Decretum, Gratian offers two important definitions: “What is put in writing is called enactment or law, while what is not collected in writing is called by the general term ”˜custom.’” Aquinas used this distinction to posit a difference between divine law and natural law, both of which are unchanging, and human or positive law, which can be revised. Following Aquinas, Hooker maintained the same. Canon law is human law and insofar as it achieves a good end, the law itself is good. Should canon law fail in this, it must be revised. It is precisely here in a discussion of the good that canon law invokes other canons, namely, the canon of Scripture. If Scripture contains “all things necessary to salvation,” then canon law should be written to aid the Church in attaining these same divinely revealed ends.

Canon law is thus evangelical through and through. A church’s witness to the wider society begins with its own, internal witness. In this way, canon law is constructive, even in its punitive functions. The purpose of ecclesiastical discipline is never to punish but always to restore. The violation of canon law is a matter of no small importance in the Church, just as the violation of civil law is a matter of importance in the State. Only the arbitrary use of authority allows law to be violated in an ad hoc fashion. In the State this is called tyranny; in the Church it is called abuse. A church that cares nothing for canonical infractions also cares nothing for restoration. A church without confession is a church without repentance, and such a church is also without forgiveness, for it stands in need of lawful and righteous judgment. How can there be justice if there is no law?

Read it all.

We believe the past General Convention structure has slavishly copied in ecclesial ink the politics and legislative processes of American culture. Episcopalians are fond of saying that the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution also created the church’s Constitution and Canons. It is an exaggeration but a telling one: General Convention looks and acts too much like Congress and not enough like a council of the Church.

Joseph D. Small, longtime director of theology, worship and education ministries for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), wrote in the March issue of First Things about what he called his church’s “democratic captivity” ”” its reliance on secular democratic procedure rather than proper theological discernment to order its common life. This, he argues, has been a key factor in aggravating his church’s divisions. To such observations, we can only concur.

Read it all.

From here:

And, if you’re following what’s happening, what you’re seeing is the conservatives who have left, now that they’re out, and their identity was defined in part by what they were against as well as the Gospel they were for, trying to figure out how to live together, and how they should live, has actually been harder than they thought, and they’ve actually started to divide among themselves. And so, one of the current tragedies is the group that has left looks very American and very Protestant and very chaotic. And that just has to owned on the front end. I wish it were different, but they are having a hard time cohering and working together. And that is a problem not simply for them, but also for the other conservatives in the Episcopal Church, because they have said, essentially, “this is the faithful way to do this and you need to come join us.” And I just need to tell you that, in all sorts of ways, and I say this with a very sad heart, it’s not attractive. They’re really struggling. So that’s one side.

You may find the link and comment thread here.

At the end of 2012 when he retires to Magdalene College, Cambridge Rowan Williams will have been Primate of All England for a decade. He did not need to retire until June 14, 2020. Various commentators after the announcement of his return to academe in a prestigious but largely honorary role described the post of Archbishop of Canterbury, primus inter pares of the Anglican Communion, as an “impossible job”. But, sadly, it is Rowan whose tenure of the job has made it seem so.

His term of office has been in many ways disastrous, and it is important to consider why that should be so. In different ways both he and his predecessor George Carey have destabilized rather than stimulated the Church of England. Carey’s poorly conceived and insensitive managerial reform of the central church institutions added to the bureaucratic governance and undermined the existing representative structures, while Williams’s search for a new control mechanism to over-ride the existing auto-cephalous provincial authority would have created more problems than it solved. Neither archbishop seemed to possess a well-grounded vision of where the established Church of England was or should be going. But Carey and Williams were outsiders with little or no experience as diocesan bishops in the CofE or of the political aspects of “establishment”.

Read it all.

If you believe, as most Americans do, that the upper reaches of the church don’t have much to do with the ground floor, the next Archbishop of Canterbury will have mostly trivial interest to you. Perhaps it will be John Sentamu, and the ECUSA is in for the deep-freeze. Perhaps it will be a conciliator or a caretaker. Perhaps it will be someone with an even more lush and vigorous patch of Muppet fur insulating his brows from the slings and arrows of church leadership. Who’s to say? But Easter will come, just as it did this year. There will be babies to baptize, teens to confirm, crappy church coffee to be drunk (maybe good sherry if you’re in the right congregation), and ministry to be done, regardless of who fills Williams’ seat.

But if you believe, as many Americans do, that it is of the utmost importance to speak with one voice on women in ministry, or the place of gays and lesbians in the church””if you believe that without a common creed and ethics and way of reading scripture, there’s no point in calling it a “church”””well then, you’re in for a very interesting six months or so. It’s unlikely that you’ll get a champion of orthodoxy like Benedict, and probably not such a fierce champion of unity-at-all-costs as Williams. You may have to face the same uncomfortable ideas that the rest of us are confronted with: that there is no single voice for Christianity, that Christ’s prayer “that they may all be one” is and always has been a fond wish and ardent desire but never a fact on the ground, that Christianity as a world movement has not produced a standard culture but has shaped and been shaped by many different cultures in many different ways, to the detriment of its coherence. But at this point, who the hell knows? You may find somebody who can bring it all back together, or (more likely), you may find another weak leader committed to togetherness in principle but unable to do much about it in practice. Either way, good luck, and definitely let us know if you find somebody with bigger eyebrows than Rowan Williams. We’ll want to be warned about that right away.

Read it all.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leader of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion, recently announced that he would step down by year’s end. A few days later, the Church of England rejected a Williams-backed unity plan for global Anglicanism, a church fractured by issues of gender and sexual identity. The timing of the resignation and the defeat are probably not coincidental. These events signal Anglicans’ institutional failure.

Read it all.

Saying that he hopes that his successor has the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros. Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, will resign at the end of this year and return to academics. He will become the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge where he can meander along the River Cam and take tea at the Orchard Garden in Grantchester far away from the turbulence of the 85-million member Communion he leaves behind. When an archbishop retires at the usual age of 70, no one bats an eyelash. But when he resigns in good health nearly a decade before normal retirement age, people sit up and take notice. It evokes the image of a battle weary pugilist whose “sponger” looks at the condition of his man and tosses his sponge in the air. The fight is over. We might as well declare defeat.

The battle, of course, was his to lose. Anyone with half an eye could see the turbulence that lay ahead for someone assuming the role of leader of the world’s second largest Communion. The same year he took office an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, was consecrated bishop of New Hampshire despite public assurances from Frank Griswold, the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, that he would not participate in the consecration. Griswold went right ahead and did just that. With one part of his Communion going its own way, and thumbing its noses at the rest, while the vast majority were profoundly upset, Williams was forced to choose. Either he would take a self-imposed mediatorial role, and desperately try to keep all parties at the table. Or he would take sides, and do what he could to bring the truculent back in line.

He chose the former, with the result that no one was satisfied. Privately he held to a liberal position on sexuality, as enunciated in his well-known, though highly inscrutable, paper entitled The Body’s Grace. Publicly, he towed the line that was spelled out by Lambeth Resolution 1:10, which stated as the official position of the Communion that “homosexuality was imcompatible with Scripture.”

Read it all.

I can support both the Jerusalem Declaration and an Anglican Covenant. The reason for this is not that I want to be accepted by two Anglican constituencies that seem to be dividing along supporting one or the other. Rather, they are both useful and valid in their proper context. The Declaration is a creedal statement to which I can subscribe as a clear articulation of what I believe and what I think is the Scriptural stance proper for the Church. As a matter of witness to the world and the Church, it is necessary to state publically one’s belief and be willing to be held accountable to that stated belief. One could argue that the fatal disease of the contemporary (as in present day and not style) church is that as a community it is unwilling to be seen as odd or is afraid of being accused of intolerance. An objective statement of belief is essential to any credible identity as a church.

The problem that I have with the Jerusalem Declaration is not to be found in its substance, but in its use. A creed does not unify, it solidifies. In other words, creeds help those who subscribe to them to coalesce around the creed, but ends any conversation with those who do not. If Jesus Christ is our foundation, then the creeds are the anchor bolts that hold our house to the foundation. They are not doors and windows through which we can talk to our neighbors. Historically, the creeds have demonstrated this property quite amply. The great ecumenical councils of the early Church were called to deal with false teachings, or at least to establish a benchmark for orthodoxy. The creeds that resulted were therefore reactions to specific problems rather than instruments that prospered relationships. It follows that a new creed has to be composed or the old one amended every time a novel idea enters the arena.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Diocesan synods voted against the covenant, often in the face of great pressure from the vast majority of English bishops, who frequently made sure that the case for the covenant dominated proceedings. The bishops also exerted a certain amount of emotional blackmail, suggesting that if the scheme didn’t pass, it would be very upsetting for the archbishop of Canterbury (cue for synod members to watch a podcast from said archbishop, looking sad even while commending the covenant).

Well, it didn’t work, and now those particular bishops need to consider their position, as the saying goes. Principally, they need to consider a killer statistic: as the voting has taken place in the dioceses (and there are still a few to go), the pattern has been consistent. Around 80% of the bishops have voted in favour of the covenant, but the clergy and laity votes have split around 50-50 for and against, with votes against nudging ahead among the clergy. That suggests an episcopate that is seriously out of touch, not just with the nation as a whole (we knew that already), but even with faithful Anglican churchgoers and clergy in England.

Read it all.

In my opinion, there have been three instances when Rowan Williams had an opportunity to do something about The Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada and chose not to. Number one was at the gathering of archbishops of the Anglican Communion in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 2007 where the archbishops agreed that some discipline needed to be taken against these rogue churches. However, Rowan Williams took matters into his own hands, didn’t do what his fellow archbishops asked him to do and as a result, many of them decided not to come to future gatherings. They seemed to be thinking, “what’s the point in going if the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to overturn our decisions and take matters into his own hands anyway?”

Secondly, in a gathering of Anglican leaders, bishops, clergy and laity, in Jamaica, 2009, Rowan Williams intervened in the debate about the Anglican Covenant. The Covenant was designed to try and hold the Communion together around some kind of a confession of faith and discipline. His interventions during that debate, which I was present for, were bewildering. He seemed to undermine the very Anglican Covenant he’d been championing and cast doubts about his own leadership behind it.

Thirdly, in response to the crisis in the Communion, instead of giving more authority to those archbishops who were faithful to the Gospel, the Archbishop of Canterbury attempted to centralize power in his own Anglican Communion office and in the creation of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. These actions undermined the legitimacy and respectability of the other existing instruments of communion, unity and governance-and especially the Primates’ meetings.

Read it all.

Much of what Rowan Williams writes and says carries the air of a man who has grown accustomed to being received seriously regardless of the soundness of his ideas, and who is used to having even the most incomprehensible of his pronouncements met by the irritating acquiescence common to other “bearded lefties.” But sounding profound is not the same thing as being profound, and we should not let the man’s spiritual standing distract us from the reality that he is wholly dangerous to the power of Western ideas.

Documenting his many missteps is a little like cataloguing the utterances of Prince Phillip, but without the compensation of the consort’s dry sense of humor. An example: In response to protesters whose actions were steadily destroying the income, and thus upkeep, of London’s St. Paul’s cathedral, Williams claimed that Jesus Christ would have been an Occupier. Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey took a different view, noting that the protesters were “opportunistic and cynical,” and questioning the way in which senior clergy “mismanaged” the situation; his skepticism was vindicated when protesters began to defecate inside the cathedral and spray-paint graffiti ”” including “666” ”” on its walls.

With all of this in mind, Rowan Williams will, no doubt, fit in nicely in his new post as master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge

Read it all.

My…reaction is that though everyone is being very complimentary about his time at Canterbury ”” “As a man of great learning and humility,” said David Cameron, “he has guided the church through times of challenge and change. He has sought to unite different communities and offer a profoundly humane sense of moral leadership that was respected by people of all faiths and none” ”” despite all that, actually he has been a much greater disaster than was actually necessary. He hasn’t “guided” the Church of England at all. He has lurched, with it, from one crisis to another, as often as not making things a lot worse. He is supposed to be a distinguished theologian (a proposition about which there is, to say the least, more than one view) and also a man of integrity: but he has consistently failed to handle crises with any theological coherence (theology, incidentally, is supposed to clarify complex problems, not make them more obscure than they need be); and, as for integrity, instead of remaining true to his beliefs, he has sought to avoid conflict between opposing views in his Church not by attempting to convince those he believes are wrong but by retreating in the face of internal political pressure, sometimes changing direction in mid-stream.

Read it all.

Against the background of increased anticipation of a black Archbishop of Canterbury, a backlash appears to be in full swing to deny Sentamu this appointment. Put simply, will the British Crown follow due process and Episcopal order and allow a Blackman head the Church?

Seven years ago, a black Catholic priest, Nigerian-born Cardinal Francis Arinze, was shortlisted as a possible successor of the late Pope John Paul II. But after the emission of an inexplicable black and white smoke, Arinze was dropped and the present Pope, Pope Benedict VI, was (s)elected as the pope.

According to theweek.co.uk, insiders regard the Ugandan-born Archbishop as too old, too undiplomatic and too ill. His.. [traditional] posture though applauded by the larger church, may also count against him.

Read it all.

Not everyone had the capacity of the willingness to suffer through the audio, and now through the kindness of some very hard working individuals you can read a transcript if you are interested.

You may find part one there and part two is here.

Part one is here and part two is there. You are encouraged to take the time to listen to (suffer through?) it all.

Please note–these are both audio files. The time begins with a short Q and A to introduce me to those present before the questions shift to the subject at hand. Note, too that Bishop Kee Sloan of Alabama was invited by the Dean, Frank Limehouse, to come, which he (graciously) chose to do. During the time, Dean Limehouse invited Bishop Sloan to speak, and he chose to do so. This covers a wide range of recent events/developments and will be of broad interest to many blog readers–KSH.

Take the time to go through them all as your schedule permits.

unfortunately, there is another issue that has been made public; it is now part of the historical record: Chuck Murphy and eight AMIA bishops have removed themselves from Rwandan oversight, having done so for no particular theological or biblical reason. The issues are both personal and ecstatic. By personal, I mean personality conflicts. By ecstatic, I mean that the only spiritual reason given for the departure was Chuck Murphy’s sense that the Lord had told him personally that he was like Moses leading people out of Egypt: “I must now say ”¦ that I believe that the Lord’s present word to me (and to us) now directs me to look beyond Genesis chapters 39-45, and on into the Book of Exodus”¦. that Africa (Egypt) could no longer be viewed as [AMIA’s] lasting home”¦. Things have now been made very clear to me” [letter of Dec. 5, 2011 to Archbishop Rwaje].

I think it critical in such times that we say what a thing is”“only the truth will set us free. And this thing that happened has a name: schism. All the AMIA bishops who have resigned are schismatics.

This is a hard sentence to write and to read, because these are otherwise godly men, whose leadership we have admired. Some we call friends and colleagues. But there is no other word to describe what they’ve done other than the word schism.

Read it all.

At this point it is hard to know what to make of this – well, let’s call it what it is, a spiritual mess – and to know exactly how to unring the many bells that have now already been rung. I will note for the record that I am a bishop of CANA/Nigeria and of the ACNA, and that as President of the AAC, my organization is comprised of AMiA and non-AMiA members, and I will further note that at GAFCON, MaryAnne and I chose to ride on the bus that had all AMiA (except us) members on board, because we enjoy their company. When AMiA decided to move from ACNA member status to “mission partner” status, I was disappointed in the distancing that I felt.

With all of this said, I first sensed alarm when the letter of the Washington, DC AMiA members was posted publicly, as it gave evidence that all was not well in the Anglican Mission, as it is currently called. Then additional letters, most of which have been posted on Stand Firm in Faith or TitusOneNine websites began to come in, some from Rwanda, and some from Chairman Murphy in response. There has been a communications train wreck unfolding in slow motion. It would seem that Rwanda is not pleased with the new direction that +Chuck Murphy wishes to take the Mission, and in taking it out of Rwanda proper. They told him to stop his action and repent or resign from the AMiA chairmanship.

Read it all.

But matters are proceeding apace. The world is changing. The Global South objected to the consecration of a gay bishop with a partner, but Gene Robinson is no longer alone in that category even in the US House of Bishops (If he ever really was…). They objected to the idea of bestowing a blessing on a same-sex couple, and yet now in many states of this Union, including our own, the church is not only bestowing its blessing, but either seriously considering or already solemnizing the civil status of marriage.

In short, the process of organic development is afoot, it is not going to stop, and reception is or isn’t happening as I speak. In the meantime, the mainstream via media of the Episcopal Church is steadily reasserting our understanding of our authority to vary”” to live out the variety of rites in our own context, which is very different from that in much of the Global South. As I learned intimately and personally at the conversation I attended in South Africa just a few weeks ago. The people in those places represented at that conference are free to maintain their various rules and traditions, suitable as they are for their contexts. I will say more in the open discussion about the extent to which the friction between the North and South has been exacerbated by misunderstanding and misinformation. But it is my sincere hope that corrections to those misunderstandings, and better information, through the mandated listening process and the Continuing Indaba ”” in both of which I have been involved ”” will assist to lessen the friction and perhaps even help calm the storms that have swept through our beloved Anglican Communion ”” not just the issue, but the issues behind the issues of Anglican disunion.

Read it all.

The developing impasse between the diocese and the canonical instruments of General Convention is a tragedy in the making. It is very possible that the result will be the unnecessary loss of dozens of parishes and tens of thousands of Episcopalians. It is a moment to take stock and to recall the purpose of the canon law of the church. The canon law of the church has the peace of the church as its ultimate aim. The course of justice will be perverted if this new and arguably unconstitutional canon is used as an instrument by those of a majority opinion to gain the upper hand over those with whom they disagree. These proceedings threaten to reduce to the vanishing point the ground from which any future reconciliation might grow.

Read it all.

In an ecclesiastical outlook that has recently offered little comfort, the very serious charge of abandonment made against Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina is chilling indeed. The charge is striking, because under his leadership the Diocese of South Carolina has not ”˜abandoned’ the Episcopal Church (as did the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, San Joaquin, and Quincy). What it has done, openly and publicly, is to insulate itself as much as possible from what Lawrence has called the “false gospel” of “indiscriminate inclusivity” advocated by the national church, through a reform of its diocesan laws and constitution. It is precisely this achievement – to remain within the Episcopal Church but not of the Episcopal Church – that has enraged its enemies and spurred these charges.

It is no secret that the national church has been looking for grounds for a legal challenge against South Carolina; yet, we are assured, the information presented against Bishop Lawrence came not from the Presiding Bishop’s office, but from communicants within the diocese – disaffected progressives presumably, following the familiar progressive strategy of using bureaucratic process to advance agendas which otherwise fail to gain support. The Presiding Bishop, however, is not off the hook. One must ask whether her aggressive policy of litigation to quell opposition to her theological agenda has not created the climate and established the precedent for a resort to litigation by other militant progressives. Whether or not they are acting formally in concert, the effect is the same.
The charges will be the first major test of the newly reformed Title IV canons on Discipline. Though these have been criticized for removing due process protections, we have been given assurances that these fears are overblown. Perhaps so: but many eyes will be watching closely to see what justice the Bishop of South Carolina receives under them. A heavy responsibility lies with the Disciplinary Board and its president, Bishop Dorsey Henderson, retired of Upper South Carolina (and recent visitor to St. John’s on behalf of Bishop Benhase), as they investigate these charges, to ensure that these new canons do not become another instrument of coercion. Bishop Henderson and the Board will need your prayers.

To his credit, Bishop Benhase has expressed hope that the charges will be dismissed. Even if they are, the process will be costly in terms of money and morale: a further and needless embitterment of a church already divided and demoralized by unilateral theological change and aggressive litigation. To put it bluntly: the message being sent by these charges (as by the evident hostility of the Presiding Bishop) is that conservative dissent will not be tolerated within the Episcopal Church, and that significant theological differences will be resolved by coercion. One could hardly devise a stronger incentive for conservatives to leave. Militant progressives longing for ideological purity may rejoice at the prospect of getting rid of so much “dead wood” – but those who cherish the Episcopal Church will know that such losses leave it diminished, and not just in numbers or dollars.

This case raises a question for us: given the ascendancy of the agenda of “indiscriminate inclusivity” in the Episcopal Church – will there be a secure place in the Episcopal Church for the conscientious dissent of those who hold to historic Anglican doctrine and worship? That security cannot be taken for granted.

—-The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector of Saint John’s, Savannah, Georgia

Watch it all.

Watch it all.

Read it all.

For those of us who are part of the Diocese of Melbourne it is important that we reflect on what it means to be an Anglican, or to use contemporary terminology, what is distinctive about Anglican ”˜spirituality’. We are the most diverse diocese in Australia. On the theological level we have anglo-catholic, liberal catholic, reformed evangelical, evangelicals of other persuasions and charismatic parishes well represented, growing numbers of Chinese congregations and several other ethnic parishes, as well as a complete range of ages. What we see in our diocese at a micro level is magnified on the world scene.

Today, the Anglican Communion is an association of national Anglican churches organised as dioceses in 160 countries with a membership of approximately 80 million people. Following the Reformation of the church in England in the 16th century, catholic and evangelical emphases were from this point part of Anglicanism. The theological differences were for centuries contained within a common liturgical practice grounded in English culture. However in recent times doctrinal, liturgical and cultural diversity has become more pronounced and so differing spiritualities live side by side within Anglicanism. Today the Anglican Communion embraces evangelicals and anglo-catholics (with liberal and conservative strands in both cases), theological radicals and demonstrative charismatics, all modified by the ethnic and cultural variety of the Communion….

Read it all.