""We felt as a group that we were less whole, less representative of the church catholic in all of its many perspectives by the loss of those who have chosen to resign," Douglas said. "While it wasn't always easy for me as a person from the Episcopal Church to hear our brothers' concerns and observations about our life, the fact that they weren't at the meeting diminished us."
The committee agreed that its response to those who'd resigned "would express regret that their voices would be missed and that the committee's work was diminished when it lacked a range of opinion as well as full representation.""
From ENS' report on the winding up of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. Read the whole report here.
Let us get this straight: the Anglican Communion is 'less whole, less representative of the church catholic' because it has failed to get on top of the difficulty created by one of its significant (in money, power, loquaciousness) member churches undertaking a strategic course of action which is not representative of the 'church catholic'. It has so failed to get on top of the difficulty that one of its leading committees - the Standing Committee, no less - has lost members from it through resignation. One of them, in the same ENS article is reported thus:
"East President Bishop Mouneer Anis, who resigned his membership in February saying that his presence has "no value whatsoever" and that his voice is "like a useless cry in the wilderness.""
Unfortunate though those resignations are, they are not the primary reason why the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion is 'less whole, less representative of the church catholic.' The primary reasons lie further back: in the Communion's inadequate and tardy response to the strategic direction TEC has pursued in respect of its gay and lesbian members, to say nothing of the strategic direction itself. (Remember: if that strategic direction had not stretched to include ordaining partnered same sex persons to the episcopacy, we would not be in the situation we are in today!)
The spin here, by +Ian Douglas, is that all would be well if only the resignations had not occurred. But on the reason for the resignations he says nothing.
But there is another spin here. The impression is conveyed that the Communion is in a state of 'diminishment' rather than 'division.' If the SC really thinks we are just a bit diminished at the moment; that the effective loss of Nigeria, Uganda, and the like (including the many parishes in North America they have offered support to), amounts to 'diminishment' and not 'division', then we are not being well served by this committee. At least not as the true global Anglican Communion we could be.
It sounds like we are shrinking downwards to a moderate, middling, mediocre Communion which cannot stomach its more conservative member churches, which prefers to march to the beat of one social democratic cultural drum rather than a multi-cultural one, and which occasionally gets a razz from the Archbishop of Canterbury, but otherwise is really led by the spinmeisters. Is the "official Anglican Communion" really in American hands? Reading elsewhere in the ENS report one could be excused, I think, for concluding that the Millenium Development Goals are now the gospel of the "official Anglican Communion."
Except I do not think that is the whole story. Douglas and co can spin these things like a top, but a whole lot of Anglicans are not for turning. Keep spinning this way, Standing Committee & co, and the "official Anglican Communion" will spiral off into irrelevance to the majority of Anglicans.
Neither truth nor reality can be suppressed ... or spun to be what they are not.
Incidentally, can anyone find in reports of the meeting anything remotely forwarding the adoption of the Covenant?
It should not be surprising if the answer is negative. Some of the leading opponents of the Covenant are on this committee!
Then a final question to end with: if the continuing, active, voting presence of members of TEC is suspended from certain important Communion bodies at this time, why not from all the important bodies?
I know the answer is that the ABC had power to do so for those bodies but not for this one. But the point is that our Communion's rules (such as they are) are stupendously inadequate: suspension should be from all bodies of important, not some.
The Communion has no single set of rules governing all aspects of its governance and management.
33 comments:
Peter, you say: "Incidentally, can anyone find in reports of the meeting anything remotely forwarding the adoption of the Covenant?
It should not be surprising if the answer is negative. Some of the leading opponents of the Covenant are on this committee!"
The most concise diagnosis yet!
My own question: Why invite the fox/vixen into the hen coop/chicken run ...?! And I thought Jemima Puddle Duck was thick!
Whoa back Peter ... It is unseemly that you are straining at the leash, eager for the day when summary judgements can be enacted to exclude TEC from the Commune. That day has not yet arrived, and I hope it never does. As things stand, and have stood through all the Communion's history, there are no such powers of exclusion.
The ABC has used his own power to exclude TEC from two bodies whose membership he apparently controls. Whether he has acted justly or wisely is a matter of dispute, and creates no defacto exclusion of TEC from any other body, especially the Communion, whose membership is one of free association between those who freely chose to associate.
The Covenant is not yet adopted, section 4 has not yet been put into effect, and you have no basis for asserting that they should be punished already!
If some Communion members are currently choosing to dissociate themselves to some extent, that is their loss and ours. Inasmuch as that dissociation is coercive in intent, the greater loss is theirs.
When children refuse to come to the dinner table as an expression of their displeasure at other family members, we miss them, but they are the ones who get hungry, and perhaps learn from their experience.
Father of Six and Grandfather of Seven
Hi Peter,
Feisty today, brother!
How large those crocodile tears of Bishop Douglas must be! (Or maybe alligator tears given he's American?) Fewer people to oppose our agenda - alas! Why did those nice people we never paid attention to have to resign? We had hoped for many more years of not paying attention to them!
Honestly! Just come out and say "We're happy they're gone and the less representative the SC is, the better." We know that's your real position.
On the point of why the ABC can't control the ACC, the answer is money. There isn't enough money to fund the ACC from the AC coffers. Therefore, it has to fund raise on its own. Therefore, it has to establish some kind of charitable status in a particular country. Therefore, it needs a constitution which lays out the regulations for its membership. So, the constiution can't be changed even if the ABC decides some of the members are being naughty.
The Primates Meeting has no such legal status and therefore the ABC can invite who he likes. The Lambeth Conference has a separate company arranged for conference organisation and funding, but the ABC controls the guest list. The Primates are trying to increase their ACC membership from 5 to 8 to get it back in line, but we'll see if they succeed in Auckland next year.
I think we're moving to an era where the unofficial structures and networks among the AC will become more important than the official ones. This will be more confusing, but also liberatting in some ways. It will enable the diversity of AC groups to worry less about obtaining power in AC structures, and create alternative structures to further their distinctive approaches.
Andrew Reid
Peter, I for one appreciate your candour for what it is in this post. The extent and blatancy of the spin in the ENS report is sickening. Far from Howard's benign (and patronising!) allusion to children refusing to come to the dinner table, what we are witnessing here is Machiavellian politicking of the first order. The manipulation of Communion Instruments in the interest of holding as much power and control as possible is outrageous. Ian Douglas has it half right when he admitted 'we didn't want to participate in the diminishing of our voices any further' - except it was more than a 'voice' involved here.
If it is 'vitally important if trust and understanding across the communion is to be engendered' (as Douglas is quoted), then I can't think of a more cynical exercise to undermine what trust and understanding remains.
So TEC etc are the wise adults who raised and support the family and Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania are ungrateful squabbling children?
Kipling, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
Al M.
Thanks everyone for candid responses!
Howard, I am afraid you are misunderstanding me (or I am mis-speaking ...). My point about one standard of suspension applying across the board re TEC is that it is odd that their voice/vote should be 'diminished' in some committees, but not in all. Consistency of diminishment across all such groups would not be 'punishment' but in the interests of better, more inclusive, more thoroughly representative governance of the Communion.
It is not so much that I want to see TEC 'punished' or 'excluded' from the Communion as that it is very odd indeed to have the future of a divided organisation being significantly influenced by the causers of the division.
Bryden's fox/vixen and hen coop/chicken imagery is, shall we say, robust. Here is another: TEC presence, influence, and loquaciousness about the Communion based on their influence on the SC is akin to yellow-carded rugby players being given the role of the television referee during the time of their suspension. It's not on. It would not happen in any other organisation I can think of.
Peter, I am still amazed that you can think that TEC's position within the Communion is ... "akin to yellow-carded rugby players being given the role of the television referee during the time of their suspension. It's not on. It would not happen in any other organisation I can think of."
On this analogy, who is the referee, given that the Covenant is not yet in place? What authoritative body has declared TEC guilty and sent them to the sin bin? You seem to want them to declare their own guilt and slink off in disgrace.
Acting as video referees are they? That part of your analogy depends on seeing the SC as a juridical body, which is not yet the case.
As for other organisations, what about the justice system, presuming innocence until a proper trial has taken place?
All of this, from you and all the other commentators, only serves to prove my central point, which is only an echo of what Mark Harris and others have said much more forcefully in recent posts:- There seems to be a strong conservative assumption that the Covenant is already in place. Expressions of a frustrated desire to enforce an inter-provincial conformity to conservative policies will only serve to warn more liberal partners against ever entering into such a covenant.
Hi Howard,
There is this thing called "Scripture" and this other thing called "tradition". Melded together they form this combination which has guided the church through the ages. Albeit with some variations across main groupings of churches around the world, and through history, on a number of matters the understanding of Scripture and tradition finds extraordinary common currency across a diverse body of churches.
One such matter is the non-acceptability of same sex partnerships. Some Anglican churches have raised questions about this matter. One (and only one) member church of the Communion has answered these questions with the specific action of ordaining same sex partnered bishops. In all sorts of ways - conferences, communiques, speeches - a majority of the member churches have signalled their deep opposition to this move. Meantime, on the sidelines (so to speak), the largest church groups in the world, churches in communion with Rome, and the Eastern Orthodox churches have signalled their tacit support of this opposition.
Covenant or no covenant, the exercise of simple reason* on the part of TEC would, should tell them that this is the time for voluntary self-suspension from attempting to influence the course of Communion events from the unfair advantage point of being the protagonists of division.
I am not asking them to declare their guilt, to slink away, or to cease membership of the Communion. (Those thoughts are yours ...). I am asking them to take responsibility for their contribution to the mess the Communion is in, and to stop acting as though they are "innocent until proven guilty ... What? There is no one authorised to declare us guilty ... Oh, goody, we are free."
(cont'd.)
(cont'd.)
Back to Scripture and tradition: as has been said elsewhere on the internet: TEC are the innovators. It is up to them, not others, to carry the burden of proof that they are innocent rather than guilty of transgressing God's law.
In the meantime, I am intrigued, Howard, that in your fervant support for TEC, you offer no signs of how the Communion might flourish again.
I remain of the view, whatever metaphors are used to characterise the situation, that TEC's stubborn refusal to admit responsibility for their actions is diminishing the Communion before our eyes, even as we talk. I for one am deeply dissatisfied to belong to an Anglican Communion which appears to have now lost Nigeria, Uganda, and many good Anglicans in North America.
*"reason": one of the three legs of the three-legged stool, the exercise of which is useful, Anglicans have found ...
All of this reminds me of a comment a clergy colleague made last summer while General Convention was in session. She said, "It's amazing the progressive things the Church can do now that the conservatives are out of the way." Breathtaking as such a comment is, at least it's more honest than pretending to be "diminished" by the absence of those whose presence would put up obstacles to achieving total victory for the Liberal Party platform.
Thank you Bryan for that pertinent bit of underlining ...!
"There is this thing called "Scripture" and this other thing called "tradition". Melded together they form this combination which has guided the church through the ages." Why did you not include "reason", (meaning the lessons God expects us to learn from experience) at this point of your argument, Peter?
Bringing reason in later, and diminishing it to some sort of political astuteness, shows that your position, and that of those for whom you speak, is far from Anglican centre ground. You write as though the Puritan hermeneutic, rejected by the CofE in the 17th century, is the established norm of Anglicans worldwide ... except that the Puritans would not have allowed you to give tradition such prominence alongside scripture. As for the Pope and his followers, you could hardly say the Holy Spirit is currently bearing witness that they have got their policy on sexuality right.
The root cause of our conflict, IMHO, is that TEC and its friends have been unable to engage other Anglicans in a respectful theological conversation that gives due place to a reasoned assessment of our experience of faithful same-sex relationships in the modern world. Many of those who refuse to consider the possibility that same-sex relationships could ever be holy, including some of your commenters (and your good self?), have been nurtured in a theological tradition with a Puritan belief that scripture alone is the measure of holiness. Puritanism is an important part of our historical diversity, and is well represented in the provinces established by the CMS, but it does not define Anglican common ground. Can we overcome this fundamental theological difference among us, even with patience?
TEC has good reasons for its impatience, and good Anglican grounds for pressing ahead with its mission, on its own patch. If this means parting company with those who demand a theological rationale that is constructed on Puritan grounds, then so be it, and I stand right alongside them ... but am still more than willing to engage with the neo-Puritans on your blog :)
Hi Howard,
If the Anglican Communion has any pretensions to being an expression of God's one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, it will quietly forego some of its cherished Anglicana, and one of those would be the fondness for the three-legged stool. It is not only the Puritans who set great store by Scripture (and I did not think the Puritans set a lot of store by 'Scripture and tradition').
Be that as it may, I would like to pick up on two things you say:
(1) I recall few if any signs of TEC making a concerted effort to engage the Communion theologically on questions of homosexuality. (Recall, only this year did its own House of Bishops consider an internal TEC effort to engage theologically with homosexuality).
(2) When you say "TEC has good reasons for its impatience, and good Anglican grounds for pressing ahead with its mission, on its own patch. If this means parting company with those who demand a theological rationale that is constructed on Puritan grounds, then so be it" my question is "Why, then, is it sticking around in the Communion? Why has it not parted company and gone?" Instead it seems to be stubbornly sticking around, watching and waiting (patiently!) while the "Puritans" fall away, and it finds, hey, presto, that the Communion has been nicely made in its own image! (Cf. Bryan Owen's comment above).
Except I do not think it is going to quite work out as smoothly as that ...
I think it's important to add that it's not a merely "Puritan" hermeneutic that Peter is appealing to, but the hermeneutic of the majority of the Christian tradition for the past 2,000 years and Jewish tradition for the previous several thousand years as well. Even advocates for changing Church teaching and practice on this matter like Luke Timothy Johnson acknowledge this.
What provinces like TEC are asking the rest of the Anglican and the larger Christian world to believe is that, although we constitute less than a fraction of a percent of all Christians who have ever lived, we have a new revelation that has been given to no one else and which is not recognizable as within the normative bounds of the faith to most other Christians living today.
If so many our predecessors and contemporaries have gotten it so wrong on such a basic point of sexual ethics, in what other areas of moral theology have they blown it? And for that matter, what points of core doctrine might they have gotten wrong, too? Can we really trust the sources of authority we have received? Crack the door to the hermeneutic of suspicion on tradition and the consensual reading of scripture on such matters a little bit, and before long there may be few reasons to not open the door all the way and walk out of the house. I've heard some call that "liberation."
Not only that, but given our Presiding Bishop's narrative justification for what we're doing, in which she places the "full inclusion" agenda on the same moral trajectory as the abolition of slavery, woman's suffrage, the Civil Rights movement and desegregation, failure to embrace the agenda of the Liberal Party is morally analogous to opposing the abolition of slavery, the right of women and African Americans to vote, and the abolition of racial segregation. Which is evil. And the Church cannot and should not tolerate evil.
"...it will quietly forego some of its cherished Anglicana, and one of those would be the fondness for the three-legged stool." WHAT?!!*?!
Now I know for sure that you are one of the vandals arriving to pull down my nice safe house. Expect me to put up a fight. Like this, for instance: -
What sort of a holy, apostolic and catholic church can we imagine ourselves to be if we block our ears to the message God is sending us through our reasonable reflections on experience? This is not a matter of a quaint historical personal predilection for three-legged stools. It is all about God's Truth, about recognising the voice of the Spirit here and now, and submission to his voice. I am not going to let conservatives assume the high ground as those who listen to scripture alone. Here is a counter-charge: you may be hiding behind scripture to avoid the voice of God.
Too much is at stake for us to be altogether nice to one another, even as Anglicans. As you wrote, "Except I do not think it is going to quite work out as smoothly as that ..." TEC is not going to go away, and behind the rather banal pleasantries which you rightly reject, the gloves are coming off on both sides. Or is it tag wrestling we are doing here?
Hi Howard,
I think you still do not get it about TEC!
It is not tag wrestling or boxing that is about to occur; it is more than half the teams leaving the league to play in another union.
Is that what you want? You have not said yet what your own proposal is to prevent further break up of the Communion.
Howard, you say: “The root cause of our conflict, IMHO, is that TEC and its friends have been unable to engage other Anglicans in a respectful theological conversation that gives due place to a reasoned assessment of our experience of faithful same-sex relationships in the modern world.”
Just to be clear: I have over 70 MB of data on my file accumulated ever since mid 2003, let alone other material. I select three public documents only to make a single point.
First there was TEC’s To Set Our Hope on Christ. Then there was Canada’s The St Michael Report (chaired by Christchurch’s +VM). Most recently we have had TEC’s HOB report, “Same-Sex Relationships in the Life of the Church”. I trust you have read and discerned all three for starters. For the first is just plain woeful. The second is more useful - although it inveigles, finally, by allegedly sticking to matters of “core doctrine” to conclude that same-sex issues are not so included. What!!!??? Questions of Christian anthropology and Imago Dei are NOT necessarily part of the Second Article of the Creed?! [Fortunately for all, myself included, this is after all Peter’s blog ... I say no more ...] And then the last is staggering - staggering, firstly in its pretence of equanimity (by giving two sets of voices), and then secondly by the sheer imbalance of comparative methodologies (and here I am trying to be very polite!). BTW: I allege the “pretence” on the grounds GCs etc. have simply given up “listening”, by merely “moving progressively ahead.”
Conclusion: on the data cited (which BTW is some 5% of what I have read these last 25 years directly on the topic from all sides), I have to say, “my ‘reasoned assessment’ is that while some 1-2% of humans may indeed be predisposed to s-s orientation, NOTHING so far has persuaded me the Tradition is anything like wrong to condemn outright s-s behaviour. Indeed, ‘human marriage’ is the singular icon of Christ’s relationship with His Church. STET!” And so, what of the moral authority of Lambeth 1998, 1.10 - in all respects, yes - to date?
Bryden, I agree with your last post, although global figures for same-sex erotic attraction are very difficult to specify: based on the largest survey I know of (in the US in 1991), excluding bisexuality, s-sa could be c. 3% for males and just over 2% for females, although there are individual cultural and sub-cultural drivers, e.g. classical Athens had a siginificant ephebophiliac sub-culture through its male education and slave systems.
Tec has seemingly talked about nothing else for the past 20 years, and none of the costly and time consuming Communion efforts (Lambeth 98, Windsor, Dar es Salaam, Dromantine etc etc) has diverted it from its chosen goal. It is time to let it go, and to take its money and re-education efforts. I don't like quoting Gamaliel as if he were a prophet (he's more like a racetrack tipster), but if this new sexual ethic is of God (I doubt it!), then it will flourish.
Time for Tec to leave.
Al M.
Thanks Al M. My figures are based on two of the later stats I have on file, from Canada and Denmark BTW. And then secondly, the wording of my post was very careful: orientation-plus-culture is indeed a very difficult thing to 'measure'.
How do we know we have heard the authentic voice of God's Spirit? And what does it say when our interpretation of "experience" contradicts the consensual reading of scripture within the broad context of the Christian tradition for the last 2,000 years, and is not received as recognizably Christian by the majority of other Christians in our own day?
A few relevant quotes:
"If the community is the ultimate authority and the Bible just one member of the community, what prevents the community from plummeting into heresy?"
"Without tradition as an outside marker, we have no way to know how far we have moved from biblical fidelity."
~ Jim Belcher, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Traditional and Emerging (2009)
" ... our human experience, including our erotic experience, cannot be a replacement for the divine revelation preserved by the church. We must be careful not to let it become a counter-narrative or a counter-Scripture."
~ Eve Tushnet
"When people say, for instance, 'We believe in the inclusion of all the baptized in every level of the Church's ministry,' I want to say, 'Well, yes, but baptism doesn't mean that everything in your character, personality, etc., God now accepts and wants to affirm as is.' ... you know that the doctrine of the sinfulness of humans is that every aspect of our personality is distorted and warped in some way or other. And the key thing is how do you tell the bits about you that are in fact part of your God-given humanness and must be accepted and celebrated, and how do you tell the bits about you that are actually things which, even though they feel as though they're deeply a part of who you are, have to be repented of and forsworn?"
~ N. T. Wright
Thanks for recent comments, including those helpful, pertinent citations, Bryan!
Well, Bryan, if you really feel that way about The Episcopal Church, don’t you think that it’s time to do the honorable thing and resign from TEC’s priesthood and join the ACNA, REC, or whatever?
Kurt Hill
Brooklyn, NY
Kurt, I've sometimes asked myself the question: would expressing doubts or raising criticisms of the Episcopal Church's current trajectory be sufficient for others to suggest that a theologically centrist Episcopalian like me should leave the Episcopal Church? Perhaps your suggestion about the honorable thing for me to do is an answer to my question, at least for some on the "progressive" side of things. If that's the case, it's a highly ironic response in light of how much we talk in the Episcopal Church about "inclusiveness" and "diversity."
How apposite is the title "spinning like a top" when one reads some of the later comments on this thread!
Of course, Howard, you are right to speak of both three legged stools and Wesleyan Quadrilaterals. And I sincerely say this. I have a 90 A4 page manuscript ready that seeks a way through just these quagmires of Scriptural interpretation and Christian formation for the 21st C Church. But I sense it might not appeal to many I have encountered in the likes of TEC. Why so?
In brief: because Hooker's "reason" is far more akin to Aquinas's than that of the Enlightenment's. And then because "experience" is ALWAYS preloaded and precoded via culture - just so Wittgenstein and others. In which case how might you (or any of us) address Rom 12:1-2, or rather BE ADDRESSED BY ROM 12:1-2? That's the question.
Bryden, in regard to spinning tops, I have just been looking about for a quotation from one of the 17th century latitude-men, maybe Tillotson, who likened a broad church to a top resting on its big end, as opposed to his opponents whose church stood on its point and required constant whipping to stay upright.
I would like to read your document, if you can email it to me:- hnp@inet.net.nz.
As for Romans 12:1-2, it is my constant aspiration.
Regards, Howard
"In brief: because Hooker's "reason" is far more akin to Aquinas's than that of the Enlightenment's. And then because "experience" is ALWAYS preloaded and precoded via culture - just so Wittgenstein and others."
Both *highly pertinent* points which indicate just where Tec and its fellow travelers have gone wrong and parted company with orthodox Christians in the past 40-50 years. (The Charismatic movement of the 1960s and 70s concealed the drift somewhat, but that movement is now dead within Tec.) I would be glad to see Bryden amplify these points, perhaps in some guest blogs on this site, How 'bout it, Peter?
Many of us have been saying for a *long* time that the dispute has not been in the first instance about sexuality but more fundamental questions of theological method and revelation. I am sure Bryden is right that Tec is committed to an Enlightenment model of reason (Sapere aude!) rather than the traditional Thomist conception of reason as a divine gift to be used in conjuction - not competition - with divine revelation; and that experience has become its own interpreter, in the most naive of 19th century American expressions (think Walt Whitman), with maybe a bit of William James and reconstructed Freud and his misunderstood epigones thrown in. Ally this to Bultmannian biblical skepticism and you get
Bryden, Peter: let us hear more of this.
Al M.
Hi Al,
Bryden is welcome to guest post anytime.
“...it's a highly ironic response in light of how much we talk in the Episcopal Church about ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘diversity.’--Bryan Owen
Perhaps we in the Episcopal Church don’t talk enough about “basic agreement” and “loyalty”?
Kurt Hill
Brooklyn, NY
Kurt, I think you're absolutely right that we don't talk enough about those sorts of things!
Which is a reason why I have been critical over the last 3+ years of clergy who violate the ordination vow to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church out of convenience, or because their personal opinions are at variance with the Church's teaching, or because they've wrapped their actions in the mantle of Spirit-guided prophecy. Whether they fall to the Left, Center, or Right on the theological spectrum, their actions violate basic agreement within the Church and loyalty to the Church.
I've observed so much of this that I've come to think that Philip Turner is mostly correct that the "working theology" of the Episcopal Church is at variance with the official theology of the Prayer Book and the creeds. I call it anomic Anglicanism.
No doubt it was a shock for someone like Philip Turner, accustomed to the con-evo fundamentalism of Uganda, to be thrust back into a Western setting. However, to my way of thinking, TEC (with all of its warts) is far more “Anglican” in its ethos than that of provinces like Uganda. Obviously we disagree. But if you feel that Uganda has it right, I would suggest that you should resign from TEC and join them. After all, you will still receive your TEC pension for time served.
Kurt Hill
Brooklyn, NY
I'm not terribly interested in Uganda, but I am interested in adhering to the theology of the Prayer Book and the creeds. It's rather sad if that interest is now a minority view within the Episcopal Church, much less grounds for inviting someone (twice in two days!) to think about leaving.
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