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A Guide Through the Thicket

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Renewing Moral Theology: Christian Ethics as Action, Character, and Grace
by daniel a. westberg
ivp academic, 281 pages, $25.00

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Bishop Jefferts Schori’s Two Sermons: Curacao and Charleston

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

What happens in Cura ç ao doesn’t stay in Cura ç ao, at least if one is Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Last month, Katharine Jefferts Schori preached a routine Sunday sermon on the idyllic Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela that was so roundly criticized that it made it all the way into the pages of the New York Times, as the subject of a Beliefs column by reporter Mark Oppenheimer.

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Unconservative Evangelicals

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500

From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin:
Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism
by D. G. Hart
?Eerdmans, 252 pages, $25

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Anglicans, the Ordinariate, and the Unopened Gift

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:01:00 -0500

It is hard to remember now, but it is true: for the better part of the last hundred years, Anglicans were at the forefront of the ecumenical movement for Christian unity, with the Episcopalians in the lead. In 1886, the Episcopal bishops proposed the Chicago Quadrilateral as a means for “the restoration of the organic unity of the Church” in the face of its “sad divisions.” In 1888, the rest of the world’s Anglican bishops lent their voices to the proposal at Lambeth, and in 1920 extended it into a heartfelt “Appeal to All Christian People” for church reunion.

The Lambeth appeal in large part set the agenda for the Faith and Order movement of the twentieth century, which itself was spearheaded by the Episcopal missionary bishop Charles Henry Brent. Anglicans and Episcopalians were not the whole story, of course, but it is without question that they played an outsized and crucial role.

It is a proud history, but it all seems part of the past now. Today, it is probably closer to the truth to say that Anglicans are at the forefront of our “sad divisions,” with the Episcopalians once again at the helm. Two weeks ago, the Anglican primates met in Ireland, but key archbishops representing a majority of the Anglican faithful did not attend. The same was true for the last Lambeth conference, from which hundreds of bishops absented themselves, and which opted for open-ended discussion groups in place of its historic practice of issuing common resolutions.

The Anglican Consultative Council, which the 1968 Lambeth conference envisioned as a means to foster greater unity and communication among Anglicans worldwide, is in wide disrepute and deep disarray, with key members having resigned and its present form in constitutional question. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, the historic see that has long held it all together, is regarded by many on both the right and the left as either irrelevant or feckless. As Ephraim Radner not long ago concluded, each of the instruments of Anglican communion is broken, and it is not clear how, when or if they will ever be mended.

It is into this context that three Church of England bishops were received into the Roman Catholic Church last month as priests, as the first fruits of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus issued by Pope Benedict XVI not much more than a year ago. Although they are a small group for now, their numbers promise to grow: “We don’t want to frighten the horses” by receiving everyone at once, as one of the former bishops told the Catholic Herald , but there are certainly more to come, and soon.

What does this mean for the Anglican future? In concrete terms, it means that in many Anglican provinces there will be, perhaps just down the street from the local Episcopal or Church of England parish, a church in full communion with the bishop of Rome that worships with an Anglican liturgy developed from the Book of Common Prayer but holds the faith of the Catechism of the Catholic Church .

Each of these churches will answer to an ordinary in the Ordinariate itself rather than to the local Catholic bishop, roughly on the model of episcopal oversight for military personnel. The ordinary will be empowered to plant new churches, just like any other Catholic bishop, and will meet together in conference with his brother Catholic bishops and with the pope. Married clergy from the Anglican communion will be eligible for the priesthood.

It is easy to see how the logic of division, which after the Reformation played itself out through shelves upon shelves of rival self-justifying theological tomes, might quickly find a foothold in the popular imagination. Of course, it is not a foregone conclusion that things will play out like that, and surely it was not what the Vatican intended. There have at least been hints of more constructive discussion, even though the current climate of division and confusion has made it sadly rare.

Rowan Williams, speaking at the Vatican after the document’s release in November 2009, argued that it did not break any “fresh ecclesiological ground” and remained “at the level of spiritual and liturgical culture.” In an important sense, the point is a sound one: in 1993, the Joint International Orthodox-Roman Catholic Commission disavowed “uniatism” on the model of the Eastern Rite churches as the way forward for ecumenism, but it appears that the proposed Anglican ordinariate has much in common with precisely those churches. Is Williams right to argue that no important ground has been broken by Anglicanorum coetibus ?

Catholics have long insisted that the Roman primacy is an integral and necessary part of the ecumenical movement toward Christian unity. And they have further insisted, as Pope John Paul II paradigmatically did in Ut Unum Sint , on the “power and the authority without which such an office would be illusory.” But this is precisely what Rowan Williams challenged in his Vatican address: whether instead it might be that shared theological understandings of primacy could coexist “alongside a diversity of canonical or juridical arrangements,” leading to a sort of communion of communions not united “juridically or institutionally” but instead by “lasting loyalty, shared theological method and devotional ethos.”

Primacy, in such a scenario, would not need to be constituted by a “centralized juridical office” and a “single juridically united body.” It would instead serve as the focus of unity within a communion of communions, each committed to sustaining a “mutually nourishing and mutually critical life” and each following mutually agreed-upon “protocols of decision-making.”

Williams’ proposal, as he himself indicated, sounded very much like that of the Anglican Covenant, of which he has been the principal proponent in recent years. The long-discussed Covenant, which by now has been approved by three provinces, in essence consists of the shared “protocols of decision-making” by which Anglicans worldwide would commit to walk together in faith and morals rather than apart.

The elephant in the room, of course, was and is that Anglicans have thus far failed spectacularly in bringing anything like the vision of ecclesial life Williams described to fruition. It is not at all clear that there exists among Anglicans anything remotely close to “lasting loyalty, shared theological method, and devotional ethos,” as the events that have transpired during his time at Canterbury have shown.

As such, the question raised by John Paul II remains open: Is it not the case that such a vision will continue to remain illusory without the power and authority held by the Bishop of Rome? As the former Episcopal bishop Jeffrey Steenson asked in a 2005 Anglican Theological Review essay, is not the authority of the Roman primacy just the “unopened gift” that Anglicans need? Then-Bishop Steenson thought so; he is now a Catholic priest.

The 1998 Anglican-Roman Catholic document The Gift of Authority said as much too, in its discussion of the specific role of the Bishop of Rome in exercising universal primacy and discerning the truth. For Steenson, and others who are now following his footsteps through Anglicanorum coetibus , the “fresh ecclesiological ground” Williams spoke of is actually the old ecclesiological ground, trod down years ago by Cardinal Newman and the many who have followed him since.

To say all of this is not to say that such judgments ultimately are correct. Nor is it to say that Williams has not raised a set of important questions. But it is to say that those questions cannot be asked by Anglicans with any force and integrity unless they are able to show that they have a serious alternative to offer in their own embodied life. And to date, Anglicans simply do not.

The Episcopal Church’s leadership has offered its own vision of Christian unity, to be sure. Stacy Sauls, the bishop of Lexington, has argued that Anglican unity is expressed “sacramentally not doctrinally,” and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori, among many others, has proposed that the Church’s unity is best expressed in shared missions of service. Such proposals are echoes of the old slogan of the Life and Work movement in the early twentieth century: “Doctrine divides, service unites.” Whatever unity might thus be expressed, of course, assumes that the person and work of Christ actually is detrimental to unity, since any attempt at a shared confession of what God in Christ has done for our salvation can only be divisive.

To oppose sacrament to doctrine is to evacuate the sacraments of all substantive content; to propose that the deepest ground of our unity is good works is Pelagian. Such attempts, finally, assume that there is some ground for Christian unity that is somehow wider than Christ. The high-water mark of the ecumenical movement is widely regarded to be the 1961 World Council of Churches assembly in New Delhi, which affirmed that genuine church unity will require not only shared worship and service, but also shared confession and the ability to “act and speak together” on crucial issues.

As they knew, the realization of this vision would necessarily require the painful “death and rebirth of many forms of church life.” But in sharp contrast to New Delhi, the modern-day Episcopal Church’s vision of Christian unity appears to proceed on the assumption that “unity” will not require anyone to change their minds about anything.

Such a vision was on sorry display at the Primates’ Meeting in Ireland. As Sherlock Holmes said of the dog in the nighttime, the curious thing about the meeting was what was not said: nothing of the strong resolutions of the 2007 meeting at Dar es Salaam, nothing of the Windsor Report ’s moratoria, nothing of the Episcopal Church’s consecration of a second bishop in a same-sex relationship (Mary Glasspool of Los Angeles) or of the marriage of two leading female clergy in the Boston cathedral by the bishop of Massachusetts, and nothing that challenged the absorption of the Meeting as one of the four instruments of communion into the Anglican Consultative Council, the office of Canterbury, and the Anglican Communion Office’s London bureaucracy.

The common understanding is that those primates who stayed away from the meeting, such as Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone (the Anglican churches in southern South America) or Egypt’s Mouneer Anis, did so as a protest against the actions of the Episcopal Church and the invited presence of its presiding bishop. While that is true, it is only a half-truth. As Venables and Anis have both explained, the heart of their problem is that they feel as if such meetings have become “managed,” that the Primates themselves have no ownership of the agenda or the outcome. As such, they have refused to participate in a meeting at which it has been decided in advance that nothing decisive will be accomplished, and where everything accomplished at previous meetings has disappeared down the memory hole.

What Venables and Anis are asking for, in short, is that the Primates’ Meeting be constituted as a part of what Rowan Williams called the “mutually nourishing and mutually critical life” that depends upon shared “protocols of decision-making.” As it stands, the meeting is nothing of the sort. To say, as Williams has, that he is largely satisfied with the outcome of the meeting, and that it is to be hoped that the absent primates will return next time, is deeply puzzling.

Only last May, Williams wrote in the context of the Episcopal Church’s consecration of Bishop Glasspool that he would be “inviting the views of all members of the Primates’ Meeting on the handling of these matters with a view to the agenda of the next scheduled meeting in January 2011.” As Andrew Goddard and others have noted, whatever the nature of the resulting discussion, its outcome was never made public and its effects are exceedingly difficult to discern in the meeting’s agenda.

As Ephraim Radner said, the instruments of Anglican communion are indeed broken. And it is a very lamentable thing: the historic Anglican witness to Christian unity seems now to be a thing of the past. It is also lamentable because we Anglicans greatly need the mutual discipline that biblical conciliarism, envisioned in the Anglican Covenant, could provide”the practice of reading Scripture in common, committed to waiting upon each other to hear the one Spirit leading the church in its common mission.

The West and North need to be pressed by their southern brethren to return to the Scriptures, to proclaim the Gospel of Christ’s atoning work, and to live with faith and courage in the face of persecution. The South needs likewise to be reminded, as the agitations in Uganda over prescribing capital punishment for homosexuals have painfully demonstrated, that the Church must always preach the law as good news, and that Christ’s love reaches out to all of us sinners, especially to the outcast.

It is in this context that Benedict XVI has offered Anglicans the Roman primacy, and it is into this and every other context that John Paul II offered the same in Ut unum sint to Christians everywhere. Is it an unopened gift? Or is there a via media down which Anglicans still remain called to walk? If there is such a path, it has become dark and narrow, and few are walking it. Whether any will arrive at its end remains to be seen; if they do, they will arrive by the grace of their Lord.

Jordan Hylden, a candidate for holy orders in the Episcopal diocese of North Dakota, is a doctoral student in theology at Duke University Divinity School. His previous articles for “On the Square” were Rowan Williams and the Anglican Future , Brave New Church , and The Anglicans in Egypt .

RESOURCES

Ephraim Radner’s Can the Instruments of Unity be Repaired?
Anglicanum Coetibus
Rowan Williams’ address to the Willebrands Symposium
Jeffrey Steenson’s The Unopened Gift
Stacy F. Sauls’ The Wisdom of the Constitution
A report on the Anglican primates’ meeting
The communiqué from the Anglican primates’ 2007 meeting in Dar es Salaam
The Anglican Communion’s Windsor Report .
Andrew Goddard’s report on the primates’ meeting and the Anglican Communion Institute’s report
The Ugandan proposal to punish homosexuals
The Anglican Communion Institute’s Dublin Post-Mortem

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Rowan Williams and the Anglican Future

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:11:00 -0400

Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, has issued his much-awaited response to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church: “ Communion, Covenant, and our Anglican Future .” Although it’s not as lengthy as Pope Benedict’s recent encyclical, it’s sure to be parsed almost as carefully and debated nearly with the same intensity by Anglicans throughout the world. The letter is worthy of such scrutiny: As he has done so often in the past, Archbishop Williams has given us both a substantively theological read of the present moment and a sound and hopeful way forward for the Anglican Communion.

For those keeping score, the leadership of the Episcopal Church”including the Presiding Bishop, the president of the House of Deputies, and the church’s chief ecumenical officer”had attempted to argue that the actions of their General Convention didn’t go against the repeated requests of the wider Anglican Communion to stop progress on same-sex blessings and partnered gay bishops. Williams was not convinced: “The repeated request for moratoria on the election of partnered gay clergy as bishops and on liturgical recognition of same-sex partnerships has clearly not found universal favor,” he wrote. In short: The communion’s request for moratoria has been answered, and the answer is “No.”

In fact, as Williams argues, to change the received Anglican position on sexual ethics would require a quite sharp re-thinking of biblical teaching, something that even if possible would require a level of consensus among Anglicans and ecumenical partners that simply has not been reached. “In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years,” says Williams, “it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also. A major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.” There is therefore no warrant for moving forward on this issue as a province, diocese, or parish.

As a result, Williams contends that “it is hard to see how [a person in a same-sex relationship] can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires . . . . A person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.” In a similar way, it is difficult to see “whether someone belonging to a local church in which practice has been changed in respect of same-sex unions is able to represent the Communion’s voice and perspective.” Here, the logic of Williams’s argument is that the Episcopal Church’s consecration of Gene Robinson and its expressed openness to further such bishops, as well as its practice of offering same-sex blessings, must affect its ability to serve in representative roles both for and within Anglicanism.

This is so, Williams explains, because of the venerable catholic principle that “what affects the communion of all should be decided by all.” Without the difficult process of consulting the wider body of Christ when a local church seeks either to respond to a new question or to answer an old question in a new way, that church runs the risk of “becoming unrecognizable to other local churches, pressing ahead with changes that render it strange to Christian sisters and brothers across the globe.” The end result is a cacophony of churches all preaching different gospels, with none of them sure anymore if they are indeed proclaiming one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.

This does not mean”as Williams is quick to point out”that everything we do and preach must be precisely the same. On some issues, Anglicans may indeed agree to disagree, and there are no absolutely clear rules for determining when this will be permissible. But it does mean that developments in matters of faith and morals cannot be done independently, without the consultation of both the wider Anglican Communion and our ecumenical partners. “To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity,” Williams argues. “It would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent ‘community of Christian communities’.”

Although this is clearly not how Williams envisions the Anglican Communion, he admits that not all Anglicans agree with him on this point. Some view Anglican fellowship instead “as best expressed in a more federalist and pluralist way,” he concedes. “They would see this as the only appropriate language for a modern or indeed postmodern global fellowship of believers in which levels of diversity are bound to be high and the risks of centralization and authoritarianism are the most worrying.” But although this is the self-understanding of many Episcopalians (such as Bishop Stacy Sauls, who has publicly stated that even the word “federation” is for him a bridge too far), Williams insists that this is not how Anglicanism has commonly understood itself, particularly in recent years with the advent of Lambeth conferences, instruments of unity and governance such as the Anglican Consultative Council, and ecumenical dialogues.

It is precisely this emerging ecclesial reality, he argues, that the Anglican Covenant proposal has sought to secure”namely, “to do justice to that aspect of Anglican history that has resisted mere federation.” Proponents of the covenant, Williams explains, are not out to exclude people or grasp power, but instead simply “seek structures that will express the need for mutual reconcilability, mutual consultation and some shared processes of decision-making. They are emphatically not about centralization but about mutual responsibility.” As such the proposed covenant is the best hope Anglicans have for strengthening the bonds of relationship that tie them together and avoiding the path of local isolation and fragmentation.

No one, Williams emphasizes, will be forced into this, and no one who chooses a different path need fear being “cast into the outer darkness.” Relationships of affinity and partnership in mission will no doubt continue in any case. But those who decline the opportunity to walk together with other Anglicans in mutual responsibility and discernment, electing instead to place a higher value on local and provincial autonomy, will have chosen a path that will inevitably lead to a degree of differentiation from their covenanted Anglican brothers and sisters. This is to be regretted, but such is a path that can be chosen in good faith and need not lead to acrimony. Williams strongly urges that such decisions be made peaceably and with respect for the conscience of all, particularly those who seek to covenant with the larger Communion but find themselves within provinces that choose not to. The treatment of such Anglicans”and here, Williams has both the Communion Partners within the Episcopal Church and others elsewhere in mind”is, he asserts, an “important” question that requires a “clear answer.”

Notably, Williams still expresses his “strong hope that all the provinces will respond favorably to the invitation to Covenant” with each other, even while acknowledging that the Episcopal Church had not kept to the moratoria the larger Communion had requested of them. This may lead some to wonder: Is there here a hint of Pollyanna, or perhaps Charlie Brown falling for Lucy’s football one more time? But there is much more going on here. The covenant has simply not been placed before the Communion in its final form, and it is not for him to say what the future decision of any province will be. That said, of course, the context for Williams’s reflections should not be missed”it is precisely following the actions of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church that he saw fit to lay out, once again, his understanding of the two paths that lie ahead for Anglicans to choose, one covenanted and one federated.

Clearly, it is his read of the present moment that the Episcopal Church, in its actions this summer, has moved further down the federated path. And it is his hope for the future that as many Anglicans as possible, both within the Episcopal Church and around the globe, will move ever further toward the covenanted reality that holds such great promise. This, quite plainly, will have to do with both respecting the threefold moratoria (border crossing, same-sex blessings, and partnered gay bishops) as well as with signaling clear support”at the provincial, diocesan, and parish level”for the Ridley-Cambridge draft of the Anglican covenant. While the all-important Section 4 of the draft covenant, which deals with relational structure and discipline, is now being looked at again after the Anglican Consultative Council”thanks largely to Episcopal Church delegates”forced its delay, the entire logic of Williams’s letter points toward its adoption in full without change. And the more dioceses and parishes that show their support, the likelier that will be.

Actions, as Williams concludes, are “bound to have consequences.” But while Williams’s letter strongly points to the need for consequences following the actions of the actions of General Convention, there is now further need for Williams to show that his words have consequences. Whether rightly or wrongly, too many Anglicans around the world view Williams as inclined too much toward talk, unwilling to take action when action is called for. As such, there are too many Anglicans who will perhaps not be convinced by the weight of his words alone. At present, two members of the Joint Standing Committee”which will make the crucial decision, at the end of this year, whether or not to pass along the final draft of the Anglican covenant to the provinces for ratification”are members also of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori and Dr. Ian Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School. It may be both right and prudent to ask them to step down”for if the Episcopal Church has decided not to abide by Communion decisions, then what right have they to make decisions for the Communion? Their participation will only deepen Communion-wide distrust of international Anglican bodies, and by taking action Williams will help renew the trust of many in his own office.

What, after all of this, is the future for ordinary faithful Anglicans in the United States, whether in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) or the Episcopal Church? The strong implication of Williams’s argument is that for both groups, the best and brightest future is with the Anglican Covenant. Both ACNA itself and the Communion Partners within the Episcopal Church have expressed their desire to sign on to the covenant, and while difficulties no doubt exist in both situations there is no reason to think that forward progress cannot be made by both parties. Where more serious difficulty exists, at present, is with those elements within ACNA that do not share an interest in the proposed covenant, as well as those places within the Episcopal Church that do not have the oversight of a Communion Partners bishop. Those who do have one or the other, however, can and should be confident in their ability to work from where they are for the good future of the covenanted Anglican Communion.

In my recent article, “ Brave New Church ,” I expressed a lack of confidence in the direction of the Episcopal Church’s leadership. But I do have confidence in the Communion Partners dioceses, both in where we stand and in where we’re going. In my case, that means the diocese of Dallas, where I’m just now finishing up a summer internship, and my home diocese of North Dakota, where I’m a candidate for holy orders. I have good friends in ACNA too, many of whom recognize just as I do the need to work for the common covenanted future of the Anglican Communion.

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Brave New Church

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:52:00 -0400

The seventy-sixth General Convention of the Episcopal Church made headlines last week for moving forward on same-sex blessings and officially opening its doors for partnered homosexuals to serve as priests and bishops. Stacy Sauls, the Episcopal bishop of Lexington and a close associate of the presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, argued that it was long past time to do it: Over thirty years ago, he said, the church had placed pastoral compassion over Scripture, tradition, and the teachings of Jesus to permit remarriage after divorce, and it would be nothing less than hypocritical for the church not to do likewise for gay and lesbian people.

There is a certain logic to this, of course. If we’re going to set aside the teaching of Jesus for ourselves, shouldn’t we do the same for others? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” as someone once said. According to Bishop Sauls, this was the most important point he made at the convention. Arguably, it was the most important point anyone in attendance made. The Episcopal Church has now, quite definitively, decided to step out on its own, away from Scripture, tradition, and the rest of the Anglican communion. It was a bold and brave step, for with it the church has decided that it is now a church that takes its own counsel, answerable only to God. No doubt it was a matter of prayerful discernment and conscience for many, and no doubt many will shy away from drawing out the full implications of their decision. But the implications are there nonetheless. It is a brave new thing for the Episcopal Church, a brave new church on its own in the world.

The two key resolutions, D025 and C056 , were passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of the convention, the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops. The first resolution, D025, effectively gave dioceses the green light to elect bishops in partnered homosexual relationships, thus overturning the commitment of the 2006 convention to “exercise restraint” in doing so. The second resolution, C056, committed the church to develop rites of blessing for same-sex unions with the goal of bringing draft versions for approval at the next convention in 2012. In the meantime, the resolution encouraged dioceses to develop and use rites of their own, with the expectation that such on-the-ground experience will be of value in creating a set of official, churchwide liturgies in the near future.

As such, the two resolutions represent a clear and purposeful departure from the requests made of the Episcopal Church by the rest of the Anglican communion, as expressed repeatedly by all of the official bodies of global Anglicanism over the past several years. Contradicting requests for a moratorium on bishops in same-sex relationships, Resolution D025 asserts that “God has called and may call” persons in such relationships to all of the ordained ministries of the church. And, in the face of requests not to authorize public rites of blessing for same-sex unions, Resolution C056 explicitly calls for their development and authorizes bishops to perform them on a trial basis in their dioceses. It is, in short, a clear victory for those such as Bishop Sauls who have argued for the national autonomy of the Episcopal Church and the need to move forward regardless of Anglican communion requests.

That is, at least, the straightforward interpretation of the resolutions, as understood by media outlets such as the New York Times (“ Episcopal Vote Reopens a Door to Gay Bishops ,” “ Episcopal Bishops Give Ground on Gay Marriage ”), the BBC (“ US Church Drops Gay Bishops Ban ”), Reuters (“ Episcopal Vote Widens Anglican Split ”), and the Washington Post (“ Episcopal Bishops Can Bless Gay Unions ”). It is, additionally, how they were understood by Anglican bishop N.T. Wright (“ The Americans Know This Will Lead to Schism ,”), conservative groups such as Fulcrum and the Anglican Communion Institute , and the ECUSA gay rights lobby, Integrity . Susan Russell, the president of Integrity, celebrated achieving a “clean sweep” on their legislative goals, and justifiably so.

But be that as it may, the official organs of the Episcopal Church have insisted that no matter what it might look like to everyone else, actually nothing much has changed. The two ranking officers of the church, presiding bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies president Bonnie Anderson, wrote in an open letter to Rowan Williams that “nothing in [Resolution D025] goes beyond what has already been provided under our constitution and canons for many years.” By that, they mean to say that since church canons already stipulate that the ordination process is open to all persons regardless of sexual orientation, and since Resolution D025 asserts that future bishops will be considered by following canonical guidelines, they have done nothing new. The 2006 resolution, they note, asked for restraint in granting “consent” to the election of partnered homosexual bishops, and since the new resolution does not mention consent, this has not actually been overturned.

If that sounds like a distinction without a difference, that may be because it is. Indeed, they admit that “it remains to be seen” how the new resolution will be interpreted by dioceses, and that some dioceses will likely understand it as granting them latitude to consent to the election of partnered gay bishops. And no wonder, because that is precisely the point of the resolution. The General Convention, which Bishop Jefferts Schori and Bonnie Anderson insist is the highest governing body in the church, has asserted unequivocally that God calls partnered homosexuals to all of the ordained ministries of the church, and it has asked the church to discern who is called to the episcopacy in this context. Bishop Sauls, for his part, argued in an official church press conference that there isn’t; that is, until they decide to consecrate another partnered gay bishop. It is, to put it mildly, difficult to see how the rest of the Anglican world will interpret this as a positive response to their requests.

As for same-sex blessings, Bishop Christopher Epting, the church’s deputy for ecumenical and interreligious relations, has asserted that despite Resolution C056 the convention actually “did not authorize any public rites” for the blessing of same-sex unions and so did not, in fact, contravene the requests made by the global Anglican instruments of unity. It is notable that this argument was not even attempted by Bishop Jefferts Schori and Bonnie Anderson in their letter. The word game here in play is to insist that while they were asked not to authorize any churchwide rites, no one said anything about unleashing bishops to make and use rites on their own. In short, Bishop Epting’s argument not only fails on its own terms (see here ), but it is difficult even to take seriously.

All in all, one is left with the spectacle of the Episcopal Church’s leadership trying desperately to convince the Anglican communion and countless onlookers, by the artful use of lawyerly nuance and political hair-splitting, that they did not do what they did.

Arguably, this is the worst of all possible worlds. While one might wish that the church had not decided to leave behind biblical sexual norms, it is by now clear that this is the position of the great majority of Episcopal leadership. As such, there would have been genuine integrity in stating forthrightly that the Episcopal Church disagrees with its Anglican brothers and sisters, and that, out of their prayerful discernment and sense of God’s justice, they cannot comply with the Anglican world’s requests.

But that is not the path the Episcopal Church’s leaders have chosen. Instead, they have professed their heartfelt desire to remain full members of the Anglican communion, but on none but their own terms. As the Windsor Continuation Group and many others in the Anglican world have warned time and time again, the bonds of trust in Anglicanism have been frayed far past the breaking point in recent years. Many Anglicans around the world no longer believe that they can trust the Episcopal Church to say what it means and do what it says, and the actions of the seventy-sixth General Convention, along with the present stance of church leadership, will almost certainly add fuel to the flame of Anglican discord and mistrust. Honesty and clarity would have been better, but it appears too late for that now. Even for those such as Rowan Williams who have bent over backward to give the most charitable reading of the Episcopal Church’s actions, this may be a bridge too far.

Rowan Williams, for his part, is widely expected to issue a statement in the near future on the Episcopal Church’s actions. In an Anglican communion that seems ever closer to spinning out of control, many are looking to him right now for clarity and guidance. In the past, Archbishop Williams has spoken of “constituent” and “associate” membership to describe the coming covenanted reality of the Anglican communion, with the constituent membership comprised of those churches and dioceses who covenant to walk together on matters of faith and morals, and an associate group of Anglicans who decide instead to place a higher premium on national autonomy. Many hope that Williams will apply this language to the present situation, at least provisionally.

So too, many hope that Williams will reaffirm his commitment to the Anglican Covenant in its present form, the Ridley-Cambridge draft , as well as reconsider the Episcopal Church’s role in the continued covenant process. Given the actions of General Convention, it is clear that serious questions must be raised about the extent of the Episcopal Church’s commitment to the process in the first place.

Finally, the many Episcopal bishops and parishes that have long sought faithfully to remain Anglican are now hoping that Williams, along with the Anglican primates, will give them a place to stand and a way to move forward with clarity and hope. Both clarity and hope are in short supply right now in such dioceses as Dallas, Albany, and South Carolina, not to mention traditionally minded parishes in places like Philadelphia and Lexington. Many ordinary, faithful Episcopalians who seek to remain Anglican are worried about what the future may hold. In short, the Communion Partner bishops and rectors are hoping to find a true partner in the archbishop of Canterbury.

What then of the Episcopal Church’s future? With regard to its continuing relations with the larger Anglican communion, its leadership has a choice to make”either honesty and clarity about their decision to walk apart, or continued obfuscation and maneuvering. With respect to its own members who still seek to walk together with Canterbury and the rest of the covenanted Anglican world, the church’s leaders have a choice to make as well. Either they can graciously allow conservative Episcopalians to do what is necessary to walk with the rest of the Anglican world, or they can follow the imperial road of majority tyranny, coercion, and lawsuits.

As for whatever is left of the Episcopal Church after the dust settles, the future is unclear. By all indices , the church is graying fast and shrinking faster, attracting precious few youth and young families, its progressive reputation notwithstanding. One of the buried stories of the seventy-sixth General Convention is its decision to make drastic cuts to the church budget, including its entire evangelism department. Much of this, of course, is attributable to the economic downturn, but some of it is not”just enough of it to be disturbing. If present trends hold, in the not-so-distant future many of its members will be either in nursing homes or cemeteries, with devastating effects on the numerous small dioceses and parishes that are just barely holding on. And in far, far too many places, especially the seminaries, theological depth and immersion in the Scriptures and the catholic tradition is a thing of the past.

In short, the sad parallels to be drawn with the shriveled, largely post-Christian fate of the United Church of Christ are there without number. Of course, the winds of revival, mission, and theological rigor may yet return one day to the Episcopal Church. Even now, there remain vibrant congregations, exciting scholars, and hopeful young people who believe in the church’s future. And the counsel of Gamaliel still holds true. But against such great odds, it is a brave soul indeed who would entrust her soul to the General Convention and take the Episcopal Church’s future and faith as her own.

For such a small church to venture forth from Scripture’s norm, to leave behind the faith of its fathers, to live at the very razor’s edge of all of catholic Christendom, whether Anglican or no”whatever this is, it at least requires courage. And no doubt there are many within her number who truly and genuinely possess it. However Erastian, bourgeois, and politicized Episcopal conventions may seem these days, one hopes that there are at least some left who are willing to say: This is the will of God, and may God judge me ever so severely if I lead his sheep astray. Any who do not feel the force of this are both foolhardy and fools, damnably so. Those who do feel it run the risk of hubris, of taking God’s place for their own. But those who take their stand with fear and trembling, having prayerfully discerned the mind of Christ, and act in conscience out of love for their brothers and sisters are, I do not doubt, truly brave. It is only, one hopes, a very brave new church that would set off on its own, a lonely new prophet in a brave new world.

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The General Convention of Tomorrow

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:30:35 -0400

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The Anglicans in Egypt: A Deeper Communion

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

“Are we a global church, or are we a federation of local bodies?” At the close of last week’s meeting of the Anglican primates in Egypt, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams thus set forth the great looming question that Anglicanism has been asking itself for the last several tumultuous years. And the response of the assembled archbishops was, in essence: “A global church, but there’s a lot of work to do before we get there.”

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Rowan’s Rule

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Rowan Williams is without doubt one of the most significant and learned theologians in the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, during his tenure at Canterbury, it has at times seemed that he has managed to get nearly everyone in that world angry at him, liberals and conservatives alike. As Rupert Shortt shows in his excellent new biography, Rowan’s Rule , this is to some extent the archbishop’s fault¯Williams, although superlatively brilliant and profound as a theologian, and justly beloved as a pastor and spiritual guide, does not to the same extent possess the spiritual gifts of administration and political savvy. But many of the criticisms sent Williams’s way, Shortt argues, are unjust, often due to misunderstanding, projection, and a lack of perspective.

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Anglican, or Episcopalian?

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

“Are you Anglican, or Episcopalian?” As an Episcopalian interloper studying at a Methodist seminary, I get the question a lot from my puzzled friends. Each time I’m asked, part of me wants to launch into a mini-primer on Anglican ecclesiology¯to wit, that Episcopalians are Anglicans, since the Episcopal church is just the American province of the global Anglican communion. Which means that, technically, the question shouldn’t even make sense¯it’s sort of like asking, “Are you American, or Texan?” But, of course, I know just what the question means¯it does make sense, because it reflects the sad divisions that have roiled the church over the past five years. Quite simply and sensibly, my Methodist friends want to know whether I’m a member of the liberal Episcopal church, or one of the conservative Anglican groups that broke off. And as saddening as it is to admit, I’ve come to think that their common-sense perception is more accurate than my attempts at ecclesiological theory. Their question can only be asked, and answered, because of the reality on the ground in the United States: Episcopalians are one thing, and Anglicans are another.

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