Perhaps these moves aren’t exactly “timid” but they surely are not the bold action I was hoping for from the worthy Bishop Lawrence. This very cautious approach may be exactly what the good people of DioSC want to happen. But does the “third way” some are looking for between a.) endorsing TEC’s present trajectory into folly and heresy, and b.) departing TEC for ACNA, amount to anything more than I have just summarized? As far as I can tell this “third way” constitutes little more than tending faithfully to church local affairs while taking a few symbolic actions to “differentiate” from national TEC a bit more and ignoring 815 as much as possible.
Sadly absolutely nothing proposed in this new “middle way” will save DioSC in the long run. One day the worthy Bishop Lawrence will leave the scene and they will have to elect a new bishop. And as long as they remain under the Constitutions and Canons of TEC their new-bishop elect, whoever he is, will have to receive consents from a majority of the heretical leadership of TEC in order to be consecrated. Any plan DioSC adopts now that does not rapidly move toward departure from TEC will eventually spell their doom. I hope they have the wisdom to see that.
Foster is right: the current plan is wholly dependent on the health of +Lawrence. Anytime you make one person indispensable to an organization, you are putting that organization at great risk should something happen to that one person. Perhaps there is a contingency plan I am not aware of (like immediate withdrawal from ECUSA upon death or incapacitation of +Lawrence, or the diocese becoming sole arbiter for future Bishops). But those things would require disavowal of the C & C, which of course they have not done.
I went over to Steve Wood’s blog (“we need to join ACNA”) to see if he’s put anything up post meeting – the site is down. Hmmmm.
I think it is remarkable that Bishop Lawrence’s critics refer to him as a “godly bishop” but do not give him credit for seeking God’s wisdom and followng the path shown to him. He described his plan as a turning of the ship and a call to action. A fractured and divisive diocese in SC would be a failure of witness. Any hope of such a statement that leaving TEC immediately would make would be drowned by the division and animosity between faithful Christians within the diocese as parishes are destroyed, lawsuits filed among Christians, and any gospel witness being covered by arguments. The bishop has to address the fact that the diocese on the pew level has been allowed to ignore TEC and continue to worship is safety. The bishop called for their education on these issues in congregational and deanery meetings to create a cohesive movement within the diocese before making a drastic step.
I think those within the diocese who want to leave 2 years ago ought to consider the best witness at this time to have a humble and submissive spirit and to love one another within the diocese. It is the diocese’s unity and love for one another that can be the best witness to the gospel at this time.
Critics trying to divine what will and won’t happen in the diocese’s future are basing judgement on speculation and conceit. The bishop’s statement was based on much prayer and council that takes into account his role of shepherd to all the Christians in the diocese, including those Christians that have no intention of leaving TEC.
Am I way off base in thinking that perhaps +Lawrence’s strategy is simply to maintain sound doctrine and practice in DioSC, sign the Covenant, and outlast TEO as it implodes, SC being whole and sound and there to pick up the few remaining orthodox pieces in the rest of TEO?
Maybe Bishop Mark does not want to tear his diocese apart by realignment
Maybe Bishop Mark wants to be Bishop to all his flock, not just those who toe the line of the radical reasserters
Maybe Bishop Mark cares about those parishes that are split on the issue and would be damaged by realignment
Just maybe, this Bishop is doing the right thing.
I would tend to see things the way Milton sees them. Many assume that the revisionist steamroller in 815 will keep rolling. But why make such an assumption? Liberal TEC is running out of dollars and running out of people. There are many parishes and dioceses holding on to financial and demographic viability by their fingernails. I think it a virtual certainty that the next 5 years will see many parishes collapsing into missions, and many dioceses going bankrupt. And there will be no help from 815.
The litigation regarding the departed dioceses is nowhere near being settled. There even remains a long-shot USSC appeal regarding parish departures. Liberal TEC is also moving closer to departing the “inner” Anglican Communion, and it is my bet that as the “two tier” idea moves closer to reality the liberal extremists that currently run TEC will eventually turn venomously on the Anglican Communion structure itself, which may in turn create new legal issues vis a vis TEC’s constitutional preamble.
In other words – I think that TEC is far more weak and vulnerable then many people think. Perhaps the strategy of not leaving, but disassociating and stepping back and letting the liberal extremists destroy the National Church structures, is not necessarily a bad one. That way when things do collapse, the Diocese of South Carolina can step back in and help pick up the pieces.
I also think that Bishop Lawrence is doing the right thing, in that he doesn’t appear to be giving any encouragement to those in his diocese who want to realign. But if he really doesn’t want to tear his diocese apart, he will need to assert much more vigorously that staying is the [i]right[/i] thing to do and leaving the [i]wrong[/i] thing. When you can’t or won’t say that, you leave the high moral ground to the separatists, and people who want do the right thing, but aren’t sure in their own mind what it is, will naturally be inclined towards those who are sure. If he continues to try to keep everyone in his diocese happy, he will end up losing far more of his people than necessary when the inevitable departures begin.
Check out http://canterburytrail.wordpress.com/ for info on Evangelicals who are not only staying, but staying because they are convinced it is the right thing to do, and getting back to biblical ministry where it does most good, in the local church.
Surely you are not saying, JVJ, that the decisions of every godly bishop, taken with all the wisdom at their disposal and after much prayer, are entirely above critique? I am sure what you say about a desire on the part of Bishop Lawrence (who is certain a good and devout shepherd doing what he believes is best for his flock) to avoid taking actions that will split his diocese is correct. Here in Ft. Worth we lost about 20% of our diocese when we left TEC, and it was painful. And it may be that DioSC is more divided than we were. I certainly understand why one would want to avoid that if possible, and I do not envy him as a decision maker. But I simply cannot see any real prospect for the long-term maintenance of orthodoxy in DioSC if a decisive break is not made in the next few years. The good bishop’s successor will surely have to accomodate the demands of the TEC Left if he wants to be consecrated a bishop in TEC. I do not see how any man who has been as staunch a defender of orthodoxy as Bishop Lawrence has can possibly hope to attain a majority of consents from the bishops and Standing Committees of TEC ten or fifteen years down the line. I would think that most of these future TEC consenting prelates will be even more radicalized then than they are now!
In my “vanity and conceit” I am afriad I just cannot see a future ahead of me for TEC in which milton and jamesw’s much hope-for implosion of the Left takes place, at least not in a time frame that will help DioSC and the other orthodox diocese still trapped inside. The velocity of theologically leftward changes in TEC has only accelerated as the last thirty years have passed, and GenCon09 surely was a strong reminder that the forces of the far theological Left are positioned to sweep the field in three more years (though GenCon09 surely looked like a near clean sweep for them to me!). As much as I would love to think that the implosion of the TEC Left, which many readers here would love to see, could take place before Bishop Lawrence has to leave the scene (and I wish him many years as leader of DioSC), I cannot imagine that sea-change in favor of reasserters happening soon enough to do any good for his diocese. For such an implosion to take place a massive decline in attendance and giving within TEC is not enough. A majority of revisionist Bishops and Standing Committees would need to leave office and be replaced by a majority of reasserter lay and clerical leaders before such a revisionist collapse would permit another +Lawrence-like bishop to follow him. Just consider the large number of the present revisionist incumbants in those ecclesial offices who would need to retire and the broad sweep by traditionalists nation-wide in the process to select their successors that would need to take place before any orthodox successor to +Lawrence, +Albany, et al could possibly hope to get the necessary consents for their consecration.
Now take a look at the vast majority of new Episcopal clergy being graduated from every TEC seminary except Nashotah and Trinity, and tell me if you really believe the crop of potential bishop-elects and clerical deputies on Standing Committees twenty years from now are likely to be far more orthodox than the present House of Bishops and Standing Committees. The Left is in power in the substantial majority of dioceses of TEC and in every seminary of TEC except for those two. Not many future leaders of TEC are not likely to be reasserters ten or fifteen years from now, as far as I can see.
And continued declines in attendance in TEC might not have the result many here hope for. It could very well be that as attendance in most TEC dioceses continues to drop it will actually be the true-believing revisionists who keep warming their pews while the orthodox faitfhul seek other places of worship. There may be only twenty people in church on Sunday, but they could very well be fully dedicated to TEC’s “new thing.” And they would elect deputies to their diocesan conventions and GenCon that share their views. In short, it appears to me that the smaller a TEC parish becomes the more revisionist it is likely to become (at least in many places around the nation). Sheer numbers of parishoners might decline ever more sharply, but that doesn’t necissarily mean the orthodox will take over the levers of power in TEC. It may mean the Left will dominate TEC’s organs of governance even more completely than they do now!
And it simply is beyond my capacity to imagine the present state of TEC affairs can truly change (at least before Bishop Lawrence leaves office) when I see what the present state of the junior clergy and seminarians of TEC is like. Perhaps TEC will simply wither to near-nothing and merge with the UCC and other shrinking mainline denominations down the road, but it appears to me that they can hold out for a few more decades if they wish by canibalizing the significant resources they still have. And that will be long enough to insure that the status quo in DioSC and other orthodox dioceses cannot endure. I stand by my assertion: any plan in DioSC that does not end in a departure from TEC in the near future cannot insure the survival of orthdoxy there.
Of course, I could be wrong and milton and jamesw may be right (at least TEC’s present budgetary and attendance woes can give them some cause for hope, so long as there are still growing orthodox parishes in the dioceses that might take over diocesan conventions again some day–do we have evidence that this is the case in most revisionist dioceses?). But I have a hard time making the facts on the ground with respect to the future leadership class of TEC (and revisionists mostly likely will be TEC’s leaders even if they are serving tiny little parishes operating on shoe-string budgets a few years down the line!) jibe with a resurgence of orthodoxy nation-wide in TEC.
I think Bishop Lawrence is doing exactly the right thing for someone who is called to stay in the Episcopal Church, but refuses to accept the non-biblical and non-traditional doctrines emanating from 815 and GenCon.
By withdrawing delegates from bodies of authorities in TEC that have propogated teaching that has no basis in the bible or church tradition, he is creating a visible reminder at every meeting of these bodies that all is not well.
Some may say it is a symbolic act and that’s true, however, a symbolic act is really all traditionalists still in TEC are able to do at this time. It’s better to stay home and create visible reminders of the brokeness of the church than to go to meetings where the outcome is pre-decided and your presence is used by propogandists to try to claim that all is well. (This is the same lesson that so many GAFCON primates understood about last summer’s Lambeth conference.)
Furthermore, by refusing to leave TEC, he can be a verbal burr in their birkenstocks, proclaiming loudly the word of truth which they can fail to head but cannot ignore. Just think of the reverberations throughout TEC blogdom both conservative and more importantly liberal based on his recent remarks. Lawrence has the bully pulpit from within TEC that Bishop Duncan used to have before the great exodus.
By remaining in TEC, not sulking quietly in a corner, but instead engaging the Church in an almost John the Baptist sort of way, keeping doctrine sound in his diocese, and working for an orthodox Anglican Communion, he is positioned exactly where needs to be. As a couple of other posters have noted, not all are called to leave, some are called to stay.
For the record, I am not saying that I believe that there is only one way. Actually quite the opposite – I think it is GOOD that there are different responses. I believe that there are very important tasks for BOTH those called to stay within TEC and those called to ACNA.
We don’t know how long it will take for 815 to collapse. My thought is that it will collapse sooner then people think. That doesn’t mean that TEC will magically become orthodox. What I mean is that the combative and vengeful faction will lose its support in TEC once the more moderate liberals realize the disaster which that group has wrought. (And I do think that at some point a lot of liberals in TEC will one day wake up and ask themselves in wonder “how did we let KJS and her cronies get away with doing this much damage to the church?!???”) I don’t think that the current crop of 815 apparatchiks will be replaced by anyone conservative at all, but I do think that, in time, it will be easier for conservative dioceses to replace their leadership with other conservatives (i.e., I think that a more “live and let live” attitude will develop).
I think that the ACNA also is playing a crucial role in developing an alternative Anglicanism in North America. My fear with the ACNA is that they have been too quick on things and haven’t done the homework that needed to be done. Generally, I believe that parishes and dioceses that can remain in TEC for now, should do so. On the other hand, I think that (outside of a handful of dioceses, and even they is debatable), it is criminally negligent to plant a church under the auspices of TEC.
I think it critical that the orthodox Anglicans in TEC and ACNA work together – to achieve a long term viable Anglican presence in North America. The ACNA can bring evangelism unburdened with a heretical national infrastructure. The TEC orthodox can bring order, patience and accountability to the wider Communion. I am someone who is very supportive of both – I simply don’t think there is one right response.
And we should never discount the possibility of the unexpected. What if the extremist liberals do attempt a coup against Lawrence and other Covenant bishops?
Let me clarify some more. I see those that stay within TEC to be playing more of a defensive role. Reality is that they will have a very hard time to grow significantly or to engage in evangelism. They need to hunker down and hope that they can survive. Speaking militarily in Napoleonic times, they are infantry in square formation, waiting for the enemy cavalry to either be defeated or leave the battlefield. Their job is to hold their position on the battlefield, but they have no, or very limited, offensive capabilities.
I see those in ACNA as playing more of an offensive role. They are unencumbered by the crazy, heretical nutjobs that currently run TEC. They don’t face the marketing problem of asking people to join a wealthy white liberal niche denomination. They can reach out to the unchurched. Their job is to be the cavalry and the light infantry – take ground, drive away the enemy. But they don’t have a defensible position on the battlefield (i.e. in the Anglican Communion).
As long as each side understands its role, there should be no major conflicts or disagreements.
#7 I think what you are missing in the Bishop’s statement is that this is not a plan with an indefinite timeframe without amendment. It is a starting point. In it there is a strong call for congregational and deanery meetings and a special convention. There is no assumption about anything regarding TEC on which the bishop’s plan or vision depends. I also don’t think there is a submission to a sense of urgency that leaving TEC must be done right now or not at all. There is nothing ruling out a future move in 6 months or a year or more.
I think it is good to keep in mind that because of a lack of clarity or decision on the part of the ABC or the ACC TEC has faced no discipline at all that could help SC in its decisions.
Bp Lawrence has said that this is a begining of a response. There is a difference between the cost of discipleship and the cost of making a wrong decision.
As one who is a life long member of The Diocese of South Carolina,
I would like to ask a simple question: where would SC go? The ACNA
seems to be little more than an umbrella group, with all due respect.
Don’t get me wrong. I would love nothing more than to leave TEC
behind. The best strategy seems to be waiting it out. This requires
patience, something we are not good at in this country. The image
of the dinosaurs comes to mind. TEC is like the dinosaurs who were
wiped out by a meteor striking the earth, according to theory. We
in SC, and other Orthodox Anglicans, are the small mammals that later took over. This is a time for Godly patience and standing to-
gether not bolting and fragmenting.
Thanks to jamesw for his typically perceptive, balanced comments (#5, 9, 10). I particularly liked his suggested military analogy, with those orthodox Anglicans still in TEC playing an essentially defensive role holding valuable ground, and those of us in the ACNA taking on the more aggressive role of the cavalry and mobile light infantry. Both are vital.
But given the choice (and often circumstances leave us little choice), I’d rather attack than defend any day.
David Handy+
Another possible scenario: The Diocese of South Carolina does not withdraw from TEC, but consents to all of its parishes that are so-minded withdrawing from the Diocese with their parish property with the Diocesan Bishop’s blessing. The parishes then form their own ACNA diocese.
Mark Brown
San Angelo, Texas
August 17, 2009
Could be, Mark! Who knows…..it might happen!
Prayers for the Diocese of South Carolina in its mission to bring the Word of God to the Episcopal Church.
David: As the Church, we need to “attack” (i.e. evangelize and grow) in order to survive. This is why I believe that the ACNA is so crucial, and that we can’t just rely on the orthodox that remain within TEC. TEC is a dying institution, and the only hope for it is that the institution dies, to be followed by scattered pieces surviving. To have only the stay-in-TEC orthodox is to preserve the shell of an orderly, orthodox Anglicanism, but to lose the battle for winning over the next generation of Anglican believers. We will have preserved orthodox Anglicanism simply to die. On the flip side, to have only the ACNA is to have a vibrant but insufficiently anchored and only semi-coherent Anglican coalition which is neither fully unified nor a full part of the Anglican Communion. I really do believe that both groups are utterly essential to the long term future of North American Anglicanism.