Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Fourteenth Lambeth Conference has come to an end. The “Reflections Paper” I described to you yesterday has been released (all 44 pages of it!), and the Archbishop of Canterbury has just concluded his Third and Final Presidential Address, stating unambiguously that Jesus Christ is, indeed, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and that we find our unity in him.
Shortly the “Reflections Paper” will be available online (Anglican Communion web site, also the Episcopal News Service web site).
In our Indaba group this morning we discussed our discomfort at the thought that this Paper might be read as if it had the character and (moral) authority of the Reports and Resolutions of previous Lambeth Conferences. We drafted a brief Introductory Statement that we wish to be attached to the Paper. (Note: this is the Statement of OUR group of 40 Bishops, not that of the Conference as a whole.)
Nevertheless, if you download (or otherwise receive) the “Reflections Paper” it would be my hope, personally, that you read it in the light of the following Introduction:
“The statement which follows cannot hope to capture the mood and experience of the Lambeth Conference 2008.
“Cold words are inadequate to express the quality and passion of the journey we have shared. We have listened intently to one another, we have laughed together and wept together. We have discovered in our Bible Study and Indaba Groups the kind of friendship and fellowship which is life-changing.
“This statement represents a distillation of insights and opinions, not from a single group but from 16 Indaba Groups and it therefore takes the form of a patchwork which no editorial process can make seamless without creating a garment that never existed.
“In order to read this document with appreciation you must allow yourself to imagine that you are in a safe space with others whom you have come to love and whose opinions you have grown to respect at the deepest level. Only the reader can breathe love, humor, tears, admiration, urgency and imagination into this document so that it can truly live, and so that the experiences that gave it birth can be seen to have animated our renewed relationships.”
Again, my profound thanks to all of you for your prayerful support of the Bishops gathered here in Canterbury for the past three weeks.
Warmest regards in our Lord,
The Right Rev. John W. Howe
Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida
Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.
Agree
Bishop Howe: “We have listened intently to one another, we have laughed together and wept together. We have discovered in our Bible Study and Indaba Groups the kind of friendship and fellowship which is life-changing.”
Bishop Schori: “We have prayed, cried, learned, and laughed together, and discovered something deeper about the body of Christ.”
Bill McGovern: “I’ve cried, wept and laughed watching this foolishness and discovered that life-changing friendship and fellowship can be had in GAFCON.”
I will never again feel that the Anglcian Communion is a safe place Bishop Howe…I have been run out of the church of my ancestors and now have nothing to leave my own children and grand children…the disappointment and grief inflicted on all of us by the Bishops of TEC is a betrayal from which I personally will never recover…except by God’s own healing power.
The sad thing is that the AC is now just as hostile.
It’s hard to describe the feelings of this non conclusion of Lambeth. No surprise, I cannot deny, but simply, well, depressing. And what an expensive way to be depressed!
“In order to read this document with appreciation you must allow yourself to imagine that you are in a safe space with others whom you have come to love and whose opinions you have grown to respect at the deepest level. Only the reader can breathe love, humor, tears, admiration, urgency and imagination into this document so that it can truly live, and so that the experiences that gave it birth can be seen to have animated our renewed relationships.”
Where does a once-rational, clear-thinking bishop pick up and enthusiastically utter such drivel?
Sad, this bishop has caved.
I wrote in support of +Howe early on in the reading of his letters back home, having previously “ripped him a new one” on another topic. Even then, in voicing support, I felt hesitant. I was afraid that his waffling, which seemed clear to me, was a bad sign. Now I guess I see my concern confirmed in large part. Fool me once….
Please, your Grace, come back fully to the fold. Reforge your relationships with ACN/CCP. Open channels with the GAFCon bishops. If you are called to it, stay on “the inside,” but please don’t be corrupted by their twisting misuse of words. Please don’t sign on to the big lie as part of the truth. Let +Duncan, +Iker, and esp. +Ackerman be a model for your behaviour now and in the months to come.
It’s plain to me that there are not years to come if you are to remain faithful to the orthodox truth of Christianity. By GC 2009 all bets are off, and one should expect trial rites for SSBs province-wide, multiple nominations of non-chaste partnered out-of-marriage candidates for bishop, and also the unveiling of a series of trial rites (or even a new trial BCP) from the Standing Committee on the Liturgy. “All glory and praise be to the universe, to the sun and moon and stars, to she who is god and mother of all” (or perhaps it) (this is wholly different from the Omnia Opera, I must point out!). I will pray for you.
I’m baffled by the hostility to +Howe’s letter in this thread, I must say. My respect for him has grown remarkably in the last few months, and I am encouraged by his optimism.
Don Armstrong is right. Once my former parish discovered I held orthodox views, I never won Vestry nomination, never was elected to Dio. Convention, and was eventually shot down in my desire to seek ordained ministry.
Much more liberal members of the parish were successful in such ventures, often times going to convention multiple times or serving multiple terms on vestry, but not I.
Now, I seek out none of the above.
Peace
Jim Elliott <><
By the way, that Diocese I speak of was the Florida/Alabama “Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast”, not Bp. Howe’s diocese, lest any be confused.