Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
This morning I awoke to an e-mail from the Archbishop of Canterbury informing me of my invitation to participate in the Lambeth Conference, the meeting of bishops from across the Anglican Communion held every ten years and scheduled next for the latter half of July 2008. The text of this letter is available on the diocesan website.
In it you will find the following paragraph:
“At this point, and with the recommendations of the Windsor Report particularly in mind, I have to reserve the right to withhold or withdraw invitations from bishops whose appointment, actions or manner of life have caused exceptionally serious division or scandal within the Communion. Indeed there are currently one or two cases on which I am seeking further advice. I do not say this lightly, but I believe that we need to know as we meet that each participant recognises and honours the task set before us and that there is an adequate level of mutual trust between us about this. Such trust is a great deal harder to sustain if there are some involved who are generally seen as fundamentally compromising the efforts towards a credible and cohesive resolution.”
Shortly thereafter I received the news report that Bishop Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire who was elected and consecrated according to the Canons and Constitution of The Episcopal Church, was one of the bishops about whom Archbishop Williams is seeking further advice and to whom he has not issued an invitation to participate. The news service reported that Bishop Martyn Minns, the former Episcopal priest of the Diocese of Virginia ordained by Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria to serve as a missionary bishop to the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) was another. I am told that Bishop Minns, along with the Bishop of Bolivia, was in the Diocese of Ohio last week to participate in an ordination in Akron, neither bishop having sought or received my permission to perform episcopal acts within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction for which I am responsible.
I write to let you know that I am aware of the current scope of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitations to the Lambeth Conference and respect his privilege and prerogative in making those invitations. I also want to be clear with you that I do not believe it is Bishop Robinson’s “manner of life” that has “caused exceptionally serious division or scandal within the Communion,” rather it is the divisive actions of those who have used it in an intentional effort to divide both The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Williams rightly points out in his letter that the productive work of the Lambeth Conference is dependent upon “an adequate level of mutual trust.” In light of the challenges facing our global fellowship, he accurately states that “such trust is a great deal harder to sustain if there are some involved who are generally seen as fundamentally compromising the efforts towards a credible and cohesive resolution.”
Bishop Robinson’s presence at the Lambeth Conference might be awkward or difficult for some of the other participants, but that is hardly uncommon in Christian community. There are plenty of bishops whose presence in the councils of the Church I find difficult, and doubtless plenty who find mine the same. However, Bishop Robinson, throughout his ministry, has been unfailingly honest and open, consistently establishing and maintaining trust within the diocese he has faithfully served and throughout the Church. Time and time again he has been an instrument of reconciliation and resolution.
As Bishop of Ohio, I cannot say the same about those bishops who have come into this diocese to exercise episcopal ministry in contempt of the centuries old practice of jurisdictional respect, bishops of our own province and from abroad, beginning the month before I became the Bishop of Ohio and continuing even until last week, including the Archbishop of Kenya who presided at an ordination in Cleveland only weeks before last February’s meeting of the Primates.
Regardless of one’s perspectives on human sexuality and how the intimate expression of personal relationships is seen in the eyes of God, we must be able to distinguish between Bishop Robinson’s ministry and that of bishops who indeed are “fundamentally compromising the efforts towards a credible and cohesive resolution.
It is important that none of us, whatever her or his perspective, responds precipitously to this news, rewarding with our reactivity the power of evil’s desire for division. At the same time, I will only be honest with you and say that I am deeply disappointed. Just as I do not imagine representing the more conservative communicants of the Diocese of Ohio without the companionship and participation of conservative bishops, at Lambeth or any other council of the Church, I can not foresee representing the lesbian and gay communicants of this diocese, and their more liberal peers, without the companionship and participation of the Bishop of New Hampshire. And none of this even begins to address representation of the faithful communicants of the Diocese of New Hampshire, whose duly elected, consented to, and ordained Diocesan Bishop may be kept from fulfilling his responsibilities.
In a note to the bishops of The Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori has urged “a calm approach to today’s announcement,” reminding us that “aspects of this matter may change in the next 14 months, and the House of Bishops’ September meeting offers us a forum for further discussion.” I concur both with her sense of patience and her hope for productive conversations with the Archbishop of Canterbury in New Orleans this autumn.
By circumstance, I will be spending the next three days with Bishop Robinson and three other members of our ordination class of bishops. Of course we will consider this recent news thoughtfully and prayerfully, as will you, seeking not to be reactive, but faithfully responsive. And as we move into the time ahead, I invite you to continue in your openness with me about this and all other concerns of our common faith and mission.
Gratefully,
The Rt. Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr.
Bishop of Ohio
Yikes! It would appear Bp. Kirk Smith of Arizona has copied sections of +Hollingsworth’s text wholesale in his own pastoral letter to his diocese. Either that or they have both copied talking points from 815 or Integrity. I assume it is +Smith who copied +Hollingsworth because +Hollingsworth’s letter has been circulating for several days….
Check it out:
Hollingsworth from above:
Smith, from here:
http://walkingwithintegrity.blogspot.com/2007/05/kirk-smith-speaks-out-on-invitations-to.html
Again, here’s Hollingsworth:
And here’s Smith, not quite word for word, but thought for thought:
I seem to recall this happening before with two bishops, but don’t remember the details. I also remember +Griswold was discovered copying letters to various other Christian leaders almost word for word. Very sad and telling.
I thought this letter sounded familiar….
Hmmmm. It gets more interesting. In noting that many of the letters from ECUSA bishops about the Dar es Salaam Communique sounded the same, like they were written from the same template, Chris Johnson of the MCJ cited, guess who? None other than +Kirk Smith
http://themcj.com/3029
about which a commenter over there notes:
Either Bp. Smith can’t think and write for himself, or there is someone else telling ECUSA bishops what to say.
“Time and time again [Robinson] has been an instrument of reconciliation and resolution.”
Not only are these bishops plagiarizers, they’re also liars!
A certain reader posted the following comment, “The ABC has issued invitations to American bishops, but has done so in a way that he knows that the vast majority cannot accept (unless they lack any moral backbone whatsoever).. I posted that I believed he had it 180 degrees wrong. We now have five (by my count: Andrus, Chane, Irish, Hollingsworth, and Smith, the apparent plagiarizer) of the most liberal bishops that cry outrage but say nothing of boycott.
The ABC, on the other hand, knows full well that the spine of the GS are made of stronger stuff and that they had long said (CAPA statement, etc) that they would not participate if the non-Windsor American bishops participated. He has effectively dis-invited the GS without the political repercussions.
What a fantastic rant!
I enjoyed all that I read of it . . . ; > )
And really cool is KarenB’s discovery. You’d think they could have come up with some sort of slight innovation on what appears awfully like some sort of Integrity-or-something boilerplate . . . Surely the bishops are creative enough to not make it appear entirely dependent on lobbyists.
#3: “Either Bp. Smith can’t think and write for himself, or there is someone else telling ECUSA bishops what to say.”
I don’t like to polarize, i’ve always been a ‘both … and’ person.
As I’ve noted before, ecusa conformism looks more and more like Soviet 1930’s CCCP politics, replete with purge show-trials and political exile. “Champagne guzzling Stalinist narcissists†constitute their flock on a residual basis.
In Georgia, there is an ongoing campaign to protect one of our coastal islands from the development our governor hopes to profit from. Organizers send our alerts, asking us to write appropriate people at crucial junctures and suggesting talking points. There is a “form letter” for those who want to take the easy way. I have always written my own letter with my own “talking points,” believing that receiving a bunch of messages saying essentially the same thing won’t be as effective as very individual letters. I imagine Integrity keeps a mailing list of sympathetic bishops and sends “talking points” to them at moments like this. Apparently some bishops are happy with the “form letter.” 🙂 Which is not so good for their cause when it becomes so evident.
By golly, this is like listening to the new-casts. No matter which program one watches or which paper one reads, the stories and the wording is almost the same!
In saying
+Hollingsworth, or whoever actually wrote the letter, got it approximately half right. The fact that, in and before 2003, the Rev. V. “Gene” Robinson was living in a relationship that is not unambiguously within the bounds of acceptable Christian behavior was a reflection of what has become commonplace within secular Western society. It is a sad fact that this behavior, as well as many others that are scripturally “outside the pale” of what is expected from a Christian are now commonplace. But the commonality of occurrence of a behavior in the culture does not interfere with that behavior’s becoming a stumbling block to one’s fellows.
The far greater scandal, was the consecration and installation as a bishop of the Church of a man living in such a relationship. Either +Hollingsworth does not understand what the word scandal implies, or else he is simply one more Episcopal cleric who has subscribed to the conceit that God has enlightened him so that he may be an agent in God’s doing of a “new thing”. Bishop Hollingsworth, like Bishop Robinson, and far, far too many others have conformed themselves to the world, rather than to scripture and the faith once delivered to the Church. In my humble opinion this is much to the detriment of the health of the body of Christ.