more about Canada and the USA
We carried our own correspondent’s account of a recent Toronto meeting. Now the Diocese of Toronto has published this account by Carolyn Purden. Here’s a portion:
The Primate painted a picture of deep division at the gathering in Northern Ireland. Among the 38 Primates attending the gathering, a group of about a dozen from the global South shunned the North Americans (Archbishop Hutchison and Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A.).
These Primates, who were primarily from Africa and Latin America (the Southern Cone), petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, not to hold a daily eucharist at the gathering. When the eucharist was held with a chaplain presiding, they would not attend. When the Archbishop of Canterbury invited all to attend the final eucharist at which he would preside, they refused to attend.
The same group was also involved in leaking information from the Primates’ sessions, which are held “in camera,” to the media. The final report of the meeting was released a day early because an earlier and erroneous version had appeared in the press.
Archbishop Hutchison spoke with anger and passion about these same bishops who, without notice, suddenly abandoned the Primates’ meeting for an afternoon and evening. “The Archbishop of Canterbury left the chair,” he said. “The Africans had decided to meet off site and had taken others with them.” The 16 bishops remaining had received no prior notice from Archbishop Williams or the General Secretary of the Anglican Communion that this was taking place. “It seemed our agenda was hijacked and put in the hands of others,” the Primate said.
Today Bill Bowder in the Church Times reports that English can’t throw stones – Hutchison:
THE CANADIAN PRIMATE, the Most Revd Andrew Hutchison, has suggested that the blessing of same-sex relationships is much more prevalent in England than in Canada.
Speaking on Tuesday afternoon, Archbishop Hutchison said: “There are many priests conducting same-sex blessings sub rosa with the full knowledge of the bishops, but without any sanctions. This is going on in the Church of England, unannounced, all the time.
“I know of one report from one bishop in England that this is now done in 14 dioceses. From a report by the English House of Bishops, it is quite clear that they know this.
“For the Church of England to do any posturing about Canada being out of order is frankly ridiculous.”
By contrast, he said, “In Canada, if a priest gives an informal blessing, and I know of two instances, that priest is disciplined by his bishop immediately. That does not happen in England, where you have a much bigger problem. A little transparency would be helpful.”
This story also reports the opinions of Nigel McCulloch on the ECUSA HoB:
16 CommentsThe Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, attended the US House of Bishops’ meeting in Texas ( News, 18 March). He said this week that he was “realistically optimistic” about the chances that the Anglican Communion would hold together.
He said that the US bishops had been “stunned” by the Primates’ reaction in February. He said he had received a standing ovation, after telling the bishops of the seriousness of the issue. “I said that this decision would have its knock-on effect on other churches, including the Church of England.”
Bishop McCulloch felt that the US bishops at their meeting had a very deep sense of communion with Anglicans across the world. “They also valued their sense of personal communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
The bishops’ agreement not to consecrate any more bishops for 18 months was “a costly thing”, he said.
more on Scotland
The Scottish Episcopal Church has itself issued a press release Statement regarding today’s media reports – 23rd March 2005.
There has today been wide reporting of a statement issued by the College of Bishops in response to the Anglican Communion’s Windsor Report and the meeting of the Anglican Primates in February. Press interest has focused on one small part of the overall statement.
The statement was in fact issued on 4 March. It acknowledges the difficulties currently faced by the Anglican Communion and expresses the Bishops’ commitment to work to preserve the unity of the Communion. In particular, the Bishops commit themselves to facilitating discussion “across difference”, recognising that within the Scottish Episcopal Church there are both those of gay and lesbian orientation and those whose theology and stance would be critical of attitudes to sexuality other than abstinence outside marriage. The Bishops “rejoice in both” and express the hope that the energy of both groups can be harnessed to serve the Church and the proclamation of the gospel.
In referring to the fact that there is no current bar to ordination for someone who might be in a close relationship with a member of the same sex, the Bishops were simply stating the present position as it applies in Scotland where, unlike some other provinces, no motion discouraging such ordinations has ever been passed by our General Synod. Consequently, the statement earlier this month does not represent any change in policy on the part of the Bishops.
The Glasgow Herald continues with Split in Anglican community over gay priests.
The Scotsman has Evangelicals warn of ‘battle for Church’s soul’ in gay row.
Cedric Pulford of ENI filed Anglican bishops in Scotland say gays not barred from priesthood.
Jonathan Petre in the Telegraph has Scottish bishops declare support for gay priests.
Ruth Gledhill in The Times has Scottish bishops risk split by supporting gay priests and there is a second article ‘I feel proud of my Church today’.
In the Guardian Stephen Bates has Scottish church reignites gay row which follows a late afternoon report on the website yesterday: Scottish church declares support for gay priests.
The CEN reported Scots on collision course with Communion.
0 CommentsScotland in the news
There’s a flurry of reports about the Scottish Episcopal Church. These relate to a statement by its College of Bishops that was published on 4 March. It was belatedly reported here on 16 March.
Yesterday, the first newspaper report was in the Herald and late last night the Scottish Press Association caught up.
Today we have all these:
BBC Scottish church backs gay priests and Can Anglican rift be resolved? (public comments invited) and Church risks censure over gay priests by Robert Pigott
The Times Scottish bishops back gay clergy and Timeline: gay clergy row and Ruth Gledhill on Analysis: Anglican disarray.
Telegraph Scottish church gives backing to gay priests
Press Association via the Independent Gays can be priests, say Scottish bishops (this is a fuller report than earlier versions by Jude Sheerin)
Reuters Scottish church backs gay priests
And here is the radio segment ( 7.5 minutes Real Audio required) from the BBC Today Programme in which
The Bishop of Aberdeen, Bruce Cameron, and the Rector of St Silas, Glasgow, Reverend David McCarthy, discuss homosexuals becoming priests.
Here also is an earlier radio report on the same programme by Robert Pigott (2 minutes)
Update
Here is a later Scottish Press Association report Scottish Stance on Gay Priests Divides Church
Uganda report
Following up on the interview with Henry Orombi mentioned in the previous item, the Guardian reports today that African bishop spurns Aids cash from pro-gay diocese. This involves the Diocese of South Rwenzori and Bishop Jackson Nzerebende Tembo.
The letter referenced in the article is here.
Correspondents on the US website were divided over whether the bishop’s action was in accordance with Christian principles.
But that’s not all.
You will recall what Henry Orombi said recently in No debate on gays, says Orombi
By Jude Etyang and Jude Katende
THE Church of Uganda (COU) yesterday announced that it upholds the biblical position on sexuality, with no room for homosexuality.
The Archbishop of the COU, Henry Luke Orombi, ruled out any debate with homosexuals, saying they either repent and adopt the biblical teaching of sex or go their way.
“I do not think there is a debate. When God gives his word, you either take it or leave it. We either agree with God or go our own way,” Orombi told journalists he called to brief on the Anglican leaders’ meeting which resolved to suspend the American and Canadian Churches from the Anglican communion because of consecrating gay Church leaders.
Orombi said, “The Bible defines marriage as between one man and one woman. The Episcopal Church of America hasn’t followed the biblical teachings on sexuality and that’s why we’re against them.”
Then New Vision carried this letter Church Should Listen to Homosexuals
Bishop Christopher Senyonjo
KampalaOn March 1 your paper reported that the Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi likened the views of both proponents and opponents of homosexuality to views of any other people and said the Church could only find a solution by listening to them.
Let the Church of Uganda follow the Archbishop’s vision. The Church should listen to the silenced, perplexed, intimidated, abused and marginalised homosexuals in our midst. They are not only in institutions of learning but are everywhere (though in minority) rubbing shoulders with the heterosexuals.
Dialoguing with them is in agreement with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And today, we have Church Warns Bishop Senyonjo of Arraignment:
Jude Etyang
KampalaTHE Church of Uganda will arraign gay sympathiser Bishop Christopher Senyonjo before the provincial tribunal if he continues to ask the church to soften its position on homosexuality.
The Provincial Secretary Church of Uganda, the Rev. Aaron Mwesigye Kafundizeki, sounded the warning after Senyonjo wrote in the New Vision saying, “the Church should listen to the silenced, perplexed, intimidated, abused and marginalised homosexuals.”
Senyonjo suggested that the church should have dialogue with homosexuals.
“Bishop Senyonjo and company will soon face a Church of Uganda Provincial tribunal if he continues to provoke the Church of Uganda leadership and the entire Anglican Communion,” Kafundizeki said.
Update
According to titusonenine on Thursday, this story has been denied by Church of Uganda Provincial Secretary, the Rev. Aaron Mwesigye Kafundizeki who issued this statement:
16 CommentsIn the 21st March 2005 issue of The New Vision newspaper (p. 3), reporter Jude Etyang incorrectly reported that the Church of Uganda “will arraign gay sympathiser Bishop Christopher Senyonjo before the provincial tribunal if he continues to ask the church to soften its position on homosexuality.” The Church of Uganda has not initiated any ecclesiastical discipline against Senyonjo and calls upon The New Vision to publicly apologize to the Church of Uganda and Senyonjo for implying that it has.
The Church of Uganda continues to be distressed that a retired bishop, namely, Christopher Senyonjo, persists in openly misrepresenting the teachings of Scripture. In so doing, he is misleading the public on the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the historic teaching of the church on human sexuality that the Church of Uganda upholds. When he speaks, he speaks only for himself, and has no authority to speak on behalf of the church.
On human sexuality, the Bible is very clear and, as Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi has previously stated, the good news that we in the Church of Uganda joyfully proclaim is this: “Sexual intimacy is reserved for a husband and wife in a lifelong, heterosexual, monogamous marriage. We are committed to offering the gospel to those struggling with homosexuality. For us in Uganda pastoral care means leading people into the fully transformed life that Jesus promises to those who call upon his name.”
views around the Communion
Each of these articles deserves reading in full.
Beliefnet’s Deborah Caldwell has an interview with Frank Griswold which you can read at The Battle Rages On.
In some of the Episcopal Church-related blogs you were quoted last week as singling out six Americans for having “detrimentally influenced” church proceedings. What did you say?
What I said was that there were notices put on the tables in Ireland describing “acts of oppression” within the Episcopal church that were highly inaccurate and I got up and said, “This kind of information is untrue. It’s taking facts and slanting things from a particular perspective. And I said, ‘In scripture Jesus tells us the devil is the father of lies, and lying is his nature.’” Therefore this kind of material is really evil. And I said my sense is—and I didn’t assign it to any particular people—I feel that there is evil pressing on this meeting. And I said that any one of us can be caught in patterns of evil. Any one of us can misrepresent things to our own advantage.
I repeated it last week in Texas to the House of Bishops when I described my participation in the primates meeting. And I said there were several Americans in the hotel in Newry, including [Pittsburgh Bishop Robert William] Duncan—but I made no connection between those people and the piece of paper I was describing, and the misrepresentations on it…
Do you think the liberal movement within the Anglican Communion will win this battle?
Yes. When I look at the history of the church, I can see all kinds of dreadful moments when something was trying to happen, and it was just too much for the system at that moment. I look at Galileo. Teachings that supposedly were heretical and contrary to what everyone “knew was true” over time shifted or reversed themselves—and our truth was enlarged.
The other thing I would say is, if I may quote Jesus in the Gospel of John: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; however, when the spirit of truth comes, the spirit will take from what is mine and reveal it to you.” This says to me that the truth in some way is always unfolding and being enlarged.
I find it curious that with no strain or difficulty we accept the fact that we’re learning more about the world we live in; we’re learning more about the human person—physiology, psychology, all of it. Why is it that we can expand our consciousness in every area other than sexuality, but when we come to sexuality everything has to be fully revealed and contained in scripture by one particular reading? You might ask why God didn’t just tell us in the beginning? For some reason God didn’t, and we have to grow into truth. And I think we’re always growing into truth. I look at the ordination of women in the Episcopal tradition; that was a break if you looked at it in terms of the past, but if you accept truth as organic and ongoing then you can say, “This is an enlargement of our understanding of ministry rather than a hideous break with what has been.”
Anglicans Online has an article by Pierre Whalon entitled The Ghost of Bishop Pike, Revisited.
…Furthermore, we are talking about the General Convention. Our system of government looks like the American secular politics we are so familiar with, but in fact, it differs significantly. The Constitution of the United States calls for a strong central government, while the Episcopal Church Constitution explicitly prevents one. We are a confederation of dioceses, essentially the same structure since Bishop William White designed our polity in the 18th century.
As a result, legislation is rarely binding upon all the dioceses. General Convention’s resolutions are non-binding, unless they change the constitution or canons, including revising the Prayer Book. Using the General Convention to effect change in the church is an ungainly process at best, not only because the balance of the Houses of Deputies and Bishops is not offset by a strong president and independent judiciary, but also because of the problems inherent to a body of nearly one thousand voting members.
And when it comes about, change by legislation creates a division between winners and losers. As a result, following a trend in secular politics, lots of interest groups have formed to influence the Convention in one direction or another. As the decisions of Convention have evolved, so have these groups, clustering together along the political spectrum.
These clusters of groups at either end of the spectrum curiously resemble each other. Their rhetorical style is similar, inventing lexicons of invective like “heterosexist” and “homoerotic.” They organize fundraisers to pay for campaigns to lobby Convention. Each, sadly, has invited the other to leave the church. Now since Lambeth 1998, both are involved in a struggle to persuade the larger Communion that theirs has the right to be considered the “real” American Anglican province. Our side must win and the other side must lose, even if we must involve the whole world. In style, at least, they are so similar…
Dale Rye who is a lawyer in Texas has written On Thinking with the Church.
…That brings us to the crucial reason: my personal opinion is irrelevant…
In the case of Anglicanism, such matters are traditionally decided through the painstaking process of collective discernment described by Hooker, among others. This method expresses the Anglican doctrine of the church, our ecclesiology. Decisions are not imposed from outside or above. Instead, we engage in a Socratic dialogue that incorporates persons from every order of ministry and every jurisdiction (both all those linked vertically in a hierarchy and all those linked horizontally in communion). We ground our discussions on scripture, but we also give a role to common sense, both the historical common sense we call tradition and the contemporary common sense we call the consent of the faithful. Eventually, we either come to an agreement that defines the Anglican position on an issue and that forces those who cannot conscientiously live with the agreement out, like the 17th century Recusants and Separatists, or we agree to disagree while remaining in fellowship, like the Puritans and Arminians.
Some of the differences that Anglicans have agreed to live with hardly qualify as unimportant. The discrepancy since the 1840s between High and Low Church dogmas on the means of grace goes well outside the historical scope of tolerable adiaphora; they diverge as widely as Luther or Calvin and the Council of Trent. Except that both sides agree that the question is essential to salvation, their answers are incompatible and cannot both be true. Nevertheless, since the Church (my church, which is neither Lutheran nor Roman Catholic) has declined to condemn either view, my personal opinion that one side or the other is a heterodox betrayal of the Gospel is irrelevant. In this, as in all things, a loyal Christian submits his judgment to the authority of the Church.
That is why the process issue and the question of polity are so important to those of us who find ourselves in the middle of the sexuality dispute. We are anxious to believe as the Church teaches, but who has the human authority under God to teach in the name of the Church? What are we to do when our rector says “yes,” our bishop says “no,” our national church says “yes,” and the Primates’ Meeting says “no?” Anglicans have been lucky enough for 450 years to avoid this sort of divided loyalty (except perhaps during the English Civil War). That luck has enabled us to “muddle through” without ever facing the issue of who has the final authority to speak for our church during a dispute between two—or more—organs of the body, all of whose oversight we would normally heed.
The original Art. XXXVII declared that national churches should be free of foreign jurisdiction. Whatever Henry VIII’s motivation, subsequent Anglicans made this a theological principle. Men like Jewel and Hooker argued from the New Testament that each distinct cultural and political society should have its own church under native leadership responsive to their community’s needs. That is why the Church of Scotland could choose to be Presbyterian, while the Church of England remained Episcopalian, and why everyone took it for granted that there would be an autonomous Episcopal Church in the USA. As John Henry Newman insisted—both before and after his conversion—if the Anglican divines were wrong on this point there is no excuse for separation from Rome. The long-standing consensus was plainly stated by all the Lambeth Conferences from 1868 to 1988: any structures beyond the national churches (barring a genuinely ecumenical council) were only consultative, not authoritative.
Andrew Hutchison was interviewed in the Canadian Anglican Journal Primates call for breathing space.
In a candid interview with Anglican Journal, Archbishop Hutchison said he was disappointed with the boycott of the eucharist by some primates as well as with a “failure of leadership” on the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury. On one occasion some delegates were not informed that a number of primates would not be able to attend the meeting because they were having a dinner party with some conservative U.S. Episcopalians who had been monitoring the meeting from the nearby village of Newry. “I think when primates come together to do their business they should be permitted to do that, without outside interference,” he said. “There was a feeling that we (primates) were not fully in control of our agenda.”
Archbishop Williams had known about the party but did not try to stop it, he said. “Virtually nothing was done about it except that following the exodus of those people, (he) did apologize to the whole plenary session and did state how inappropriate that had been.”
There were also moments, he said, when he was profoundly disappointed as some primates glossed over their own provinces’ struggles with the issue of homosexuality. Fourteen dioceses in the Church of England regularly allow blessings, he said, and “in one diocese alone, I suspect there have been more blessings than have ever occurred in Canada,” he said. “But it’s all done unofficially, in the shadows rather than out in the light of day. So there is a profound sort of hypocrisy here.”
The Sydney Morning Herald interviewed Henry Orombi in African Anglicans flex their conservative muscle.
4 Comments“The language is flowery, the meaning is … we suspend you,” Orombi told the Herald yesterday. “But it’s put in the most beautiful language that the English would like to put it. It’s a polite way of saying, ‘please leave the room’.”
Orombi speaks from a position of growing influence, having helped channel discontent among conservative dioceses mainly in Africa and Asia into action against the US church that even the Archbishop of Canterbury was forced to accept with an air of resignation.
He also comes from a position of numerical strength, with the Anglican churches of Uganda and Nigeria making up almost 50 per cent of the world’s Anglicans.
As Orombi views it, it’s the US church and other Anglican liberals that are on the outside looking in. Anglican conservatives are mobilising worldwide, marking a return to the purity of biblical teaching and breaking free of the strictures of denominational consensus…
But there can be no reconciliation without the liberal North Americans repenting – and that means abandoning the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson.
“If Gene Robinson is going to the next Lambeth [conference] then we aren’t going, and if we don’t go there is no Lambeth.”
Robinson’s sin is to be openly gay. While progressives argue a church tradition of inclusiveness, Orombi has taken a hard line on gay issues. In Uganda, homosexuality is a crime punishable by life imprisonment.
Homosexuality, the archbishop says, contravenes Biblical teachings that go back to the first God-sanctified man-and-woman union of Adam and Eve, and are reinforced in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the words of the apostle Paul. It was a “misuse of sexual organs” as God designed them, and society’s “stamp of approval doesn’t make it normal”.
But a Melbourne Anglican, Dr Muriel Porter, said yesterday that the “second-order” issue of homosexuality should not govern who is acceptable to the worldwide Anglican faith and it was time for “good people” in the church to speak out…
“I would like to ask the Archbishop of Uganda and his church if they have launched an all-out offensive against his Government to change the law so that homosexual people are not facing life imprisonment,” Porter says. “That is the very least they should be doing if they are requiring the US church to take action against Gene Robinson.”
Updating the Sex Discrimination Act
On 7 March the Department of Trade and Industry published a consultation document and draft regulations to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SDA) in order to bring it into line with the Equal Treatment Directive which comes into force in October. Amongst many other changes the proposals will alter the circumstances in which sex discrimination is legal in the Church of England.
The most important consultation documents can be downloaded from the website of the DTI’s Women and Equality Unit.
consultation document
executive summary
draft regulations
These and other documents are linked from here including the response form. Unfortunately this Word document uses the font Univers55; if you do not have this font installed on your computer you might find the document unintelligible. The consultation period ends on 31 May 2005.
The proposed changes include the repeal of section 6 of the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure 1993. The DTI view is that this section is too widely drawn. In its place a new section 19 of the SDA would still allow discrimination in certain circumstances, and would be applied equally to all religious bodies.
General Synod members have been sent a paper outlining how the proposed changes will affect the Church of England, and giving the text of the proposed new section 19 of the SDA. I have copied this paper below the fold.
0 CommentsUgley Puritans – update
A correspondent reports from the Chelmsford diocesan synod meeting held last Saturday:
15 CommentsAnswering questions at the Diocesan Synod, John Gladwin told the dissidents who have declared themselves to be “out of communion with him”, that theirs was the only letter of complaint that he had received, but that he had also received 130 letters and messages of appreciation and support.
In reply to their complaint that he had signed the letter as Bishop of Chelmsford without any synodical support for doing so, he answered to the effect that he is the Bishop of Chelmsford and people really have to come to terms with that – to loud and prolonged applause from the synod, thereby signifying that he did have the synod’s support should he have needed it. He also said that the Six Bishops’ letter was entirely in accord with the Dromantine Communiqué and that had been checked at the highest level.
After the spontaneous applause following his robust defence of his position as Bishop of the Diocese, a synod member even cheekily asked in a supplementary – would it be appropriate for this synod to further demonstrate its support for the Bishop with another round of applause – to more applause.
The dissidents had a rather poor time of it, the more so as the Bishop kept saying that he welcomed dialogue with the group, would be replying to their letter and would continue to meet with them.
religion and politics
Rowan Williams expresses his opinion on abortion today in the Sunday Times: People are starting to realise we can’t go on as we are and a related news story is Williams calls for abortion review.
There is also a BBC report about this Williams urges debate on abortion. The original article begins:
For a large majority of Christians — not only Roman Catholics, and including this writer — it is impossible to regard abortion as anything other than the deliberate termination of a human life. Whatever other issues enter into the often anguished decisions concerning particular cases, they want this dimension to be taken seriously.
Equally, though, for a large majority of Christians this is a view which they know they have to persuade others about, and recognise is not taken for granted in our society. The idea that raising the issues here is the first step towards a theocratic tyranny or a capitulation to some neanderthal Christian right is alarmist nonsense.
One of the confusions that has arisen in the past week is the idea that we are somehow going to be swept up into a British rerun of the US election of 2004, with a moral conservative panic dictating votes. It’s far from clear that this is what happened in America; and even if it were, we are a long way from any comparable situation here…
Last Friday in the Guardian Giles Fraser and William Whyte wrote Don’t hand religion to the right.
For decades, the political class on this side of the Atlantic has prided itself on the absence of religious culture wars. The obsession with abortion, gay marriage and obscenity, the alliance between the secular and religious right – these are peculiarly American pathologies. It couldn’t happen here. After all, we’re just not religious enough.
Except it does seem to be happening here. In making abortion an election issue, Michael Howard has prompted the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, pointedly to warn against assuming “that Catholics would be more in support of the Labour party”. Elsewhere, the Christian right targets the BBC, and the Church of England is being colonised by homophobic evangelicals with broad smiles and loads of PR savvy. No wonder the cogs are whirring at Conservative central office on how best to exploit the voting power of religion…
The Observer today has a Focus: The religious right feature which includes this article by Jamie Doward and Gaby Hinsliff Who would Jesus vote for? with the strapline:
As abortion and religious censorship move up the pre-election agenda, evangelical pressure groups are seizing the chance to exercise increasing influence over mainstream British politics
Related news story Blair seeks the Christian vote
And yesterday the Independent carried a report about Tony Blair, Blair: ‘Within my milieu, being gay was not a problem’ and an accompanying news story First the grey vote, now the gay vote which includes this:
4 CommentsThe Prime Minister insists there is no conflict between his religious views and his pro-gay stance. Urging the Church of England to resolve its differences over homosexual bishops, he says many people in the Church share his view that the fundamental Christian principle is one of equality. “But there are those that passionately disagree,” he says.
report from Toronto
Archbishop Andrew Hutchison Primate of Canada spoke in Toronto about the primates meeting in Dromantine. Below the fold is a first-hand account of the event held on Wednesday evening in Toronto, as sent by a local correspondent.
This meeting has also caused Anglican Essentials to issue J.I. Packer Comments on Recent Developments as well as this earlier report.
Also, Reuters apparently didn’t attend the meeting but did file this report after speaking to Hutchison by phone: Homosexuality Could Split Church-Canadian Anglican.
6 CommentsObject Lessons
While watching Bremner, Bird and Fortune on Channel 4, I suddenly realised what it was like to have them shoot at me; or at least shoot at something I care about.
I love the show, if for no other reason than it gives some of our MPs an object lesson in being an effective Opposition. Last week it turned to the subject of God speaking: Mr Blair finds it hard to hear what God says, so he asks Mr Bush who does hear God clearly. So we learn from Mr Bush that God says they should bomb Iraq, and Bremner wishes God would learn from the Archbishop of Canterbury whose practice, apparently, is to say nothing.
I was on board until we got to the Archbishop.
It took me back to a Daily Mail article I was shown a year ago asking what the point was of an Archbishop who did not feel the need to speak on every subject in the public eye. Of course Dr Williams has and does speak on key issues in public life, it is just that he does not do so to order.
It’s a strange feature of our national life that while so few of us attend Church of England services, and yet we expect its most senior figure to come out with a defining word from God to solve a particularly thorny public debate.
It happens personally as well. I was called to visit some old friends last autumn. They had lived perfectly contented lives without any need for dialogue with the Christian faith. They were now in crisis as the husband was dying a nasty and lingering death. They were clearly disappointed that I didn’t come out with a tidy phrase which would have been a ready source of supernatural comfort in their distress.
I know colleagues who do have a stock of tidy phrases for these occasions, but I have never believed you have to take people back to a world of Santa or the Tooth Fairy to be able to talk about God. Losing a lifetime’s love to death is too serious for that. I didn’t do a quick and easy sound bite, because you can’t give a shallow, ready response to profound pain. (Neither can you leave them empty-handed.)
Newspapers are in business to boost their circulations, so that they can charge more for their advertising space. Demanding a comment from a prelate, then and there, is newsworthy. Whether the comment is worth hearing, or whether it is absurd, it makes no difference to the journalist as it will still sell papers. Tomorrow it will be someone and something else, which will be required to be just as instant.
To be expected to respond to complex national issues with deadline-driven instant insight is unreasonable. Just as no course in faith, which will do a dying man or his wife the slightest bit of good, can be delivered in one visit over afternoon tea. But both are possible, all they need is time, consideration, prayer, and silence.
Above all they each need an understanding that any insight about anything, national or personal, is about being committed to a journey of discovery, in which things about ourselves are revealed, some of which will be assuring, some of which will not. Journeys are not all of a fixed length, and the outcome is not always foreseen. Whatever else they are, they are not usually responsive to instant demands for pithy comment.
I’m sorry Mr Bremner, an Archbishop who doesn’t always speak on demand is not a national liability. If anything, he is an object lesson to our representatives of how to manage grave and weighty issues. He does speak, however. As I write this, he is addressing a gathering in East London on the subject of who is raising our children. Whether I will agree with him or not, he will be worth hearing because what he says will be the fruits of a considered and prayerful journey, in a way that a lot of what is passing through Parliament is not.
Silence to a demand is not to say nothing, it may be that the question is the wrong one, or that silence may be an invitation to take a longer and more prayerful look.
1 Commentmore on the Ugley Puritans
Several stories relating to this protest against writing letters to The Times:
Gladwin faces Ugley scenes over gays is the headline over the story in the Church Times (not on the public website yet), which says in part:
One of the clergy’s number, the Revd John Richardson, Assistant Curate of Henham, and Elsenham with Ugley, said on Tuesday: “He cannot be in sacramental fellowship with us and Churches in North America at the same time.”
…The Chelmsford group insists that, by opting for sacramental fellowship with those “who have gone against mainstream Anglicanism”, Bishop Gladwin has opted out of sacramental fellowship with others in his diocese.
…The group’s concern was not to add numbers to its list, but to make a point, he said.
Meanwhile Andrew Brown writes in the weekly Church Times Press column (also not on the public website) that:
ANOTHER EXAMPLE of a story that was made by its timing came in Saturday’s Telegraph, where the parish of Elsenham, Henham and Ugley in Essex announced that it was out of communion with the Bishop of Chelmsford because he had signed a letter to The Times in support of the North American Churches.
Again, this should have been a non-story. The benefice has made the papers before for throwing a yoga class out of the parish hall for a while (the class finally settled in Ugley village hall, which is controlled by a churchwarden of the neighbouring benefice); and for witholding its quota for a while in protest against the diocese’s interfaith policy. This stirring announcement, then, shouldn’t have been aroused too much excitement.
But, to journalists who are coming to believe that the Church of England as we have known it is doomed, and that a fractious congregationalism is the inevitable future, these gestures matter.
The CEN has Bishop rebukes opponents over Communion debate
The Guardian has Bishop hits back over gay row
And the GetReligion blog has Broken Communion story rolls on — in England.
while Fr Jake has Table Fellowship; the New Weapon
ECUSA HoB followup – Friday
Updated Friday evening see below
The Church Times reports the story as US dons sackcloth and bans all new bishops
and also has a sidebar (though not yet on the public website) Canadians defiant on the committee report which was first reported here.
The BBC published US Church moves to avoid splits. This story starts:
The US Anglican Church says it will not appoint new bishops or bless same-sex relationships for at least one year.
But other reports from the USA indicate that when the House of Bishops said (emphasis added):
Nevertheless, we pledge not to authorize any public rites for the blessing of same sex unions, and we will not bless any such unions, at least until the General Convention of 2006
some of them were making a personal commitment not to bless such unions and were not speaking for all their clergy.
Episcopal News Service has a further report on the meeting, Episcopal bishops begin ‘new day’ of collegiality. Kendall Harmon says the information about the Diocese of South Carolina in this report is inaccurate.
Another news report was Episcopal leaders to hold up bishop ordinations—gay or not from the Chicago Tribune.
The Times website has No gay bishops? Then no bishops at all by Ruth Gledhill who concludes the article with:
My question is why they could not, for the sake of peace, simply go as far as the primates and Windsor requested, and no further. If, as Dr Williams has posited, unity is inseparable from truth, then for the sake of unity surely even the lesbian and gay lobby could have put their purple ambitions on hold for a couple of years while everyone tries to sort out the mess.
The public is invited to comment.
The Church of England Newspaper has this report:
US Church puts moratorium on consecrating all bishops
The NACDAP has published a statement from Bishop Duncan and the AAC has published A Statement from the President of the American Anglican Council on Communications Issued by the Episcopal Church House of Bishops. This claims that:
The Covenant Statement and the Word to the Church issued by the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops is insulting to the Primates of the Anglican Communion. While it aims at specific requests of the 2004 Windsor Report and the 2005 Primates Communiqué, it fails to fulfill clear expectations outlined therein. The House claimed to affirm the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral 1888, and yet they failed to repent of their decisions and subsequent actions contrary to Scripture as well as Anglican faith and order. Note there is no affirmation of the authority of Scripture or Lambeth 1.10, which were upheld by the primates. Are there not two mutually exclusive views presented in this covenant?
Reuters published Conservative U.S. Anglicans Attack Bishops’ Move.
Update
GetReligion has Everybody loves to see justice done — on somebody else
Fr Jake has A Closer Look at the Attempted Coup
Further Update
Ruth Gledhill has this report in The Times ‘These are apostolic leaders behaving like lawyers’
George Conger has this report in the Living Church Bishops’ Support of Covenant Statement Not Unanimous
ECUSA HoB – Thursday morning reports
Telegraph Jonathan Petre Liberals delay appointing new bishops
Washington Post Alan Cooperman Episcopalians Halt Ordaining of Bishops
New York Times Laurie Goodstein Episcopal Dispute Over Gay Policies Halts All U.S. Bishop Appointments
Religion News Service via Beliefnet Episcopal Church to Freeze Same-Sex Blessings, Elections of All Bishops
Houston Chronicle Episcopalians ban consecration of new bishops
and the latest writethrough of the Associated Press report by Rachel Zoll Episcopalians ban OK of new bishops
From Canada, so focused on Dromatine rather than Camp Allen:
Canadian Press Anglican Church ‘broken’ over same-sex debate
ECUSA HoB – more news
Further statements are promised later today.
Update From the House of Bishops: ‘A Word to the Church’ has now been issued. Key paragraphs are:
At our meeting in Salt Lake City in January 2005 we said that we would “commit ourselves to a more thorough consideration of the range of concrete actions identified in the [Windsor] Report at our House of Bishops meeting in March 2005.” We also said we believe it is extremely important to take the time to allow the Holy Spirit to show us the way to deepen our communion together.
We believe that the Covenant Statement we have made has been achieved under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Our Covenant expresses remarkable convergences among us during these days and emerged from our mutual desire to speak as one House embracing widely divergent points of view. We sensed a profound solidarity and willingness to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2).
We pray that this Covenant Statement will be seen by brother and sister Anglicans as responding to some of their concerns. We pray that our overwhelming support for the Covenant may be a sign to them of our unwavering commitment to life in communion.
We pray as well that our Covenant will be useful for us all in healing relationships and opening the way for renewed solidarity in the service of Christ’s work of reconciliation. We believe our Covenant Statement is a reflection of a fresh spirit of mutual forbearance and reconciliation among us. We faced into our deep divisions with an openness that has not characterized our recent past. We believe this marks the beginning of a new day in our life together as bishops and as the Episcopal Church.
Meanwhile, The Living Church has published this report:
Presiding Bishop: Primates “Out for Blood” at Meeting which says that:
Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold identified by name six Episcopalians for having detrimentally influenced the course of the primates’ meeting in remarks to the House of Bishops at their March 11-17 spring retreat at Camp Allen in Navasota, Texas.
The devil is a liar and the father of lies and the devil was certainly moving about Dromantine, the site of the primates’ meeting in Northern Ireland, the presiding Bishop said, according to accounts from several bishops who spoke to THE LIVING CHURCH on the condition that their names not be revealed. The primates were “out for blood,” Bishop Griswold told them.
The Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh; the Rev. Canon Bill Atwood, general secretary of the Ekklesia Society; the Rev. Canon Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Parish, Fairfax, Va.; the Rev. Canon David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council; the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina; and Diane Knippers, president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, were singled out for opprobrium by the Presiding Bishop for their behind-the-scenes roles at Dromantine…
Picture of all six available here
Update
A further report from George Conger is posted at the website of The Living Church: Bishops Declare ‘Time for Healing’
The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued the following statement:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has welcomed the Covenant statement issued yesterday by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA), during their spring meeting in Camp Allen in Texas.
“I welcome this constructive response from ECUSA’s House of Bishops. They have clearly sought to respond positively to the requests made of them in the Windsor Report and in the Communiqué issued after the recent Primates Meeting. It is clear that there has been a real willingness to engage with the challenges posed.”
First press reports on last night’s statement:
Larry Stammer Los Angeles Times Clash Over Gay Episcopal Bishops Delays New Ordinations
Reuters U.S. Anglicans set moratorium on gay bishops
Rachel Zoll Associated Press No Episcopal bishops confirmed for a year
ECUSA bishops respond to Windsor/primates
Episcopal News Service reports that:
The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church adopted, by nearly unanimous vote late this afternoon, “A Covenant Statement” that includes “a provisional measure to contribute to a time for healing and for the educational process called for in the Windsor Report” (full text of Covenant Statement is here).
The Covenant Statement includes the following items:
Relating to the WR request for an expression of regret:
2. We express our own deep regret for the pain that others have experienced with respect to our actions at the General Convention of 2003 and we offer our sincerest apology and repentance for having breached our bonds of affection by any failure to consult adequately with our Anglican partners before taking those actions.
Relating to a moratorium on episcopal elections:
3. The Windsor Report has invited the Episcopal Church “to effect a moratorium on the election and consent to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges” (Windsor Report, para. 134). Our polity, as affirmed both in the Windsor Report and the Primates’ Communiqué, does not give us the authority to impose on the dioceses of our church moratoria based on matters of suitability beyond the well-articulated criteria of our canons and ordinal. Nevertheless, this extraordinary moment in our common life offers the opportunity for extraordinary action. In order to make the fullest possible response to the larger communion and to re-claim and strengthen our common bonds of affection, this House of Bishops takes the following provisional measure to contribute to a time for healing and for the educational process called for in the Windsor Report. Those of us having jurisdiction pledge to withhold consent to the consecration of any person elected to the episcopate after the date hereof until the General Convention of 2006, and we encourage the dioceses of our church to delay episcopal elections accordingly. We believe that Christian community requires us to share the burdens of such forbearance; thus it must pertain to all elections of bishops in the Episcopal Church. We recognize that this will cause hardship in some dioceses, and we commit to making ourselves available to those dioceses needing episcopal ministry.
Relating to a moratorium on public rites of blessing for same sex unions:
4. In response to the invitation in the Windsor Report that we effect a moratorium on public rites of blessing for same sex unions, it is important that we clarify that the Episcopal Church has not authorized any such liturgies, nor has General Convention requested the development of such rites. The Primates, in their communiqué “assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and valued by him, and deserving of the best we can give of pastoral care and friendship” (Primates’ Communiqué, para. 6). Some in our church hold such “pastoral care” to include the blessing of same sex relationships. Others hold that it does not. Nevertheless, we pledge not to authorize any public rites for the blessing of same sex unions, and we will not bless any such unions, at least until the General Convention of 2006.
Relating to participation (or otherwise) in the Anglican Consultative Council:
12 Comments6. As a body, we recognize the intentionality and seriousness of the Primates’ invitation to the Episcopal Church to refrain voluntarily from having its delegates participate in the Anglican Consultative Council meetings until the Lambeth Conference of 2008. Although we lack the authority in our polity to make such a decision, we defer to the Anglican Consultative Council and the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church to deliberate seriously on that issue.
WR/primates: Scottish bishops response
The Windsor Report/Primates’ Communiqué: A response from the College of Bishops has been published on the official SEC website.
Part of the response discusses homosexuality. The bishops say:
2 CommentsOn the matters of sexuality which occasioned the Report we are conscious that, like any province within the Anglican Communion, there is in our life significant diversity of view on both the matter of the consecration of Gene Robinson and the authorisation of liturgies for the blessing of same sex unions.
The Scottish Episcopal Church has never regarded the fact that someone was in a close relationship with a member of the same sex as in itself constituting a bar to the exercise of an ordained ministry. Indeed, the Windsor Report itself in suggesting that a moratorium be placed on such persons being consecrated bishops, itself acknowledges the existence of many such relationships within the Church.
The Scottish Episcopal Church has, even before the 1998 Lambeth Conference, sought to be welcoming and open to persons of homosexual orientation in our congregations, and to listen to their experiences. This has on occasion led clergy to respond to requests to give a blessing to persons who were struggling with elements in their relationship, and who asked for such a prayer. We were glad to note that the concern of the Windsor Report and the Primates’ Communiqué was not with such informal pastoral responses to individual situations, and was about the official authorisation of a liturgical text for the blessing of such unions.
We do agree that the whole area of debate in this matter is of such a fluidity, within which many different understandings exist, that it would certainly be premature to move formally to authorise such a liturgy.
The College of Bishops is conscious that the pressures within the debate on matters of sexuality vary from one province to another. Within our Province the debate tends to focus on matters to do with scriptural authority and human rights and justice. We sense that we are privileged in that we are a small province, and discussion across differences may be more easily achieved in our life than in other parts of the Communion. We hope that as a result of the publication of the report discussion across difference will take place, rather than a consolidation of opinion among the like minded. We welcome therefore the commitment of the Communiqué “to take positive steps to initiate the listening and study process” and each of us will seek to facilitate discussion across differences within his diocese as recommended in Lambeth 1:10.
Members of the College indicated to the Primus that while acknowledging the significant pressures the Primates were under to arrive at a statement that would preserve the Communion, they personally regret the decision in the Communiqué to request the voluntary withdrawal of ACC members of ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada for the period leading up to the next Lambeth Conference.
We are conscious that as a Church we are much indebted in our life both to a significant presence of persons of homosexual (lesbian and gay) orientation, and also to those whose theology and stance would be critical of attitudes to sexuality other than abstinence outside marriage. We rejoice in both, and it must be our prayer that discussion following the Windsor Report and the Primates’ Meeting will enable the energy of both to be harnessed to serve the Church and the proclamation of the gospel.
Canada committee report
The motion shown below was passed unanimously by the Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee (a Standing Committee of the Anglican Church of Canada) at its recent meeting. It goes now as a recommendation to the governing body of the Canadian church – the Council of General Synod – that will meet in May to determine Canada’s response to the Primates’ communique.
Motion FWM 03.05.#6
Moved by Patricia Bays
Seconded by Richard Leggett
That, while acknowledging the sincere concern of Anglicans throughout the world for the unity of the Communion and recognizing the pain of Anglicans of all persuasions caused by recent events, this Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee reluctantly but firmly recommends to the Council of General Synod the following resolution:
1. That the Council of General Synod confirm the membership of the Anglican Church of Canada in the Anglican Consultative Council with the expectation that the duly elected members attend and participate in the June 2005 meeting of the Council in the UK.
2. That the Council of General Synod welcome the invitation to explain at the June 2005 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council the current situation, the steps that were taken by Dioceses of the Anglican Church of Canada and the General Synod and the underlying theological and biblical rationale with respect to the decision to bless committed same sex unions.
3. That the Council of General Synod, in response to the second part of Paragraph 14 of the Primates’ Statement of February 24 2005, commend the Windsor Report to the Anglican Church of Canada for study.
Explanatory Notes
Part 1 of the Motion
- The Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee is concerned that existing ecclesiological and synodical structures, in dioceses and Provinces and within the Communion, are being pre-empted in their processes, and in the appropriate exercise of the checks and balances already available to them. Authority is being extended to bodies that goes beyond that constitutionally allocated to them. One principle of the evolution of church law is that we create new mechanisms only when all existing mechanisms have been exhausted.
- In light of the above, we believe that the request to withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council is an inappropriate action at this time for the following reasons:
- The Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council states that the Anglican Church of Canada is a member of the Council, entitled to send three delegates to its meetings.
- Article 3.A of the Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council clearly states that questions of membership are initiated by the Anglican Consultative Council.
- The roles of the Instruments of Unity as proposed by the Virginia and Windsor Reports have not been formally received by the Communion.
- The Primates’ Statement of February 24 2005 contributes to further confusion regarding the interconnection of the Instruments of Unity.
- If the request issued by the Primates (Section 14 of the Primates’ Statement of February 24) were to be honoured, it would set a precedent for dealing with other issues.
Part 2 of the Motion
- The Windsor Report commends dialogue and study, and representatives of the Canadian church need to be present to keep communication open. At the heart of the Anglican Communion is the principle that we meet. For this reason we believe it is important to accept the invitation to make a presentation to the Anglican Consultative Council.
- The Anglican Church of Canada is still in a process of discernment and is not at present of one mind. Its Primate’s Theological Commission is reflecting on whether same sex blessings are a matter of doctrine or not. A decision on the substantive question has been deferred to the General Synod of 2007.
Part 3 of the Motion
- We welcome the opportunity to engage in further study as requested by the Anglican Consultative Council at the time of the release of The Windsor Report. The Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee reviewed the Response to the Windsor Report from the Canadian Church, compiled at our Primate’s request. We believe that further study of both the Windsor Report and our Church’s Response to it is important for all Canadian Anglicans.
Carried unanimously
10 CommentsUgley Puritans
The Telegraph reports today in Clergymen refuse communion with bishop in row over gays that
…at least eight conservative clerics have told the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Rev John Gladwin, that they will refuse to share Holy Communion with him. They are furious that the bishop and five of his colleagues sent a letter to a national newspaper earlier this week announcing their determined support for liberal Anglicans in North America…
That would be a reference to this letter in The Times in which the bishops merely said:
…We remain in full sacramental fellowship with all the churches of the Anglican Communion, including those of Canada and the US, and we seek to remain in full communion with all of them…
which is of course a simple statement of fact that applies to every single member of the Church of England at the present time, whether they like it or not, including those objectors in Chelmsford. Clearly that favourite term of conservative evangelicals the plain meaning of the words has escaped them. Individual members of Anglican Communion churches do not have the luxury of deciding for themselves who they are in communion with.
The newspaper list among the eight people the clergy of the Henham, Elsenham, & Ugley benefice, John Richardson and Richard Farr. Mr Farr is best known for his refusal to allow the use of his church hall for a yoga class. His own account of this event can be read here.
Update
The extent to which conservatives are upset by the bishops’ letter is quite remarkable:see this Mainstream – Letter to London Times so far not published by the paper, and see also this Statement on Sacramental Fellowship with the Bishop of Chelmsford by Messrs Farr and Richardson.
primates: links to responses
Two very helpful lists of responses to the Dromantine communiqué are these:
Episcopal News Service Primates Meeting 2005 – News & Resources
which includes, among much else, links to statements by a number of American bishops.
Stand Firm Various Responses to the Primates’ Dromantine Meeting Communique which includes links to very many people, bishops and otherwise, who have written responses.
A further ENS resource on another page contains An interview with Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town and Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold which is an audio recording of an interview conducted by Kevin Eckstrom of RNS.
0 Commentssome Saturday reading
Starting close to home, Christopher Rowland has written a column in today’s Guardian The best of enemies which starts:
The issue of the Anglican Church and homosexuality has brought home to me how central it has become to the identity of Christianity for Christians to vilify their enemies, especially those who profess the same faith but hold to different expressions of “the truth of the gospel”.
In many ways, church history is a tale of intolerance and lack of charity. The difficult thing is that such attitudes are not some aberration, but are deeply rooted in the primary sources of orthodox Christianity and, at times, in the Bible itself.
From Ireland, ‘Church needs to celebrate, not just tolerate, all human sexuality’ says Church of Ireland minister
In his new book, The Right True End of Love: Sexuality and the Contemporary Church, the Dean of Killaloe, Very Rev Stephen R. White looks at the issue of sexuality, especially homosexuality, and maintains that the time has now come for the church to change its attitude from one of toleration to one of celebration. He says ‘the Church’s efforts to address issues of sexuality are ‘eminently ignorable’, ‘unimaginative’ and ‘un-theologically based’.
The book is particularly timely given recent controversies over homosexual clergy in the Anglican Communion. The Anglican primates, who met recently at Newry, discussed and broadly welcomed the Windsor Report on the matter.
Dean White looks at the church’s inherently negative attitudes towards sexuality, exemplified in the wording of the marriage vows in the Church of Ireland, where marriage first and foremost exists ‘for the due ordering of families and households’ and secondly for the hallowing of the union betwixt man and woman, and for the avoidance of sin’. He looks at the contentious issue of homosexuality and how the most charitable response from within the church is toleration. This, he says, is not acceptable. Toleration of difference is not a celebration of difference, and such an attitude is inclined to become ‘a favour graciously conferred by the “normal” majority on a somehow “inadequate” minority’.
As the American House of Bishops is currently meeting, several American newspapers have columns about them:
Chicago Tribune Episcopal bishops seeking to avoid schism on gay issues
Houston Chronicle A house of cards
Dallas Fort Worth Star-Telegram For Episcopalians, this might be the big one
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