Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
Now that the House of Bishops meeting has ended, and I am back home among you, I want to share a few thoughts on the work we did, and particularly on the statement we produced. As you may know, I was one of the eight bishops who wrote this statement, which developed over several days as each draft was discussed by the whole House and further refined by the writing group. Apart from preaching and celebrating at a local parish on Sunday, this process of drafting and revising took up all my waking hours from Friday evening until Tuesday afternoon. So it is fair to say that my experience of New Orleans is essentially my experience of that process.
I went to New Orleans afraid that the House would not maintain the high level of civility and mutual respect that marked our meeting last March.
On the one hand, I worried that the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury might provoke angry words directed against him and the other primates. On the other, I feared that bishops on different sides of the same-sex unions debate might become rancorous toward one another. None of this happened. Rowan Williams was welcomed with respect and warmth, as were the members of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates, whom we had invited to sit with us in our deliberations. As for how we related to one another, I was struck by the kindness, care and mutual understanding that informed the House’s discourse from beginning to end. We are a community of bishops that is passionately devoted to the worldwide Anglican Communion and committed to our unity and fellowship with one another as members of the Episcopal Church.
The meeting was largely shaped, in my view, by our conversations, both formal and informal, with our Anglican Communion guests. What emerged for all of us was a firmer grasp of how the Primates and the ACC viewed the Episcopal Church and what they were asking of us as its bishops. I was surprised to discover that, for the most part, we are held in high regard by our brothers and sisters in the Communion, and our participation in the Communion is very highly valued. Moreover, while there is frustration and anger that we have, in their view, acted precipitously and disrespectfully in consecrating a partnered gay bishop without consulting with the larger Communion, there is also an appreciation that the Episcopal Church is forcing a Communion-wide conversation about homosexuality that is long overdue. What our guests were asking of us was clarity about two things: (1) the bishops’
interpretation of B033, the 2006 General Convention resolution regarding the election of partnered gay bishops, and (2) the bishops’ current approach to the blessing of same-sex unions.
The statement that we produced is our attempt to answer those two questions succinctly and transparently. We have said nothing new. Those who were dissatisfied with B033 for going too far or not going far enough will be equally dissatisfied with the present statement. However, what we have said as a House arises in the context of renewed hope for a conversation with our Anglican partners that honors all members of our Church. I am heartened by this hope, and I pray that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters will also find encouragement in this.
My ardent desire for this Diocese is that we will continue diligently to embrace our fellowship with one another across the differences that both challenge and enrich us. We all have a witness to share, and we all are in need of having our perspective broadened by the witness of others. By God’s grace, and through your prayers, a step was taken in New Orleans toward recovering the possibility of an Anglican Communion capable of facing tough issues with mutual forbearance and readiness to learn from one another. That possibility will become a reality as it is lived into on the ground. God bless us in Southern Ohio, as we play our part in that adventure.
–(The Rt. Rev.) Thomas E. Breidenthal is Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio
From the bishop’s message:
“I was struck by the kindness, care and mutual understanding that informed the House’s discourse from beginning to end.”
My questions:
1. What good did congeniality accomplish?
2. Are they men?
3. Is there ANYTHING worth fighting over?
^^^^^^^^^^^
All of my closest and most trusted friends today are those who, at some point, I have ardently contended with. Jacob wrestled with God. I know that godless anger and rage does not accomplish the will of God but neither does non-communication.
Just some thoughts.
The bishops are desperately trying to spin the “Response” document. The public press isn’t buying it. I really like this statement, but I don’t think his liberal colleagues will. He blithely admits they haven’t said anything new, but DeS certainly required “something new” to be said.
One piece of good news from all of the statements I have read by bishops conservative, moderate, and liberal (to use an inadequate shorthand) is that the HOB is coming together to a degree it has not in a long time. The common theme is that the bishops treated one another with courtesy and listened to one another respectfully even with strong positions of disagreement. They worked to craft a statement that the overwhelming majority could live with, and strengthed their sense of collegiality in the process. This cannot be anything but good for future developments in the Church. I also believe, from many comments by bishops following the last two meetings, that much of this positive development is due to the leadership of our Presiding Bishop, who has seen to it that all voices and points of view are heard, and who called for comity in her sermon at the latest meeting. She evidently takes the difficult task of reconciliation seriously, and by that I mean being willing to live together with differences.
I am so glad that Bp. Howe had the idea to invite the ABC and the Primates Standing Committee to this meeting and was unanimously backed. The addition of the ACC Standing Committee to be the JSC was a wise move. The presence of the Presiding Bishop on the JSC had to have helped the process of crafting the statement as she could receive directly the further thoughts of its members during the process of deliberation.
Of course, many are unhappy with this statement, especially those with entrenched positions on the ends of the spectrum, but this is a very difficult issue with persons of conscience on different sides, and it sometimes takes slow steps as this one to keep the great majority desiring community moving toward that end.
Bob,
Your denomination is imploding. How can you not see that?
Maryland Brian
Brian, can you come up with something better than that?
Bob,
Sure … many of your largest congregations are walking out the door, entire dioceses are considering following them, TEC is viewed as walking into the dark night of apostacy by many (nearly all?) Christians who live in the impoverished global south … On what part should I expand?
The New Testament does not appear to value people of conscience on different sides “walking” together. It would seem, considering the rapid aging and accelerating numerical decline of TEC, the Holy Spirit doesn’t either. In other words, from all metrics TEC is going “south”, and I don’t mean theological.
Maryland Brian
MD Brian–can you take this up with Bob off thread please. I happen to know Bob a little and he is a fine conversationalist. But this thread is to discuss the Bishop of Southern Ohio’s comments.
Thanks.
Kendall,
OK, not a problem. My primary interest in the bishop’s response was my interpretation that it’s a sort of “head in the sand” of reality approach to communication. I really don’t get how “walking together” appears to have become such an important ideology amid what seems to be the rapid decline of TEC – and our own ELCA for that matter. It’s a scratch the head and wonder aloud kind of thing.
Maryland Brian
It is difficult to find a way to believe that being civil and collegial is a sufficient substitute for the demands placed on TEC by DeS. It appears that the decoration on the house is being praised precisely because there is dry rot in the frame and sills. This focus on the superficies may have been predictable, I suppose. The bishop needs some way to say, “The meeting was a success and we accomplished something important” when this is patently false. LM
It appears that the institutionalist liberal and conservative factions came together in NO- largely because the leftists were worried enough to assist or be quiet and the hard conservatives no longer wish to fight over TEC – they have emotionally at least already departed. I do believe that the HOB has set in motion events over which they will no longer control – think August 1914. I think (and yes hope for) large scale seccession within or from TEC, I also expect the Anglican Communion to splinter. Lincoln was right in that a house divided cannot stand. Human sexuality is not a periphery issue (to most) like losing Elizabethan era language or a secondary issue to most like WO. It strikes to the core of our identities and is understandable by even the most illiterate or ilinformed as to theology. That homosexuality is wrong is something that traditional Anglo Catholics, biblical literalists, and country club republican Epsicopalians can all agree upon – now lets see if the three groups can come together to build a Church.
“We have said nothing new.”
Wow! Wonderful! We’ve sat in conference for so many days. So much world wide interest has been paid. So much has been prayed over. So much ink has been spilled. So much is at stake. That we have said nothing new. Amazing. All that wasted for nothing new. A gob-smacking moment to realise that saying nothing new is now a virtue. The sheep are wandering off. The lost are perishing. And the entire US HOB can afford to make all this effort to say nothing new. We live in very strange time indeed.
We should be filled with shame at this.
[i]there is also an appreciation that the Episcopal Church is forcing a Communion-wide conversation about homosexuality that is long overdue.[/i]
Most charitably, this is pure ‘spin.’ I have numerous close contacts in the global south, including family members on long-term mission at the Islamic interface. [b]Nobody[/b] appreciates this, except wealthy white revisionists. This “conversation” is “overdue” if and only if you a) hold scripture in very light regard, and b) dismiss the transformative power of Christ, acting through the Holy Spirit … to change lives.
[i] We all have a witness to share, and we all are in need of having our perspective broadened by the witness of others.[/i]
And just what is that witness ECUSA wishes to “share”? Based on their actions it distills to the following:
a) God loves everybody
b) If God loves me, he’ll let me do what I want (which is the operational philosophy of a 3-year-old).
c) God calls on you to love me.
d) If [i]you[/i] loves me, you’ll let me do what I want.
e) In fact you will [i]affirm and support[/i] me in whatever I want, otherwise there’s no justice and you’re a bad, bad sinner.
f) Nobody’s gonna tell me what I can do with my wee-wee, and nobody can make me change.
Based on very public statements by the PB herself that witness also includes:
a) Jesus was a nice guy, but he’s only one way you can get right with God.
b) In fact Jesus was androgynous. We can call her Mother.
c) Real sin is defined not by the Bible, but by what we sense the Holy Spirit is telling us.
[i]We have said nothing new. {snip} … renewed hope for a conversation with our Anglican partners that honors all members of our Church.[/i]
Yes. Exactly. That’s the problem. Any “conversation” subsumes that the global south needs to be educated. Nothing has changed.
I’m not interested in “honoring” all members of “our” church … I prefer to honour my Lord and Saviour, Jesus the Christ.
The difference between a redeemed heart and a rebellious heart is not that the redeemed no longer sin. The redeemed grieve their sin, repent (literally, change direction), and do their very best through the power of the Spirit to “go and sin no more”. The rebellious heart denies that it has sinned and denies that it can change.
We are called to [i]expel[/i] such people from the church, not “honor” them by talking forever and ever whilst they continue doing whatever they wish. To continue “conversation” in such circumstances is merely to enable the addict to continue his behaviour whilst pretending there’s nothing wrong.
I thank the Bishop of Southern Ohio for his one phrase of transparent honesty — “We have said nothing new.”
Kendall, you said yourself that the meeting went better than in the spring. The church is in crisis. They don’t come up with anything new. Bob, everybody being collegial about it is a bad thing from a sane point of view. The prophets of old certainly did not place collegiality over truth.
[i]I went to New Orleans afraid that the House would not maintain the high level of civility and mutual respect that marked our meeting last March.[/i]
Uh, how is it that the bishops can even be in disagreement over the tone and civility of the March meeting? I’ve read or heard several bishops who said March was the low-water mark for civility in the house. What’s up with that?
They have said nothing new, and what they said before was insufficient. End of story.
The bishop is wrong. The HOB =did= come up with something new. For the FIRST time, an official body of TEC said that non-celibate gays and lesbians were included in the meaning of B033. This was likely the “something” that Bb Chane said they needed to give Rowan Williams to take back home.
w.w.
w.w.–your comment is correct but misleading because it contains only part of the truth. They also LEFT the expansive b033 language in, in stead of using the careful and precise language of windsor as they were asked to, ANd they made it contingent upon General Convention, thereby inserting their own terms.
Thus it is a yes, but, sort of, as long as we can use b033 they way we want against other bishop-elects and change in the future (indeed it could be the near future). Rather than give Rowan Wiliiams something genuinely useful (at least in one area out of three), it gives him a problem.
The meeting was better than the one in the spring only in that it was more pleasant to attend.
So tens of thousands have been spent in order that Episcopal bishops might be more courteous to one another.
At this rate there will be arguments over a statement that a Buddhist English speaker from Korea would say has a general meaning that can’t also be construed as its opposite before KJS’s successor is elected. Bravo.
Kendall,
Do you have any remarks about Katherine Jefferts Shori’s planned visit to South Carolina?
“We all have a witness to share, and we all are in need of having our perspective broadened by the witness of others.” Interesting that TEC does not want to hear the witness of those who minister to gays or have come out of homosexuality by God’s grace and saving power!
#12 Bart Hall (Kansas) THANK YOU!
For your succinct and accurate portrayal of the “new” theology (1966 on) of TEC. I hope I may use this in the future.
Kendall, unlike many posts I’ve read so far, I am in agreement with you on the fact that leaving B033 language vague creates a gaping hole and real problem for the ABC. I can’t imagine what Lambeth will be like, it seems as though we are poisoning the process with our arrogance (if that’s the right word).
KTF!!!….mrb
The meeting wasn’t all bad. Almost a million dollars was raised for the Dioceses of Louisiana and Mississippi for Katrina related work. And maybe a few more houses in the New Orleans’ 9th ward got “mucked out” with the help of some of the bishops. Otherwise, “Nothing new” was not what the Primates are looking for out of the TEC HofB. And if the Primates continue to run true to form as they have over the last few years, TEC bishops will one day have to pull their heads out of the sand and when they look around at what they have done, it will not be a pretty picture to behold.
The lauded civility seems to have coincided with the departure of some of the most implacable of the separationists. Who among us has not been at a meeting where certain people left early, whereupon the rest of the meeting was marked by an increase in both civility and productivity.
“By God’s grace, and through your prayers, a step was taken in New Orleans toward recovering the possibility of an Anglican Communion capable of facing tough issues with mutual forbearance and readiness to learn from one another. That possibility will become a reality as it is lived into on the ground. God bless us in Southern Ohio, as we play our part in that adventure.â€
The key error is “mutual forbearance and readiness to learn from one another.†I see no truth in the idea the TEC is willing to learn anything from the vast majority of the AC. He should have said, “mutual forbearance and readiness for us to teach you the blessedness of our new religion.â€
The good bishop’s dissertation is pure whistling in the dark. What the HOB has done is to confirm a strategy of doing nothing asked of it and trying its best to have it both ways; remaining in communion with those who cannot accept his new religion by being collegial and at the same time doing what it wants to.
Cantaur is sitting on a very shaky throne.
Bart Hall, your interpretation of progressive Christianity is hilarious. If only it were true. Given the conflicts it created with the fairly crucial idea that Jesus wants a just world, your caricature of what liberals think demonstrate the necessity of more conversation. Because clearly you don’t understand. I just don’t see myself in your words. I could equally merely state that gay people are the conservative scapegoat for a Christian message that has no power in a capitalist country.
Conversation is, in itself, part of the Gospel. The resurrected Christ offered peace to his disciples, not rancour. The letters give very clear admonitions for Christians to listen to each other. The danger is when we start calling each other names and non-Christians. In those times Jesus’ admonition to Judge Not seems particularly apt.
Bishop has given a good, honest, pastoral letter to his diocese that is appropriate for them.
A conversation about homosexuality is about as overdue as one concerning the physiological makeup of feces.
What an utter bunch of pap.
Charley, let’s keep it civil?
[i]your caricature of what liberals think demonstrate the necessity of more conversation[/i]
When, for more than a decade, the power structure of an entire church manoeuvres, camouflages, obfuscates, and litigates to protect, promote and affirm one particular class of un-repentant sinners …the time for conversation has passed.
When conversation is used as a stalling tactic to permit additional [i]de facto[/i] action intended solely to force a particular conclusion on behalf of those un-repentant sinners, the time for conversation has passed.
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword, for I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, … a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves his [household] more than me is not worthy of me.” Matt 10:34-37
Remember, too, that this is the guy who took the time to [i]fashion[/i] a whip, which he then used to trash those who defiled the temple. Some conversation.
Bart, obviously you think so. I don’t know if that is what we should gather from God. Like others, you seem to confuse your own hostility with God’s. I just don’t know if that’s true.
I also know that daughters and sons of parents, in this generation, are much more progressive about sexuality. Thus, yes, there will be conflict. Perhaps because there is more integrity in the system.
Do you think I disagree with your image of Jesus? I just don’t have the audacity to claim him as on my side absolutely. I think we all stand condemned, and thus the necessity to keep in “civil” conflict.
You might want to study peacemakers, Bart. Peacemakers often created conflict because lots of people want war.
That you continue to call homosexuals “unrepentant sinners” demonstrates that you never really understood the liberal position. Bart, recognize also, that unfortunately, when we hear you speak, we also hear Charley, who demonstrated one… “Christian” way people have spoken about gay people.
#29, JW, long time, no contact with you. Let me take a stab at the “liberal position” on homosexuals. Homosexual activity within the context of a committed monogamous relationship is no more sinful than sexual activity within a heterosexual marriage relationship.
Two comments:
1. when will TEC extend ‘valid orders’ to the Metropolitan Community Church?
2. it’s too little too late all around. The most one can say for the HOB that in the end they were ‘civil’, ‘polite’, and ‘nice’. As they watch the entire AC and TEC desintegrate into factions.
At Nicea I Nicholas of Myra was alleged to have slapped Arius on the face for hiis degrading Christ to a mere creature. I think things have gone way downhill since then. at least back in the ‘good old days’ the arguments were about the Person of Christ, not what one did with his weenie. I think there were canons back then about misusing that object of affection. Now all they quote are the ones regarding territory and property. Hmmmmm…..
#29: Progressive about sexuality? Progressive in what way? Do you mean that the standards, having been lowered, allow for sexual access not permitted in the past? And this is a good thing? If so, why is it good? Has not the effect been to cheapen sexual contact by ease of access and casual frequency?
And you need to be more careful. The sexual adandonment of the Baby Boomers is well established, but their grandchildren seem to be having other thoughts. I have heard college kids (my son just graduated from college) say that they did not want to live the lives their parents lived, the serial marriages, the misery of divorce, the drugs, the grasping, mindless consumerism… this litanty is familiar. There seems to me some reason therefore to hope that this 20’s generation is beginning once again to see the need for standards and self-restraint. To be sure, their attitudes about homosexuality have changed from 40 years ago, but I am beginning to think that while they will not demonize, they are not longer willing to beatify homosexuality and its devices – as the Boomers did.
The present TEC generation are all Boomers and their children, the offspring of a generation of the standardless, who have substituted the institutionalizing of novelty for identity because their own beliefs were so insubstantial and evanescent. They are themselves evanescent, and I suspect the next generation will be very different because they have seen the shallowness and transparent self-indulgence of both the literal and spiritual parents and have seen that it is fool’s gold.
And it would be hard to find a more compelling case – the New Orleans debacle – that the homosexual lobby is not good for society or that it should be trusted. This is not progressive; it is, I submit, the reverberation of the fin de siecle decadence of the last century, since the diseases of the end of the last century can long be seen as scars on the face of the new. LM
Hi Billy, how are you doing? There are a few places we’d have to figure out: is marriage, has it ever been, in any way, divorced from secular institutions? Thus, is it finally an example of God working through secular law? Or is marriage magically manifested through a particular sort of copulation rather than, say, a promise the creates abundance in the community or in families? Then, we’d have to examine what sorts of sexual acts in an arrangement that was exemplified by the fruits of the spirit that marriage theoretically provides, were prohibited in heterosexual marriages that homosexuals theoretically engage in. And then, finally, we liberal would have to wonder why God is so concerned with such activities. We wonder why conservatives are so concerned. We find it unconvincing that conservatives are only concerned about the bible, when the bible is concerned about, for example, the Sabbath and Usury.