In an order published…[yesterday], the Supreme Court of Texas has, following its announcements of decisions in a number of pending cases, granted Bishop Iker’s request for expedited oral argument and set the case for hearing on the same day as the San Angelo case (the appeal by Church of the Good Shepherd from the decision in favor of the Diocese of Northwest Texas) — October 16, 2012, at 9 a.m.
Each side will have twenty minutes for oral argument.
Read it all and follow the many links.
In the past few months I have read several agonized reports on the supposed death throes of the Episcopal Church. I have not studied the statistics or interviewed masses of people. However, I have traveled in the opposite direction from those who have left the Episcopal church, and am glad that I have.
I’ve been an Episcopalian for a little over a year. I found a church home with strong preaching, a loving community, and attention to scripture, reason and tradition. The liturgy moves me, the clergy challenges me, and I am both inspired and heard. After 10 years as a Baptist, it has been a welcoming new home.
Yes, I do understand that membership numbers are down. Much of that, of course, is because a number of congregations and many individuals left the Episcopal Church when it accepted gay and lesbian clergy several years ago. Being among the first major denominations to resolve this issue, though, is both a blessing and a curse — yes, some people left in anger, but I also know where the church will stand from this point forward, and I agree with that position. The wrenching dislocation of that question is resolved. There is a blessed settledness to that.
St. James’s is the Anglican Parish Church of Hampton Hill, Middlesex.
We seek to be a Christian community and local community drawing closer to God. We are:
Ӣ Liberal Open to new ideas and possibilities with a critical eye to the past and present, and generous in our attitudes.
”¢ Catholic This literally means ”˜universal’ and so we recognise our setting in the wider world and Church, and value the past as well as being concerned for the future.
Ӣ Eucharistic Our principal act of worship is the eucharist and we explicitly acknowledge Christ present in the world with all this entails for Christian living.
(Blog readers please note that Father Henderson is a 2009 Graduate of General Theological Seminary currently serving a parish in Connecticut–KSH).
I joined a church that valued tradition and yet was engaged with modernity. I joined a church that embraced the timelessness of dignity and beauty. I joined a church that was engaged theologically and reasonably rather than emotionally in issues of doctrine and order. I joined a church that was a true blend of Catholic and Reformed. I joined a church that valued the uniformities of the Prayer Book even as it explored how to plumb its depths in manifold ways. I joined a church that was sacramentally grounded. I joined a church that believed that how we pray says something about what we believe.
Just as when I went to General [Seminary], finding the Episcopal Church was a joy and it felt exactly like where I was called to be. I felt at home and it was a place that made sense because there was a there there.
I am not sure where the there is now.
As I talk to priests too happy to ignore rubrics and ordination vows to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church because they have decided their sense of “welcome” is more important than the church’s call to common identity,
as I attended a Diocesan Convention at which we sang treacly hymns with narcissistic lyrics,
as I talk to priests in pitch battles in their dioceses about baptizing in the name of the Trinity,
as I attend Eucharists where priests make up the Eucharistic Prayer on the spot (“meal of power” not Body and Blood and “the systems of the world are broken” at the Fraction),
and as I watch the Church one more time hurtle into a divisive squabble, I am feeling profoundly out of place.
The Church that is slashing funding for Christian formation and youth ministry while hurtling toward… “[the Communion of the Unbaptized]” is not the Church I thought I was joining. The Church that has a diocesan convention at which we sing “Shine, Jesus Shine” and ignore the Prayer Book is not the Church I thought I was joining. The Church that is defining sainthood as anyone who has done something good and worthy rather than someone who has done good and worthy things because of their faith in Christ is not the Church I thought I was joining.
Read it carefully and read it all and many of the comments are well worth the time.
Ending three years of sitting on the fence during a breakup over doctrine, leaders of a historic Downtown church decided to break away from the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh and affiliate exclusively with the Episcopal Church.
Trinity Cathedral’s governing board last week voted 11-7 to withdraw from the more theologically conservative sect, overturning an October 2008 resolution to serve both the Episcopal Church diocese and the Anglican diocese.
“This decision was not made lightly or hastily,” the Rev. Catherine M. Brall, provost at the cathedral, said in a letter to members. “Many, if not most, of the comments made during the lengthy time of discussion had been previously raised.”
Anglican officials said they were “saddened” by the vote.
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.
The Vision of the Church of the Good Shepherd is to exist for those who are not yet members and to be known for”¦
*World-changing Children
*Strong Families
*Confident Leaders
*Biblical Preaching
*Spirit-filled Worship
Our Core Values are the principles we are unwilling to sacrifice in the achievement of the Vision.
* Centered on the Cross of Jesus Christ,
* Centered on Community
* Centered on Mission and Ministry to Others
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….
I like it for its rootedness also and that it takes people seriously. I like it’s theology (but by no means all of it) or should I say it’s approach to theology.
– First, its diversity, tolerance and the most important : freedom of thought. Second, having TS Eliott and CS Lewis but also John Shelby Spong, Paul van Buren and Don Cupitt….
And of course, current problems surfaced and one said ”“ Sadly, what attracts me most in the Anglican Church are all the things we would lose if we were to adopt the Anglican Covenant….
Frankly, I find it impossible to reconcile the good Canon’s version of our Church’s history with the known facts. There was no “Presiding Bishop” created by the founding documents to be “the head of this new Church”, much less a lead bishop “reflecting the principles of the young republic” — see the details about the gradual establishment of that office, and its subsequent mushrooming into its current form, in this earlier post.
Moreover, the Church of England and its bishops were emphatically not unwilling to “embrace [their] child’s new status.” They simply had to eliminate certain procedural hurdles, and to iron out a few doctrinal differences, before they could proceed with consecrating an American bishop, all as explained (in painstaking detail — which I know for many readers is the bugaboo of this blog) in this post, in which there are full links to all the historical documents. There, one will learn, for example, that far from being unable to “convince Church of England leadership to consecrate indigenous bishops for the fledgling Church”, the Rev. Dr. White was one of the first two American bishops to be consecrated by the then-Archbishop of Canterbury. That august official, together with the Archbishop of York, went to great lengths to accommodate the desire of the “fledgling Church” to have proper bishops to lead it, and to ensure that it was truly a church founded in the image of the Church of England, if not under its jurisdiction.
Around the world, entire nations are losing their Christian identity. Countries that once spread the Gospel world-wide now see missionaries coming to them. Many churches, once full on Sunday mornings, are now shuttered or used by another religion or remodeled as museums and homes. In America, Christianity’s influence on society is less and less recognizable. In this crucial hour, Christ’s imperative to “hold fast the profession of our faith” is even more urgent.
Hold Fast: An Urgent Call to the Western Church features the preaching and teaching of Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, someone who’s shared the Gospel around the world despite countless challenges.
I am a happy returnee to Anglicanism after many years away. My reconnection occurred while going to the magnificent Washington National Cathedral to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu preach. His message of peace and reconciliation was truly inspiring.
During the service, I found myself praying for the first time in 20 years ”” for my sick, aged father, languishing in a veterans’ hospital in far-off Toronto. I returned to the cathedral weekly, finding that praying for him gave me a connection to him that was very real.And, of course, the Episcopal liturgy and worship was as familiar and appealing as it was when I was a young parishioner at St. Simon the Apostle in Toronto.
In his Pentecost letter to the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, speaks of us as having ”˜not fully received the Pentecostal gift of mutual understanding for common mission’.
The differences that focus around questions of human sexuality continue to be very real, very difficult.
ACSA must contribute what we can to the painful debate, not least from our own experiences of dealing with vast diversity.
I am therefore glad that ACSA was effectively represented at the Global South 4th Encounter earlier this year, and that 10 Bishops attended the All African Anglican Bishops Conference in Uganda last month.
For us, what has mattered most is:
· being centred on Christ;
· agreeing on the central matters of who Jesus is and the salvation he brings;
· and therefore recognising one another as being united in him, and, in consequence, with each other.
In consequence, as we have found within the Synod of Bishops, when differences arise, none of us feels called to say to another ”˜I no longer consider you a Christian, a brother in Christ, a member of the body of Christ ”“ I am no longer in communion with you.’
The revisions to the disciplinary section of the Canons (“Title IV”) proposed at Anaheim in 2009 lived up to Bishop Jefferts Schori’s prediction: with very little time to consider their sweeping nature, and with no line-by-line comparison of what was being changed made available to them (contrary to what the Canons themselves require), the deputies enacted changes the full scope of which no one — not even those who had labored for years to draft them — grasped. The extent of the disciplinary powers over other bishops alone which the new Canons give to the Presiding Bishop transform her — in contrast to what tradition and ECUSA’s Constitution say — into a full-fledged metropolitan. Consider just these points (see this paper for the full details):
* Currently, if the Presiding Bishop wants to bring charges against another bishop, she has to send a written presentation of just the facts, without any editorializing, to an independent “Title IV Review Committee” consisting of bishops, clergy and laity. Under the new Canons, the Presiding Bishop is empowered to refer, “in any form”, information about any offense she thinks “may” have been committed to an “Intake Officer”, whom she alone appoints.
* Currently, the Title IV Review Committee screens and evaluates each potential charge against a bishop. Under the new Title IV, the Presiding Bishop, along with her appointed “Intake Officer”, have two out of the three votes on the “Review Committee” which now screens the charges.
* Currently, the Presiding Bishop may inhibit a bishop only if the Title IV Review Committee decides to present charges, and only if a majority of all the members of the affected diocesan Standing Committee consent. Under the new Title IV, the Presiding Bishop may act alone, and out of the blue, to inhibit a fellow bishop (the word “inhibit” has been replaced by the term “place restrictions on the exercise of the ministry” of a bishop).
* Currently, any inhibition is “temporary”, and is “an extraordinary remedy, to be used sparingly and limited to preventing immediate and irreparable harm to individuals or to the good order of the Church.” Under the new Title IV there are no such limitations on its use — restrictions may be imposed for any duration, and for any reason(s) the Presiding Bishop, in her sole judgment, thinks are sufficient.
Please read it carefully, follow all the links, and read it all.
f) With the support of the Ecclesiastical Authority a special Diocesan Convention held in October 2009 modified the declaration of conformity, signed by ordinands to the Priesthood or Deaconate, as specified in the Book of Common Prayer and the TEC Constitution”¦.
This is just a wrong understanding of what the Diocesan Convention approved. There has been no modification of the Declaration of Conformity. The ordinands sign only the Declaration as it appears in the Constitution & Canons of TEC and the Book of Common Prayer. The statement referenced is read as clarification of the teaching of this Church for the edification of the faithful in the midst of the many controversies today. I would ask those in the Forum which of the expressions of our heritage they find so offensive””what is expressed in the Creeds, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral or the theology of the historic prayer books?
(For an intriguing discussion of this matter I suggest members of the Episcopal Forum or other interested persons read a scholarly article in the Journal of Episcopal Canon Law by Jonathan Michael Gray, an assistant Professor of Church History at the Virginia Seminary http://www.vts.edu/canonlaw )
g) With the support of the Bishop, the Standing Committee of the Diocese proposed six Resolutions for the Reconvened Convention to be held on October 15, 2010”¦..
In March we recessed the Diocesan Convention with the constitutional question still pending: The ability of a diocese to govern its common life in a manner that is obedient to the teaching of Holy Scripture (to which every ordained person in this Church has given his or her verbal and written assent), the received heritage of The Episcopal Church, and in accordance with the Constitution of TEC. This has remained unresolved or, more accurately stated, entirely unaddressed by the Presiding Bishop; therein leaving in question our ability to pursue our mission, free from unauthorized intrusions.
At the Clergy Conference held at St. Paul’s, Summerville, on September 2, Mr. Alan Runyan, legal counsel for the Diocese, presented a report detailing revisions to the Title IV Canons of the Episcopal Church, which were approved at the 2009 General Convention. These Canons deal directly with issues of clergy discipline, both for priests and bishops. The impact of these changes is profound. It is our assessment that these changes contradict the Constitution of The Episcopal Church and make unacceptable changes in our polity, elevating the role of bishops, particularly the Presiding Bishop, and removing the duly elected Standing Committee of a Diocese from its current role in most of the disciplinary process. The changes also result in the removal of much of the due process and legal safeguards for accused clergy that are provided under the current Canons. For a detailed explanation of these concerns, members of the diocese are encouraged to review the paper co-authored by Mr. Runyan and found on the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) website.
In response, the Standing Committee is offering five resolutions to address the concerns we have with these changes. View the resolutions. Each represents an essential element of how we protect the diocese from any attempt at un-Constitutional intrusions into our corporate life in South Carolina. In the coming weeks these resolutions, along with an explanation of the Title IV changes, will be discussed in the Deanery Convocations for delegates, as we prepare for Convention to reconvene on October 15th. By these resolutions, we will continue to stand for the Gospel in South Carolina and pursue our vision of “Making Biblical Anglicans for a Global Age.”
Please follow both links and read all the material carefully–KSH.
We see in this set of facts, as early as 2004, a recurring pattern. While professing to honor diversity — and indeed, to seek “unity in diversity” — the groups allied with Via Media have always taken root only in those dioceses led by orthodox clergy who stoutly resisted the ordination to the episcopacy of individuals in a noncelibate relationship outside of Holy Matrimony as defined (and still defined) by the Book of Common Prayer. For thus upholding the rubrics of the BCP, they have been accused of fomenting schism within ECUSA, sued, deposed and hounded from the Church.
In a recent webcast, [Presiding Bishop Katharine] Jefferts Schori was asked if she was trying to shore up support from other provinces before the meeting. “That was certainly not the intent,” she answered. “It may have been a byproduct.”
“We have partners all across the Anglican Communion,” Jefferts Schori continued. “These visits had been set up some time ago, well before the timing of the Standing Committee meeting was known, basically as a way of building relationships between our respective provinces.”
TEC’s recent history reveals that it now has a standard way of doing business””one that exposes its pleas for dialogue as disingenuous. What is that way? One makes changes in disputed aspects of the life and order of the church by breaking the rules and then calling for conversation rather than “consequences.” This standard way of doing business carries with it its own very idiosyncratic notion of dialogue”“one that, by laying claim to the prophet’s mantle, will not allow the possibility that one could be wrong and one’s opponent right. When TEC acts, TEC acts (according to TEC) in the power of the Holy Spirit; and when TEC speaks, TEC speaks (according to TEC) in the power of the Holy Spirit. To be in opposition, therefore, is to oppose both the Holy Spirit and the justice it is God’s purpose to bring to the world. These are shocking conclusions but, given TEC’s recent history, they are unavoidable conclusions”“conclusions that if ignored by the Instruments of Communion and the member Provinces, will lead to the demise of the Anglican Communion.
TEC’s recent history makes the truth of these charges abundantly plain.
….the whole question of diversity and communion more broadly has been a consistent Anglican concern, at least since the late 18th-century English bishops required of the nascent Episcopal Church that she reorder her Prayer Book (e.g. replacing those parts stricken from the Americans’ proposed version of the Apostles’ Creed), if she wished to have her ministers and bishops “recognized” through a process of continuous succession with the English Church. It was still a question when the first Lambeth Conference met and resolved that “it is necessary that [newer Anglican churches] receive and maintain without alteration the standards of faith and doctrine as now in use in [the Church of England]”, echoing in this instance TEC’s initial commitments from 1786. The bishops then explained that, nevertheless, “each province should have the right to make such adaptations and additions to the services of the Church as its peculiar circumstances may require”. Immediately, however, the bishops noted a proviso, “that no change or addition be made inconsistent with the spirit and principles of the Book of Common Prayer”, a standard that, if rather loose, at least pointed to a text. Further, the bishops insisted more concretely, “that all such changes be liable to revision by any synod of the Anglican Communion in which the said province shall be represented”. And here, obviously, “representation” is not viewed as a veto power for one’s own interests, but rather as a participatory role bounded by unitive action.
One can argue whether this Lambeth resolution was consistently followed through in a strict sense. And so, with respect to the broader diversity-unity question, the Communion has tended to address difficult issues on this score as they have arisen, rather than through a strict censorial mechanism, whether constitutional or confessional. But does this lack of a defined template that can measure when diversity becomes “too much”, or when the “recognizable becomes unrecognizable” indicate that in fact there is no means of discernment at all? Certainly not, since the dynamic of recognition ”“ unity and separation ”” has performed this task quite adequately: when one church is no longer recognized as representing other Anglicans before the world, diversity has exceeded the measure of unity.
And, indeed, if the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, based on whatever means by which he has made this determination (in this case, years of consultation) no longer recognizes TEC as representative of the Communion that ”“ for TEC and many other Anglican churches ”“ is substantively defined by their bonds with him, then it is a simple descriptive fact that TEC’s particular convictions have undercut common Communion commitments. There is not some other mechanism that awaits application to reveal this fact. Indeed, the claim made by the Presiding Bishop that a Covenant is needed first before this can be done, ”” and therefore it cannot be done now ”” only underscores TEC’s choice to move to the side of previously acknowledged means of discernment regarding appropriate Christian diversity with the Communion, and to claim a kind of Communion chaos on this matter that even more desperately seeks some kind of covenantal resolution.
Finally, what are we to make of the fact that the Presiding Bishop and other leaders of TEC have long sought to undercut the strength of local diversity within the American Church ”“ there are vast swaths of no-go zones in TEC for traditional and conservative Episcopal clergy and scholars, imposed quite consciously by bishops and the committees they lead? Or that they have now put in place disciplinary canons (the revised Title IV rules) that would give the Presiding Bishop the arguably unconstitutional power to inhibit fellow bishops without prior consultative permission? None of this suggests a stable understanding of the relationship between diversity and Christian unity, despite claims to the contrary in her Pastoral Letter. While the diversity-unity question deserves (and has received) significant Scriptural and theological scrutiny, its practical import is nonetheless contained within these kinds of “actions”, as Lund put it: one judges the character of a tree of unity by its fruit, if always somewhat retrospectively.
It seems to me that love must, by its essential nature, be always unconditional. We welcome Katharine Jefferts Schori to this pulpit because we love our sisters and brothers in the Episcopal Church of the United States; not because she is female, or a woman bishop ahead of us, or has permitted a practising lesbian to become a bishop (As it happens she couldn’t have stopped it after all the legal and proper canonical electoral processes resulted in the election and nomination), we welcome her because she is our sister in Christ.
The lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures is enormously topical. Disaffected Anglicans have been threatening to ”˜walk separate ways’ for many months. Abram and Lot travel together and their herdsmen bicker and fight, in modern translation there is ‘strife’ between them. They reach agreement to take separate paths and settle down and so their mutual belonging as members of one family is secured. The lesson is even more pertinent because it describes how Lot ended up near Sodom, which was a very wicked city, and of course it is sodomy that so curiously and constantly preoccupies so many disaffected Anglicans. The story of Sodom is often misrepresented from scriptures, the abuse which leads to its reputation and much social mythology, current even today, in Chapter 19, is a more sophisticated story of torture and coercion than misrepresented as a matter of sex.
It may be that some Anglicans will decide to walk a separate path. I believe the Chapter and congregation of this church will walk the same path as the Episcopal Church of America, the links are deep in our history, especially here. Their actions in recent months have been entirely in accord with the Anglican ways of generosity and breadth. They have tried to ensure everyone is recognised as a child of God. They have behaved entirely in accord with their canon laws and their freedom as an independent Province of the Church, not imposing or interfering with others with whom they disagree but proceeding steadily and openly themselves.
It is as if the breath of the Spirit has the capacity to translate the gospel of the Word made flesh, not only into the different languages of the first day of Pentecost, and all the languages of our twenty-first century world; the Spirit can also translate into every culture of our world ”“ and between the inculturation of the gospel in different cultures. So, when we cannot understand each other, we must be sure that we have listened carefully to the still small voice of the Spirit. Is the Spirit speaking to each of us? Can we recognise the presence of Christ, which is the touchstone, the standard, of the true Spirit of God?
I am convinced that in our current situation within the Communion neither have we done, nor are we continuing to do, enough of this sort of listening to one another. We do not understand one another and one another’s contexts well enough, and we are not sufficiently sensitive to one another in the way we act. Autonomy has gone too far. I do not mean that we should seek a greater uniformity ”“ I hope it is clear I am saying nothing of the sort. But we risk acting in ways that are so independent of one another that it becomes hard for us, and for outsiders, to recognise either a committed interdependent mutuality or a common Christian, Anglican, DNA running through our appropriately contextualised and differentiated ways of being.
Bishop Katharine, what I am going to say next is painful to me, and I fear it may also be to you ”“ but I would rather say it to your face, than behind your back. And I shall be ready to hear from you also, for I cannot preach listening without doing listening. It sometimes seems to me that, though many have failed to listen adequately to the Spirit at work within The Episcopal Church, at the same time within your Province there has not been enough listening to the rest of the Anglican Communion. I had hoped that those of your Bishops who were at the Lambeth Conference would have grasped how sore and tender our common life is. I had hoped that even those who, after long reflection, are convinced that there is a case for the consecration of individuals in same sex partnerships, might nonetheless have seen how unhelpful it would be to the rest of us, for you to proceed as you have done.
There are times when it seems that your Province, or some within it, despite voicing concern for the rest of us, can nonetheless act in ways that communicate a measure of uncaring at the consequent difficulties for us. And such apparent lack of care for us increases the distress we feel. Much as we understand that you are in all sincerity attempting to discern the best way forward within your own mission context, the plea is: be sensitive to the rest of who are still drinking spiritual milk and are not yet eating solids.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has described the decision by Lambeth Palace to remove Episcopalians serving on international ecumenical dialogues as “unfortunate … It misrepresents who the Anglican Communion is.”
Jefferts Schori’s comments were made during a June 8 press conference at the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod 2010 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Before the sanctions were imposed on the Episcopal Church as a consequence for having consecrated a lesbian bishop, Jefferts Schori said she had written a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressing her concern.
“I don’t think it helps dialogue to remove some people from the conversation,” she said shortly after addressing General Synod. “We have a variety of opinions on these issues of human sexuality across the communion … For the archbishop of Canterbury to say to the Methodists or the Lutheran [World] Federation that we only have one position is inaccurate. We have a variety of understandings and no, we don’t have consensus on hot button issues at the moment.”
The Episcopal Church
* The Episcopal Church is an autonomous church which is a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, serving God and working together to spread through word and action the good news of God in Christ.
* The Episcopal Church has over 7400 congregations in 109 dioceses plus three regional areas in 16 countries with 2.2 million members.
* The Episcopal Church has members in the United States, as well as in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Micronesia, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Venezuela, the Virgin Islands, and the Convocation of Churches in Europe.
* The Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church is the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead The Episcopal Church as well as any of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion.
Another major topic before the Synod is the Anglican Communion Covenant. We are one of the first provinces to consider the final text. We are blessed to have had an Anglican Communion Working Group guiding our study of the drafts of the Covenant and inviting our input by way of critique and revision. And I know that those comments from our Church have been viewed by many within the Communion as constructive and helpful.
Section IV, Our Covenanted Life Together, continues to be challenging for many in the Communion. On the one hand it speaks of respect for the autonomy and integrity of each province in making decisions according to the polity reflected in its Constitution and Canons. On the other, it speaks of relational consequences for a Church should it make decisions deemed incompatible with the Covenant. These consequences could range from limited participation to suspension from dialogues, commissions and councils within the Communion. In my opinion, they reflect principles of exclusion with which many in the Communion are very uneasy. For if one is excluded from a table, how can one be part of a conversation? How can our voice be heard, how can we hear the voices of others, how can we struggle together to hear the voice of the Spirit? How can we hope to restore communion in our relationships if any one of us cannot or will not be heard?
In his 2010 Pentecost letter, the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks of “particular provinces being contacted about the outworking of these relational consequences.” To date we cannot be identified as “a Province that has formally through their Synod or House of Bishops adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion and recently affirmed by the Standing Committee and the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order”. However the Archbishop’s letter also refers to “some provinces that have within them dioceses that are committed to policies that neither the province as a whole nor The Communion has sanctioned”. One is left wondering if provinces whose Primates continue to interfere in the internal life of other provinces and extend their pastoral jurisdiction through cross-border interventions will be contacted. To date I have seen no real measure to address that concern within The Communion. I maintain and have publicly declared my belief that those interventions have created more havoc in the Church, resulting in schism, than any honest and transparent theological dialogue on issues of sexuality through due synodical process in dioceses and in the General Synod. I also wonder when I see the word “formally” italicized in the Archbishop’s letter. It leaves me wondering about places where the moratoria on the blessing of same sex unions is in fact ignored. The blessings happen but not “formally”. As you will have detected I have some significant concerns about imposing discipline consistent with provisions in the Covenant before it is even adopted; and about consistency in the exercise of discipline throughout one Communion. There are also lingering concerns in Section IV on monitoring discipline and procedures for restoring membership in our covenanted life together.
All that being said, I have every hope that our Church will embrace the request to consider the Covenant. Our Anglican Communion Working Group is committed to providing educational resources to aid our study. Bishop George Bruce will give us a brief overview of those materials in the course of Synod. I have every confidence we will use them faithfully and that we will offer valuable comments in response to the request for a Communion-wide Progress Report on the Covenant at the next meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in 2012.
What has been exercising the minds of Anglicans in recent years, as the culture wars over human sexuality have raged, is the relationship of Unity and Truth. How to reconcile radically divergent opinions in a single communion?
Some have put a premium on Truth ”“ and so have been prepared to take unilateral action or to cross ecclesial boundaries in order to uphold it. Others have openly preferred Unity. Heresy, as one American bishop tersely put it, is to be preferred to schism.
And there has been no respite. No sooner had the crisis over women in the episcopate subsided than another conflict took its place ”“ over the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of practising homosexuals….
The Windsor Report (2004), instead of addressing this pressing issue head on, chose by procedural sleight of hand to avoid it:
”˜The mandate of this Commission has been to examine, and make recommendations in relation to, the formal results, in terms of our Communion one with another within Anglicanism, of the recent events which have been described. We repeat that we have not been invited, and are not intending, to comment or make recommendations on the theological andethical mailers concerning the practice of same sex relations and the “blessing or ordination or consecration of those who engage in them [italics theirs].
Having outlined the problems, and sketched the deeper symptoms we believe to lie beneath them, it is time to examine more fully, in this Section, the nature of the Communion we share, the bonds which hold it together, the ways in which all this can be threatened and how such threats might be met.’
… this leads to our final point. It is the preservation of this catholicity, the relationship of bishop to the college of bishops, and these finally understood to include some kind of universal college, that is most important. In the past, TEC has exercised its autonomy with accountability in communion with the other Anglican churches. Anyone familiar with the formation of TEC will know that this accountability, although voluntary, was expressed in very concrete ways, including in the formulation of our Book of Common Prayer and the consecration of our first bishops. And within TEC, its autonomous dioceses were able to exercise their autonomy with accountability both to the other dioceses of TEC and to the Anglican college of bishops. But TEC has now repudiated any accountability to the larger communion. This presents TEC’s dioceses with an awful choice. How will they exercise their autonomy? To whom will they be accountable? To no one but themselves? To an isolated and declining body that itself rejects accountability to the church catholic? Or, through the Anglican Covenant, to the wider Communion?
Autonomy without accountability leads to denominationalism and isolation. Accountability without autonomy leads to authoritarian structures. Communion with both autonomy and accountability is the Anglican hope manifested in the Covenant. For us the choice is obvious, but we recognize that it is not without cost.