The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Letter of 2007:The Significance for Anglican Communion Life

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:36:02 +0000

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The long awaited Advent Letter promised by the Archbishop of Canterbury is now in the public arena. It is a remarkable piece of work-one that deserves careful reading and reflection on the part of all. Its rich theological content and wise procedural protocols will place it, along with the Windsor Report and the Communiqué from Dar es Salaam, in the center of all future discussions of the nature and calling of the Anglican Communion. It should be remembered that statements of this nature are not trial balloons or proxies for our voting, up or down, but rather have the character of Anglican instrumental discourse, to be ranged with other such documents as defining the nature of Anglicanism at a critical time. So they must be assessed with the same level of seriousness with which they are constructed and promulgated.

Among other things The Advent Pastoral seeks to define the Anglican Communion and the role both of the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury within that Communion. We will say more about the understanding of the nature of communion to be found in the letter, but from the outset the reader should note the role accorded to the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop's understanding of these matters shapes his entire letter. As well, his views stand in marked contrast to the prevailing opinion of many within The Episcopal Church (TEC). The Lambeth Conference is neither "a canonical tribunal nor a general consultation." Rather, it is "a meeting of the chief pastors and teachers of the communion seeking an authoritative common voice." As stated in the Windsor Report, it is, therefore, the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury "to articulate the mind of the communion in moments of tension and controversy."

In obedience to the role assigned him, the Archbishop makes a trenchant diagnosis of the present crisis within the Communion, warns against unhelpful ways of addressing that crisis, and tracks a way forward that is faithful to the principles upon which life in communion is built. In keeping with the function of the Lambeth Conference the Archbishop urges its bishops to take a constructive part in the upcoming gathering at which it will be necessary to determine "what it means for the Anglican Communion to behave with a consistency that allows us to face...the deeply painful question of who we can and who cannot recognize as sharing the same calling and task."

It will prove tempting to rush to the end of the letter to see the concrete proposals made in respect both to the place of The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the Communion and the various responses of other Provinces to the crisis precipitated by ordination of Gene Robinson. However, to do so will result in hasty judgments, mis-readings of what the Archbishop is saying, and possibly unwise and precipitous forms of action.

The specific judgments contained in the letter, along with the course of future action the Archbishop proposes, follow in the first instance from his articulation of what it means for Anglicans to be in communion. The letter makes clear the long held conviction that the communion of Anglicans rests neither upon a centralized jurisdiction nor upon canon law. Rather it rests upon the ability of the family of churches that make up the communion to recognize that its various provinces have received the same faith from the Apostles and hold faithfully to it. Communion is defined by mutual recognition and is sustained by mutual subjection in the body of Christ.

    Mutual recognition of this sort is expressed and maintained by common acknowledgment that all stand under the authority of scripture. Further, mutual recognition requires that the interpretation of scripture be undertaken as a common enterprise sustained, as the overall thrust of the letter suggests, by the practice of mutual subjection. No Province can interpret scripture on its own. A common reading of scripture is fundamental to communion because it allows each province to recognize that it belongs to a fellowship in which each both proclaims the same good news and shares a common ministry of word and sacrament.

    The key to communion is mutual recognition on the part of those who enjoy fellowship in Christ, and it is just such recognition that has been called into question by the recent actions of TEC. In the light of these actions and the incomplete response to the Dar es Salaam Communiqué by TEC's House of Bishops many within the Communion no longer recognize a church that stands under the authority of scripture, proclaims the same gospel, and shares a common ministry of word and sacrament. This lack of recognition defines a problem that lies far deeper than the novelties introduced by the recent actions of TEC in the matter of sexual ethics.

With a diagnosis such as this the Archbishop puts on display a crisis of unprecedented proportions within the communion Anglican share. The question is how to respond in a way that coheres with the principles of communion one seeks to preserve. In seeking an answer, the Archbishop has pointed out what he believes are either inadequate or false steps.

III

In the light of the principles of communion he sets out, the Archbishop presents the response of TEC House of Bishops to the Dar es Salaam Communiqué as at best incomplete and at worst subversive of the Communion's understanding of the gift of Episcopacy. It is not only the case that the House of Bishops has failed to give a pledge that no further blessings will take place. The more significant issue is that the bishops, in suggesting that they must defer in these matters to the actions of TEC's General Convention, have failed to understand that their special ministry within the church requires them (rather than a convention or synod) to guard its faith and order. So it is that by their action (or lack thereof) the TEC's bishops have placed in doubt the recognizability of the ministry they claim to share with the rest of the communion.

The Archbishop does note, however, that the TEC bishops have made it clear that they value their place within the Communion and that they wish to remain part of it. Nonetheless, the Advent Letter notes that nothing further can be expected by way of further elucidation on the part of TEC. The clear implication is then that discussion of TEC's relation to the Communion has entered another stage-one in which a determination must be made, on the basis of the Bishop's response and the principle of recognizability, concerning TEC's status within the Communion.

TEC's response to the charge of the Primates is inadequate. The reaction to this inadequacy by various provinces, dioceses, and parishes both within and without the U. S. is, however, further complicating and wrong. This is because their actions run in a direction quite contrary to the principles upon which communion rests. Ad hoc border crossings on the part of external Provinces and Dioceses and similarly ad hoc disaffiliations on the part of parishes and dioceses within the U.S. have been undertaken without reference to a principle on the basis of which one might judge an entire ministry defective. They are consequently contrary to a basic principle of communion that gives advanced credit to all to whom one is bound in Christ, namely, trust that the gospel is being faithfully communicated and faithfully lived out. One can say this without for a moment declaring any moral equivalence between those who seek some remedy in the light of TEC's actions, and those who have failed to respond adequately to what was asked of them. We see no evidence that the Archbishop has confused this issue, and indeed he notes the difficulty created by the decisions of a majority of TEC for a minority which remains keen to declare Windsor compliance, or which has decided under the circumstances to work for a ‘solution' at odds with the spirit of conciliar decisions.

Actions of the sort in question should be undertaken, the Archbishop insists, only if it is determined that the ministry of an entire Province is defective. No such determination has been made or, at the moment, can be made. The ministry of the many within TEC who do not agree with the direction it has taken (Windsor Bishops and those who favor more radical solutions) simply cannot be judged defective. He leaves open, however, the question of status of the ministry of those who, after being admonished, continue in a direction opposed to the accepted teaching of the Communion.

Finally he notes very practical considerations that argue against these ad hoc responses. Among other things they have created confusion, rivalry, and forms of pastoral care from a distance that can hardly be effective. They have also, in contradistinction to the clear admonishment of the Primates, led to lawsuits. It is abundantly clear that recourse to law is now associated in the public eye with the affairs of TEC more than proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We judge the Archbishop's sober appraisal of TEC, at this critical juncture, to be a warrant for continued work for differentiation that does not entail legal entanglements but works to forge communion alliances within the ample space available for that.

These things being said, the Archbishop recognizes that the Communion faces a genuine issue of the logic and credibility of recognition. His invitation to Lambeth is an invitation to make a determination about this issue. The present mind of the Communion is not to bless relations between persons of the same gender. TEC's House of Bishops has not given the requisite assurances in this matter. Lambeth will not, therefore, be simply for consultation and mutual support. Its purpose will be to determine how to address this issue and then move forward as a communion.

How then does he propose that the Communion prepare for Lambeth? He sets out some very clear guidelines and announces certain very definite plans. His chief guideline is that attendance must imply a willingness to work with those aspects of the Lambeth Conference that relate to the implementing of the Windsor Report, including the proposed covenant. He insists as well that attendance must signal a willingness to ask how the Communion can avoid this sort of crisis in the future.

It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that these conditions place great limits upon the extensive autonomy the present leadership of TEC is claiming. The Archbishop insists that participation in the conference requires engagement with the issue of recognition. Since recognition requires standing together under a common reading of Holy Scripture, those who hold the polycentric, federalist conception of communion common among "progressives" are, at best, being asked if they must not in the name of their own integrity "walk apart" by choosing not to participate. In like manner, conservatives who use the term "biblically orthodox" to describe themselves have been told that invitation to the Lambeth Conference is not "a certificate of orthodoxy." Rather, it is an invitation to struggle together in the Lord so as to reach a common mind about what constitutes recognizability within the Anglican Communion. By implication, those who, because of prior judgments, are unwilling to undertake such a struggle must question the propriety of their own participation. We further understand that the Archbishop will be making direct contact with those Bishops in TEC who have made it clear that they are opposed to the direction a generous account of the New Orleans meeting was even prepared to give. That is because hard work lies ahead that would be frustrated by an inability to proceed with a minimal level of trust and mutual recognition.

The hope and prayer of the Archbishop is that those on both the left and the right will not decline the opportunity to engage in a conflict that is part of a process of maturation-part of a process in which the Anglican Communion will realize the gift to the Church Catholic the Archbishop believes it to be. He is, we believe, absolutely right in emphasizing the seriousness of our call in Christ to attend to the hard work he has given us to do as His Body, dying and rising in hope in Him.

The guidelines all call the bishops of the Communion to engagement one with another on the basis of the views expressed in previous meetings of the Lambeth Conference and the suggestions of the Windsor Report that have been accepted by the Instruments of Communion. The same is true of the various courses of action he proposes. Thus, he makes it clear that neither Gene Robinson nor the bishops consecrated in foreign jurisdictions will be invited to Lambeth. To do so would be to affirm actions taken in direct contradiction of the specific requests of the Instruments of Unity. To do so would betray the principle of mutual subjection in the body of Christ.

The other courses of action he announces in like manner are to be guided by the same considerations.

1.    The Archbishop will be in direct contact with those who have indicated they are unwilling to participate in the upcoming conference with a view of implementing the recommendations of the Windsor Report and taking those steps necessary to prevent crises similar to the one we now face in the future.
2.    He will call a professionally facilitated meeting between the leaders of TEC and "those with whom they are most in dispute, both internally and externally."
3.    He will convene a small group of primates and others to work in close cooperation with the Primates, the Joint Standing Committee, the Covenant Design Group, and the Lambeth Conference Design Group in order, among other things, to work on the unanswered questions surrounding TEC's bishops' response from New Orleans and "to consider whether or not it is possible for provinces or individual bishops at odds with the expressed mind of the communion to participate fully in representative communion agencies, including ecumenical bodies."

These courses of action are designed to facilitate a process of recognition. They are designed in a way that forces honest speaking in the Lord. They presuppose that the right way for the church to resolve conflict is through a process that stretches over time and demands both truthfulness and humility. The constraints that he places on this process do not allow for endless prolongation of the present discussion but drive toward its conclusion within a limited period of time.

It seems to us that the courses of action proposed and the guidelines provided all serve the principle of mutual subjection. The remaining question is what to do as the process plays itself out. In this respect, the Archbishop notes that the parties most affected by the current conflict rejected the proposal made by the Primates to find an interim solution. We are firmly convinced that some interim solution must be found quickly if further fragmentation of the Communion is to be prevented during the process of finding answers to the difficult questions the Communion faces.

The Archbishop himself acknowledges the need to find a way for those within TEC who support the direction marked out by the Windsor Report to differentiate themselves from the present leadership of their church. At present both they and the Communion are faced with a bad choice, namely, between the forces represented by the National Headquarters of TEC and those represented by Common Cause Partners. The clear implication of the Advent Letter and the Dar es Salaam Communiqué is that a solution to the issue of differentiation internal to TEC is the proper way forward. It is urgent that an American solution to an American problem be found. It is our hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Presiding Bishops of TEC and the leaders of the Windsor Bishops will devote their energies to this issue and find a mutually acceptable solution with all deliberate speed. We fear that if no such action is taken both TEC and the Communion as a whole will be faced with a battle between opposing forces that may well simply tear fabric of our communion apart.

The Anglican Communion Institute is frequently criticized for providing no ‘practical solution' for those struggling at this time. We take this opportunity-in the context of an Advent Pastoral that seriously confronts the problems with TEC as a recognizable family member in Communion-to underscore that work continues unabated on our part to see to the emergence of a meaningful, Communion aligned, Windsor alliance of Anglican Bishops in Communion. We believe the Advent Pastoral underscores the necessity of such work and the hopefulness that should attend it. We pledge our continued work to this end, in cooperation with others, and contend that a recognizable Communion presence is indeed available for encouragement in connection with the wider Anglican family, especially at this present moment when TEC as a whole is undergoing such a tremendous challenge of identity and Communion forbearance.

The Rev. Dr. Christopher Seitz, President of ACI
The Very Rev. Dr. Philip Turner, Vice President of ACI
The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, Senior Fellow of ACI

A Sermon: Incarnation, Church, and Communion

The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:00:18 +0000

Rev. Dr. Sumner is the principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto This being Christmas Eve Eve, my question for you is this: back in your childhood, when Christmas had a numinous glow, what was the most memorable present you ever received? Several come to mind for me. There was a doll of my hero, Popeye, which I received on my 5th Christmas and dragged happily around the house all morning, only to discover to my horror later in the afternoon that my sister had performed surgery on him (we were surgeon's kids) and the surgery had gone very very wrong...not sure I have forgiven her yet. A couple of years later, in my militaristic phase, I found under the tree two beautiful uniforms, of Union and Confederate soldiers, handsewn by my grandmother, one of which I have to this day. But the one I want to focus on this morning was actually given to my older brother: a see-through antfarm. There they were, working industriously within, digging, dragging, building, quite oblivious to the staring eyes of us, far larger beings taking in their predicament and their efforts. The antfarm: what strikes us when we watch is how industrious they are, but when one gets older one stops to think why? For they are equally unaware of themselves, and willing to be trampled by their comrades if it furthers the cause. It is all for the Farm, and down with the Ant, the individual anyway, a far cry from each wondering what there is for me under that tree. The great selfless one, in which we are but worker ants: it is strange, attractive, and awful to us as we look in on the plastic window.

         Quite the opposite are our lives, aren't they? Doesn't it often seem that our work, our homelives, are precisely the balancing and working out of different and colliding needs and desires, of all the very individual creatures with which we deal, including ourselves? Isn't every sphere of our life in this way "political", in the sense of being a polis, a micro-city, in which there is a struggle to balance what each individual desires and what would benefit the whole? Ants we aren't, which is our splendor and our problem.
      It is in this regard that I want to offer to you this morning a vision by a Father of the Church from 4th Century Turkey named Gregory of Nyssa. In one of his essays he imagined that in heaven there stands before God one great being, Adam the new, humanity. Within that one being are we all parts of the whole, individuals still, though the walls between us taken down, so that the spiritual ligaments between us are better seen. It is in the same vein that I heard a clergy colleague say recently in a sermon that in church there is only one communicant, the Body of Christ, the Church, because the communion is with God the Father, and that belongs to God the Son, and through the sheer grace of God we have been included in that communion. There is only one communicant at the rail at St. Matthew's this morning, who is named Church, the new Eve bride of Christ and one flesh with Him, and we are all included in that one Body. That of course has wonderful and hard implications. It means that eternally and to my salvation I am bound together with some people I do not really like nor can I abide, but brother or sister they are to me still.
      This sermon is really about heaven, and my first point is that we are there, not just you and you and you and you and, God willing, I, And the next question is this: what are we doing there?   For the answer to that question, what are we doing when we get to where all of life is about getting to, will tell us a lot about what this life too is for. There we are, the book of Revelation tells us, gathered around the Lamb of God. I Corinthians tells us that it is really we, bodies and all, though in a way that we cannot now even imagine. Daniel tells us that we are "from every language, family, language, and people," though these differences no longer divide. Traditionally what we are doing is singing, which may seem unappealing to the unmusical of us, but this is really a way of saying that in joy and the beauty of holiness we are telling forth all that the God we behold has done. To do that is what we were originally intended to do; arrows are for shooting, shovels for digging, humans made in the beginning for this praising, in what Paul this morning calls "the obedience of faith," that he is now, finally, calling the peoples to. In common praise they are more and more themselves to eternity, as they are more one. The two are not opposites after all, nor desire and self-sacrifice, if you are doing what you are made for. In other words, what they are doing in the Christmas story, the peoples gathered around God's Son in wonder and praise, is a figure, even in its plainness, for heaven itself. That takes us beyond the antfarm, and brings us round to the today's lesson, from the first chapter of Romans.
    We are on the edge of Christmastide, the feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, and the next question to be asked, obvious when we think of it, however used we may be to the story is this: why does God come this way? If He is God, and the world so in need of righting, why not come in manifest power and terrible justice? Why not skip this first coming altogether? If the goal is the obedience of faith among the nations, who are always in a fury, why not come and enforce the order they need?   Why this painful and circuitous route through human history? And the answer comes back, "precisely because it is the obedience of faith," which is to say trusting relationship. The goal God has for us is loving and free praise of Him from us his creatures. To accomplish this he must use means that allow and nurture human freedom and free love, that give the creature space to act, to praise, which also allows space to rebel as well. But be sure that it is God the creator who allows us this space. And likewise it is all God in this passage of Paul's in Romans 1, ordaining, setting apart, determining how the drama shall unfold. This is the real test of God all-powerful greatness, that he can lead us where we were created to reach, and nurture our free love all the while. How he determined to do this begins here in the Christmas, incarnationtide story.
    If we were to look in detail at today's lesson, from Romans 1, with these questions, and God's grand strategy in mind, the first thing you would notice is that the birth of Jesus is fixed at the very center of a much longer story. It is all about God making a path through the way of human flesh, a way through the valley of the shadow of death. You see Romans 1 starts by telling us that God has set Paul apart as an apostle, a sent one, a messenger. But this is not new thing, for he is but the last of a long line of prophets, and what he has come to say was foreseen by them long ago. That is one big reason you and I have a Bible that is one book with an old and new testament, for God's journey down through the way of flesh is one journey, and the path was announced by prophets in both eras. God journeys into the far country of his own creation, and the country of the rebellion of his own children. He moves in humility into the land of flesh and blood, sin and death, so that it can be the land of the "obedience of faith." It is the land of Israel, the flesh and blood people who are to mark God's ownership of them in their flesh, who are to obey with their bodies as well as their souls. The Torah is full of what they eat, and with whom they have sex, and how they dispose of their wealth, and how they take in the stranger- these all matter to the Lord God in the journey through the flesh on the way to the obedience of faith. On the far side of the birth of Jesus, Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That is the moment when he is shown to have been the Son of God by power. That is where the transformation of human flesh begins in earnest. That is the culmination of the life which begins in the nativity stable, the life that is the great descent of God through the land of flesh and blood, in humility and powerlessness. It is the only way that we can be led to the place prepared and set apart for us, where we are to praise him freely in the obedience of faith. My point is that incarnation is centerpiece of a longer story of God with us, in the flesh. For the story goes on, for God the Son resides in the Church through the Holy Spirit. With the resurrection God has not abandoned our lowly way. He is still in the Church, guiding it, speaking to it, indwelling it in His Spirit, feeding it with his body and blood. He is in it forebearing its divisions in order that the peoples might learn to be one in his praise. The incarnation of which you will hear again this Christmastide is the heart of a longer strategy, the fitting way for God to bring us to the end for which he made it. It is the fitting way, and a painful way, a patient way.
         It is easy to look at the Church and be disappointed, or discouraged, or despairing, or cynical, or angry, and not least we who are clergy. Why do divided, so impotent, so ineffectual, so faithless? It is all these things, and to our blame. But why does God allow it? Why, the question goes unspoken, doesn't God do a better job of creating an instrument on earth for himself? But here, with the help of today' lesson, we look again at the Church, in all its frailty and failure, and wonder in silent gratitude. God, even here, places his priceless treasure, the key that unlocks the door of eternal life. He does it in this way not because he couldn't do otherwise, but because he is willing to duck his head to come into our house. He does it because of the infinite patience he shows in walking the long road through the valley of flesh and blood.    He does it because this frail and endangered thing is perfectly fitted to the delicate work of making us, free and loving in the obedience of faith. Frail yes, but unbreakable too, for in it is the tungsten of his word, the steel against which one Anglican theologian said that many a century has broken its teeth. Against this frail creature, because it is God's creature hell cannot prevail. Frail, yes, but the perfect preparation for heaven.

Where’s the Science? A Conversation with the Presiding Bishop

Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:35:17 +0000

In August of 2007, we posted on the ACI site an essay by Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan. (Why Theology Should Precede Change ) In this essay, Dr. Keenan provided an overview of a number of recent scientific studies questioning the claims made by many that there is a biological basis to homosexuality that renders it an immutable condition. These claims have also been made by some leaders in the Episcopal Church as part of their defense of the church's affirmation of homosexual unions. They were made quite formally by the official response of TEC to the Anglican Communion's request for an explanation of the American church's reasoning in pressing for such affirmation, a response contained in the report To Set Our Hope On Christ. Dr. Keenan's essay, therefore, stood as a direct challenge to at least one important aspect of TEC's argument offered to the rest of the Communion.

Over the past few months, Dr. Keenan has attempted to gain clarity regarding the Presiding Bishop's own understanding of the "science" behind her support for homosexual unions. The main part of this correspondence is printed below. We note that, some days after the exchange the exchange copied here (and some other brief emails), the Presiding Bishop's office requested that her letter to Dr. Keenan be kept "private". This after-the-fact request is one Dr. Keenan and the ACI have struggled to evaluate. The public nature of the correspondence was noted from the beginning, both in the general terms and copied recipients in the original letter, and later explicitly in an email. Only several days after sending her response did the PB's office - and not she herself - ask that her letter not be shared with others. We are now, furthermore, in a situation where the PB has gone before the public herself, criticizing others in the Communion for a lack of willingness to discuss these kinds of matters openly. Having weighed these factors, and given the importance of the subject and, frankly, its unproblematic content - in which nothing personal, pastoral, or inherently secretive is being communicated - we have decided to go forward with the originally communicated plan to share these concrete discussions about this difficult subject with the people who need and deserve to follow such conversations - the people of the church.

"The Episcopal Church lives in a society that values transparency, increasingly values transparency, in all kinds of operations, not just within the church. To have other parts of the Communion express distress at having to have conversations about sexuality, is certainly understandable in terms of different contexts, yet that is where this church has felt led to be and felt led to have conversation, to bring these issues out into the public sphere where we can do public theologizing about them." - Presiding Bishop Schori in a January 1, 2008 interview with the BBC.

To listen to the interview referenced above, click here.

                        Jacqueline Keenan, DVM
                        5246 Pommeroy Dr.
                        Fairfax, VA 22032

                        October 7, 2007

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori,
Episcopal Church Center
815 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10017

Dear Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori,

There is a matter of grave importance to the church that I would like to discuss with you. It appears that TEC's divisive direction is driven by the belief that for many people homosexuality is a biological given. Twice I have had important people in TEC's leadership claim that there is science supporting the biological or fixed basis for homosexuality, but neither would give me their studies when I asked for them. In this letter I will describe those incidents, hoping that you will present the science that supports their view. I also will outline some major issues that people have ignored when they cite studies. Hopefully, you will avoid sending studies with these issues, and that will save time.

To Set Our Hope on Christ based its understanding of homosexuality on the idea of orientation, which is an unbiblical concept from science.   After seeing my article, "Why Theology Should Precede Change," an author of To Set Our Hope on Christ insisted that there was "other science" that she was considering. I sent her an email asking to see this science. I know that she got the email, because I called her to verify that she had it. That happened last spring, and she never answered me. Nine days ago I received an email from a senior bishop in the church. I had been carrying on a long discussion with him about the problems with the understanding of homosexuality as a fixed and genetic stereotype. In the email he said, "I hope in the future that you will, with your scientific background, pay close attention to the many people who study these matters who are learning that homosexuality is, at least in many instances, a given and not a choice." Of course, I had looked for science that shows a biological basis for homosexuality, and there had always been major problems with the science. I also had consulted with some very good psychiatrists who have followed the science and worked with homosexuals, and they too could not find any science showing a biological basis for homosexuality in anyone. I asked the bishop for his science, but he simply said that the fixed nature of homosexuality was the opinion of some psychiatrists. Yet he did not give any basis for that opinion. Are we talking about testimonials or research? Since even research done by homosexuals shows that so many people change attractions, please explain the scientific basis of the church's opinion that homosexuality is fixed. In one study the homosexual researcher found no characteristics to distinguish the 58% of lesbians who had changed after eight years from the 42% who did not. So how do psychiatrists determine that homosexuality is fixed for some people?

It is important to differentiate between issues that are truly fixed and issues that are experienced as not being a choice. One of the psychiatrists that I have talked to affirmed that early trauma or family dysfunction can lead to issues that are experienced as not being a choice. Issues from early childhood problems are not fixed, but are difficult to change. Since so many changeable behaviors are experienced as fixed, I think that we must differentiate between those things that are truly fixed because of biology and those things that people experience as fixed. These are different issues. The latter are subject to change through psychological therapy and through the grace of God.

    The church's document To Set Our Hope on Christ claimed a biological basis for homosexuality. It is on that basis that many people in this church have been willing to bless homosexuality. If you are saying that the unverified opinions of some psychiatrists is the actual reason for the church's direction, please say so publicly to be fair to the many Episcopalians who were fooled by To Set Our Hope on Christ. But if you are arguing that homosexuality does have a biological basis, I request that you send me studies to that effect, and please be sure that they were not debunked in the literature years ago. To Set Our Hope on Christ is an example of proof texts from science. I spoke to the author of that part of the paper. He said that TEC has no good system for dealing with science. He indicated that although there is lots of science out there, he had no way of knowing which studies had been declared invalid. That is how Bailey and Pillard got into the paper as an example of genetics. So the church needs a better system for dealing with science, or it will continue to resurrect long dead issues. Hopefully, you will pay attention to the history of the studies that you claim support your position.

    Another thing to watch out for in picking studies is the problem of confounding variables. The twin studies were a good example. If you have not read my article, you need to. It shows that the small concordance left after seeking unbiased samples is explained when the environment is examined. When the environment was not examined, the high prevalence rate in the twins showed an environmental effect, unless you believe that Australians genetically mutate at warp speed. One of the difficulties is that so many researchers ignore the environment. That problem seems to have arisen from the APA's 1973 vote to remove homosexuality from the DSM. In case you missed what happened at that meeting, I will give you an account that has been published and independently verified by people who were present. The research presented in the committee responsible for recommendations on the DSM consisted of the now discredited Kinsey data and some work done by a Dr. Hooker on overcrowded mice. In the late ‘60s Dr. Hooker had chaired a task force. She was an experimental psychologist who worked with mice, and she left out of the task force the clinicians who spent their lives studying homosexuality in people. That psychiatrists were aware of the excluded clinical research is evidenced by Bayer's poll showing that four years after the 1973 APA vote, 69% of the members of the APA thought that homosexuality was "usually a pathologic adaptation." One psychiatrist who was at the 1973 meeting said that for about six years the activists had so disrupted their meetings that they could not get their work done, and there was also a low turnout that favored the vote. The APA buckled to pressure. Because of this vote, it is politically incorrect to look at homosexuality as anything but another biologically normal behavior. Given the outrageous history of the APA, it is not surprising that there are psychiatrists who now want to claim by fiat rather than science that homosexuality is fixed.

    As an example of how ignoring the environment affects research I will use the research showing that homosexuality is more common in younger brothers. Although this would only affect about 6% of the population, it could show a biological basis for some people. Researchers have hypothesized that there might be an immunological or hormonal change in the mother that caused the homosexuality. However, very good psychiatrists who work with Bowen systems theory have pointed out that this situation is also typical of family dysfunction. Birth order issues represent one of the eight basic concepts in Bowen systems theory. But the people doing this research have no interest in considering the environmental issues. Therefore, a lot of effort will be poured into looking for biological explanations all the while assuring everyone that the biological explanation exists, but just has not been found. So please do not cite studies that have multiple possible causes with biology as only one possibility. You are a scientist. You know what is required for real evidence. In this case the immunological or hormonal cause must be identified and verified.

    It seems that the people of the Episcopal Church have a right to know whether you are actually basing your direction on real evidence of the fixed nature of homosexuality in some people, or the wishful thinking on the part of some individuals in the psychiatric profession. It is clear that opinion is not science or proof. Further, the people of the church should be aware of whether you have decided that the witness of scripture is wrong based on the opinions of some psychiatrists or based on real evidence. Do most Episcopalians believe that unsubstantiated opinions are more valid than God's opinion? The people of this church thought that decisions were being made on the basis of the science presented in To Set Our Hope on Christ, but that is seriously flawed. Perhaps you should have owned up to that and told them the real reason that you want to bless homosexuality, whatever that may be.

Since you are planning to bless homosexuality eventually although you must wait for now, please send me studies that show that there is any scientific basis for claiming that homosexuality is fixed for anyone. As one scientist to another and one Episcopalian to another, I ask you to show me the studies in order to engage in a real dialogue rather than innuendo. It is bizarre that I am forced to drag this discussion into the public eye in a church that prides itself on dialogue, but my experience is that private attempts at dialogue are unfruitful. Do the people of this church want to continue the destruction of a whole communion, if there is no biological evidence or other scientific basis for the unbiblical direction you are taking? Is there any evidence at all that demonstrates your position?   We Episcopalians have a right to know the truth about this.

Yours in Christ,

                        Jacqueline Keenan

Cc: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rev. Ephraim Radner, David Mills, editor of
       Touchstone

The Episcopal Church

The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate

October 23, 2007

Dear Dr. Keenan,

Thank you for your letter, and the concerns you raise. Let me recommend that, as a veterinarian, you might wish to begin with Bruce Bagemihl's exhaustive study Biological Exuberance. I cannot respond in detail to studies which are not cited.

Science is not the only basis by which many people in this church are coming to the conclusion that homosexual orientation is a given (a matter of creation) and that it may be possible to bless it as a reflection of God's image in creation. Many, many faithful people (of both homosexual and heterosexual orientation) have the direct experience of seeing the fruits of the faithful, committed, monogamous, life-long and life-giving relationships of persons of the same sex. That mode is in fact the way in which many if not most Christians experience the reality of God at work in their lives - they see Christ-like lives in those around them.

You claim that those who come to such conclusions are taking an unbiblical stance. Many said the same of those who advocated for a more generous pastoral response to those whose marriages had ended in divorce. Even though Jesus had very direct words on the subject, the church as a whole changed its teaching and pastoral practice in regard to remarriage following divorce. The change had more to do with personal experience, and a broader understanding of the whole of the biblical tradition, than it did with one or two verses of the Bible. When we have, within the tradition, clear summaries of the teaching of that tradition as "love God and love your neighbor as yourself," many would find it possible to take a broader reading than what appears to be the plain sense of one or two verses.

May your ministry be a blessing. I remain

Your servant in Christ,

Katharine Jefferts Schori

(email reply)

Dear Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori,

I did receive your letter today. The citations and the body of my argument are in my online article "Why Theology Should Precede Change." It is on many websites. Google my name and the name of the article. I cited the work of homosexual researchers in refuting the claim that homosexuality is necessarily fixed, so it seems that it is possible to make that claim and still love homosexuals. I have a close friend who is gay and likes to discuss this issue with me. He knows that I love him, but regardless of how he came to be gay, he also knows that I have some valid concerns about this not being a one size fits all issue. Yet many people in TEC are treating it that way. Because of the difference in women and girls, there is a high rate of homosexuality in American young women and girls. This rate is much lower in societies that do not claim homosexuality as being fixed and just another acceptable option. In my article I cited the work of a gay researcher named Ritch Savin-Williams, who is the best known expert on prevalence rates in youth.

I love my neighbor and I love myself. But for many years I carried a weed in my own heart that did not seem to be a choice, yet it was the worst possible sin. Because of abuse as a child, I quietly did not forgive people who hurt me. While I still carried that weed, I did remarkable work at church in our children's programs, the music programs, and education. People saw me as having wonderful fruits of the Spirit and I was very loving with the children. But when the Spirit did finally enter my life, the first thing that it did was start to pull the weed. That was very painful, and until it finally came loose, I doubted that I could ever change. In no way do the visible fruits of the Spirit testify to holiness regarding our other behaviors.

I particularly have love and care for our young people, who are led to believe that same-sex attractions are normal and unchanging. What science can do is to help us test the claims that are made about the nature of homosexuality. The notion that homosexuality is created is not being supported by research, and any revelation of creation should be supported by scripture. Scripture says nothing about homosexuality as being created by God.

I do not see a direct comparison with divorce. Hopefully, you agree that divorce is a bad thing. I hope that you do not intend to bless divorce too. For those who have divorced, I hope that you would not encourage them to continue to get divorced. These two issues are like apples and oranges in that one is being extolled and the other is viewed as unfortunate, but the church is dealing with divorce by supporting healthy marriages.

I am surprised that you have not kept up with recent understandings of homosexuality. I know that you are busy, but you cannot tell children that homosexuality is not a good option, yet if you take that option, we will bless it. As much as your stance reflects the dogma on TV and in the newspapers, it does not reflect what is being learned. The bibliography of my article would be a good starting place for you to educate yourself. Since attractions change so often, it makes a difference whether people choose to act on those attractions. Reinforcement is an issue, especially in women. Again, look into the articles that I cited. There has been some important new research done by some very fine researchers. Most of them are homosexual.

So I assume that your answer means that you have no new evidence that would show homosexuality to be biological or fixed. Therefore, you don't mind that I intend to point that out to the communion. Apparently, you don't need to know what is going on in the world of research, because you think that you have a revelation that counters the actual research and scriptural statements about homosexuality. At least people in TEC and the communion will know the basis for your direction.

Thank you for being clear.

Yours in Christ,

Jackie Keenan

Discipline and the Bishops in a Time of Confusion and Discernment: The Case of Bishop Duncan

Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:45:24 +0000

As Anglican Christians, both within and outside TEC, what are we to make of the disciplinary process against Pittsburgh's Bishop, Robert Duncan, now initiated by the Presiding Bishop? In brief, I would urge TEC and other Anglican bishops to pray for and take action so that this process pauses indefinitely. They should do this for the sake of genuinely seeking discernment and resolution as to the ordering of our common life as Anglicans. There is nothing that legally demands that the process be carried through at this point and in the manner now laid out. There is every Christian reason to work for some other outcome.

I.   First, the engagement of the process itself appears to have been inevitable, at least once the various positions regarding the actions of General Convention 2003 were laid out, adopted, and embraced by different parties in the church. That is not in dispute. And once the complainants against Bishop Duncan formally made their charges to the Review Committee, an examination and determination as to Bp. Duncan's adherence to the Episcopal Church's Constitution and Canons was necessarily demanded.

II.   Second, the use of Title IV.9 - "abandonment of communion" - was reasonably applied in this determination, since at issue in the charges was whether Bp. Duncan was actively and deliberately working to disengage himself and his diocese from the legally organized life of the Episcopal Church, and the canon in question is aimed at a bishop who makes an "open renunciation of the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship" of the church. "Discipline" certainly includes such legally organized life and an "open renunciation" might well be interpreted as including active, articulated, and hortatory efforts at effecting a formal disengagement, for himself and his diocese, from such a life.

III.   However, third, it is an open question as to whether "the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship of this church" are in fact being upheld and/or embodied by the current executive offices of the Episcopal Church. (Myself, I believe they are not; but that is not the point here.) The question is "open" because it has been in dispute, at least since General Convention 2003. It has been disputed in the explicit mind of a series of TEC bishops, theologians, clergy, and laity, as well as in the explicit mind of other formal leaders and members of the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is bound, by its own Constitution, to be a "constituent member".   The dispute has been openly engaged, and has continued unabated, and in fact with growing force, despite attempts by General Convention 2006 and meetings by the TEC's House of Bishops to answer, in certain respects, charges as to the constitutional integrity of its executive life.

IV.   Fourth, and to further explicate the previous point, this dispute is not an artificial or tendentious construct insofar as it touches the "Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church". The matter of "discipline" is bound up with a host of extensive theological and practical realities that, as we know, include liturgy and liturgical form, teaching, moral behavior, and the more narrow "disciplinary" matters of how clergy and bishops are directed, admonished, and corrected.    When, as has happened in now literally hundreds of cases among clergy (and some bishops), an ordained Episcopalian declares that it is no longer possible to "keep" his or her "ordination vows" given the formal teaching, decisions, and actions of the executive leadership of the Episcopal Church itself, and on grounds that have been concretely enumerated in a host of cases and with respect to a host of matters, just insofar as this, the question of whether that leadership itself has openly renounced the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church has been formally raised. Raised and asserted, furthermore, by the departure of many thousands of the faithful.

V. Fifth, the Title Review Committee that received the charges against Bishop Duncan and formally "certified" his "abandonment of communion" simply and irresponsibly ignored this serious dispute in question and its constraining implications for their decision-making. They did not even make an attempt to assess the nature of the charges brought to them and argue for their pertinence to their judgment.

VI.   Sixth, there has not yet been an agreed upon method for resolving this dispute both as to what amounts to the "Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church" and as to what constitutes its "open renunciation". There has certainly been no method accepted where each party to the dispute accuses the other of such a renunciation, and the very instruments of (quite limited) disciplinary adjudication within the church are governed by the very executive leadership who is an accused party to the dispute. If "interested parties", in the sense of those who actually stand so accused by one party or the other of such "open renunciation" were to recuse themselves from a decision in this matter, much of House of Bishops itself would need to stand aside, let alone a host of other members in leadership positions within the church. This fact makes the failure in acknowledging and analyzing our church's dispute and of carefully arguing a case by the Title IV Review Committee particularly suspect and egregious: they have failed to engage the actual disordered life of the church whose order they are duty-bound to uphold.

VII.   Seventh, there are difficult and maddeningly slow formal attempts unfolding, yet unfolding nonetheless, within the Anglican Communion as a whole to begin to identify a means of getting through this adjudicatory impasse. It involves a host of synods, including the Lambeth Conference, and a proposed "covenant", among other things. Since no one has offered an agreeable alternative to these unfolding attempts, they remain the primary means, indeed the only means available to all parties in the dispute to move forward.   They are, furthermore, in keeping with the long traditions of catholic order and deserve a presumptive respect. Yet because they are both slow, still imperfectly defined, and legally of untested strength, the ultimate usefulness of these unfolding attempts must depend on a host of other Christian realities that - most would agree - actually define the Church of Jesus Christ far more essentially, primarily, and profoundly than do simply the Constitution and Canons of this or that province or diocese (indeed, that latter are, in a Christian sense, legitimate only to the degree that they embody these prior realities). These realities touch upon the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit and the powers thereof that permit a clear following of the Lord Jesus Christ's own straightforward calling to specific forms of relational behavior. They touch upon matters of humility, patience, longsuffering, honesty and transparency, self-control, and much more. That is, both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion of which it is still a part and which it has, rightly or wrongly, so disturbed through its executive actions, have been thrown upon a complete dependence upon these gifts and fruit, in a way that must transcend, even while respecting for the sake of the world's order, particular rules and regulations.

VIII.   Eighth, and proceeding directly from the above, it is a vocational imperative incumbent upon the executive leadership of TEC as well as upon those questioning its legitimacy, to defer to the burden and grace of these gifts and fruit during this time. This is a large part of what it means to be a "Christian leader". This must mean setting aside the legal - including canonical - strategies and manipulations designed to create new formal relationships of what used to be called "dominion" - "lordship" over property, goods, and persons. Ad hoc arrangements are inevitable during a "truce" - and the tradition of a "truce of God" (treuga Dei) for the sake a temporal space for resolution has real, if historically ineffective, roots in the Christian Church. But ad hoc arrangements should not trespass into areas of final legal and structural determinations. The poison of property's enslaving demand, transferred to new areas of personal "dominion", has long ruined most reform movements among Christians, and, whatever need there may appear to be to lay the legal groundwork for property "claims" through structural and formal disciplinary actions taken immediately and ruthlessly, such a pursuit of this need as we are now seeing is an affront to the Holy Spirit's own restraining, and thereby ordering and fruitful mission.

XI.   Finally, and in view of the above, I would urge the bishops of TEC, when the matter of Bp. Duncan's status and discipline is raised before them, as now it must be, to vote to table it indefinitely. That is within their power; and it is demanded, I believe, by the evangelical needs of this church and her people. The bishops might then use the disciplinary energies and resources of our church, instead, to pursue and submit in patience to the task and outcome of our larger Church's resolution of our dispute.   Having fulfilled her canonical duties in forwarding the Review Committee's decision, however ill-formed, to the House of Bishops, the Presiding Bishop herself should now use her persuasive and parliamentary powers to accomplish just such a vote to table the matter.

TEC is embroiled in a territory of adjudication precisely to the degree that her official leadership has pressed forward to "do a new thing" for which there is no disciplinary direction apart from what, in the past and within current Anglican Communion teaching and direction, has clearly forbidden this very thing they have done. As the Anglican Communion Institute has consistently argued, TEC's leadership cannot do this and then say they are in a position to judge anything, except by an intrinsically novel, and therefore communally questionable, standard.

The Communion Partners Plan

Rev. Professor Christopher Seitz — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:50:49 +0000

Several things need to be borne in mind about the Communion Partners Plan as it is discussed on the internet via the lens of news stories now appearing.

The Polity of The Episcopal Church in respect of the Presiding Bishop.
Particularly in a period of contestation about the role of the Presiding Bishop it is crucial to keep in mind the peculiar polity of TEC. Bishop Stanton of Dallas has been clearest about this in questioning the option of alternative Episcopal Oversight given that specific limitations already inhere in the office of Presiding Bishop. No metropolitan powers are attached to this office. More recently, in the Diocese of South Carolina we witnessed appropriate attention to the limits this Church has imposed, in the course of its history, on the role of the Presiding Bishop. The Diocese of South Carolina did so, in other words, not as an act of revenge nor in a position of questionable advocacy, but in full compliance with the Canons of TEC.

One news report is accurate when it speaks, not of permission by the Presiding Bishop, but of offering the courtesy of a nihil obstat (‘no objection').

The Plan should be assessed in the light of this. Five points can be registered.

·   The Primates at Dar es Salaam recognized the Camp Allen Principles as sufficient to express compliance with the Communion

·   The basic unit of Anglicanism is the Diocese

·   The Presiding Bishop of TEC has no metro-political powers

·   Parishes outside Partner Bishop Dioceses will only ever have been able to secure visitations, or sacramental actions demonstrating their life in Communion beyond TEC, by moral persuasion; building non-juridical links to the Partner Primates, supported by Canterbury, can only help with this

·   Those parishes which wish to leave and pursue other forms of alignment have in great measure already chosen that path; Dioceses which do not ordain women to the Priesthood face a set of problems this Plan cannot and did not seek to address, even as we believe a Provisional Episcopal Visitor scheme such as obtains in the Church of England was always a positive way forward; this Plan does not hinder the development of such a reality, but it lies outside its remit

For those Dioceses which wish to abide by Camp Allen Principles, this Plan offers a way to model full and enthusiastic compliance with Communion life. This is particularly important at a time when the terms of belonging to the wider Communion are under assessment and negotiation.

Christopher Seitz

____________

In response to some specific queries on the Blogs.

1. CANA, AMiA et al have another vision and they are pursuing it; they want not to be TEC-AC, and work for the Communion processes which could expose the unwillingness of liberals in TEC to be communion compliant, but have concocted other schemes: they believe in these; in some cases, the matter is one of tragic expediency (Southern Cone's 'temporary' idea), in other cases a different polity for the Communion may be or is envisaged;
2. The vast majority of GS Primates have not rushed to embrace Gafcon, and this Plan is not responsible for that fact on the ground;
3. The Windsor Continuation Group has solid members on it, including +Mtetemela and +Lilliebridge and +Chew;
4. The PB was not in a position to give permission because Bishops can proceed to implement this as they choose, given the polity of TEC, but a nihil obstat clears the way for involving Primates; people tend to forget that the Primates who are not intervening at present are not intervening because they do not feel they are at liberty to, and would not want the tables turned; that is a fact and is not something the Plan creates, but acknowledges;
5. this is all the more true of the role of +Canterbury;
6. It is important to build as much solid Communion presence as possible given that the Communion is in a period of self-assessment (to say the least);
7. The point is to model Communion compliance in Camp Allen dioceses; in moderate dioceses whose Bishops would not wish to block this if requests were made; in more difficult places; and then to demonstrate in places where the Plan was not accepted that these Dioceses were unwilling to abide by a generally positive Plan, with conservative Primatial leaders backing it;
8. It must be remembered that during the next season, eyes will be on the TEC situation as it unfolds.

That is all I am going to say because it strikes me that a lot of this has been said already, or could be picked up by clear-headed reading of the statements already out there. I found Mark Harris's assessment fairly clear-headed, and reproduce it here.

As I understand it the scheme would be that the Episcopal Visitors have some group of Primates that they can engage for fellowship and in a forum for considering matters related to the Anglican Covenant and the Windsor process.

Up to a point this seems a reasonable scheme by which the Episcopal Visitors might have access to the thinking of Primates who are committed to working things out within the norms of life in the Anglican Communion. But here are some initial problems:

(i) the Participants will consist of the Episcopal Visitors and those bishops who are willing to be Episcopal Visitors, along with five primates and others who might join them. That is the forum could grow to include all bishops in the Episcopal Church who consider themselves "Windsor Bishops" (committed to an Anglican Covenant and the so called Windsor Process) and are willing to be Episcopal Visitors and all Primates willing to abide by a "no boundary crossing" rule. This opens the door to the argument by those who are in this "forum" that they are the center of The Episcopal Church and that they have the approval of the majority of the worlds Anglican Provinces.

For those who believe either that (a) the Anglican Covenant is a really bad idea at least as conceived in the St. Andrew's Draft or worse the drafts previous to it, or that (b) the Windsor Report along with its "process" is now moot, this drift is not such good news.

(ii) The "Anglican Partners" idea is not a bad one. Actually it has been tried on a number of levels - The Lambeth Conference, the variety of networks within the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Consultative Council, the wide variety of Companion Diocese relationships. Seemingly those are not enough. What makes this one different is that it is a gathering of "partners" committeed to Covenant and Windsor Process, not necessarily to the Anglican Communion as a fellowship of churches.

How that plays out is yet another strand in the continuing desire to make the Anglican Communion look more like a world-wide church. The "Anglican Partners" is a move towards defining the Anglican Communion by subscription to a covenant. It would become the international forum for that proposition. More importantly it would give the Episcopal Visitors and those who would be willing to be Episcopal Visitors a primary voice in pursuing this end.

The offer of Episcopal Visitors was a good one when first made. This overlay - that the EV's should become TEC's members in an international forum for the promotion of the Anglican Covenant and the Windsor Process - is a bad one.

Of course the Presiding Bishop's permission was not asked. No matter that as Conger reports, "The Presiding Bishop was briefed ... giving her “nihil obstat” to the Communion plan, one participant reported." Bishop Howe's email makes it clear, "Our purpose in meeting with Bishop Schori yesterday was to apprise her of this plan, seek her counsel, and assure her..." Apprising her is not like asking permission or seeking approval. These bishops are going to do it anyway. Had she objected they would have been under no obligation to cease working on this.

Two members of that interesting and often neglected entity, the Anglican Communion Institute, Inc, (as opposed to the Anglican Communion Institute), Prof Seitz and Dr Ephraim Radner were party to the planning of this deal. Their agenda is very much bound up with making the Anglican Communion a more coherent (and I think more conservative) whole. Both were present at the meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It appears from Bishop Howe's note that they were not present at the meeting with the Presiding Bishop.

Additionally, Bishop Drexel Gomez and Dr Ephriam Radner are on the Covenant Design Group and busy at the task of producing an Anglican Covenant.

So the bishop players are being guided by people with a high committment to the Anglican Covenant. They are guided within by bishops who are part of the Network or part of the wider group called the Windsor Bishops.

How this all unfolds I do not know. The early read is that this is yet another effort to organize those who do not want a woman Presiding Bishop exercising primatial oversight (whatever that is), particularly someone who supported the ordination of Bishop Robinson and a feminist, and, under the guise of the Episcopal Visitor program, to give them greater voice in the Anglican Communion. It seems a very bad idea.

On the Matter of Deposing Bishops at a Time of Communion Self-Assessment

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:59:06 +0000

The current public dispute over the canonical legality of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops' recent vote to depose Bishops Schofield and Cox amounts at best to a severe embarrassment to the Presiding Bishop, her advisors, and the House itself; at worst, it exposes a travesty of Christian justice and prudence. How was it possible that the process and definition of terms demanded by the canons were not openly examined, discussed, and agreed upon prior to this vote, so as to avoid the prima facie plausible accusations now being made that appropriate consents were not in fact given? Indeed, given the intrinsic seriousness of the matter - the deposition of a bishop - and the overwrought character of the moment within both TEC and the Anglican Communion and within which the deposition process has unfolded, and the general ecclesiological stakes at play within the Communion at large that are caught up in this moment, it is simply unconscionable that such preparation was not carried through. Trust in the good will and/or good sense of our leadership is no longer just frayed; it has been torn asunder.

And the result of this dispute and the failures of good order leading up to it will inevitably be the further erosion of TEC's standing in the public's eye and in the Communion's councils. Although some will take this as vindication of their hostility towards TEC, it can only bring shame to the Christian gospel as a whole, given that the name of Christ is being abused in the process.

Complaints there will be aplenty. What we wish to emphasize at this point, however, is that the present fiasco is the inevitable outcome to a destructive mistake on the part of our leadership. And that mistake is the insistence on dealing with an ecclesial challenge, one bound up with the character of the Christian faith, on the basis of limited disciplinary canons that are incapable of and not designed to address such a major issue. The canons of TEC, and usually of any church, are meant to order the common life of those who are agreed as to the fundamental truths that the church in question exists to serve; such canons cannot act to discern those truths subsequent to their deployment. But the major dispute in question, the one within which charges and depositions are being thrown about, has to do with that which define the canons themselves, not the other way around.

This point is of fundamental importance and bears repeating. The matter at issue is that our canons are being used to conclude that someone has abandoned communion. They are not being used, as they should, to take appropriate actions after a clear determination has been reached that communion has in fact already been abandoned. A use of the canons in this way amounts to a political rather than a legal act and as such serves to undermine the order not only of TEC but of the Anglican Communion. Indeed, by such an act TEC hews perilously close to a describing itself as an idiosyncratic church within a larger Communion Body, making judgments about Communion membership from its own limited perspective and so calling into question its own place within that larger fellowship.

In this case, a central clue as to what is going on was given by Bp. Schofield's March 12 Statement in response to the vote to depose him on the basis of his having "abandoned the Communion of the Church" (Canon IV.9.2): "I have not abandoned the Faith," Schofield stated; "I resigned from the American House of Bishops and have been received into the House of Bishops of the Southern Cone. Both Houses are members of the Anglican Communion. They are not - or should not be - two separate Churches." Bp. Schofield's point is straightforward: if the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone is not a "separate church" from TEC, how can he have "abandoned" the "Communion" of TEC's own ecclesial existence? Does in fact TEC "recognize" the Southern Cone as an Anglican Church with which she is in communion? In what sense, then, is "abandonment" taken?

The basic ecclesial issue, then, is one of recognizability. Yet this is just the issue that is at stake in the Anglican Communion's current struggles. Archbishop Rowan Williams himself spoke to it straightforwardly last December in his Advent Letter to the Primates. The Anglican Communion's "unity", he wrote, "depends not on a canon law that can be enforced but on the ability of each part of the family to recognise that other local churches have received the same faith from the apostles and are faithfully holding to it in loyalty to the One Lord incarnate who speaks in Scripture and bestows his grace in the sacraments. To put it in slightly different terms, local churches acknowledge the same 'constitutive elements' in one another. This means in turn that each local church receives from others and recognises in others the same good news and the same structure of ministry, and seeks to engage in mutual service for the sake of our common mission." The issue of "recognisability", of course, is more than a matter of Anglican Communion concern; it has become a central feature of ecumenical discernment. And therefore, the fact that the Presiding Bishop, her advisors, and the House of Bishops as a whole can determine that Bishops Schofield and Cox are worthy of deposition under Canon IV.9.2 would seem to indicate that they believe that both bishops and the Province of the Southern Cone do not share with TEC in the "constitutive elements" of "church" in the fundamental ways that provide "communion".

Some may dispute whether the disciplinary canons for "abandonment of communion" are clearly designed to deal with the larger matter of impaired or broken "communion", that is, some level of non-recognizability. And the question is admittedly confused given that it is bound up with issue of the "worship and discipline" of the Episcopal Church, which itself, in other places like our Prayer Book, is linked to "constitution and canons". Perhaps all that is envisaged is the narrow world of American Episcopalian denominational polity. But it is precisely the fact that there is a dispute at all that would indicate that caution be taken in starkly applying the canon of "abandonment of communion" in the midst of context of fundamental argument. In our minds, at any rate, it seems proper that the language of "communion" ought to be directive of the interpretation of the canon in this case, given its larger meaning, both in the tradition and in the Constitution's Preamble: we are talking about recognizability among churches, not political legalities.

The issue of communion and the recognizability of churches has already surfaced as a canonical issue in 2000, with regards to the AMiA and those clergy who left TEC to go under the Provinces of Rwanda and (at the time) South-East Asia. Had these clergy "abandoned the Communion of the Church"? There was disagreement at the time, with the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor even then vigorously and sometimes angrily demanding that Title IV.9 be applied, while others (including one of the present writers) argued that, although there was a serious dispute taking place, the churches in question were indeed "one", and that the appropriate process was to issue the departing clergy Letters Dimissory. The disagreement of 8 years ago has not been resolved, we might add, on either side. For it appears that not only do the leaders of TEC not recognize some parts of the Anglican Communion as "in communion", but neither do some of these churches recognize TEC as truly a "church in communion", and for a variety of reasons, theological and disciplinary. After all, when Letters Dimissory were sent, they were never acknowledged nor formally received. Indeed, if TEC and the Province of the Southern Cone are not in fact "two separate churches", what exactly is going on from either side in this dispute? This is the territory of ecclesiological quicksand.

But given this fact, why would one wish to carry forward disciplinary proceedings on the basis of somehow having resolved the question of mutual ecclesial recognizability in one's own mind before the fact? The Presiding Bishop, her advisors, and the House of Bishops (or least a significant part of it) are plowing ahead with putative judgments about what is an Anglican Church, and who is in communion with whom and on what basis - even in the face of clear and admitted and contradictory views about this among Anglicans including American Anglicans. Do they really believe that this can do anything but add fuel to the fire? The current embarrassment or travesty, whichever it is, is proof that the attempt to cut the Gordian knot of Anglican ecclesiological ferment, disarray, and reordering - something many of us believe and pray will be a blessing and not a curse -- will lead to nothing more than further confusion and the stoking of the flames of mutual hostility.

There are already accusations that have been publicly expressed that the ongoing process leading to a vote over Bp. Duncan's deposition is fatally flawed by a failure to abide by canonical order, not to mention substantive truth. The situation in the Diocese of San Joaquin, in which the Presiding Bishop has intervened through the imposition of new oversight, in flagrant disregard of a legitimately functioning Standing Committee for that diocese, rises to the level of potential and serious canonical violation in its own right. Even if it turns out that, in both these cases as well as in the case of the latest vote for deposition, a persuasive case is eventually made that due process was followed, the failure to make that case prior to highly questionable actions displays an irresponsible lack of concern for the pastoral needs of the church and the consciences of the flock of Christ.

We have urged previously and we so urge again: that "TEC and other Anglican bishops pray for and take action so that this process of depositional discipline pauses indefinitely. They should do this for the sake of genuinely seeking discernment and resolution as to the ordering of our common life as Anglicans. There is nothing that legally demands that the process be carried through at this point and in the manner now laid out. There is every Christian reason to work for some other outcome."

As a consequence of this effort to settle things canonically when the timing is not proper or the tool the right one, we are now right where we were before: awaiting a judgment only the larger Communion can give. What now is Bishop Schofield's status? An effort to settle things has actually reopened them: a vote to accept a resignation appears deeply flawed, and so a cloud is now over the matter of ecclesiastical authority in the Diocese of San Joaquin. Either he remains that authority, or the standing committee -- and the issue is not resolved. That the Chancellor uses language like "it is our position" indicates clearly that a questionable use of a canon, and a questionable process to deploy it, has resulted only in questionable interpretation, and neither legal nor moral resolution.

Ephraim Radner, Christopher Seitz, Philip Turner
The Anglican Communion Institute

About

Charles W. Teel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:08:10 +0000

This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.

Contributing Theologians

Charles W. Teel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:47:41 +0000

Contributing Theologians

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:49:17 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Vice President

The Very Rev'd Dr Philip W. Turner III

Senior Fellow

The Rev'd Dr Ephraim Radner

Fellows

The Rev'd Dr Andrew Goddard
The Rev'd Dr Peter Walker

Board of Advisors

The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez
(Archbishop of the West Indies)

The Rt Rev'd John W. Howe
(Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida)

The Rt Rev'd Edward L. Salmon, Jr
(Bishop of South Carolina)

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt
(Bishop of Winchester)

The Rt Rev'd James M. Stanton
(Bishop of Dallas)

The Rev'd Frank Fuller
(Beaumont, Texas)

Professor Russell Reno
(Creighton University)

Mrs Elizabeth Cooper
(Charleston, SC)

Contributing Theologians

Charles W. Teel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:49:17 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Contributing Theologians

Charles W. Teel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:50:43 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Vice President

The Very Rev'd Dr Philip W. Turner III

Senior Fellow

The Rev'd Dr Ephraim Radner

Contributing Theologians

Charles W. Teel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:51:44 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Vice President

The Very Rev'd Dr Philip W. Turner III

Senior Fellow

The Rev'd Dr Ephraim Radner

Fellows

The Rev'd Dr Andrew Goddard
The Rev'd Dr Peter Walker

Board of Advisors

The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez

Contributing Theologians

Charles W. Teel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:52:43 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Vice President

The Very Rev'd Dr Philip W. Turner III

Senior Fellow

The Rev'd Dr Ephraim Radner

Fellows

The Rev'd Dr Andrew Goddard
The Rev'd Dr Peter Walker

Board of Advisors

The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez
(Archbishop of the West Indies)

The Rt Rev'd John W. Howe
(Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida)

The Rt Rev'd Edward L. Salmon, Jr
(Bishop of South Carolina)

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt
(Bishop of Winchester)

Contributing Theologians

Charles W. Teel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:53:44 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Vice President

The Very Rev'd Dr Philip W. Turner III

Senior Fellow

The Rev'd Dr Ephraim Radner

Fellows

The Rev'd Dr Andrew Goddard
The Rev'd Dr Peter Walker

Board of Advisors

The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez
(Archbishop of the West Indies)

The Rt Rev'd John W. Howe
(Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida)

The Rt Rev'd Edward L. Salmon, Jr
(Bishop of South Carolina)

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt
(Bishop of Winchester)

The Rt Rev'd James M. Stanton
(Bishop of Dallas)

The Rev'd Frank Fuller
(Beaumont, Texas)

Professor Russell Reno
(Creighton University)

Mrs Elizabeth Cooper
(Charleston, SC)

Contributing Theologians

Charles W. Teel — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:53:46 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Vice President

The Very Rev'd Dr Philip W. Turner III

Senior Fellow

The Rev'd Dr Ephraim Radner

Fellows

The Rev'd Dr Andrew Goddard
The Rev'd Dr Peter Walker

Board of Advisors

The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez
(Archbishop of the West Indies)

The Rt Rev'd John W. Howe
(Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida)

The Rt Rev'd Edward L. Salmon, Jr
(Bishop of South Carolina)

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt
(Bishop of Winchester)

The Rt Rev'd James M. Stanton
(Bishop of Dallas)

The Rev'd Frank Fuller
(Beaumont, Texas)

Professor Russell Reno
(Creighton University)

Mrs Elizabeth Cooper
(Charleston, SC)

Contributing Theologians

Charles W. Teel — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:56:05 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Vice President

The Very Rev'd Dr Philip W. Turner III

Senior Fellow

The Rev'd Dr Ephraim Radner

Fellows

The Rev'd Dr Andrew Goddard
The Rev'd Dr Peter Walker

Board of Advisors

The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez
(Archbishop of the West Indies)

The Rt Rev'd John W. Howe
(Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida)

The Rt Rev'd Edward L. Salmon, Jr
(Bishop of South Carolina)

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt
(Bishop of Winchester)

The Rt Rev'd James M. Stanton
(Bishop of Dallas)

The Rev'd Frank Fuller
(Beaumont, Texas)

Professor Russell Reno
(Creighton University)

Mrs Elizabeth Cooper
(Charleston, SC)

Contributing Theologians

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:44:08 +0000

President

The Rev'd Professor Christopher Seitz

Vice President

The Very Rev'd Dr Philip W. Turner III

Senior Fellow

The Rev'd Dr Ephraim Radner

Fellows

The Rev'd Dr Andrew Goddard
The Rev'd Dr Peter Walker

Board of Advisors

The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez
(Archbishop of the West Indies)

The Rt Rev'd John W. Howe
(Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida)

The Rt Rev'd Edward L. Salmon, Jr
(Bishop of South Carolina)

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt
(Bishop of Winchester)

The Rt Rev'd James M. Stanton
(Bishop of Dallas)

The Rev'd Frank Fuller
(Beaumont, Texas)

Professor Russell Reno
(Creighton University)

Mrs Elizabeth Cooper
(Charleston, SC)

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Letter of 2007:The Significance for Anglican Communion Life

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:21:56 +0000

The long awaited Advent Letter promised by the Archbishop of Canterbury is now in the public arena. It is a remarkable piece of work-one that deserves careful reading and reflection on the part of all. Its rich theological content and wise procedural protocols will place it, along with the Windsor Report and the Communiqué from Dar es Salaam, in the center of all future discussions of the nature and calling of the Anglican Communion. It should be remembered that statements of this nature are not trial balloons or proxies for our voting, up or down, but rather have the character of Anglican instrumental discourse, to be ranged with other such documents as defining the nature of Anglicanism at a critical time. So they must be assessed with the same level of seriousness with which they are constructed and promulgated.

Among other things The Advent Pastoral seeks to define the Anglican Communion and the role both of the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury within that Communion. We will say more about the understanding of the nature of communion to be found in the letter, but from the outset the reader should note the role accorded to the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop's understanding of these matters shapes his entire letter. As well, his views stand in marked contrast to the prevailing opinion of many within The Episcopal Church (TEC). The Lambeth Conference is neither "a canonical tribunal nor a general consultation." Rather, it is "a meeting of the chief pastors and teachers of the communion seeking an authoritative common voice." As stated in the Windsor Report, it is, therefore, the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury "to articulate the mind of the communion in moments of tension and controversy."

In obedience to the role assigned him, the Archbishop makes a trenchant diagnosis of the present crisis within the Communion, warns against unhelpful ways of addressing that crisis, and tracks a way forward that is faithful to the principles upon which life in communion is built. In keeping with the function of the Lambeth Conference the Archbishop urges its bishops to take a constructive part in the upcoming gathering at which it will be necessary to determine "what it means for the Anglican Communion to behave with a consistency that allows us to face...the deeply painful question of who we can and who cannot recognize as sharing the same calling and task."

It will prove tempting to rush to the end of the letter to see the concrete proposals made in respect both to the place of The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the Communion and the various responses of other Provinces to the crisis precipitated by ordination of Gene Robinson. However, to do so will result in hasty judgments, mis-readings of what the Archbishop is saying, and possibly unwise and precipitous forms of action.

III

the_archbishop_of_canterbury_s_advent_letter_of_2007

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:23:01 +0000

You may download a PDF version of this document for forwarding by clicking here....

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Letter of 2007:The Significance for Anglican Communion Life

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:25:41 +0000

the_archbishop_of_canterbury_s_advent_letter_of_2007 The long awaited Advent Letter promised by the Archbishop of Canterbury is now in the public arena. It is a remarkable piece of work-one that deserves careful reading and reflection on the part of all. Its rich theological content and wise procedural protocols will place it, along with the Windsor Report and the Communiqué from Dar es Salaam, in the center of all future discussions of the nature and calling of the Anglican Communion. It should be remembered that statements of this nature are not trial balloons or proxies for our voting, up or down, but rather have the character of Anglican instrumental discourse, to be ranged with other such documents as defining the nature of Anglicanism at a critical time. So they must be assessed with the same level of seriousness with which they are constructed and promulgated.

Among other things The Advent Pastoral seeks to define the Anglican Communion and the role both of the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury within that Communion. We will say more about the understanding of the nature of communion to be found in the letter, but from the outset the reader should note the role accorded to the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop's understanding of these matters shapes his entire letter. As well, his views stand in marked contrast to the prevailing opinion of many within The Episcopal Church (TEC). The Lambeth Conference is neither "a canonical tribunal nor a general consultation." Rather, it is "a meeting of the chief pastors and teachers of the communion seeking an authoritative common voice." As stated in the Windsor Report, it is, therefore, the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury "to articulate the mind of the communion in moments of tension and controversy."

In obedience to the role assigned him, the Archbishop makes a trenchant diagnosis of the present crisis within the Communion, warns against unhelpful ways of addressing that crisis, and tracks a way forward that is faithful to the principles upon which life in communion is built. In keeping with the function of the Lambeth Conference the Archbishop urges its bishops to take a constructive part in the upcoming gathering at which it will be necessary to determine "what it means for the Anglican Communion to behave with a consistency that allows us to face...the deeply painful question of who we can and who cannot recognize as sharing the same calling and task."

It will prove tempting to rush to the end of the letter to see the concrete proposals made in respect both to the place of The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the Communion and the various responses of other Provinces to the crisis precipitated by ordination of Gene Robinson. However, to do so will result in hasty judgments, mis-readings of what the Archbishop is saying, and possibly unwise and precipitous forms of action.

III

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Letter of 2007:The Significance for Anglican Communion Life

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:25:56 +0000

III

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Letter of 2007:The Significance for Anglican Communion Life

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:26:23 +0000

III

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Letter of 2007:The Significance for Anglican Communion Life

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:27:02 +0000

III

A Sermon: Incarnation, Church, and Communion

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:27:47 +0000

A Sermon: Incarnation, Church, and Communion

The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:28:34 +0000

A Sermon: Incarnation, Church, and Communion

The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:29:32 +0000

Rev. Dr. Sumner is the principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto
This being Christmas Eve Eve, my question for you is this: back in your childhood, when Christmas had a numinous glow, what was the most memorable present you ever received? Several come to mind for me. There was a doll of my hero, Popeye, which I received on my 5th Christmas and dragged happily around the house all morning, only to discover to my horror later in the afternoon that my sister had performed surgery on him (we were surgeon's kids) and the surgery had gone very very wrong...not sure I have forgiven her yet. A couple of years later, in my militaristic phase, I found under the tree two beautiful uniforms, of Union and Confederate soldiers, handsewn by my grandmother, one of which I have to this day. But the one I want to focus on this morning was actually given to my older brother: a see-through antfarm. There they were, working industriously within, digging, dragging, building, quite oblivious to the staring eyes of us, far larger beings taking in their predicament and their efforts. The antfarm: what strikes us when we watch is how industrious they are, but when one gets older one stops to think why? For they are equally unaware of themselves, and willing to be trampled by their comrades if it furthers the cause. It is all for the Farm, and down with the Ant, the individual anyway, a far cry from each wondering what there is for me under that tree. The great selfless one, in which we are but worker ants: it is strange, attractive, and awful to us as we look in on the plastic window.

         Quite the opposite are our lives, aren't they? Doesn't it often seem that our work, our homelives, are precisely the balancing and working out of different and colliding needs and desires, of all the very individual creatures with which we deal, including ourselves? Isn't every sphere of our life in this way "political", in the sense of being a polis, a micro-city, in which there is a struggle to balance what each individual desires and what would benefit the whole? Ants we aren't, which is our splendor and our problem.
      It is in this regard that I want to offer to you this morning a vision by a Father of the Church from 4th Century Turkey named Gregory of Nyssa. In one of his essays he imagined that in heaven there stands before God one great being, Adam the new, humanity. Within that one being are we all parts of the whole, individuals still, though the walls between us taken down, so that the spiritual ligaments between us are better seen. It is in the same vein that I heard a clergy colleague say recently in a sermon that in church there is only one communicant, the Body of Christ, the Church, because the communion is with God the Father, and that belongs to God the Son, and through the sheer grace of God we have been included in that communion. There is only one communicant at the rail at St. Matthew's this morning, who is named Church, the new Eve bride of Christ and one flesh with Him, and we are all included in that one Body. That of course has wonderful and hard implications. It means that eternally and to my salvation I am bound together with some people I do not really like nor can I abide, but brother or sister they are to me still.
      This sermon is really about heaven, and my first point is that we are there, not just you and you and you and you and, God willing, I, And the next question is this: what are we doing there?   For the answer to that question, what are we doing when we get to where all of life is about getting to, will tell us a lot about what this life too is for. There we are, the book of Revelation tells us, gathered around the Lamb of God. I Corinthians tells us that it is really we, bodies and all, though in a way that we cannot now even imagine. Daniel tells us that we are "from every language, family, language, and people," though these differences no longer divide. Traditionally what we are doing is singing, which may seem unappealing to the unmusical of us, but this is really a way of saying that in joy and the beauty of holiness we are telling forth all that the God we behold has done. To do that is what we were originally intended to do; arrows are for shooting, shovels for digging, humans made in the beginning for this praising, in what Paul this morning calls "the obedience of faith," that he is now, finally, calling the peoples to. In common praise they are more and more themselves to eternity, as they are more one. The two are not opposites after all, nor desire and self-sacrifice, if you are doing what you are made for. In other words, what they are doing in the Christmas story, the peoples gathered around God's Son in wonder and praise, is a figure, even in its plainness, for heaven itself. That takes us beyond the antfarm, and brings us round to the today's lesson, from the first chapter of Romans.
    We are on the edge of Christmastide, the feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, and the next question to be asked, obvious when we think of it, however used we may be to the story is this: why does God come this way? If He is God, and the world so in need of righting, why not come in manifest power and terrible justice? Why not skip this first coming altogether? If the goal is the obedience of faith among the nations, who are always in a fury, why not come and enforce the order they need?   Why this painful and circuitous route through human history? And the answer comes back, "precisely because it is the obedience of faith," which is to say trusting relationship. The goal God has for us is loving and free praise of Him from us his creatures. To accomplish this he must use means that allow and nurture human freedom and free love, that give the creature space to act, to praise, which also allows space to rebel as well. But be sure that it is God the creator who allows us this space. And likewise it is all God in this passage of Paul's in Romans 1, ordaining, setting apart, determining how the drama shall unfold. This is the real test of God all-powerful greatness, that he can lead us where we were created to reach, and nurture our free love all the while. How he determined to do this begins here in the Christmas, incarnationtide story.
    If we were to look in detail at today's lesson, from Romans 1, with these questions, and God's grand strategy in mind, the first thing you would notice is that the birth of Jesus is fixed at the very center of a much longer story. It is all about God making a path through the way of human flesh, a way through the valley of the shadow of death. You see Romans 1 starts by telling us that God has set Paul apart as an apostle, a sent one, a messenger. But this is not new thing, for he is but the last of a long line of prophets, and what he has come to say was foreseen by them long ago. That is one big reason you and I have a Bible that is one book with an old and new testament, for God's journey down through the way of flesh is one journey, and the path was announced by prophets in both eras. God journeys into the far country of his own creation, and the country of the rebellion of his own children. He moves in humility into the land of flesh and blood, sin and death, so that it can be the land of the "obedience of faith." It is the land of Israel, the flesh and blood people who are to mark God's ownership of them in their flesh, who are to obey with their bodies as well as their souls. The Torah is full of what they eat, and with whom they have sex, and how they dispose of their wealth, and how they take in the stranger- these all matter to the Lord God in the journey through the flesh on the way to the obedience of faith. On the far side of the birth of Jesus, Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That is the moment when he is shown to have been the Son of God by power. That is where the transformation of human flesh begins in earnest. That is the culmination of the life which begins in the nativity stable, the life that is the great descent of God through the land of flesh and blood, in humility and powerlessness. It is the only way that we can be led to the place prepared and set apart for us, where we are to praise him freely in the obedience of faith. My point is that incarnation is centerpiece of a longer story of God with us, in the flesh. For the story goes on, for God the Son resides in the Church through the Holy Spirit. With the resurrection God has not abandoned our lowly way. He is still in the Church, guiding it, speaking to it, indwelling it in His Spirit, feeding it with his body and blood. He is in it forebearing its divisions in order that the peoples might learn to be one in his praise. The incarnation of which you will hear again this Christmastide is the heart of a longer strategy, the fitting way for God to bring us to the end for which he made it. It is the fitting way, and a painful way, a patient way.
         It is easy to look at the Church and be disappointed, or discouraged, or despairing, or cynical, or angry, and not least we who are clergy. Why do divided, so impotent, so ineffectual, so faithless? It is all these things, and to our blame. But why does God allow it? Why, the question goes unspoken, doesn't God do a better job of creating an instrument on earth for himself? But here, with the help of today' lesson, we look again at the Church, in all its frailty and failure, and wonder in silent gratitude. God, even here, places his priceless treasure, the key that unlocks the door of eternal life. He does it in this way not because he couldn't do otherwise, but because he is willing to duck his head to come into our house. He does it because of the infinite patience he shows in walking the long road through the valley of flesh and blood.    He does it because this frail and endangered thing is perfectly fitted to the delicate work of making us, free and loving in the obedience of faith. Frail yes, but unbreakable too, for in it is the tungsten of his word, the steel against which one Anglican theologian said that many a century has broken its teeth. Against this frail creature, because it is God's creature hell cannot prevail. Frail, yes, but the perfect preparation for heaven.

A Sermon: Incarnation, Church, and Communion

The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:29:51 +0000

A Sermon: Incarnation, Church, and Communion

The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:30:18 +0000

Where’s the Science? A Conversation with the Presiding Bishop

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:31:26 +0000

Where’s the Science? A Conversation with the Presiding Bishop

Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:32:23 +0000

Where’s the Science? A Conversation with the Presiding Bishop

Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:34:11 +0000

                        Jacqueline Keenan, DVM
                        5246 Pommeroy Dr.
                        Fairfax, VA 22032

                        October 7, 2007

The Episcopal Church

The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate

Where’s the Science? A Conversation with the Presiding Bishop

Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:34:31 +0000

                        Jacqueline Keenan, DVM
                        5246 Pommeroy Dr.
                        Fairfax, VA 22032

                        October 7, 2007

The Episcopal Church

The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate

Where’s the Science? A Conversation with the Presiding Bishop

Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:35:17 +0000

                        Jacqueline Keenan, DVM
                        5246 Pommeroy Dr.
                        Fairfax, VA 22032

                        October 7, 2007

The Episcopal Church

The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Letter of 2007:The Significance for Anglican Communion Life

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:38:18 +0000

III

A Sermon: Incarnation, Church, and Communion

The Very Revd Dr. George Sumner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:40:19 +0000

Where’s the Science? A Conversation with the Presiding Bishop

Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:40:48 +0000

                        Jacqueline Keenan, DVM
                        5246 Pommeroy Dr.
                        Fairfax, VA 22032

                        October 7, 2007

The Episcopal Church

The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate

Discipline and the Bishops in a Time of Confusion and Discernment: The Case of Bishop Duncan

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:41:36 +0000

Discipline and the Bishops in a Time of Confusion and Discernment: The Case of Bishop Duncan

Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:43:28 +0000

As Anglican Christians, both within and outside TEC, what are we to make of the disciplinary process against Pittsburgh's Bishop, Robert Duncan, now initiated by the Presiding Bishop? In brief, I would urge TEC and other Anglican bishops to pray for and take action so that this process pauses indefinitely. They should do this for the sake of genuinely seeking discernment and resolution as to the ordering of our common life as Anglicans. There is nothing that legally demands that the process be carried through at this point and in the manner now laid out. There is every Christian reason to work for some other outcome.
I.   First, the engagement of the process itself appears to have been inevitable, at least once the various positions regarding the actions of General Convention 2003 were laid out, adopted, and embraced by different parties in the church. That is not in dispute. And once the complainants against Bishop Duncan formally made their charges to the Review Committee, an examination and determination as to Bp. Duncan's adherence to the Episcopal Church's Constitution and Canons was necessarily demanded.

II.   Second, the use of Title IV.9 - "abandonment of communion" - was reasonably applied in this determination, since at issue in the charges was whether Bp. Duncan was actively and deliberately working to disengage himself and his diocese from the legally organized life of the Episcopal Church, and the canon in question is aimed at a bishop who makes an "open renunciation of the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship" of the church. "Discipline" certainly includes such legally organized life and an "open renunciation" might well be interpreted as including active, articulated, and hortatory efforts at effecting a formal disengagement, for himself and his diocese, from such a life.

III.   However, third, it is an open question as to whether "the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship of this church" are in fact being upheld and/or embodied by the current executive offices of the Episcopal Church. (Myself, I believe they are not; but that is not the point here.) The question is "open" because it has been in dispute, at least since General Convention 2003. It has been disputed in the explicit mind of a series of TEC bishops, theologians, clergy, and laity, as well as in the explicit mind of other formal leaders and members of the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is bound, by its own Constitution, to be a "constituent member".   The dispute has been openly engaged, and has continued unabated, and in fact with growing force, despite attempts by General Convention 2006 and meetings by the TEC's House of Bishops to answer, in certain respects, charges as to the constitutional integrity of its executive life.

IV.   Fourth, and to further explicate the previous point, this dispute is not an artificial or tendentious construct insofar as it touches the "Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church". The matter of "discipline" is bound up with a host of extensive theological and practical realities that, as we know, include liturgy and liturgical form, teaching, moral behavior, and the more narrow "disciplinary" matters of how clergy and bishops are directed, admonished, and corrected.    When, as has happened in now literally hundreds of cases among clergy (and some bishops), an ordained Episcopalian declares that it is no longer possible to "keep" his or her "ordination vows" given the formal teaching, decisions, and actions of the executive leadership of the Episcopal Church itself, and on grounds that have been concretely enumerated in a host of cases and with respect to a host of matters, just insofar as this, the question of whether that leadership itself has openly renounced the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church has been formally raised. Raised and asserted, furthermore, by the departure of many thousands of the faithful.

V. Fifth, the Title Review Committee that received the charges against Bishop Duncan and formally "certified" his "abandonment of communion" simply and irresponsibly ignored this serious dispute in question and its constraining implications for their decision-making. They did not even make an attempt to assess the nature of the charges brought to them and argue for their pertinence to their judgment.

VI.   Sixth, there has not yet been an agreed upon method for resolving this dispute both as to what amounts to the "Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church" and as to what constitutes its "open renunciation". There has certainly been no method accepted where each party to the dispute accuses the other of such a renunciation, and the very instruments of (quite limited) disciplinary adjudication within the church are governed by the very executive leadership who is an accused party to the dispute. If "interested parties", in the sense of those who actually stand so accused by one party or the other of such "open renunciation" were to recuse themselves from a decision in this matter, much of House of Bishops itself would need to stand aside, let alone a host of other members in leadership positions within the church. This fact makes the failure in acknowledging and analyzing our church's dispute and of carefully arguing a case by the Title IV Review Committee particularly suspect and egregious: they have failed to engage the actual disordered life of the church whose order they are duty-bound to uphold.

VII.   Seventh, there are difficult and maddeningly slow formal attempts unfolding, yet unfolding nonetheless, within the Anglican Communion as a whole to begin to identify a means of getting through this adjudicatory impasse. It involves a host of synods, including the Lambeth Conference, and a proposed "covenant", among other things. Since no one has offered an agreeable alternative to these unfolding attempts, they remain the primary means, indeed the only means available to all parties in the dispute to move forward.   They are, furthermore, in keeping with the long traditions of catholic order and deserve a presumptive respect. Yet because they are both slow, still imperfectly defined, and legally of untested strength, the ultimate usefulness of these unfolding attempts must depend on a host of other Christian realities that - most would agree - actually define the Church of Jesus Christ far more essentially, primarily, and profoundly than do simply the Constitution and Canons of this or that province or diocese (indeed, that latter are, in a Christian sense, legitimate only to the degree that they embody these prior realities). These realities touch upon the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit and the powers thereof that permit a clear following of the Lord Jesus Christ's own straightforward calling to specific forms of relational behavior. They touch upon matters of humility, patience, longsuffering, honesty and transparency, self-control, and much more. That is, both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion of which it is still a part and which it has, rightly or wrongly, so disturbed through its executive actions, have been thrown upon a complete dependence upon these gifts and fruit, in a way that must transcend, even while respecting for the sake of the world's order, particular rules and regulations.

VIII.   Eighth, and proceeding directly from the above, it is a vocational imperative incumbent upon the executive leadership of TEC as well as upon those questioning its legitimacy, to defer to the burden and grace of these gifts and fruit during this time. This is a large part of what it means to be a "Christian leader". This must mean setting aside the legal - including canonical - strategies and manipulations designed to create new formal relationships of what used to be called "dominion" - "lordship" over property, goods, and persons. Ad hoc arrangements are inevitable during a "truce" - and the tradition of a "truce of God" (treuga Dei) for the sake a temporal space for resolution has real, if historically ineffective, roots in the Christian Church. But ad hoc arrangements should not trespass into areas of final legal and structural determinations. The poison of property's enslaving demand, transferred to new areas of personal "dominion", has long ruined most reform movements among Christians, and, whatever need there may appear to be to lay the legal groundwork for property "claims" through structural and formal disciplinary actions taken immediately and ruthlessly, such a pursuit of this need as we are now seeing is an affront to the Holy Spirit's own restraining, and thereby ordering and fruitful mission.

XI.   Finally, and in view of the above, I would urge the bishops of TEC, when the matter of Bp. Duncan's status and discipline is raised before them, as now it must be, to vote to table it indefinitely. That is within their power; and it is demanded, I believe, by the evangelical needs of this church and her people. The bishops might then use the disciplinary energies and resources of our church, instead, to pursue and submit in patience to the task and outcome of our larger Church's resolution of our dispute.   Having fulfilled her canonical duties in forwarding the Review Committee's decision, however ill-formed, to the House of Bishops, the Presiding Bishop herself should now use her persuasive and parliamentary powers to accomplish just such a vote to table the matter.

TEC is embroiled in a territory of adjudication precisely to the degree that her official leadership has pressed forward to "do a new thing" for which there is no disciplinary direction apart from what, in the past and within current Anglican Communion teaching and direction, has clearly forbidden this very thing they have done. As the Anglican Communion Institute has consistently argued, TEC's leadership cannot do this and then say they are in a position to judge anything, except by an intrinsically novel, and therefore communally questionable, standard.

Discipline and the Bishops in a Time of Confusion and Discernment: The Case of Bishop Duncan

Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:44:13 +0000

As Anglican Christians, both within and outside TEC, what are we to make of the disciplinary process against Pittsburgh's Bishop, Robert Duncan, now initiated by the Presiding Bishop? In brief, I would urge TEC and other Anglican bishops to pray for and take action so that this process pauses indefinitely. They should do this for the sake of genuinely seeking discernment and resolution as to the ordering of our common life as Anglicans. There is nothing that legally demands that the process be carried through at this point and in the manner now laid out. There is every Christian reason to work for some other outcome.

I.   First, the engagement of the process itself appears to have been inevitable, at least once the various positions regarding the actions of General Convention 2003 were laid out, adopted, and embraced by different parties in the church. That is not in dispute. And once the complainants against Bishop Duncan formally made their charges to the Review Committee, an examination and determination as to Bp. Duncan's adherence to the Episcopal Church's Constitution and Canons was necessarily demanded.

II.   Second, the use of Title IV.9 - "abandonment of communion" - was reasonably applied in this determination, since at issue in the charges was whether Bp. Duncan was actively and deliberately working to disengage himself and his diocese from the legally organized life of the Episcopal Church, and the canon in question is aimed at a bishop who makes an "open renunciation of the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship" of the church. "Discipline" certainly includes such legally organized life and an "open renunciation" might well be interpreted as including active, articulated, and hortatory efforts at effecting a formal disengagement, for himself and his diocese, from such a life.

III.   However, third, it is an open question as to whether "the Doctrine, Discipline, or Worship of this church" are in fact being upheld and/or embodied by the current executive offices of the Episcopal Church. (Myself, I believe they are not; but that is not the point here.) The question is "open" because it has been in dispute, at least since General Convention 2003. It has been disputed in the explicit mind of a series of TEC bishops, theologians, clergy, and laity, as well as in the explicit mind of other formal leaders and members of the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is bound, by its own Constitution, to be a "constituent member".   The dispute has been openly engaged, and has continued unabated, and in fact with growing force, despite attempts by General Convention 2006 and meetings by the TEC's House of Bishops to answer, in certain respects, charges as to the constitutional integrity of its executive life.

IV.   Fourth, and to further explicate the previous point, this dispute is not an artificial or tendentious construct insofar as it touches the "Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church". The matter of "discipline" is bound up with a host of extensive theological and practical realities that, as we know, include liturgy and liturgical form, teaching, moral behavior, and the more narrow "disciplinary" matters of how clergy and bishops are directed, admonished, and corrected.    When, as has happened in now literally hundreds of cases among clergy (and some bishops), an ordained Episcopalian declares that it is no longer possible to "keep" his or her "ordination vows" given the formal teaching, decisions, and actions of the executive leadership of the Episcopal Church itself, and on grounds that have been concretely enumerated in a host of cases and with respect to a host of matters, just insofar as this, the question of whether that leadership itself has openly renounced the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church has been formally raised. Raised and asserted, furthermore, by the departure of many thousands of the faithful.

V. Fifth, the Title Review Committee that received the charges against Bishop Duncan and formally "certified" his "abandonment of communion" simply and irresponsibly ignored this serious dispute in question and its constraining implications for their decision-making. They did not even make an attempt to assess the nature of the charges brought to them and argue for their pertinence to their judgment.

VI.   Sixth, there has not yet been an agreed upon method for resolving this dispute both as to what amounts to the "Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of this church" and as to what constitutes its "open renunciation". There has certainly been no method accepted where each party to the dispute accuses the other of such a renunciation, and the very instruments of (quite limited) disciplinary adjudication within the church are governed by the very executive leadership who is an accused party to the dispute. If "interested parties", in the sense of those who actually stand so accused by one party or the other of such "open renunciation" were to recuse themselves from a decision in this matter, much of House of Bishops itself would need to stand aside, let alone a host of other members in leadership positions within the church. This fact makes the failure in acknowledging and analyzing our church's dispute and of carefully arguing a case by the Title IV Review Committee particularly suspect and egregious: they have failed to engage the actual disordered life of the church whose order they are duty-bound to uphold.

VII.   Seventh, there are difficult and maddeningly slow formal attempts unfolding, yet unfolding nonetheless, within the Anglican Communion as a whole to begin to identify a means of getting through this adjudicatory impasse. It involves a host of synods, including the Lambeth Conference, and a proposed "covenant", among other things. Since no one has offered an agreeable alternative to these unfolding attempts, they remain the primary means, indeed the only means available to all parties in the dispute to move forward.   They are, furthermore, in keeping with the long traditions of catholic order and deserve a presumptive respect. Yet because they are both slow, still imperfectly defined, and legally of untested strength, the ultimate usefulness of these unfolding attempts must depend on a host of other Christian realities that - most would agree - actually define the Church of Jesus Christ far more essentially, primarily, and profoundly than do simply the Constitution and Canons of this or that province or diocese (indeed, that latter are, in a Christian sense, legitimate only to the degree that they embody these prior realities). These realities touch upon the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit and the powers thereof that permit a clear following of the Lord Jesus Christ's own straightforward calling to specific forms of relational behavior. They touch upon matters of humility, patience, longsuffering, honesty and transparency, self-control, and much more. That is, both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion of which it is still a part and which it has, rightly or wrongly, so disturbed through its executive actions, have been thrown upon a complete dependence upon these gifts and fruit, in a way that must transcend, even while respecting for the sake of the world's order, particular rules and regulations.

VIII.   Eighth, and proceeding directly from the above, it is a vocational imperative incumbent upon the executive leadership of TEC as well as upon those questioning its legitimacy, to defer to the burden and grace of these gifts and fruit during this time. This is a large part of what it means to be a "Christian leader". This must mean setting aside the legal - including canonical - strategies and manipulations designed to create new formal relationships of what used to be called "dominion" - "lordship" over property, goods, and persons. Ad hoc arrangements are inevitable during a "truce" - and the tradition of a "truce of God" (treuga Dei) for the sake a temporal space for resolution has real, if historically ineffective, roots in the Christian Church. But ad hoc arrangements should not trespass into areas of final legal and structural determinations. The poison of property's enslaving demand, transferred to new areas of personal "dominion", has long ruined most reform movements among Christians, and, whatever need there may appear to be to lay the legal groundwork for property "claims" through structural and formal disciplinary actions taken immediately and ruthlessly, such a pursuit of this need as we are now seeing is an affront to the Holy Spirit's own restraining, and thereby ordering and fruitful mission.

XI.   Finally, and in view of the above, I would urge the bishops of TEC, when the matter of Bp. Duncan's status and discipline is raised before them, as now it must be, to vote to table it indefinitely. That is within their power; and it is demanded, I believe, by the evangelical needs of this church and her people. The bishops might then use the disciplinary energies and resources of our church, instead, to pursue and submit in patience to the task and outcome of our larger Church's resolution of our dispute.   Having fulfilled her canonical duties in forwarding the Review Committee's decision, however ill-formed, to the House of Bishops, the Presiding Bishop herself should now use her persuasive and parliamentary powers to accomplish just such a vote to table the matter.

TEC is embroiled in a territory of adjudication precisely to the degree that her official leadership has pressed forward to "do a new thing" for which there is no disciplinary direction apart from what, in the past and within current Anglican Communion teaching and direction, has clearly forbidden this very thing they have done. As the Anglican Communion Institute has consistently argued, TEC's leadership cannot do this and then say they are in a position to judge anything, except by an intrinsically novel, and therefore communally questionable, standard.

Discipline and the Bishops in a Time of Confusion and Discernment: The Case of Bishop Duncan

Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:44:47 +0000

Discipline and the Bishops in a Time of Confusion and Discernment: The Case of Bishop Duncan

Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:45:24 +0000

The Communion Partners Plan

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:45:55 +0000

The Communion Partners Plan

Rev. Professor Christopher Seitz — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:50:42 +0000

The Communion Partners Plan

Rev. Professor Christopher Seitz — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:50:49 +0000

On the Matter of Deposing Bishops at a Time of Communion Self-Assessment

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:58:39 +0000

On the Matter of Deposing Bishops at a Time of Communion Self-Assessment

Charles W. Teel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:59:15 +0000

On the Matter of Deposing Bishops at a Time of Communion Self-Assessment

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:00:07 +0000