I read ABC's comments with interest, I was glad that he noted it was an experiment to be prayed for.

Just quickly, my one concern is that liberals outside of the US do not seem to have been acknowledged and thus their needs not addressed.

That being the case, my concerns continue about a super organised group determined to expunge liberal forms of theology by cherry picking off unorganised opponents. I would thus welcome the continuing developments such as the Inclusive Church and similar activities. I don't see this needs to be a problem in a broad tent perspective. In a broad tent perspective, there can be an acknowledgement of "special interest" groups that might draw people from different parishes across the diocese to focus on a particular form of mission e.g. working in prisons, on the environment, helping children, protecting women, looking at justice. What has been unhealthy in some dioceses is that you are allowed to target different socioeocnomic groups - but only with the perspective of flattering "pure" males. So you work with gays in only in order to reform them, and if they can't be reformed you pray for their "dead" soul and expunge them lest they infect others.

Similarly, in theological development, there needs to be a robust development of the liberal interpretations. Otherwise the bible will become reduced to 300ish key passages (which is still a significant improvment on 200ish key passages); but way short of the full depth and breadth of the whole bible. There will also be the issue of "blinker thinking" which would lead to complete discounting of unpalatable ideas e.g. God has a feminine side; God encourages us striving to ideal behaviour and be in a full relationship all our lives, but acknowledges the parenting style that lets them go in the hope they will come back as a prodigal child; God does not replace covenants but adds to or clarifies covenants. (Which gets rid of the stupid idea that the Noahide or Mt Sinai or Ishmael covenants are null and void. If they are void, then the covenant with Jesus is also void because the interpretation that voids previous everlasting covenants ipso facto voids Jesus' covenant too.)

I bet the ABC wouldn't be so bloody opposed to litigation if someone tried to occupy and steal Canterbury Cathedral and Lambeth Palace. Butt out.

I wonder how an ultimatum can be gay...

Typical Williams-style response. Not acceptable, and if gay people are still stupid and naive enough to stay within Anglicanism,more fool them

Happily few do. Young gay people can;t be bothered with church homophobia and are managing quite well without it.

Bishop Katharine's statement seems to me a generous and considered one which does her great credit. I hope those of us on the "liberal" side will support her. What is needed is more persuasion and perseverance in the hope that change will come.

What if the HoB begins with a request that the primates who have interfered in the internal affairs of TEC apologize & return episcopal oversight to the duly constituted ordinaries of the dioceses by July 2007. If they fail to do this, we will acknowledge their claim that they are no longer in communion with TEC & all legal expenses incurred because of their uncanonical actions will be taken from our funding of the WWAC.

Secondly, the HoB will impose:
a permanent prohibition on the consent to the election to the episcopate of anyone who is not willing to affirm without qualification a willingness to vow to conform to the Constitutions and Canons of The Episcopal Church.

a moratorium until three months prior to the next Lambeth meeting on the consent to the election to the episcopate of anyone who is currently in a same-sex relationship

and likewise a moratorium of the authorization of rites for the blessings of same sex unions for the same time period.

The purpose of this second moratorium is make sure that the other provinces comply with the request of Lambeth that the church listen to the experience of persons with a same sex orientation. If the inquiries of the persons appointed by the Presiding Bishop in consultation with the Executive Committee determine that a province have made no sincere attempt at compliance, The Episcopal Church will acknowledge their claim that they are no longer in compliance with the counsel of the bishops of the WWAC & the bishops of TEC will not meet with them and our payment of the expenses of the Lambeth Conference will be withheld.

On the other hand, should the inquiries of the persons appointed by the Presiding Bishop in consultation with the Executive Committee determine that a province has made sincere efforts to listen to the experiences of persons with a same sex orientation, The Episcopal Church will continue the moratoria for a further period until meetings of the ACC & the Primates have had an opportunity to discuss the results of these conversations.

Today I was reading "Undergoing God by James Alison & found the following painfully pertinent (BTW -- Alison is English -- former Dominican -- RC priest -- gay):

from Chapter twelve, "yes, but is it true?" p. 189-190

"In the first place, I would like to say this to you: don't allow yourselves to be provoked. This sort of document and the language it uses hits us in the gut, and then we find ourselves reacting in ways which are not reasoned. In fact, part of the provocative nature of such documents is that they tend to take people out of their capacity for reasoned response, and then we lose it and any subsequent argument becomes heated and hateful. Let us take a little time to stand back from the intervention and allow ourselves to be set free from being knee-jerked into reaction."

p. 191-192

"So the only question before us is: 'Is it true that lesbian and gay people are defective heterosexuals?' According to how we answer this question, everything else follows. I myself, and I guess all of us here, take it for granted that it is not true, and that we are discovering that there is just such a thing as being lesbian or gay, in itself a matter of no great significance, something capable of properly human flourishing or of dehumanizing corruption -- you can be a good gay man or a bad gay man, but it is not that you are gay, but how you live your life including how you develop and exercise being gay, that determines your goodness and badness. In this I am simply in disagreement with the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith on a question of truth."

I am very, very, very happy to hear PB KJS speaking out.

What we need to hear is just how refraining from critical inquiry into the legacy negative positions, and just how maintaining traditional Status Quo negatives, will honor and nourish all believers by avoiding any opportunity to ask overt questions or ignoring any opportunity to attend to the daily good, decent lives of people who are not in fact straight.

This is clearly legacy advice in a way.

It has us turning to the runaway slave, or the woman who mistakenly thought she could manage medical school, or the Gentile believer upon whom the Holy Ghost fell without permission ahead of time from the council at Jerusalem - and telling them that the measure of their vocation and pilgrimage is to maintain the Status Quo so that other believers will not be confused by the change their calling represents in reality.

The most crucial discernment is not about whose conscience is weak, but about whose conscience is holding all the oxygen in our Anglican rooms hostage.

Does a return to entirely legacy queer reticence, with us shyly withdrawing back into silence and invisibility and the nonverbal apologetics of our various historic Anglican closets, really help the traditional believers grow? By maintaining the negative Status Quo? Please explain, describe, imagine.

I still don't quite get it.

A flat earth model of me and my partner and our children is a flat earth model is a flat earth model is a flat earth model.

Treating the dilemma via an analogy with weak/strong (closed/open? final/provisional?) judgment calls of varied conscience mistakes the sheer factualities of good, decent, daily queer life, love, work, and parenting.

Those facts do not actually disappear, just because we all agree never to mention them in public as Anglicans, ever again, so that certain traditionalistic believers will not have occasion to be upset with us.

I know how positively I am living as an Out queer fellow. My biological family knows. My overlapping faith families know.

How does keeping silent about it, and using powerful Anglican institutional means of erasing it proclaim, contrarily, God's goodness? Through which Being Out, Partnered, and Parenting has been called into being?

Fasting from justice? Strange idea.

++Katherine's comment is pastorally brilliant, as she often is, but the question is whether she can convince the rest of our church that the fast is wise. At the same time, it remains to be seen whether the Akinolites will stop their intrusion into the US. Also, the withdrawal of legal proceedings against those who have removed themselves from the Episcopal Church could set a precedent in law that reduces TEC's property rights should this experiment fail. Risky all 'round, but it was probably the best ++Katherine could get.

ABC, Primates, please here/read this:

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

This represents the exact number of LGBT people that I KNOW PERSONALLY who have been harmed/murdered because of YOUR inability to face Gods reality (or simply because you worship at the alter of exclusion, fear and hate) and say no to BIGOTS like +Akinola of Nigeria.

You are cowards.

The problem w/ ++KJS's "fasting/forebearing---for a season" model (as biblical, traditional and reasonable as it *sounds*)...

...is that LGBT Episcopalians (and our allies, at home and abroad) KEEP ON FASTING AND FOREBEARING, season after season, and have precisely *bupkuss* to show for it.

* Remember how Jeffrey John+ promised celibacy? What did he get for that? (His appointment withdrawn, and his name humiliated!)

* Remember how TEC *didn't* authorize SSBs at GC '03? What did we get for that? (Windsor!)

* Remember the episcopal-consecration moratorium before the last GC? What did we get for that? (Dromantine! And border-crossings!)

* For heaven's sake, remember B033 (and submitting to outrageous machinations that made it happen)? What did we get for that?

---This outrageous "Communique" (read "Ultimatum"), and MORE border-crossings, with NO promise that they won't continue!

We fast, and the ConEvs feast---ON us!

Having said ALL that...

...Yes, ++Katharine: we can fast, yet AGAIN.

For a *season* (date-certain!) ONLY.

Then after Lent, comes the Pascal Season. With our Risen Lord as LIBERATOR, it's time to tell Ol' Pharaoh (i.e., Anglican Primates): "LET MY PEOPLE GO!"

Merseymike wrote: "Typical Williams-style response. Not acceptable, and if gay people are still stupid and naive enough to stay within Anglicanism,more fool them"

Dear Merseymike, I can't imagine why people who choose to live in same-sex sexual partnerships (or just have uncommitted sexual encounters) should want to stay in the Church either.. unless they are hoping to come nearer to God, and are prepared to countenance offering up their sexuality at some point! There *are* quite a lot gay people in the Church, even in very conservative churches, who have done just that (or are aiming to).. It is not homophobic to try to live by Christian behavioural standards..

Bishops Jefferts Schori gives a truly Christian response.

Tanzania is not just carnevale, though; it also tastes of ashes.

The epiphanal tableau that will remain in memory is of a group of bullying males forcing a woman, in tears, to sacrifice her proteges.

Title: "Schori's Choice".

In the sixteenth century the Jesuits decided to stop accepting people of impure, i.e. Jewish, blood into their ranks. At the meeting where this was decided, were any Jewish voices heard? People of Jewish blood would have been thought of as pushy lobbyists, and holding the line against their contamination seemed normal. Now Jesuits wince when they recall that. And their action then stands condemned by the whole Jewish people, so often the object of Christian fear and hatred.

In the same way the Primates of the Anglican Church stand condemned today by all gay couples -- who have miraculously reached out to each other in face of millennia of false teaching and hatred, in face of social and church disapproval, in face of the self-doubt and despair injected into their hearts by entenched bigotry -- and they stand condemned as well by the much more numerous ranks of gay men and women whose lives have been blighted and poisoned by their falsehoods.

True, the Primates hold their views in good conscience. But they have put a bureaucratic agenda in place of listening to live human beings, and they have shown an utter lack of Pauline liberty and openness, parrhesia and eleutheria. They have failed to discern a prophetic moment in the development of Christian understanding.

Such failure does not go unpunished: stagnancy and decay are the lot of churches that stifle the Spirit. That stagnancy has been palpable in the Vatican since it turned its back on Vatican II, and it is spreading like gangrene in the Anglican Communion today.

Joseph O'Leary - you do realise that what the Jesuits were doing was going against scripture..........but now you want the AC to make the same mistake they did

Some of the debate has become bogged down in whether or not homosexuality is nature or nurture, whether it is a corruption or natural.

After God had made it clear that I was going to backed up, even though I had told God in advance of the Nias Easter earthquake that if God kept confirming me that is what I was going to do, I then trusted that God wanted me to help GLBTs out. So I went looking through the bible for the passages that are helpful.

The passages in the bible relating to eunuchs are useful. e.g. Isaiah 39:7-8 (= 2 Kings 20:18-19) alludes that for peace to happen, some of descendants will be eunuchs (or defective). Then there are Jesus' words in Matthew 19:12 "For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men... The one who can accept this should accept it.”

It doesn't matter if GLBTs are "normal" or "afflicted", "human" or "beasts": they are still under God's grace.

On a personal level, I wish that every parent could have the perfect child born without defect and never blemished by the misfortunes of life, and that in turn they could have their own perfect children who grow up in perfect safety. But the world is not like that. Not all children are perfect and we grow up having to life with the limitations that life imposes upon us.

Thus are we as Job, who loves God, for better or for worse? Or are we opportunistic flatterers who only want God for the good things and rebel against accepting the hard lessons? Do we worship God with a subagenda that God must then bless us with prosperity and good health? Or do we worship and love God unconditionally?

Unconditional love means for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer.

If we marry ourselves to each other (and God) with the expectation of the perfect life (and children) then what do we do when we are confronted with the disabled child or the adverse circumstances? Do we walk away becausse we "deserve better" or do we accept the burden imposed upon us and seek to see what God wanted us to learn from loving our diabled child or afflicted spouse?

What would God perceive to be as a more genuine and/or altruistic love?

"Joseph O'Leary - you do realise that what the Jesuits were doing was going against scripture..........but now you want the AC to make the same mistake they did".

I doubt if any Jesuit at the time would have thought even for a moment that what they did was against Scripture.

Many Anglicans, on the other hand, see the acceptance of gays and of loving relationships between gays as an expression of the highest values of Scripture.

Those who balk at this could also balk at our current friendship with Jews, for the same reason: biblical fundamentalism. "You are of your father the devil" and "His blood be upon us and upon our children" could just as easily be used to bolster antisemitism as other texts are to bolster homophobia.

Excellent writing Joseph O'Leary . Thank you ! You done good !

"...is that LGBT Episcopalians (and our allies, at home and abroad) KEEP ON FASTING AND FOREBEARING, season after season, and have precisely *bupkuss* to show for it." (JCF)

speaking of the Jews, it's amazing how many Yiddish words have come into the American English lexicon. I'm not sure if they're understood by Brits, and we surely have readers from other parts of the world here, so bupkuss is (my dictionary says) actually spelled bupkis: noun (informal), nothing at all, eg you know bupkis about fundraising.

as for John Thorpe's comment: "Fasting from justice? Strange idea."

let's see it instead as a fast from hasty action. right now, tempers are high. let's take Lent off, and pray on this.

And then, let's remember: this is NOT just about the Episcopal Church. we have responsibilities to people worldwide. remember +Marc Andrus (Bishop of California):

"... we are all part of the world, and the kindom of God is like a net laid over that same world. All on the earth are connected by this net, whether perceived or not. Actions of justice and injustice reverberate throughout the whole, promoting either integrity, remembering, and shalom, or diabolic isolation."

Before we do anything, TEC should consult with our allies worldwide. Liberal churches in Canada and England, moderates in South Africa, LGBT people everywhere. It may be that our best course action is to leave the AC completely, or to remain in impaired communion, or to stay. Let us take a fast from jumping to conclusions.

I find ironic that I'm preaching deliberation; I'm normally quite a hothead. Read my scathing letter (on my blog) to Abp John Chew of SE Asia, one of the enablers of the schismatics, if you doubt for some reason that I'm on your side.

PS. to NP: TEC does not need to go global. Progressive believers are already dispersed throughout the planet, including many other Anglican provinces. What we probably may do, unless institutionally prevented by conservative prejudice and/or force, is get quite a bit more organized in how we continue to support and link with one another. Already Changing Attitude is connecting with Nigerian citizens who are not straight. And progressive folks in other provinces have been put on high notice that they are included among the conservative target groups for purging.

As realignment campaign pressures demonstrate: Progressive believers took their historic Anglican inclusion too much for granted, for entirely too long. God willing and the creek don't rise, we shall take that lesson more consistently to heart, no? And you realignment folks must pride yourselves on being the teachers in that regard.

If conservatives wish to singlehandedly proclaim and enforce an end to the Enlightenment as it has evolved into Modernity; then we can hear it, clearly, and probably must respond.

Still yet: Following Jesus in today's worlds is much more than just mounting a progressive reply to realignment conservative campaigns. The other lesson realignment pressures teach us: Being conservative is not all that important, really, and so it must not consume all available church or world resources, despite its claims that God has so willed it to be.

why are liberals always so scared to launch a liberal church?

clearly, there is a lack of confidence in your minority view or you would not be in the same organisation with Akinola after all that has happened since 1998 and 2003 - and even now KJS thinking about how you can stay!

For once I agree with NP.

I find it thoroughly offensive that I am expected to be in communion with those who hold the views of Akinola.

Its about time that liberals recognised that the Anglican Communion cannot be reformed. It is simply rotten. We need to do something new - outside the malevolent influence of conservative Christianity.

NP wrote: "why are liberals always so scared to launch a liberal church?"

Dear NP, I don't think that they have the courage to try it any more. Most liberal churches have failed and are emptied out. And if we didn't have the constraint of a liberal elite we would probably grow so rapidly it would show up how much of a hindrance they were!

I predict that, if TEC goes independent, it will be smaller than the new Anglican province of America within 5 years, nearly die out and eventually becomes more christian again.

"It is not homophobic to try to live by Christian behavioural standards.."

You are absolutely free to live however you please, dear Dave - for yourself.

"You are absolutely free to live however you please, dear Dave - for yourself."

But not in Sweden, apparently, as you'll be arrested if you criticize homosexuality from the pulpit. Same thing's happening in Canada, & seems to be coming to Britain - the police will visit you (remember the bishop of Chester).

Well we - believers and unbelievers alike? - are starting to ask the question: IF we keep preaching a God who is violent, are we implicitly imaging violence as a sacred act? Can we continue to valorize a violent God without wanting to be violent in that God's footsteps? If the first divine perception/reaction to sin is holy violence, only later moderated by divine mercy or compassion or forgiveness, can we avoid having just that deep spiritual or theological perception shape us, just as deeply as we affirm it reveals God to us?

This would have been almost inconceivable to any ancient near eastern citizen or slave, since the state and the community and the known world was in that era, almost exclusively, formed by violence of one sort of another. Even relations between men and women were mainly beholden to strong/weak categorizations - See Gray Temple's discussion of ancient near eastern sex/gender roles. And follow up on his cites in the scholarship.

For other who wish to discern an anthropological-symbolic approach to violence as a fundamental paradigm in culture, see Rene Girard's work on scapegoating and the victim as a fundamental human means of forming committed, incarnational, long-lasting intimacy via deep explusion and deep targeting energies. These are sometimes almost of near-mystical intensities, as a casual read through almost any of the conservative realignment blogs and articles will show. People seem deeply offended and threatened that queer folks should openly exist, outside of their categorical and definitive say.

Also see James Alison's follow up work as a gay, ordained Roman Catholic theologian. (At:http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/ )