One of the saddest moments of the Conference for me personally occurred in our Indaba when a bishop spoke earnestly of his views on same sex issues with a brief and solemn conclusion. Some minutes after I saw him surreptitiously pass a sheaf of the TEC briefing notes to the TEC bishop seated in front of him. He had parroted one of the ’sample narratives’. I wanted to shout and to cry. Any idea of transparency and trust through Indaba had been tragically thrown in our face. Set piece parroting surreptitiously orchestrated was poisoning our communion. God have mercy on us! Although I spoke to our Indaba facilitator of this privately we, as an Indaba group and Conference, had neither the wit nor the will to address our hiddenness.
This sample narrative and messaging strategy staged by TEC is just what you’d expect from a political campaign. It’s significant because its proof that TEC sees the Communion not as a theological entity, but as a political one.
So it’d be OK if +Minns & Co. were to provide staff work for +Akinola, but not if TEC were to share its staff work with its supporters. I see ….
No participant in a conference like Lambeth, possessed of any degree of sophistication at all, would have walked in there cold, without having done its homework to identify and brief supporters. If the bishop truly thinks otherwise, he’s pretty naive.
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Elsewhere in the bishop’s report: “Approximately one in four of the bishops at Lambeth was from the USA and its network of American dioceses (called ‘The Episcopal Church’ or ‘TEC’) ….”
News flash for the good bishop: TEC is not just those Anglican Communion dioceses that happen to be located in a geographic territory that’s sometimes called ‘the USA.’
I wonder if he’d use the same phrasing about “Australia and its network of dioceses (called ‘the Anglican Church of Australia’).”
Rowan Williams’ sham “conference” with its phony Indaba thang just keeps on dribbling out amazing revelations. The Episcopalians sure got their money’s worth out of Rowan at Lambeth this time.
D.C., I see you haven’t gotten with the indaba spirit. I suspect had +Akinola attended an indaba he would not have needed a script to tell TEC what he thought of their innovations.
DC – it is one thing to go to a meeting where Robert’s Rules set the stage and where you know that there will be motions made and votes cast. It is quite another to be told you are going to a meeting where people are expected to speak from their hearts and to share honestly what their thoughts and hopes are. The “indaba” process was supposed to be discussion by individuals and to be relationally oriented, not decision oriented. To have ECUSA bishops giving other bishops “talking points” violates the spirit of indaba.
I think the choice to have a massive bull session was the wrong one – but if it was advertised as a bull session, then it should have been one, and not an opportunity to propagandize by taking advantage of the stated ground rules.
DC,
Don’t you suppose that by “network” he means those dioceses in other American nations that are nevertheless part of TEC. After all the Presiding Bishop herself asserted at one time that TEC was a global entity. By contrast, the Anglican Church of Australian is composed solely of Australian dioceses.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
Having “read it all,” I am thankful for the interesting comments Bp Harrower has on Lambeth, and for the presence of an evangelical bishop outside Sydney.
This whole process shows the dishonesty of TEc. Why elso would you try to hide the fact that you were reading a “canned” speech. If a Bishop can not speak from the heart in support of the divinity of Christ and the authority of the Bible, as written, not some TEc edited for contemporary use bile, then he isn’t much of a Christian bishop. I know DC above might disagree but this is a good example of a political machine, not honest conversation from a Christian Bishop. Thanks to the Bishop of Tasmania for his honest thoughts.
D. C., there’s a big difference between getting an English-speaker to clean up your thoughts for an English-speaking readership when English isn’t your first language and robotically chanting Episcopal Organization talking points and I’m surprised that you can’t see the difference.
Actually, I’m not surprised at all.
I was struck by his question of what it means for a bishop to lead: American bishops ‘unable to stand against their laity’, some African bishops seen as very authoritarian. A question there for us, and one that could be asked in other churches, not only the Anglican. What does it mean for a bishop to lead?
D.C., that is a tangential non-sequiter. I find it hard to believe that you approve of American bishops being coached by handlers on what to say in small group discussions. It is reprehensible even if Bp Minns were to be donning an ABp Akinola costume and giving press conferences. (Sort of like in the Mission Impossible series where after fooling everyone, they would unzip their faces off. I always thought that that was pretty cool.)
It is shameful that a bishop should use a crib sheet. This is indisputable. But the problem is bigger than this. First, in a group of this sort, he had a moral obligation to say that he was speaking from a crib sheet. To fail to do so is to lie flagrantly. Second, he has agreed to become a puppet. It is difficult to find the words to describe a bishop who would permit himself to be used in this fashion. Someone should inquire: Who put these crib sheets together, and at whose behest? The matter grows darker because there must have been a number of TEC bishops who did the precise same thing. Someone needs to ask the bishop involved here: Why would you do such a thing? The very idea that there is a corps of bishops who have lied in concert, have been suborned in concert, suggests strongly that there is in TEC a Cardinal Richelieu whose power to coerce is even greater than we have supposed. Larry
D.C. With “Approximately one in four of the bishops at Lambeth … from the USA and its network of American dioceses (called ‘The Episcopal Church’ or ‘TEC’) ….†the ability of TEC to influence what happened is greatly out of proportion to its membership. Further the so called “overseas” dioceses give the rest of us the impression that TEC is actually a Colonialist church. With the exception of the Diocese of Canterbury it is the only Anglican entity with territory outside its own country. The only overseas territories ACA has apart from Tasmania are a few off shore Islands.
Jon R
Robroy [#11] writes:
And Larry Morse [#12] says:
That’s a decidedly curious perspective. I presume you guys would think it would have been OK for the bishop to jot down some notes and use them to speak his piece in the ‘small’ group (although 40 isn’t exactly small in my book). I see no material difference if he’s speaking from someone else’s notes.
You seem to be assuming the bishop in question had no opinions of his own, but was willing to be co-opted as a mindless Charlie McCarthy for the American Edgar Bergens. Some might think that’s a condescending and even insulting viewpoint. (Recall the chicken-dinners brouhaha of several years ago; this time the shoe would seem to be on the other foot.)
And assuming the bishop had some TEC briefing materials in his possession: We don’t know what other materials he had been given by others, nor what he actually read.
In any case, reading TEC briefing materials surely didn’t disqualify the bishop from expressing opinions in agreement with those materials unless he disclosed his reading list. I doubt many people in any walk of life would go along with an ethical standard of such preciousness.
D.C. he didn’t use prepared notes to make a presentation. He told a story, but the story [i]wasn’t his[/i]. In a time that was supposed to involved bishops sharing their own stories, he read a generic narrative off of a sheet. It wasn’t his story. The fact that he agrees with it doesn’t make it his.
My mother taught me telling stories was wrong. Seems the cribbing bishop didn’t get the message, eh? Not from his mom, his Sunday School, his seminary, his bible or anywhere. Behold, the NEW THANG GOZPELL (C) in deed and in truthiness. Amen. Pass the legal fee collection plate, please.
Using one’s own notes is admirable. It helps a person gather his thoughts to make a better prepared presentation. However, this is not what was reported.
The Bishop used a pre-prepared ‘talking points’ sheet given to him by someone else, and he made his presentation from that. In the speech classes I took in Community College, that would be an automatic “zero” grade.
JE
How about considering other troubling aspects of the whole controversial Indaba process? I appreciated this bishop’s frank assessment of the Indaba group experience as “highly negative:” with an “imposed agenda” and an “impossible time frame.” Moreover, it all was expressly designed to avoid any real resolution of the crisis facing the AC.
This is significant, because ++Rowan Williams hopes to keep using the same silly and worthless process at future international gatherings, such as the Primates’ Meeting and the ACC meeting next year. I hope more bishops will speak up and call a spade a spade. The whole “Indaba” process was a farce, a pathetic sham.
David Handy+