For the first time in the history of General Synod, members will witness the election of a new Primus. This will take place during an Episcopal Synod on Saturday morning (13 June) – where all seven bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church (known collectively as the College of Bishops) will elect a new Primus following the retirement of the Most Rev Dr Idris Jones (current Primus and Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway). The role of Primus, which is taken from the Latin ”˜primus inter pares’ – meaning ”˜first among equals’ is to preside over the College of Bishops and represent them and the wider Church at home and throughout the world-wide Anglican Communion.

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Richard Holloway says the worldwide Anglican Church has made room for “happy clapping” evangelicals, bells-and-smells Catholics, women priests and, in the United States, openly gay clergy and even practitioners of other faiths. So surely, he argues, it can find room for people like him – Christians who don’t believe in God.

Holloway, contrary to popular belief, has not left the Episcopal Church, as Scottish Anglicanism is known. He may have taken early retirement as Bishop of Edinburgh but the writer remains an ordained priest and consecrated bishop, who still preaches from the pulpit, performs baptisms and weddings and even presides at communion.

“I had a crisis in 1998 and I was in a kind of internal exile for a bit,” he told the Herald yesterday, while en route to Sydney, where he is a speaker at the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

“I am in a slightly mellower place with the church right now. I’ve still got my pilot’s licence, so to speak. They didn’t take it away from me.”

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“World focus on the current economic situation threatens to overshadow the response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in DR Congo and elsewhere at a time when the message ”˜Peace on Earth’ begins to take centre stage in our thoughts,” declares the Most Rev Dr Idris Jones, Bishop of Glasgow & Galloway and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

He continues “Over the past few months we’ve all experienced in some way the effects of the global economic crisis. For some the effects are more shattering than for others. More recently shocking reports of the conflicts in DR Congo highlight the massive humanitarian crisis there and the atrocities being carried out on thousands of people. Peace on Earth?

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The congregation – which was formed in 1847 to minister to the spiritual needs of Irish weavers and their families who came over in the wake of the Irish potato famine – has had many ups and downs in its 160-year history.

But sadly, despite modest growth in numbers over the past year, there has not been sufficient support for the congregation for them to justify the large amount of money which would need to be spent repairing the building.

Surveyor’s reports over the past eight years indicated that there were several structural problems which would require extensive remedial work. The congregation at the time was at a low ebb and did not feel able to spend large amounts of money on the building.

However, since then, the deterioration has worsened to the extent that the chancel is no longer used for health and safety reasons.

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The programme was certainly tight and finely controlled. In the event the controversial issues of the Covenant and the Communion, together with issues around human sexuality were left until the last few days. The hope was that the relationships built before we took these issues would help us stick together as we came to confront the differences that still divide the communion. The general opinion was that this did happen. Bishops listened more attentively and heard the different reactions from around the communion and did so in a calm and measured way. That is not to say that no passion was expressed about deeply held convictions.

My experience was to be part of a series of meetings in which it became dear that different situations demanded different responses and there was mutual respect shown for these various positions. They were basically irreconcilable and remained so yet the determination to stay in dialogue and to go on working with these dashing positions was what marked out the potential of our Communion as distinctive.

There is dearly more work to be done but with some hope of a way forward. The fact is that neither of the extreme positions if I can call them that can be expected to give up what they believe God has called them to witness to as part of the life of their Province. There may be a way through but it is not dear yet where it would take us – meanwhile we hold to the position that we are in pending further provision in the Communion to take account of the need for some enlarged thinking. Whether the proposed Pastoral Forum to take over the care of congregations that have chosen to renounce the leadership of their Diocesan Bishop can have any place in this process I personally doubt.

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The conference will be a testing time for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who is on the liberal wing of the church but has devoted himself to trying to hold the church together. Some have accused him of seeking consensus where there is none.

He seems to have disappointed radicals while failing to satisfy traditionalists, but Bishop Holloway has a strong respect for the archbishop. “Rowan is a liberal, warm-hearted man,” he says. “There is something very honourable about what he is doing. He has decided to park his own private convictions and work to preserve the unity of the institution.

“It is a very self-sacrificing thing to do and it has won him a lot of respect as well as criticism. My hunch is the good guys will rally round and do what they can to bolster him up.”

Bishop [Richard] Holloway, who was Bishop of Edinburgh for 14 years and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church for eight, attended the last two Lambeth conferences.

He says: “Each Lambeth I have been at, the press has predicted the dissolution of the Anglican communion. In 1988 it was over the ordination of women, but we found a way of living with that. In 1998 they did less well with the gay thing. I suspect this time they will get through again.

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The question we must ever face is not “What errors do we see in our opponents position?”, but “What values do we discern in our opponents position, values that our
own position may not be stressing as fully?” And we need to see these questions not as ones simply to be asked in a formal way, but as expressing an attitude of a path of shared discovery on which we are willing to embark, within the debate in which we are participating.

And so concerning the current ”˜troubles’ in our communion:

· We might ask that the debate be shaped in terms of values rather than policies or strategies

· We thus ask each Province to express the values it sees being expressed in it present position, relating these to values within our scriptural and traditional
inheritance

· We note that as a metaphysical ”˜fact’ values clash and that this creates a significant space within which a variety of good options can be considered .

· We seek to articulate this ”˜space’ as an area within which diversity can be accepted, as being paths that seek to live in the light of Christian values, noting
that this limited variety is not ”˜anything goes relativism’.

· We do not expect total agreement, but we seek to circumscribe an acceptable pluralism. In doing do we reflect the recommendation of Aristotle, only to expect
that degree of precision (akribeia) of which the subject admits.

· Each Province admits that no one will in their life have achieved a total and full expression of the Divine demand, but each with due humility and repentance
offers its life to God and to the other Provinces.

To approach in this way is to accept, in Kuhn’s terms that we may need a paradigm shift in perspective, or in Goldmann’s terms “a conversion”, for a world in which values clash, is a very different world from one in which these values are potentially in harmony.

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A priest visited our all-age worship yesterday. He has recently resigned from the leadership of a congregation. For a long time he had stood for what he understands to be Gospel imperatives. In the face of some opposition from his congregation (a few of whom left to go to other churches) and his bishop, he stood pretty much alone in his diocese. Yet he is a pastorally-hearted person, with a concern for both scripture and tradition. He and his wife feel pushed out, rejected and with little future in the Church. Unlike those clergy who who have entered same-sex Civil Partnerships (and who presumably see themselves as being in some sense married). Or those who conduct blessings of such partnerships using the new Scottish Episcopal Marriage liturgy (can someone please confirm that this isn’t happening?).

I’ve expressed my concerns about this kind of thing before: how can we ensure that those who take a traditionalist line on matters of sexuality, women’s ordination, etc, are both included and honoured in the life of the church? How can we ensure that having such views is not a bar to ordained ministry? Or will it be the case that only those that hold to the new way of thinking will be allowed to function in ministry? And I don’t mean that they should be tolerated as dinosaurs who will soon die out.

Any settlement of these issues in the Anglican Communion (or the Scottish Episcopal Church for that matter) needs to ensure that both reappraising and reasserting views are held in tension. At the moment, it remains a ‘winner-takes-all’ scenario, with neither side willing to allow the other a canonically protected place in the church.

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We have three principle areas of concern regarding the Draft Covenant:

–The discussion of the foundations which are traditionally held to undergird Anglicanism omits to mention reason, which has long been thought to stand alongside scripture and tradition.
–The wording of section 6 of the Draft Covenant is potentially open to a wide variety of interpretations. For example, to take paragraph 6.3 alone, we feel that the expressions such as ”˜common mind’, ”˜matters of essential concern’, and ”˜common standards of faith’, all require significant further definition before they can bear the weight being placed upon them in the context of this Covenant. We are led to wonder whether the wording of section 6 of the Draft Covenant is fit for purpose in any practical circumstance in which it is likely to be called upon.
–We note that the Draft Covenant invests the Primates’ meeting with considerable and wide-ranging powers. We question whether the Primates’ meeting is the Instrument of Unity best suited to the task being entrusted to it (rather than the ACC, which contains a more wide-ranging representation of Church members).

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The Scottish and Mexican leaders were expected to voice the view that gay people should live a fully equal life within the church.

But the Dean of Manchester Cathedral, The Very Rev Rogers Govender, said they were not so explicit.

He said: “It was a very good conference, very positive with about 50 people here and the two speakers were both very well received, it was a very positive experience.

“No specific calls were made at all.

“The conference was about issues of Anglican diversity and what they said -and others said in the course of the day – is that the Anglican church is historically diverse and makes room for people of different persuasions.

“At this critical time we need to reclaim that ground and make sure we put in our views on retaining that ethos which is essentially Anglican – rather than having extreme views on either side of the debate.”

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You almost have to smile at the bishops of the Episcopal Church in the states. It would appear that they have managed to get Rowan Williams the headlines that he wanted without changing their policy on anything at all.

The BBC is reporting things particularly inaccurately.
They say today:

Leaders of the Episcopal Church in the United States have agreed to halt the ordination of gay clergy to prevent a split in the Anglican Church.
The Church will also no longer approve prayers to bless same-sex couples.

But neither statement is true at all. The bishops have not said they will halt the ordination of gay people. Some people think that they said that they would not ordain any more gay bishops. That is not quite right either. The polity lingers on. If any diocese elects a bishop who is in a partnership, it will still be for the other diocesan bishops with jurisdiction & Standing Committees to vote on whether to confirm the election just as they do for all bishops. We might presume that quite a few of them would vote against such an appointment at this time. We must also assume that quite a few would vote in favour. The process has changed not a jot as a result of this latest meeting.

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Global warming is an issue that scientists are beginning to address in moral terms. We have a moral obligation to future generations to protect the earth, is the gist of many scientists’ appeals to people to listen to their analyse.

We don’t expect priests or ministers to preach global warming on a Sunday – though that, too, is beginning to change.

Michael S Northcott is Professor of Ethics at the University of Edinburgh and a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church. He has just written a book, A Moral Climate: the ethics of global warming, in which he examines the ethical implications for Christians of climate change.

He begins each chapter with a quotation from the prophet Jeremiah and is not afraid to talk of “the immorality of global warming”. He writes that “the spiritual vision of divine grace” is needed to save the earth and its people.

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ACNS has posted the response of Dr. Idris Jones, the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, to the Glasgow airport terrorist attack.

You can read it here.

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.A very cool resource.