Via Email:
Yesterday I returned from the House of Bishops meeting. It was a week that showed us the challenges that lie ahead and the hope that we Christians hold on to tenaciously, especially as our meeting was in New Orleans, a city that still shows very clearly the scars of Hurricane Katrina.
The work that the Episcopal Church continues to do in Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of the hurricane should make you proud. Other churches were present in the days immediately following the storm, but the Episcopal Church continues its hard work two years later. Our people are still building houses, counseling the broken hearted, and establishing vital services for residents whose world has been turned upside down.
On Thursday evening, we gathered for worship and to receive an offering for our ongoing work in the two states devastated by Katrina. The presiding bishop asked each diocese to bring $10,000. We in Arkansas met the challenge from our emergency fund. When gifts from across the church were gathered, the total was almost $1 million.
Saturday the bishops and spouses fanned out across the city for a work day. Some people hung drywall, some painted, and some (including your bishop) planted community gardens to bring tangible signs of life to neighborhoods that so desperately need it. I was greatly moved when I stood both in a house’s front lawn and later in a church, and saw there, higher than my head, the still-remaining marks of flood waters. But the people of New Orleans are resilient. Hope is replacing despair.
I am also reminded that hope can replace despair when I reflect on the work in New Orleans of the House of Bishops as we responded to the spring primates’ communiqué regarding issues surrounding human sexuality. The house listened to the Archbishop of Canterbury and members of the Anglican Consultative Council, and they in turn listened to our witness to the larger church of the American experience. There is a huge love for the Anglican Communion among Episcopal bishops. Together we can do much to better the world. There is a profound respect for the fact that in the Episcopal Church all orders of ministry-lay and ordained-bear witness to the truth.
Our final statement reflected both our love and our witness in many ways. We stated that we will find ways that dioceses whose people feel disaffected in the Episcopal Church can feel included in our life. The witnesses of such dioceses are important. We stated that our love for the Communion is such that we will continue the policy enacted at the most recent General Convention of urging restraint in the election of bishops whose manner of life gives cause for concern. We stated that the witness of the church must be that the dignity of gay and lesbian persons is an unequivocal commitment. We stated that we will wait to discern the will of General Convention regarding authorized rites for the blessing of same sex unions, and in the meantime we will allow for a breadth of response to situations of individual pastoral care, as the primates themselves encouraged us in 2003.
We expressed our opposition to the crossing of jurisdictional boundaries by uninvited bishops. Such behavior fosters competing prayer, rather than the common prayer that has been historically foundational to the Anglican experience.
In November at clergy conference, I will talk with the members of the clergy about the work of the House of Bishops this past week. But I share with all of you now that our work in Arkansas continues as always: to find exciting ways to tell our ancient story to the next generation of people whose lives can be changed by the gospel. If we keep our focus on that work, there is nothing we cannot do.
–(The Rt. Rev.) Larry R. Benfield is Bishop of Arkansas
what liberal sugarcoated claptrap.
The fact that he said he would discuss this with the clergy later shows exactly what he’s doing. He’s continuing to treat the pewsitters as mushrooms. He apparently believes that folks in Arkansas don’t have access to the internet. I am firmly convinced that for years us pew sitters were mushrooms; now we are not (except those that want to be). Many of these bishops still believe they can control the communication. THey will find out they cannot.
This was telling,it seemed to me, that each diocese had to bring 10G and this church had to take it from its emergency fund. This is a lot of contributions Sunday after Sunday. One can go to this well only so often. I wonder how many of other dioceses had 10G floating around to spare? Larry
110 diocese time 10k = 1.1M . Hummmm, somebody was short.
FUDGE, FUDGE, and MORE FUDGE.
RSB
+Larry, well done and well said. Obviously the other commentors don’t know you.
You are very kind, 5. Larry
Always skeptical when the lead “story” has nothing to do with the actual business at hand of the HoB.
“These are not the ‘droids you are looking for, move along…move along.”
When I was in dioAR earlier this year I had a chance to sit in on a pre-Mass, over-coffee talk with Bishop Benfield. I have the idea that he (like probably most Arkansans) felt like the same-sex blessing, etc. etc. stuff didn’t really affect his diocese very much. After all, Arkansas is smack-dab in the middle of Southern Baptist-Land, so there’s not a lot of overt gay advocacy going on. He was more concerned about helping local churches find new and creative ministries.
I am currently in DioDallas and I feel that even here, people feel disconnected from TEC/GeneralConvention/NewHampshire. I think the general mood down here is “We’ve got an orthodox parish/priest/bishop, so let’s just continue on with the gospel and growth.”
#8, and no one said anything about Pike’s heresy, or Righter’s mis-trial, or when homosexuality was changed from a mental illness to an alternate life style in 1970 (when the meeting of the American Psychological Assn was in SF), or when the 1979 BCP homogenized so much of the more “harsh” parts of Scripture, or when homosexuals began to be ordained, or when seminaries began to be filled with homosexual faculty and faculty on the far liberal end of theology, and in the mid 70s when divorce and remarriage came to be ok for priests (whereas before they had had to leave the ministry), or when men in the church began to be marginalized (how many men’s clubs are there now), or when VGR was elected and consecrated bishop, and now Susan Russell and Ed Bacon are denying the Atonement … and still no one says anything (other than a small minority, who is termed to be fundamentalists and homophobic). When good people ignore bad things because those things don’t affect them locally, ultimately the bad things come a’callin. How has the D. of Ark grown; or the D. of Dallas over the last few years (since 2003), especially in comparison to general population growth in the area? Have not the national TEC polices affected growth? Are you hesitant to tell someone you are an Episcopalian now? Are you hesitant to ask someone to church? Have you heard TEC called the “gay church?” Have you had anyone outside your local church ask you questions about TEC policies or what is going on with the national church (and you know the questions are not just out of curiousity, but are accusatory)? If your answer to any of these questions (honest answer) is yes, then you are affected locally and you local church is affected.
#9:
I didn’t mean to sound like I was arguing that we weren’t affected. I meant to say that people in DioARK act as though they aren’t, (although they sure are happy to see a rare young face in their churches, I can tell!)
I definitely have personally been asked about the episcopal church “ordaining the gays.”
But at the most local level, I have no problem getting people to come to church with me–it’s the people at the parish that have made the difference, I’m sure, in spite of the GenConChurch.
Honestly, the largest impediment to folks visiting an episcopal church with me is the fact that what we do there seems foreign to a baptist. (had a few go with me last night, and they were more curious as to why we bow towards the cross or whether all episcopalians or catholics drink alcohol at church functions)
The gay issue isn’t really an issue for most folks, because the “mainstream” conversation has been shifted from the right to the left, so to speak. Anyone with a problem with homosexuality usually doesn’t talk about it, especially in the W.A.S.P. crowd these days.
See the last paragraph of #10 above. He has put his finger on one of the central issues and the AC overriding problem. There has been a fundamental shirt leftward in daily American society, and this shift is radical with WASPS and the Urban Cultural Elite, from whom much of educated America takes its cultural lessons. In short, society has been Massachusettized and th eAC is swimming against a very powerful tide.
AS I said before, this blog seems to pay no attention to what happens outside their own neighborhood. This is a strange and distressing blindness, and it will cost us dearly because the world will shift while we are frozen in attitudes that only allow discussion, never action. We are not “standing for something,” we are paralyzed by indecision and spinelessness. Why is no one else concerned about ouor disconnection from the real world? Larry
Larry Morse, my remarks were addressed to Rt. Rev. Larry Benfield. I try to be kind though 🙂