Interesting response from CAPA. All very preliminary, of course, and a bit more pointed than that of the ABC, but not the roaring denunciations one might have expected.

I suppose all of the preliminary responses will be rather measured, as various folks consult and study what has been done as well as determining how to respond. However, the end result is going to be "too little too late" from one bloc and "aww, give 'em a break--they tried" from another. Still, it will be interesting to see how the numbers fall out and even more interesting to see how the weathervane-in-chief (the ABC) finally and definitively responds.

Steven

Lionel Deimel wrote: "Bishop Chane announced that he does not consider himself bound by B033, as, indeed, he is not." *and* "whereas the original wording applied to “nominating committees, electing conventions, Standing Committees, and bishops with jurisdiction,” B033 addresses only “Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction.”"

So, I think we all agree that there is *no real moratorium*. Bishops in homo-sexual relationships can be nominated and elected, and Bishops can ignore B033 and consecrate...

I think Bishop Nazir-Ali's reaction is a little odd considering that England has a civil partnership law and the US (with a few local exceptions) dosn't. How does an opinion on a political question someone create a second "faith"?

But Chane can't consecrate a new bishop, right? Certainly not all by himself. I don't think his statement means much on its own. No bishop can be elected and consecrated without consent from more than a few other bishops/standing committees/etc.

And even odder since the Bishops who voted in the Lords largely voted for the civil partnership legislation, and have conceded that they must be recognised for clergy - and not used to prevent gay partners in the laity take a full role in the Church.

This whole deal is still so mixed it is quite difficult to extrapolate a future outcome.

When one reads/listens to the GC parts about cherishing our worldwide Anglican relationships and expressing determinations to engage Windsor processes and/or LGBTQ listening processes in order to expand/continue a too long delayed conversation; then it sounds like an invitation to conversation and rather typically Anglican old hat.

Then one suddenly recalls that now this old Anglican hat called conversation/listening has been completely redefined for new market purposes among orthodoxists as the shoddy new progressive hat. Ooops, I had temoprarily forgotten that, and probably was having one of those college-aged ECUSA flash backs that have overtaken me so frequently of late. Now let me see. Oh yes. The shoddy progressive hat is now only to be worn in poking fun and never to be taken at all seriously. It is a silly hat, then. Okay. Got it.

Then maybe one reads/listens to the veiled penal remarks of CAPA, and observes the eloquent reticence of Canterbury to be thought in any way to be capable of strong autonomous thinking or strongly-modelled leadership; and it seems that nothing has really changed. Then it looks like the whole realignment scam game / con operation is still happening without a glitch. Windsor fell for it. Canterbury fell for it. Queers will bring the heavens right down around our ankles - oops, very bad idea. Cooties. Like playing mud pies with the girls under yonder elm tree. Not good, not God's idea. Gay couples loving each other, and their children as well, is simply not happening, even if UK has recently passed a partnership law recognizing that it is happening. The sexual orientation world is flat, conformed, period. There. Close you eyes wide shut. Recite after me. Nobody I know or care about is queer. There. Feel better? I am sure you do.

If I were a bishop, which of course I certainly am not, I think I would be welcoming the idea just about now that I might conceivably attend the next Lambeth as an outside interfaith ECUSA observor, free from all this retrograde nonsense. The whole Anglican realignment thing is a tale of the emperor's new clothes. It is bald as a naked fairy tale emperor, and we know it by heart, having lived through so many of its ringing claims and changes, at least since Copernicus. Yet we are still so solemnly instructed: Anglicans are (and always, yes always, have been) a single conformed Anglican way - oh yes, that would be the Puritan, Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, Bishops owning slaves, Keeping the silly women in the vestry guilds, Take penecillin and get the laying on of hands for good measure, I don't care what people do as long as they don't do it in the streets and scare the horse carriages sort of conformed Anglican tradition.

I can't imagine how anybody thinks/thought otherwise. Thanks to the orthodoxists it is all now so very clear.

Don't hold your breath waiting for a worldwide listening process, either about how we can more frequently engage discussions across provinces without first conforming the parties invited to talk together, or about why we all now sheepishly know we have queer folks in our extended families and professional work teams who help make it all go well indeed. If I am reading the responses from elsewhere correctly, the powers that be in the continuing realignment are in no mood for any further listening - unless it is unconformed people in their listed target groups shutting up completely to listen to them and go brain dead for Jesus. I think certain exemplary Southern Baptists are way proud of the Global South, right about now. ECUSA should be putting plans in motion to offer DEPO to progressive believers who may still languish unrescued in the CoE and other provinces. The orthodoxists won't bother much with them, of course, they are only a few silly old hat Anglicans, university professor types, scientists, artists, people who write poetry at lunch, that sort.

Oh well, we follow Jesus anyway and still we believe in a God of miracles that brought us here. Meanwhile, PB Jefferts Schori is going to be an interesting nine years. You go girl. But don't fall for the fake listening scam now in progress. Insist on real listening across all our diversities which are so busily being erased, redefined out of real existence, and denied.

CAPA's letter, with its comments about being "saddened that the reports to date of your [ECUSA's] elections and actions suggest that you are unable to embrace the essential recommendations .. necessary for the healing of our divisions" would be credible if CAPA was also prepared to apply such concern about elections and actions to Lake Malawi.

And are we to gather from this - as ECUSA is apprently the only problem CAPA can see in the Anglican Communion - that CAPA churches CAN reconcile the actions of the murderous Bishop Kunonga, and his partner in injustice Archbishop Malango, with teaching "set out in the Holy Scriptures and repeatedly affirmed throughout the Anglican Communion"?

I don't see here any repentence - a favourite word for some - by Archbishop Akinola for his disgraceful actions after the Egyptian meeting "with other Primates from the [so-called] Global South."

"Scripturally faithful" Anglicans "within dioceses and congregations alienated and marginalised within your Provincial structure," such as Harare and Lake Malawi, would not share Akinola and friends' view on his and CAPA's having "heard their cries."

The point of my writing all this is not to demonstrate any superiority before God to Akinola, etc. (tempting though that is!) - "All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God" after all. But it is too say that the self-righteousness that is all too obvious in the attitudes of Akinola and friends is very, very obviously blind and one-sided. This is, of course, something that many of us - not just those who agree with Akinola - are open to being charged with.

The sooner that we as a Communion do face the simple fact that "all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God," and act on that fact, the better.

Ruidh-
Your answer marks you out as a dualist. The church is dealing with one sphere/world, and 'politics' with another.
Dualism is widely rejected. There is only one sphere/world.
On the contrary, both what you call 'politics' and what we call 'the church' are concerned with the whole of life.
'Christian' is not a word one can define and redefine at will. It means something particular, just like 'platonist', 'hedonist' and 'existentialist'.
The particular matter in question is not one where Christians (those who are correctly defined as 'Christians') will have opposing views, since one of the two available views is about as far away from anything connected with Christ or Christianity as it is possible to be.

There is a civil partnership law in England, imposed by secular Act of Parliament, with votes from a few unrepresentative bishops in the House of Lords. But it has not been debated by our General Synod. Unlike General Convention, it would certainly be widely rejected if such a debate were to take place in England.

Then by all means introduce a resolution that tries to censure you bishops for the breadth of behavior they have accepted, or at least say on the floor of your synod that you think the pastoral advice of your bishops is in error. Make it matter. You might also find that some of them are a bit less decisive when it's their actions being discussed on the floor.

I disagree that Ruidh's answer is in any way dualist. It simply reflects the way we live in the US.

It is an article of political faith for us, based on the First Amendment to our Constitution, that there is a political sphere that must exist completely separate from any religion or religious institution. This concept is probably an inheritance from our Deist founding fathers and does not always make a great deal of intellectual sense, as Christopher Shell points out above, but it is conventionally thought to be one of the essential elements in our national social contract that guarantees freedom of religion for all.

It is this kind of thinking that allows American politicians who view themselves as Roman Catholics in good standing to oppose restrictions on abortion because these restrictions are seen as infringements on the civil rights of women who do not share their religious convictions. The RC bishops don't like this much, but most Americans understand what is going on.

The current administration in the US has tried to distract the national attention by playing to the prejudices of the RR with attacks on the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens. It is in this context that A095 has to be seen as affirming the civil rights of these individuals without necessarily making a statement about the theological implications of such an action.

Again, I want to say that although this kind of compartmentalized thinking may seem odd, it is engaged in for the protection of the religious freedom of all. It's the way Americans have devised to allow themselves to live together in something approximating peace.

Not a dualist -- an American. In America, the Church and the Government *are* two seperate things.

Anna wrote, "But Chane can't consecrate a new bishop, right? Certainly not all by himself."

No, but TEC canons only require, I believe, three other bishops to consecrate a newly elected bishop. Various reports from General Convention have the number of bishops who stood (literally) with Bp. Chane at between 20 and 30. Certainly much more than three.

And to Alan Marsh: I assume you meant that a civil partnership law would fail if debated in your General Synod. That may be all well & good (at least in your mind), but remind me again just what percentage of British citizens are actually still active in the CoE ? Certainly not *nearly* enough to be considered representative of the average Briton.

So I question your use of the rather loaded word "imposed" above. Like all representative democracies, I'm willing to bet that Parliament reflects the will of most of the people most of the time :)

Remember 'the Philadelphia eleven' !

Rememeber Florence Li Tim Oi

Remember Dorothy Kerin

Remember the anglican religious communities

Remember the English Missal
Remember Evensong & Benediction
Remember tabernacles, vestments and candles
Remember 'England's Nazareth' (Walsingham)

Remember Dr. Barnes
Remember Bishop Colenso
Remember John Robinson
Remember Mervyn Stockwood -the first 'openly gay bishop'

Remember Henry v111 & Archbishop Cranmer

There a provocative piece by Damian Thompson in the Telegraph a couple of days ago (I don't see it referenced here at TA; sorry if I've just missed it) that's worth a read. It's at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/06/20/do2002.xml

It's very blunt about the state of the communion and whether it's worth saving. He says:

"While it is true that some bishops of the Episcopal Church have more in common with a crystal-gazing Californian housewife than George Herbert, it is also true that "Anglican" dioceses in the developing world have been hijacked by poisonously bigoted Bible-bashers.

And not just in the developing world, either: many parishes in Australia have fallen into the hands of Protestant iconoclasts whose hatred of Popish practices makes Ian Paisley look positively ecumenical. None of which would matter very much if it were not for the appalling effect these distant eruptions are having on churches in this country. "

and, a little later:

"But now, thanks to the Anglican Communion, English extremists - who these days consist of rainbow-coalition activists and hate-filled fundamentalists - are able to draw moral support and large sums of money from Anglicans abroad. Hard-line evangelicals, especially, have exerted terrific pressure on English bishops who, terrified of offending millions of anti-gay Africans, have adjusted their views accordingly.

Unexpectedly, it was the current Archbishop of Canterbury who caved in first. Early in his term of office, Dr Rowan Williams yielded to the African evangelical lobby and forced the resignation of the Bishop-designate of Reading, Canon Jeffrey John, a celibate gay man whose cause he had previously advanced. Perhaps it was a mistake for Dr Williams to permit Canon John's name to go forward to Downing Street; but allow it he did, and his subsequent somersault destroyed his reputation among his natural supporters, while doing nothing to impress his enemies, who still regard Lord Carey of Clifton (as he now is) as the real Archbishop of Canterbury. "

Peace,

Mark.

Why, Alan? I know many people who think that there is no reason why gay people should be discriminated against in the civil law and that their relationships should be recognised, even if they have a view that the church cannot offer this full acceptance.

Yes, and here is the relevant ECUSA (or TEC) resolution on Gay Marriage, passed on Wednesday:

Resolution A095:

Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the 75th General Convention reaffirm the Episcopal Church’s historical support of gay and lesbian persons as children of God and entitled to full civil rights; and be it further

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention reaffirm the 71st General Convention’s action calling upon “municipal council, state legislatures and the United States Congress to approve measures giving gay and lesbian couples protection[s] such as: bereavement and family leave policies; health benefits; pension benefits; real-estate transfer tax benefits; and commitments to mutual support enjoyed by non-gay married couples”; and be it further

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention oppose any state or federal constitutional amendment that prohibits same-sex civil marriage or civil union

Wierd that the last part is in negative... I presume that is because liberals in the US are arguing that gay people have always had constitutional rights, but they were just discriminated against... (Maybe easier to sell than a new "right" -- for people of the same sex to be able to marry each other).

Thought this would be of interst Simon, but don't know how (or if it's possible) to post new stuff here, so am sending it in, via a comment box--I do know how to do that ! Cheers
Laurence

Matt Kennedy: BREAKING: TO ALL THE BELOVED OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION NETWORK

From bishop Duncan: More initiatives are underway. Pastoral and apostolic care has been promised without regard to geography. All I can tell you is that the shape of this care will depend on a very near-range international meeting. Other actions will follow upon continuing conversations with those at the highest levels of the Anglican Communion. Over the course of the month of July, many of the things we have longed for will, I believe, come to pass or be clearly in view for all
June 23, 12:59 pm -

DrDanfee says it all so well as usual. Wonderful, wonderful commentary.

I am afraid that Christorpher Shell is mixing things up.

Alexandrian Hellenist Moral Philosophy is not the Gospel found in the Bible.

Neo-Platonism is not Christianity. Not even Christian. It's a different religion.

So far as General Synod and CoE go, it is sadly obvious that I cannot expect to feel welcome in many of the UK CoE congregations which are currently spouting such hogwash about Queer Stuff, so solemnly. The bedrock of deep isolation upon which just this sort of traditional but prejudiced discourse so often rests leads me to strongly suspect to nobody actually knows any LGBTQ people, let alone LGBTQ believers of any faith community, let alone LGBTQ Anglican believers, let alone LGBTQ ECUSA Anglican believers. How else shall I explain, even in practical terms of daily citizenship life, their willingness to join Nigeria and Nigrian ABC Akinola in darkly hinting that equal citizen rights for LGBTQ folks is - gasp - about to be explicitly read as unbiblical?

This sends us the provisional signal that the realignment campaign is not really the mild, moderate, provoked-into-uncharacteristic-vigor sort of phenomenon it often likes to advertise itself to be. If we wish to inquire further into these roots, there are no better USA entry points that the Chalcedon Institute, and even better, Prophet R. J. Rushdoony. Just do an internet search for either terms, and plenty will probably pop right up.

Funny that you don't hear Rushdoony mentioned much in public discourse. You get the hint that his thinking must have been quite influential, about the twenty-zillionth time one of our new conservative Anglican believers mouths something, rather rigidly based on Rushdoony's founding assumptions about scripture. If you wish to put the astounding Anglican claims that equal citizenship rights, and thus ECUSA's recent resolution in recognition of them, are simply entirely and plainly unbibilical - all you have to do is slog through Rushdoony's summa, The Institutes of Biblical Law. You may also wish to run internet searches on: fideism, presuppositional apologetics, and/or evidentiary apologetics. These technical terms get us square into the heated debates about whether the presuppositional frame - often wittingly and/or unwittingly used in so many current conservative Anglican shorthand references to biblical believers - is in fact (1) the only possible approach, and (2) the only possible serious and helpful approach.

Fideism awaits such Anglican believers, not too far off at the end of their roads to alignment. Thus, reasoning people cannot talk about religion because they do not have the requisite exclusive commitment to the revealed faith framework that simply define and governs every possible important thing. This sounds like high church living, until you see how impoverished it renders efforts to think and converse across different frameworks and methods of inquiry. Then you suspect that its high claims are not at all well matched to its poverties. Even more alarming, behind and beneath its typical effects of rending us intellectually robotic and rigid, it walls of heart and body from empathy, since one has no real reasons of heart or of body to ever imagine being inside, inside, inside another's realities. To lose your mind is one thing, a great loss. To thus have your abilities to empathize is yet a deeper great loss.

I think these themes which are hardly ever clearly discussed among us begin to point towards why we are just now in a worldwide process of being urged to be: (1)rigid thinkers who can only choose to occupy one commanding frame which must be used to govern all topics; (2) people whose hearts and bodies are walled off, with empathy left outside the gates of True Believerhood; (3)shredding our fellowship and common Anglican life by insisting on a new conformity and by pursuing forced choices between/among provincial goods in the name of Jesus as Lord.

If as new conservative believers say, this is really at heart all about having one conformed way to read scripture, worldwide, as Anglican provinces; then we have already tipped all our hats to Prophet Rushdoony. And there is little reason not to give him the historical credit for which he is so obviously due. He is a founding sponsor of the current realignment campaign, and a major figure who spent his whole life occupying this special approach - presuppositional, close to fideistic - to being a biblical believer.

Gee. I had a really strange pickle dream last night.

Canterbury stood up, finally, and announced that everybody invited to Lambeth next will NOT be invited to be devoted to (A) Anglican Conservative Conformity, and (B) Penal enforcements of Anglican Conformity. Instead, in my pickle dream Canterbury firmly and clearly announced that all would be invited to Lambeth next – exclusively as a worldwide Listening Event – aimed at the full range of different ways (presuppositional and otherwise) to read scripture with integrity and as still open to reason and to our legacy of tradition. It remember hearing lots of buzzing noise at that point in the dream but I couldn’t tell what or who was making it.

It immediately seemed clear to me in this dream – clear as only dream moments can be - that this next Lambeth would be an attempt to repeat the provisional starting example of the recent ECUSA GC on an international scale at the invitation of Canterbury as spiritual leader and instrument of communion. Instead of Anglican Unity being understood mainly via Conformity (Conservative of course) and Penal Enforcements (Conservative of course), Canterbury said it was important that all of our long-delayed worldwide listening across our differences really get going in as serious a way as we could possibly manage. Canterbury even said that all of our available resources and skilled people needed to be devoted for a few years to this new task of unprecedented listening across all of our worldwide differences. Canterbury said, Each major church faction – evangelical, anglo-catholic, progressive, other – was invited to bring a designated facilitator along with them for the overall small group and medium group and large group listening processes. The catch was, dreamily, that each facilitator had to agree to coordinate or support neutral, accurate space for listening that was not defined ahead of time by any particular set of church group or sector or faction presuppositions. Furthermore, in this dream it seemed that this Lambeth was only one among many invited near future occasions of such listening. Even world visitors were invited to observe this next Lambeth listening, from whever on the surface of our planet. It was somehow Anglican Lambeth, and somehow wide open at the same time with everybody around the planet welcome. You know how impossibly synthetic dreams can be.

Canterbury further announced that no conformity or penal resolutions would be expected from the next Lambeth, as there were plenty of time to get around to those processes once we had spent enough serious time listening to one another on behalf of accurate mutual understanding and effective peace and good will in furtherance of the Kingdom of God among us. The pronouncements or report for this next Lambeth were not framed as resolutions that would probably be passed, but as sharing of Anglican stories of diverse faith journeys so far to date, and as reports from the immediate experiences of this particular Lambeth occasion of unprecedented listening across all of our Anglican differences.

I woke up before my dream got to the responses from African Primates, or from conservative think tanks and networks in ECUSA/USA. I do remember half anticipating how they would grumble and lament the need for penal stuff and conformity – with lots of tag talk about biblical this and biblical that and my presuppositions jumped right into my brain off the pages of scripture. I also was nearly half-anticipating in the dream that some sectors labeled as conservative constituencies were already saying they had had enough of fighting differences, and would welcome a chance to at least better understand them and discern ways to live in peace and good will while still moving forward in common prayer and world service. Oh well, you know how unrealible and subjective dreams are.

I guess if I am going to say the creed in any good new conservative biblical orthodox traditional faith Anglican parish/congregation any time soon after the next Lambeth, I shouldn’t ever eat those particular pickles again.

Christina Rees seems to have gone all starry eyed over ++elect Schori... I wonder if her superlatives are based on fact and knowledge, or on campaigning zeal and fantasy ...

Dear drdanfee, Many of us have listened closely, know the liberal arguements and assumptions and, having understood, we DISAGREE with them.

Listening is not a process that can only end when we reach the liberal position - it is there to show due respect, to ensure adequate understanding and after that to come to a decision. It should also be two way - but much liberal 'listening' to orthodox believers seems to consist of nothing more than responses like "they're all just KKK-like bigots wanting to take away my freedoms" and "their theological arguements are just an excuse, and anyway my rights trump some elses theological convictions" etc etc. That is not listening - it is campaign hyperbole!

Christianity is a revealed religion based on historical facts surrounding the figure of Jesus Christ, The Son of God, The Lord and The Saviour. He appointed Apostles who founded a religion now known as Christianity. The most authentic and authoritative teachings that we have were decide by the early church and are contained in the Bible. Various other decisions were made at Councils and are contained in the Creeds and the writings of the church fathers etc.

Now you might not like what Christianity says about sexual behaviour and desires (all very narrowly constrained) it might not even suit my sexual desires either, but that is what was revealed and believed ever since the founding of the Church. To be explicit, sex with someone outside marriage, even thinking about it, is always seen as wrong. (NB I dont think that sex inside marriage is always good either - since it can be abusive, perverted, or become a "god" etc). And marriage is limited to people who you are not closely related to, and who have not been previously married (with limited exceptions). Sex with a person of the same sex, orgies, sex wth prostitutes, rape, sex as worship rituals, sex with animals etc etc are all condemned as serious sins that *must* be repented-of or, generally, "those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." And some are condemned as showing the degenerate nature of human societies. Interestingly there is at least one comment that some "received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion". Societies that live like this recieve judement even in his world - evidenced at the moment by the huge increase in sexually transmitted diseases (many serious, leading to infertility and even deaths).

If you don't like this you don't have to believe it, and you are free to think that we are seriously disguided, but you should at least try to acknowledge that it is the true Christian belief that many of us strive to live by - and that it requires us, not just *you* to restrain ourselves.

Dave continues to parrot the restrictive conservative position regarding sex - but never acknowledges the historic reality of a more healthy open sexuality in certain strains of Christianity nor the results of 150 years of scientific study of sexuality which clearly show the unhealthful effects of sexual bigotry. Conservatives always trump such arguments with the "true Christian belief" hammer, when there are a variety of Christianities and always have been. We can, however reach Common ground: monogamous sexuality - gay or straight (and please don't trot out the bestiality references you conservatives). As always, don't forget the basic Anglican call to consider matters rationally and not just rely on our culturally conditioned readings of scripture. Blogging these arguments over and over again is tedious, but this appears to be the 21st century way . . .so let us continue, with God's grace.

The Martyrdom of Volontary Abstinence gives Authority over the lay.

Yeah, we have heard that before. The Reformation rejected it.

Steven, you refer to the document signed by Archbishop Akinola as the "CAPA Letter." On what grounds do you call it that? How many persons have actually signed it? Whom does it actually represent?

I have raised this question twice on Kendall Harmon's blog, and received no answer. I'd like to raise it here, in hopes of an answer. It's a serious question. I'd like an answer.

Oh, and by the way, Dave: it's time you read up on current issues in US politics. That is, if you really have no idea why the Episcopal Church resolution you quoted above reads as it does, and you are not just trying to twist its meaning so you can score points of your own.

Davie - the last part of A095 directly addresses a proposed Constitutional Amendment which comes up about every election cycle - a couple of weeks ago is failed in the US Senate, and is likely to be voted on in the US House soon. I agree it is awkward language in the resolution - remember a Camel is said to be a tiger designed by a committee.

A Tiger? A Horse!

drdanfee

People have been LISTENING to liberal arguments for decades but they are flimsy and lack foundations so few agree....that is why the liberal churches have been shrinking and shrinking despite aiming to be "inclusive."

Byron,

"We can, however reach Common ground: monogamous sexuality - gay or straight"

Whether from a "conservative" or "liberal" reading, I don't see that either scripture, or reason, points necessarily to such a specific and severe restriction, at least for gay and lesbian individuals.

Your 150 years of science can tell us that monogamy doesn't come naturally to men. Perhaps monogamy should be a restriction on lesbian couples only.

Conservatives would be wise to note that the promotion of monogamy for Christians looking for same-sex sexual relationships is probably just a wedge, even if unintentionally so.

Charlotte:

I referred to it that way merely as a matter of convenience. It was posted by Simon. I commented. You raise an interesting issue if you intend to dispute whether it is truly representative of CAPA. However, whether or not it is currently and officially endorsed, I have no doubt it is generally reflective of what they will ultimately say. They're a conservative bunch, as you know.

Steven