The Bishop of Atlanta says tomorrow’s statement(s) will be clear and unambiguous. This has not been the pattern of this church in the past, but I will be delighted to be surprised.
Here is one way I plan to evaluate this call for clarity: will it be as clear on the things that upset and concern them as TEC Bishops as it is on those things that upset and concern their sisters and brothers throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion?
An example. It is no secret that a number of TEC bishops are very, very angry about the increasing number of TEC parishes or portions of parishes affiliating with other member Provinces of the Anglican Comunion. I was told by one participant that one proposal being bandied about this week had to to with this subject. If I understood him correctly, the idea was a plea to global Anglican leaders to refuse to recognize any ordination, congregation or ecclesial entity within the Episcopal Church as being properly related and in communion with Canterbury unless certain TEC conditions were met.
Now, please let me be clear. I am not saying this will be in anything produced tomorrow (there were and are a lot of suggestions and drafts and sections of drafts running around) I am basing this on notes of a phone conversation.
But I think the language is unambiguous. The Americans feel threatened that they will lose their Anglican franchise here. So they want any ordination, parish, or ecclesial entity (mission? missionary society?) affiliated overseas to be somehow deligitimized according to their standards.
To me it sounds unambiguous. I would say ordination, congregation or ecclesial entity pretty much covers it, wouldn’t you?
What is the point? When TEC leaders want to be clear they can be.
I am watching not only for clarity, but for consistent clarity–KSH.
We can have all the statements we want but in the end it is about the personal behavior of people in church and what is tolerated either publicly or quietly. How interesting, too, that the press seems to be catching on to the apparent prevarication of some of the bishops about what is going on in their own dioceses.
An excellent point; thanks, Kendall.
It occurs to me that the American culture I grew up in was basically run by engineers and accountants, to whom something either was or was not, plus or minus half a millimeter or rounded to the nearest dollar. Our society now is run by lawyers, who specialize in detailing every conceivable possibility in the pleading or contract while emitting pages of studied ambiguity in the affidavit.
Perhaps the relativism eating away at the theological integrity of the mainline churches is simply the flip side of the pervasive legalism of our contemporary culture. An automobile engine or printed circuit is not designed by someone who wonders what the meaning of is is…