I trust that this letter finds you well. You may remember me from Chicago where I am the rector of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Glenview. We had the privilege of hearing you preach at one point in your time as Dean of Seabury Western Theological Seminary.
I am writing in response to your diocese’s recent resolution to investigate the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Apparently you think that IRD is taking members out of the Episcopal Church. I’m still in TEC, so I must have missed the message. I have been a board member of the IRD since the mid 80s and was ordained a deacon by Bishop Paul Moore in June of 1974. So it is with a heavy heart that I write to defend my association with the IRD, especially given the fact that I started out in your diocese, though I never worked there as an ordained priest. I spent three years in the Diocese of Ohio doing youth ministry at St. Peter’s, Lakewood. Then I became rector of Church of the Good Shepherd for the next fifteen years, prior to becoming rector of St. David’s.
The IRD began in the early 1980s before I became associated with it. It was founded in part to stand up for the persecuted church. We were one of the few organizations which prayed for and stood up for the persecuted church in the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the underground Christian church thanked us for our prayers.
Thanks, Graham; you are someone I am proud to consider a friend, and someone I have long admired and continue to admire.
Thank you, Fr. Sisk for such a thoughtful letter. Might we hope to see the respose you recieve from Bp. Sisk?
Excellent letter–very good on both the 1980s and recent events. All bishops, not just Mark Sisk, should take note.
That is a very interesting letter, but I question why he felt the need to drag in the Jesus Seminar. That seemed to me to be a bit of a red herring that was distracting from his otherwise thoughtful defense of the IRD.
Yes, Archer, you fly a true arrow there. I glided over that part because it’s, um, painting with a broad red herring, if you can picture that. Some of our readers here would probably find it heretical, but I think that Borg-Crossan’s The First Christmas is thought-provoking and, more than that, in many respects quite sound. So: I agree about mainline churches in the 1980s (and not only their support for the wrong policies but also–what a surprise–their sanctimonious support for the wrong policies) and about the recent TEC business (and their sanctimonious support of their own policies) but put the rest aside. Which is how Austin Farrer suggested we read all good stuff.
Interesting letter; I am grateful for the background, all of it. If God can knock down the Iron curtain, which seemed so permanent at the time, but just melted away, how much can He achieve in our lives, if we let Him in? The psalms sing of this.
Great letter — but it lists all the values and principles that Bishop Sisk and various other revisionist activists in TEC loathe and despise. So it’s not going to convince someone like Bishop Sisk — Graham Smith lists things that Bishop Sisk doesn’t like or agree with! Those are “bugs” not features.
It’s valuable to share such information with those who support the IRD’s mission. But obviously the mission of revisionist activists in TEC is the direct antithesis of the mission of the IRD: [blockquote]”The IRD is an ecumenical alliance of U.S. Christians working to reform their churches’ social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, and to contribute to the renewal of democratic society at home and abroad.”[/blockquote]
Practically every word of the above mission is anathema to most of the bishops in TEC, not to mention most of the HOD and the PB and the Executive Council.
Again — I’m very glad that Graham Smith has written the letter so that all of us can see what Bishop Sisk and his diocesan convention opposes. And the good news is that the more successful the IRD is in achieving its mission, the more such resolutions and attention that the organization will get from those opposing that mission.