Two Episcopal Church leaders “with profoundly different convictions about matters concerning human sexuality” have co-authored an appeal for financial contributions to supplement the limited amount of money that has been designated for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Listening Process in the Anglican Consultative Council budget.
The House of Bishops’ “offer to refrain from moving forward has created space to launch an Anglican Communion-wide Listening Process,” said the Rev. Canon Bryan Cox and Louie Crew in a letter e-mailed to bishops Oct. 10. “The time has come for a global conversation in the Anglican Communion about human sexuality. The purpose of the Listening Process is not to create a predetermined outcome or to ”˜wear opponents down.’ It is to hear respectfully one another’s stories, hopes and fears about this matter.”
Canon Cox is rector of Christ the King Church, Santa Barbara, Calif., president of the Reconciliation Institute, and a member of the American Anglican Council. Mr. Crew is founder of Integrity, which describes itself as “a witness of God’s inclusive love to the Episcopal Church and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.”
Prior to distributing their letter, the two consulted with the Rev. Canon Phil Groves, who was appointed the Listening Process facilitator by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
As a reasserter, I would be willing to make a five-figure contribution if I knew that ex-gays and their stories of healing and transformation were given [b]equal[/b] time to the active gays’ stories of [i]I was born that way.[/i] I get so tired of hearing a reasserter gay person paired off with a reappraiser theologian. A real debate or conversation would be a gay vs an ex-gay; a reasserter theologian vs a reappraiser theologian; a psychiatrist vs a phychiatrist, — you get the point. Exodus International can provide an abundance of ex-gay speakers; we have plenty of reasserter theologians with ACI, AAC, etc; NARTH has more medical and psychological studies than you can shake a stick at that support the reasons for, and healings of, homosexuality. Will Canons Cox and Groves bring these resources into the conversation on an [b]equal[/b] par with the usual pro-gay resources, none of which are based on real evidence or support?
Can someone tell me why this entry is left open to comment and the previous one from VGR is closed?
This is a strange practice and I fail to see its point.
LM
Two things:
1.) It seems the Living Church’s website has been hacked and now goes to Islam Way. Scary.
2.) I received on of these emails from Louie. I’m not too sure what to think about it. In it, they pledged to include the Global South in the listening process. I’m not too sure they are going to show up at this point. The problem of course, as the Windsor Report pointed out, is that it is impossible to have dialogue when the matter up for discussion is a fait accompli. The moratoria were to be implemented to facilitate dialogue. No moratoria, no dialogue. A dialogue has to be a reciprocal conversation, and I have serious doubts that this will work. Too little, too late, maybe. I realize I am being pessimistic from a reconciliation standpoint.
I just sent an e-mail to Islam Way giving them an opportunity to repudiate the action against the Living Church that Brad references. It will be interesting to see what response – if any – I get. The hack is still effective as of now.
I cannot imagine why any reasserting Episcopalian would in any way trust the ACC — administered it seems by the activist revisionist ACO — enough to send it money.
Not to mention tha the “listening process” has been ongoing [i]in a global sense[/i] since 1998 when it was called for.
The idea that the “time has come for a global conversation in the Anglican Communion about human sexuality” is just a hoot, since such a time has already come, occurred, and gone, and despite all the protestations ended when the Episcopal church decided its path. The next decades or so will be in engaging with the fallout from that decision and the “conversation and listening” will be about that fallout and what people, bishops, provinces, and dioceses will be *doing* as a result of the completion of the listening process in August 2003.
Apparatchiks and activists may certainly pretend that the “fallout and consequences discussions” are actually “engaging in the listening process” . . . but I expect that much of the communion will be engaged in their own separate “listening processes” with those of like mind. So . . . the province of Uganda will engage with the “listening process” with Common Cause or with Windsor dioceses. And Claiming the Blessing will engage with the “listening process” with their own constituencies around the globe. And thus, even the erstwhile “listening processes” will merely continue the process of fragmentation that went further with the completion of the 1998 “Listening Process” that occurred in August, 2003.
It is a lot easier to engage in a listening process with a tape recording of one’s own voice.
There are no more stories to hear. This is, indeed, another of the many “wear them down” tactics. I won’t participate any longer. Period.
Concur. fait di accompli DOES NOT EQUAL dialogue. Properly, the ECUSA/TEC has imperialised the listening process. I guess Louie needs the bucks. Not sure about the other individual and have never heard of the Reconciliation work noted.
MORE cash to ACC? Good grief, NO, a THOUSAND TIMES NO!!!
In November 1999, I and others (incl. Bp. Duncan and Louie Crew) were invited to a conference in Seattle like the one proposed here. I went on condition that IF we concluded that there was no common ground, then we would discuss ways of amicable parting. Brian promised this consideration would be included in the process. It was not. I alone refused to partake at the concluding Eucharist. I suspect now, 8 years later, others would join me.
I think I want to repeat what I said earlier. It is instructive and significant that we are talking about “listening.” This tells us to what degree the conflict is a matter of words, not of action. WE have heard the HOB and have clearly seen their dishonest use of the language to say both Yes and No at once. VGR goes out of his way to sound avuncular, unctous, reasonable; and we also have “breadth of response” and the like. However, beneath all the talk, all Susan’s chattiness with Kendall, there is the clear belief that TEC will do whatever it pleases, and that if the rest of the AC perishes, TEC will hardly be distressed. And yet they say something else as a matter of course.
It is well therefore to remember that people not only deceive others and they not only deceive themselves, but they also know tht they are deceiving themselves. Logically, this should be impossible, but humanly, it is a common enough layering of deceptions. For this reason, I suspect that TEC knows only too well that it is deceiving itself on all sorts of matters as it seeks to deceive others, but this produces no internal conflict because they have rationalized such layered deceptions by creating deceptive language.
Someone ealier scored Sarah for referring to the Lord of the Rings. I forget what for, but I will make my reference also. Remember the passage in which Gandalf makes his final visit to Saruman on Orthanc. He warns those with him that Saruman’s voice is a deadly weapon, and so it turns out. How thoughtfully, how patiently Saruman speaks. But it is Gimli, isn’t it? who finally says that S’s words stand on their heads and he grasped his ax (knowing that this is the right action for those who sand words on their heads). Is Saruman deceiving himself as he seeks to deceive the others? And does he know it? Indeed, isn’t this the scene’s very point? So that when the palantir is thrown down, this is the symbolic end of such deception, for the stone itself stands for knowledge used to deceive, not to enlighten.
Is this not the case with TEC? In everything its speakers utter, I hear Saruman. And so, the battle of words goes on, since this is its nature, and it is precisely this that makes it virtually impossible for action to take place or for a real leader to arise, for leaders act. Instead, we have Kendall exchanging pleasantries with Susan, for civility here has become A SUBSTITUTE FOR ACTION, not the civilized courtesies that precede essential war. LM
Stephen Noll!
I think that you did not read the above statement, to wit: “The time has come for a global conversation in the Anglican Communion about human sexuality.”
Did you not get the message? Of course you did not participate in “a conference in Seattle like the one proposed here” in 1999 . . . because didn’t you hear — there has been no listening process over the past ten years until right this very instant!!!!
Please Stephen Noll — get with the program. There has been no “global conversation in the Anglican Communion about human sexuality” ever. NOT EVER.
So don’t say anything more about the conference back in 1999 — it never happened. It was all in your dreams or imagination.
I hope that you are clear now.
; > )