Dueling Letters to the Editor in the Birmingham, Alabama, News

Friday, September 28, 2007

Bishops didn’t reject Anglicans’ request

I am writing to call attention to the inaccuracy and distortion of the article “Episcopal bishops reject Anglican demands” (The News, Wednesday) from the New York Times News Service about the meeting of the Episcopal House of Bishops. The bishops did not reject the requests of our Anglican partners. We responded with great care, and the truth is, our response takes significant positive steps for the sake of our interdependence and unity in the Anglican Communion.

The article only quoted people who have a divisive agenda and whose assessment of the House of Bishops meeting is intentionally misleading. No one from The News attempted to call me or my office to ask for our view of the bishops’ work before publishing this front-page article. Not a single bishop present at the meeting is quoted. This is disappointing and biased journalism. It is harmful to the church and to the commonwealth.

The meeting of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church included a spirit of compromise and sacrifice for the good of the Anglican Communion, as well as an affirmation of our church’s commitment under God to love and respect the dignity of every human being. I hope our Anglican friends, and maybe even The News, will recognize this in the months to come.

Henry N. Parsley
Episcopal Bishop of Alabama
Downtown

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October 2, 2007

Bishop’s letter itself inaccurate:

Bishop Henry N. Parsley’s letter (“Bishops didn’t reject Anglicans’ request,” The News, Sept. 28) alleging inaccuracy in The New York Times story is itself inaccurate.

The Anglican primates addressed three major concerns to the leadership of the Episcopal Church. On the first, the bishops said yes, sort of, but on their terms. In doing so, they continued to use expansive language (referring to bishops “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church”), which was not the language they were asked to use (“any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same-gender union”).

The Episcopal bishops in New Orleans then said no to requests two and three, and they also did and said nothing about the lawsuits they were asked to stop. Going even further, however, they then insisted on two things they said were necessary of the rest of the Anglican Communion, which they have so badly damaged.

This was a last-ditch effort to seek to enable healing in a very deep wound. Tragically, the bishops have done nowhere near enough given what was asked and what the stakes were.

The Episcopal lobbying group Integrity, which is seeking to overturn the Episcopal Church’s teaching and practice in the area of legitimizing same-sex practice, titled its response to the New Orleans meeting: “Integrity applauds bishops’ strong stand against primates.” Is it not possible it and The New York Times see truth Parsley does not?

The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon

Canon theologian

Episcopal Diocese

of South Carolina

Summerville, S.C.

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These are the letters as they appeared. My submitted letter had one additional sentence in end of the first paragraph: “The expansive language the bishops chose to maintain was used by some Episcopal leaders recently to vote against South Carolina’s choice for Bishop, Mark Lawrence, a person who upholds the very theological position the Primates were trying to protect.”