From here:

As you may be aware, on Saturday, December 5, the Diocese of Los Angeles elected the Rev. Mary D. Glasspool, a partnered lesbian, as one of two bishops suffragan elected in that diocese over the weekend. This election, like all elections to the episcopate, must receive a majority of consents from bishops exercising jurisdiction (that is, diocesan bishops) as well as diocesan Standing Committees of the Episcopal Church within 120 days of the election. In response to this election, the Archbishop of Canterbury released the following statement on December 6: “The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole. The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications. The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.”

Previously, the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in June 2006, passed resolution B033 that called “upon the Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on the communion.” There was much conversation at this year’s 76th General Convention in Anaheim about whether the actions of the 2009 Convention had repealed B033. We are mindful of the statement of this summer’s General Convention that acknowledged that “members of The Episcopal Church, as of the Anglican Communion, based on careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and in light of tradition and reason, are not of one mind, and Christians of good conscience disagree about some of these matters” (resolution D025). We reiterate our belief that The Episcopal Church should exercise the restraint called for by the Anglican Communion and, likewise, will not consent to this election.

This election in Los Angeles comes at a time when we are expecting, within the next few weeks, the release of the final draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant, which seeks to guide our common life as a communion of churches. Our diocese, through actions at Diocesan Council and statements from our leadership, has consistently affirmed our support of the requests of the wider Communion in these matters, as well as the ongoing Anglican Covenant process.

The 2.1-million-member denomination paved the way for her election last summer when it lifted a moratorium on electing gay bishops after the election of New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson six years ago caused a split in the 70-million-member Anglican Communion.

The majority of world Anglicanism opposes openly homosexual clergy, and a majority of Anglican bishops voted against allowing them at the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in Canterbury, England.

But the U.S. Episcopal Church ignored that sanction, selecting Bishop Robinson in 2003, causing an estimated 100,000 Episcopalians to flee the denomination to more conservative churches. Four dioceses also have pulled out of the denomination in protest. They and an estimated 60 churches are entangled in lawsuits with the Episcopal Church in a fight to keep millions of dollars’ worth of property and real estate.

Ms. [mary] Glasspool had 153 clergy votes, with 123 needed to win, and 203 lay votes, with 193 needed to win. Mr. Vasquez had 87 clergy votes and 177 lay votes.

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This decision represents an intransigent embrace of a pattern of life Christians throughout history and the world have rejected as against biblical teaching. It will add further to the Episcopal Church’s incoherent witness and chaotic common life, and it will continue to do damage to the Anglican Communion and her relationship with our ecumenical partners.

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina

Good morning. What I have been asked to do this morning is to report on where we are at this point of time in the Anglican Communion. It’s a fairly complicated picture so I hope I will be given the gift of clarity as I talk to you about this. Since the last time I reported to Synod on these matters, six things have happened. I want to delineate those six things and comment on them and then conclude by talking about a situation which at the moment is absolutely no threat to the Uganda Link but is a potential cause of difficulty in relation to our relationships with the Church of Uganda.

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Read it carefully and read it all.

“This will bring further recognition of our diocese as a part of the Episcopal Church, as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion, and in communion with the See of Canterbury. When I shared with the Archbishop of Canterbury last month the plans for a resolution of this nature, he responded favorably,” the bishop said.

The bishop also spoke of why he believes the diocese needs to remain within the Episcopal Church.

“We need to stay where we are because our Lord needs the faithfulness of the ministry this diocese has to offer, and does offer, through the commitment of those who make this their spiritual home, and in turn are striving to build up the kingdom of God in this place and the life of Christ’s Church,” he said. “We stay also because our historic identity with the Anglican Communion demands it of us. Without ordered processes there is no catholicity, no claim to the ancient Christian unity, which we claim is at the very heart of whom we are as members of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”

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As you know, in his July 27, 2009 “‘Reflections on the Episcopal Church�s 2009 General Convention. . .,” the Archbishop of Canterbury discussed the possibility of a “two-fold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance. . .[whereby] there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with �covenanted� provinces.” God willing, should there come an opportunity for this Diocese, and likewise for the Advent, to remain aligned with the orthodox Anglican Communion and at the same time distance ourselves from the current direction and decisions of TEC, we prayerfully believe that you will take all necessary actions to remain aligned with the Anglican Communion.

May God be with both of you, and grant us all His wisdom.

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8. The autonomy of TEC dioceses has long been recognized as a feature of TEC polity. For example, the standard text on polity when many of TEC’s current bishops were trained was the volume in the widely-distributed official series in the 1950s and 1960s entitled “The Church’s Teaching.” It was written by the long-time sub-dean and professor of church history at the General Theological Seminary with the assistance of an “Authors’ Committee” composed of numerous church leaders. The author, Dr. Powel Mills Dawley, summarized the role of the diocese as follows:

Diocesan participation in any national program or effort, for example, must be voluntarily given; it cannot be forced. Again, while the bishop’s exercise of independent power within the diocese is restricted by the share in church government possessed by the Diocesan Convention or the Standing Committee, his independence in respect to the rest of the Church is almost complete.

9. Moreover, the preamble of TEC’s constitution explicitly identifies TEC as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion, which it characterizes (quoting the well-known Lambeth Conference resolution) as a fellowship of “Dioceses, Provinces and regional Churches.”

10. Thus, in the case of TEC the relevant constitutional procedures for adopting the Covenant include direct adoption by its autonomous dioceses, which are the highest governing bodies within their territory and enjoy a particular constitutional prerogative concerning constituent membership in the Anglican Communion. Indeed, given the autonomy of TEC dioceses, central bodies such as General Convention could not commit individual dioceses to the Covenant over their objection. Thus, when the Covenant is sent to the member churches, dioceses are appropriate bodies to respond at that time under the unique constitutional procedures of TEC.

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The Episcopal Church is in a Level Five conflict. It’s not getting better, it’s getting worse. We continue on this trajectory and the entire communion is affected. The best thing would be for The Episcopal Church to withdraw for a time certain, work through their theological issues, and then come back. Perhaps in that time, the rest of the communion will have worked through and discovered that yes, God is Doing A New Thing and glory hallelujah. Or not. Then The Episcopal Church can decide whether it belongs in the Anglican Communion.

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An Anglican church cannot simultaneously commit itself through the Anglican Covenant to shared discernment and reject that discernment; to interdependence and then act independently; to accountability and remain determined to be unaccountable. If the battle over homosexuality in The Episcopal Church is truly over, then so is the battle over the Anglican Covenant in The Episcopal Church, at least provisionally. As Christians, we live in hope that The Episcopal Church will at some future General Convention reverse the course to which it has committed itself, but we acknowledge the decisions that already have been taken. These decisions and actions run counter to the shared discernment of the Communion and the recommendations of the Instruments of Communion implementing this discernment. They are, therefore, also incompatible with the express substance, meaning, and committed direction of the first three Sections of the proposed Anglican Covenant. As a consequence, only a formal overturning by The Episcopal Church of these decisions and actions could place the church in a position capable of truly assuming the Covenant’s already articulated commitments. Until such time, The Episcopal Church has rejected the Covenant commitments openly and concretely, and her members and other Anglican churches within the Communion must take this into account. This conclusion is reached not on the basis of animus or prejudice, but on a straightforward and careful reading of the Covenant’s language and its meaning within the history of the Anglican Communion’s well-articulated life.

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THE first openly gay bishop in the Anglican communion yesterday criticised the Archbishop of Canterbury’s suggestion of a possible “two-track” church. Gene Robinson, the Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire, said: “I can’t imagine anything that would be more abhorrent to Jesus than a two-tier church.

“Either we are children of God and brothers and sisters in Christ, or we aren’t. There are not preferred children and second-class children. There are just children of God.”

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This may cross over into editorializing which we elves try not to do. But posting the roll call tables below, we couldn’t help but be struck by something.

We have extracted the voting information for the 27 bishops who are known to have signed the “Anaheim Statement,” from the larger table with all the roll call votes which is posted in the entry below. It seems very strange to us elves that a full one-third of these signatories claim to “reaffirm their commitment” to uphold the Windsor Process moratoria, while they voted FOR one or both resolutions (D025 and C056) that indicate TEC’s intention to breach those moratoria.

Remember, as per all our caveats in the entry below, the vote tallies here are unofficial. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, but the C056 data in particular is still off by two votes (among the full 136 bishops who voted).

You can read the full text of the Anaheim Statement here

It includes the line:
* We reaffirm our commitment to the three moratoria requested of us by the instruments of Communion.

Re-read D025 and C056 for yourselves, and please explain to this feeble-minded elf how one can have voted YES for D025 and C056 and signed this reaffirmation. We’re clueless.

–Elfgirl

Thanks to the work of a number of T19 readers, led by Karen B., here is an unofficial tally of all the Bishops’ roll call votes from GC09.

It includes the roll call votes for:

— Resolution D025 (basically overturning B033 which urged restraint on consecration of further non-celibate homosexual bishops, etc.)

— Rowe Amendment to discharge, (i.e. “kill without voting”) Resolution C056

— Resolution C056 (allowing development of SSB liturgies and “generous pastoral response”)

— Also, the currently known signatories to the “Anaheim Statement” are noted.

The listing is based on vote by vote review of the audio files of the roll calls for D025 and C056, and also draws heavily on the Rev. George Conger’s report for the Living Church. (however the tally does not exactly match Conger’s tally. There are 3 or 4 differences based either on what was heard on audio, or other published reports of how a bishop voted.) There are detailed notes and links to sources at the bottom of the table.

Note: the totals for D025 match the published totals. However the totals for the Rowe Amendment and C056 are slightly off by 2-3 votes. There are several votes which are impossible to hear clearly in the audio files. So these tallies should be used with caution, although they are believed to be 99% accurate.

Please send Kendall or us elves any corrections. We will of course post the official tallies from TEC once they are released.

You can download/view the PDF version of the roll call tallies table here

We’re going to try to post the full table here on the blog, but that may be difficult. Check back in a little while.

General Convention’s Committee on World Mission spent nearly 90 minutes Saturday morning revising a resolution that, while using polite language about preserving the unity of the Anglican Communion, ultimately repeals Resolution B033.

The amended form of Resolution D025 says the 76th General Convention acknowledges that God may call gays and lesbians, “like any other baptized members, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church.”

Read it all.

Read it all and read it very carefully noting the changes.

I found disturbing in this morning’s conversation the suggestion that B033 somehow bought our continuing relationship with the Anglican Communion ”“ a relationship that, just the same, remains tenuous at best ”“ or at least so it was claimed. But the suggestion to me implied that B033 was a ticket to grace, a punch-card to get in the door (and we might get kicked out at any moment, if we misbehave, of course).

This witnesses only to the absurdity of the way the Windsor Report has been used and abused to try to force us to toe a particular line ”“ and almost utterly without honoring our God-given freedom to consent through prayerful due process. It has the hallmarks of attempting to make our relationship with the greater Communion a coerced marriage of sorts, and continues to poison even the best motivations behind efforts towards forging an Anglican Covenant.

The frankly bizarre assertion that B033 somehow “worked” as it ought ”“ that it enabled us as a Church to retain a seat at the tables of influence in the greater Communion, and that it somehow brings us towards a healthier state of affairs ”“ was soundly and succinctly contradicted by other members of House. They replied quite simply that relationship in the Communion cannot be bought or codified by resolution. It is rather forged in the incarnational work of person-to-person and community-to-community mission, and in the creation of common, tangible ministry from rebuilding broken lives to feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and healing the sick.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Check it out.

A majority of bishops, deputies, visitors and others who testified before a World Mission Committee public hearing July 9 indicated they hope the Episcopal Church will move beyond resolution B033.

As many as a thousand people attended the two-hour hearing which began at 8 p.m. in the Pacific Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel. A total of 51 people testified; 41 said they hoped the church could move beyond B033, a moratorium on the consecration of bishops whose manner of life presented a challenge to the wider church. Ten others indicated they wanted to retain B033.

Following the hearing, Bishop Gene Robinson -”” who was among those testifying -”” said his “spirit is buoyed” despite stories of pain. “I was overjoyed at the hope and reconciliation people have found in our church. Someone mentioned being a beacon of light. That is a ministry we can reclaim.”

Read the whole article.

The House of Deputies will be asked to consider meeting in two unusual sessions early in the 76th meeting of the General Convention to discuss Resolution B033 passed by the last convention.

“The purpose of this discussion will be to exchange information and viewpoints among the deputies, and to inform Legislative Committee #8 World Mission, to which committee all the resolutions relative to B033 have been assigned,” House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson wrote in a June 29 letter to deputies and first alternate deputies.

Anderson wrote that she believes the House of Deputies “will benefit by having an opportunity to discuss B033 apart from the context of legislative procedure” and noted that “many deputies have indicated their longing to discuss B033 together as a house.”

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Divided Christendom has yet to be that vision of reconciliation through which human kind can believe. Nevertheless ecumenism has come a long way. When we are downcast it is worth looking backwards to see how far we have come. That progress slow as it is may not yet have produced full reconciliation – it has encouraged us to stand where others stand and in so doing to begin the process of understanding God’s purpose for this world.

In my work within the Anglican Communion I have been left with little doubt as to the centrality of the need for reconciliation not just between fractured Christendom but between members of the same world family of believers. What is known as ”˜The Windsor Report’ – as I have said a recognition that we did much of our work within these walls of St Georges’ – sought to produce a road map for greater understanding of the divisions within Anglicanism. Much of that division centred on and stemmed from questions of sexuality, but my experience at that time and since has left me with little doubt that behind the headlines of the main agenda there were significant questions to be asked to do with authority, power and influence. Certainly there were sharp divisions over the question of a practising gay bishop, division that represented contrasting interpretation of Scripture and the understanding of Tradition ”“ but whatever lies ahead for Anglicanism I am convinced that reconciliation must take account of what I have termed those other agendas. What this illustrates for me is that the process of reconciliation often involves the less obvious issues.

I am reminded of the words of the late Lord Hailsham during his lecture on Morality and the Law here in 1984: ”˜One of the great evils of the present day is the tendency to sound off about specifics without an examination of first principles.’

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The alliance between the Anglican Communion Office, the Rev. Marta Weeks, and the Satcher Institute leaves many questions unanswered:

— Who decided this alliance was worth pursuing? The Anglican Communion Office? The Episcopal Church? The Archbishop of Canterbury?

— Who investigated the previous work of the Center of Excellence for Sexual Health and its directors? Did they assume Anglicans would not look closely at this next phase of indaba and miss the potential entry of a Trojan horse into the listening process? How will the ACO ensure that CESH does not influence Continuing Indaba in any way when CESH effectively holds the purse strings and this is exactly the type of process they are actively seeking to be involved in?

— Why is the ACO continuing to misuse the indaba process to bridge opposing theologies and moralities when the process is based on developing consensus within a village or tribe with shared values and morality?

Read it all.

Worth the time.

A “dirty tricks” campaign has blown up in the faces of liberal activists in the Episcopal Church, as the publication of purloined e-mails has led to allegations of “conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy” being lodged against the leader of the gay-pressure group Integrity and a member of the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council.

Bishops associated with the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) have asked the bishops of Los Angeles and Delaware to look in to the conduct of the Rev Susan Russell and the Rev Canon Mark Harris for having surreptitiously obtained and then posting on their blogs the text of private correspondence exchanged among the ACI and its attorney.

A request has also been made to Bishop John Chane of Washington to review the actions of one of his staffers in the anti-ACI campaign. The dispute centres around e-mails published by Canon Harris and Ms Russell though written and exchanged by the ACI leadership on the crafting of a position paper entitled the “Bishops’ Statement on the Polity of the Episcopal Church”, released last month by the ACI and subsequently endorsed by 14 bishops.

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Its first two recommendations are about the listening process and the moratoria. The first recommendation invites the instruments of communion to commit themselves to a further stage of the listening process.

In this process we are at the stage to allow honest discussion and gain a picture of where the communion as a whole is in its response to Lambeth 1.10 which strongly discouraged ordination of persons in same-sex relations and blessing of same-sex unions but also encouraged listening to the experience of homosexual people. This process should continue, be reinforced and deepened.

I want to make it clear that without that kind of attention to the underlying issue, the appeal for restraint and moratoria is likely to sound rather hollow. You cannot say to large tracts of the communion you cannot pretend that this issue is not there or real. We need to exchange our convictions and thoughts hopes and fears more fully.

In that light, the second recommendation needs to be read about the moratoria. Windsor and Dromantine were consistent in urging that provinces hold back from deeper divisions that make common conversations harder. The moratoria called for restraint from electing a person in a same-sex union to the episcopate, from approving rites for blessing of same sex unions, and from intervention in other provinces to offer pastoral care. The Dar es Salaam communiqué made a heart felt plea about litigation.

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Read it carefully and read it all.

These two key dimensions of our vision, however, must be carried out with Another Fundamental Dimension of our diocesan life. Our constitution reads “The Church in the Diocese of South Carolina accedes to and adopts the Constitution and Canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church”¦.” The relationship is there””though we may understand how it needs to be carried out in different ways. Certainly many of us in this diocese, but let us remember by no means all, have been on a very different course from the policy setters at recent General Conventions. The Standing Committee and I, following the path trod by Bishops Allison and Salmon, have felt compelled on several occasions to differentiate ourselves from statements or actions of various leaders in TEC””such as compromises toward the Uniqueness of Christ; certain non-Canonical actions of the Presiding Bishop and the HOB; as well as the controversies regarding Human Sexuality. I anticipate the continued need for such differentiation in the months and years ahead.

Beyond differentiation there is important witness still left to do, and from which I believe God has not yet released us. I believe the House of Bishops, and the Executive Council, following the lead of General Convention 2006 has resisted the change that the Holy Spirit seems to be urging us toward as Anglicans””such as, the call toward a more responsible autonomy and inter-provincial accountability. Yet these bodies have fearfully protected the prior century’s polity and structure when 21st Century structures are needed. It continues to astonish me that so many leaders in our Church favor revision of our doctrinal and moral teaching and yet uphold relatively recent canons and polity with a fervor that would be admirable if held toward the fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles. This heel-dragging protectiveness was shown clearly in New Orleans in 2007 when the HOB refused to adopt the Primates’ Communiqué from Dar es Salaam, arguing that it was contrary to the polity of our Church. The bishops were soon followed by the Executive Council, therein making it difficult if not impossible for the Presiding Bishop to follow through with the Primates’ directives. If we had received the Primates’ recommendation the four dioceses which have since left would be intact and in TEC today! Even more recently, this fear was shown afresh when individual bishops who seemingly have little respect for the Windsor Process and the Anglican Covenant accepted the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury to attend Lambeth and then spoke against any progress towards a Covenant. They will not be able to hold back the future of global Anglicanism permanently. Either Episcopalianism will repent of its unscriptural autonomy or it will spread its splintering tendencies of the last forty years throughout the Anglican Communion.

I believe our steadfastness will be of service within TEC””if only by challenging the structural conservatism of the theological innovators to face the changes of the future. Even more importantly it will be of service for the Anglican Communion as it moves towards the emerging structures God is providentially shaping.

Read it carefully and read it all.

In the American House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans when The Episcopal Church faced its deadline to deal with terms like moratoria, ”˜words’ were fiercely debated. How far could the House of Bishops go to deliver words which might placate the Anglican Communion without giving anything away? This was a studied course of dishonesty.

Now we have the most egregious example of all in the declaration by the Canadian diocese of Ottawa that it will allow a parish to perform same-sex blessings in order to ”˜discern’ the way forward. Needless to say, it’s an odd kind of ”˜discernment’ to do something you are not agreed upon in order to reach agreement. It seems like a recipe for division and conflict.

Furthermore, the diocese claims that it is not violating the moratorium on samesex blessings. “There is nothing in the moratorium that says we cannot continue to discern,” said Archdeacon Ross Moulton of Ottawa. It seems unnecessary to point out that the very meaning of the word ”˜moratorium’ rules out this kind of discernment. But Archdeacon Moulton has a different dictionary it seems.

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American Church leaders claimed this week that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s new group of Pastoral Visitors is ”˜too little, too late’. As the number of lawsuits between the Episcopal Church (TEC) and breakaway conservative groups approaches 60, some say the initiative ”“ intended to help repair the torn fabric of the Anglican Communion ”“ lacks integrity.

The names of the bishops who will act as ”˜mediators’ were announced this week by Lambeth Palace. The statement said that the bishops had attended a meeting at Virginia Theological Seminary in the USA from February 25 ”“ 28. The purpose of the new group is to assist in healing the current tensions in the Anglican Communion by holding ”˜face to face’ meetings with church leaders in both the new American provinces and TEC.

But the Rev Philip Ashey, Chief Operating Officer for the American Anglican Council, a grouping of conservative Anglicanism, was deeply concerned about Lambeth’s response. Speaking from Atlanta, Georgia, he said: “Every pastoral visitor programme suggested so far has …[omitted] the participation of the parties who have been aggrieved, those people who have left TEC.”

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The Diocese of Ottawa has said it will perform same-sex blessings, becoming the first Canadian Anglican diocese to make such a move since a ban was imposed on the practice by the international church.

The diocese said it is developing a liturgy and protocol for the rite and once they are created it will start performing the ceremonies for gay couples on a limited basis. But critics of same-sex blessings say those steps will widen the schism in the Canadian church.

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Following the Report of the Windsor Continuation Group to the Archbishop of Canterbury (which was published at the Primates Meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, in February 2009) the initial group of Pastoral Visitors called for by the Windsor Continuation Group in their Report and commended by the Primates Meeting in their Communiqué (para 15) met for a briefing session at Virginia Theological Seminary from 25-28 February.

Those appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pastoral Visitors team are: the Rt Rev’d Santosh Marray, the Rt Rev’d Colin Bennetts, the Rt Rev’d Simon Chiwanga, Maj Gen (ret’d) Tim Cross, Canon Dr Chad Gandiya, who all participated in the briefing seminar, and the Very Rev’d Justin Welby, who was unable to attend.

Read it all.