Lambeth 2008 – Moving Forward
So the big shin-dig at the campus of the University of Kent is over. Bishops are either returning home or taking the opportunity to spend a few days having a look round this Sceptered Isle. The Reflections Document has been issued, Rowan has had his final say, and as we all pause to consider the events of the past few weeks, our thoughts turn to one question – what happens next?
For what it’s worth, the Archbishop’s final address is a master-piece in providing a glimpse of what the way forward might look like. Anybody who knows Rowan Williams knows that his style of leadership is to suggest what the path might be and then to step back and let those on the ground decide whether that is the path that want to take. While many might think that such an approach lacks the firm hand that is needed right now, it is right to applaud Rowan for his unwillingness to attempt to impose a solution on the Communion that will simply be rejected. If the Spirit is at work amongst us (and He is), then he doesn’t need to do that – we will all, on genuine, heart-searching reflection come to the mind of Christ.
When discussing previous Lambeths, Rowan had this to say:
The Resolution of Lambeth ’98 was an attempt to say both ‘We need understanding and shared discernment on a hugely complex topic,’ and ‘We as the bishops in council together are not persuaded that the new thoughts offered to us can be reconciled with our shared loyalty to Scripture.’ Perhaps we should read that Resolution – forgetting for a moment the bitterness and confusion around the debate and acknowledging that it remains where our Communion as a global community stands – as an attempt to define what a healthy Church might need – space for study and free discussion without pressure, pastoral patience and respect, unwillingness to change what has been received in faith from Scripture and tradition. And this is not by any means to say that a traditional understanding and a new one are just two equal options, like items on the supermarket shelf : the practice and public language of the Church act always as a reminder that the onus of proof is on those who seek a new understanding. To say that the would-be innovator must be heard gratefully and respectfully is simply to acknowledge the debt we always owe to those who ask unfamiliar questions, because they prompt us to explore our tradition more deeply.
One of the points of fracture at the moment in the Communion is that different parts of the church have taken ’98 1:10 and read the bits that they wanted and ignored the bits that they didn’t like. So naturally, Conservatives get utterly frustrated by revisionists who insist upon the "listening process" being adhered to yet seem to ride very roughly over the other parts of the statement that draw an absolute "no-no" (at this time) for in any way endorsing same-sex practice, let alone seeing same-sex unions as holy.
But conversely, there is huge frustration amongst revisionists that many parts of the conservative elements of the church simply haven’t bothered to engage with listening, even five years after the ACC in Nottingham and ten years after Lambeth 1998. When they hear statements such as "We do not have homosexuality in our country", what they hear is a refusal to even engage with the issue at hand. It is blatantly clear to all those with just a smidgeon of anthropological and sociological understanding that homosexualities exist in every single part of the world. The refusal to admit as much is not to take a clear moral stand on the issue, but rather is a pastoral failure of the highest order, because it is evidence of an unwillingness to engage with people where they are at.
(As an aside, often when I speak on this issue I get people to listen to Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy. If you don’t know the song, click on the link now and spend five minutes listening to Jimmy Sommerville articulate what it is like growing up knowing you are gay, in a society that looks down upon homosexuality. Put aside your moral judgements for a few seconds and just hear what he says and how he says it, the emotion involved in articulating not just the rejection he experiences but also his perceived inability to talk to his nearest and dearest about this most initimate part of his life.)
Listening though is more about just hearing stories. It is also to do with, once having listened, building and affirming relationships. What is so often disappointing in the past few years is the failure of those who have had the opportunity to influence, who have had the public ear, to use that privilege to affirm the humanity and dignity of those they disagree with theologically. We all know the websites that refer to "polysexual sodomites", but it is not just the cruder forms of language in this discourse that are a sign of no real intent to listen and build relationships. Despite the fact that there exist texts like Goddard and Walker’s "True Union in the Body" which attempt to engage with the best arguments in favour of monogamous gay unions, some conservatives insist on producing writing that condemns not the best examples of gay life, but the worse. Do we need chapters of books denigrating the promiscuous lifestyle of some, when our opponents are actually those who believe very strongly in "Permanent, Stable, Faithful"? Do we need to concentrate on the way that some in our western society want a "plasticisation" of sexuality and cross-generational affection, when the leadership of Integrity and the like are joined with us in condemning paedophilic and ebophilic relationships of any form, consensual or otherwise?
Unless we as the conservative church are willing to admit that we have sometimes (often?) failed in the call of the Lambeth ’98 resolution to listen to the experience of gay and lesbian people (and post-gay and post-lesbian, for the conservative church is still shockingly ignorant in how to deal pastorally in this area) then we have no right to ask those whom we disagree with to take such resolutions seriously themselves. What we need at this point then is a serious, critical self-examination. Can we truly say that in all cases we are the ones sinned against? Can we really stand clean in front of the Lord and argue that we have not ourselves sinned in this conflict?
When I talk with men and women who struggle with same-sex attraction, or indeed any form of sexual or emotional brokeness, what we often discuss is the web of sin that encompasses our lives. The picture for so many is the same – first we are sinned against, and then in our brokeness and woundedness we sin in response. While healing is found by allowing Jesus to send the Spirit into our wounds, that is only part of the journey towards wholeness. At the same time there is an accompanying need for confession and admittance of guilt. Even in those situations where our sinful response was beyond our control, we still need to accept culpability for acting in a manner that God didn’t create us to. In order to move forward we need not just healing for our wounds, but the will to die to the sinful self that seeks its own glorification and satisfaction rather than God’s.
Here’s Rowan again:
It’s worth adding, too, that the call for a moratorium on interventions across provinces belongs in the same theological framework. Such interventions often imply that nothing within a province, no provision made or pastoral care offered, can be recognizably and adequately Christian; and this is a claim not lightly to be made by any Christian community regarding any other without grave breach of charity. And it seems to be widely agreed in this Conference that internal pastoral and liturgical care, strengthened by arrangements like the suggested Communion Partners initiative in the USA and the proposed Pastoral Forum we have been discussing, are the way we should go if we want to avoid further ecclesial confusion.
Do you see how that links in with what I’ve just been saying? Cross-boundary interventions are often seen as the only possiblity in some circumstances, but they themselves become acts of sin in response to sin. If we truly believe that the Spirit was at work in the Ecumenical Councils of the first millenium, then we have to see these violations of the Nicene principle of diocesan integrity as serious breaches of catholicity. They may themselves be the result of other serious breaches of catholicity (false teaching), but we need to accept that one sin does not somehow validate the second that comes in response.
So we need brutal honesty in ourselves at this point. We need to have a moment of clear examination of our consciences. Whether we believe ourselves to be in Egypt, in the Wilderness, in the Promised Land or in Babylon, all these occasions call for a genuine and sincere engagement with where we as the conservative part of the chuch have sinned.
And let us be clear on one thing. Confession in Scripture is never on the basis of "I will confess if my enemy will". You simply won’t find such a concept. Jesus calls us very clearly to first examine our own eye before commenting on the speck in our friend’s. The plank doesn’t come out at the same time as the speck – it is only in realising that we have a plank and first doing something about it that we gain any ability, morally or practically, to address the specks in others.
Here then is perhaps one road forward for the Conservatives. GAFCON and the Global South should call an immediate moratorium on border-crossing. Yes, that will be painful for many. It will explicitly involve the dying to self that I spoke about above, for in the short term it will leave many abused and attacked in liberal dioceses, believing that they have been abandoned by those who said they would provide rescue. It would also implicitly involve confessing that the act of crossing diocesan boundaries was wrong, for we there would be no need to have a moratorium if crossing boundaries was seen by all as acceptable. But beyond these two things, it would at the same time indicate that we are serious about holding the Communion together, and what it would also do is give TEC, Canada (and Scotland now it appears) a very clear opportunity to also engage in the moratoria that they have been asked to impose, on same-sex blessings and ordaining and consecrating those in sexual relationships outside of marriage. There is a US House of Bishops meeting in September followed by Diocesan Conventions throughout the Autumn, easily enough time for all the necessary bodies in TEC to have come to a clear and unequivocal decision before the Primates’ Meeting in early 2009 on whether they want to take the path advocated by Rowan.
That is one road forward. The other road, which I fear is what may yet happen, is that we will continue to maintain the absolute moral high-ground, that schism will formally happen, and though we will have been vindicated theologically by the applause that comes from Rome and Moscow for our stand, we will have spiritually failed to deal with the real issue that Jesus wants us to deal with – the need for us to be brutally honest about the mistakes we have made on the journey to such a conclusion.
I’ll leave the (almost) last words to Rowan:
And as we come to the conclusion of our Conference, we very rightly and understandably bring all our thoughts, our reflections, our memories, our frustrations and our hopes into a liturgy in which what we do is precisely to tell the story that makes something happen. We tell the story of how the Word of God made flesh, living in our midst, on the night before he offered himself so that we might live, took bread, and broke it, and shared it. We tell that story and something happens, something that enables us to recognize, yet again, that the deepest thing in us is that which God invites to share his table, to share his company, to lay close to his heart. That thing in us which God invites and longs for, drawn to him to be next to him, ‘next to the Father’s heart’, in the gospel’s phrase. Here, at this Eucharist, we experience—each one of us—what it is for a story to be told that makes something happen; that changes not just bread and wine and believer, but the whole world: because here, in our midst is the beginning of the end, the realization of the hope of all creation, all people, all reality, drawn together in the broken bread and the shared wine.
That is our story and our song, at this and every Eucharist. And strengthened by the resurrection life that is there given, we go out to tell the story afresh, we go out in the confidence that when we speak from that heart of reality, which is the broken bread of Jesus’ truth and Jesus’ love, recognition will happen. The springs will be unblocked, the deserts will blossom, the Spirit will overflow.
God give us grace to tell that story. May God pour out his Spirit on each of us in all our words and deeds of witness so that something will happen, and that something will be the Holy Spirit of God. Amen
If we fail at this last moment to truly speak from the heart of reality, to be honest and open about how we, corporately and individually, have sinned and where we need to repent, we will have lost everything. May Jesus give us the grace to die to ourselves and to see him rise in glory.
Peter, I have responded to your post here. Blessings on your work and ministry!
I can only add a resounding “yes” to all you have written and commend your bravery for writing it.
Hmm, but are cross-border interventions sinful? It’s rather like worrying about the law of trespass whilst rescuing a son being beaten up at home by their father.
Even if it is sinful, can it be seen as a response to a greater sin? Stephen Clark’s article on The Lesser Evil in the latest issue of Foundations from Affinity is interesting reading on this topic. If the view persists that border crossing was objectively wrong and should be repented of then that must include returning parishes to their former structures. ‘Here Dad, have your son back again so you can hit him some more.’
It should also be added that sins of boundary crossing are somewhat anachronistic in a world where the visible church is no longer one institution. That dilutes the relevance of early church canons attacking it.
And should innovators always be heard gratefully? I suppose that depends on to whom the gratitude is directed: to God for mercifully preserving undeserving sinners such as ourselves from error, or to the innovator who is tempting us to sin? As Jesus said to Satan in the wilderness, ‘thanks but no thanks Beelzebub, though I’m grateful to you for suggesting an alternative approach.’
Yours,
the Foxe with teeth.
Well Peter,
I admire your bravery!
Pax, Winston.
Peter,
As a Gay Christian who is a member of the TEC and “revisionist” or “reappraiser” or whatever label you are giving us these days, I have given your “way forward” some thought. Let’s say that TEC, Canada and Scotland call for a moratorium on Same-Sex Blessings and Ordination/ Consecration of GLBT Clergy. Let’s also say that the “conservatives’ stop border-crossing. Where does this leave us? How long does the moratorium last? until one side is convinced that the other is wrong? It sounds like to me that you are suggesting a return to business as usual–which I don’t think you will find to be very well-received in any corner of the Anglican Communion–certainly not TEC. I do applaud your effort to consider something–not that I think it is realistic but brave to at least mention it all the same.
I only see a separation as the only realistic “way forward”–not one I would prefer but I just cant see anything else working.
Hi Jack,
The moratorium lasts until the church is of one mind. It lasts as long as we can continue to treat each other with respect.
I know it’s a tall order, but I truly believe that unless TEC realise that need to act with true catholicity, and that the conservatives need to be gracious in surrendering their ecclesiological ideals, then we are headed for schism.
Hi Alan,
I would love to be able to respond to the points you have made, but I can’t see a way to comment on your blog!!!!
Peter, very sorry, but I don’t have comments enabled at the moment. Until very recently I had been using the site as an online ‘commonplace book’ rather than a blog, so I am still deciding whether to enable comments. If you’d like to comment here I promise to come back to read what you say!
Simply put, the Episcopal Organization needs to die so that there can be resurrection into a true church. As a physician, I have seen families torn asunder because grandpa takes months to die where a quick death could have actually brought the family together. Similarly, the TEO is moribund with disseminated cancer. If I have a patient with widely metastatic cancer, I don’t put them through an unnecessary procedure just to say, “At least, we did something.”
The TEO has already declared that the SSU’s blessings will continue. The ordination of homosexual clergy will continue. The consecration of homosexual bishops will, in all likelihood, start back in 2009.
But more importantly, the lawsuits and the depositions will continue. These are what have the orthodox fleeing for oversea oversight.
I am more than a little bit peaved that Rowan Williams has no declared equivalency of cross border interventions to sanctification of homosexual relations in direct contradiction to the DeS Communique. Your call to cease interventions is an affirmation of the false equivalency.
Alan,
That’s OK. I have responded here.
Thanks very much for what you have written here, Peter, and may it find receptive hearts among my fellow conservatives.
I think the most important aspect of repentance is its cleansing effect on our souls and our relationship with the Lord Jesus. Anything beyond that is, as we would call it in my beloved south Louisiana, lagniappe.
Peter, there is a great essay by the Anglican Curmudgeon that reviews the many lawsuits by the Episcopal Organization here:
http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2008/08/trigger-happy-church.html
Now, if the TEO stopped the depositions and lawsuits, then the cessation of interventions might make sense.
I’m impressed. I’m a “reappraiser” who did not see much hope stemming from Lambeth; I’ve felt that the prospect of generous, Christian responses from behind our respective barricades had been reduced to nil. Still, you clearly get it, and the sincerity of your response deserves a reciprocal effort. Here’s my take http://anglocatontheprowl.blogspot.com/2008/08/reflections-in-jaundiced-eye.html
(The jaundiced eye in question, to be clear, is my own).
We may yet find a way forward together.  Â
This doesn’t concern the main point but: watched the Bronski Beat video which (to my shame) I hadn’t seen before. Are the people cornering Jimmy meant to be gay-bashing him? They look far more stereotypically homosexual than he does, which is odd. And was he trying to pick up the copper who took him back to his parents? Strange.
One more reference (why do the arguing when others do it better?). In response to Rowan’s:
It’s worth adding, too, that the call for a moratorium on interventions across provinces belongs in the same theological framework.
Newbie Anglican writes:
It does NOT belong “in the same theological framework†of same-sex innovations at all. Even church fathers, such as St. Athanasius, engaged in interventions, but they sure as heck did not engage in same-sex blessings. And, while there are a number of passages addressing same-sex conduct, scripture does not say much about the holiness of diocesan boundaries. Moreover, the Primates Meeting clearly said that interventions to relieve distressed orthodox are NOT equivalent to the enormities of North American provinces. Yet ++Rowan ignores and undermines the Primates . . . once again.
See here…
http://wannabeanglican.blogspot.com/2008/08/lambeth-rowan-williams-on-proposed.html
Peter,
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“…we will all, on genuine, heart-searching reflection come to the mind of Christ.â€Â I’m sorry to break it to you, Peter, but this just isn’t going to happen. The battle lines are drawn and the gods are invoked.Â
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“One of the points of fracture at the moment in the Communion is that different parts of the church have taken ‘98 1:10 and read the bits that they wanted and ignored the bits that they didn’t like. So naturally, Conservatives get utterly frustrated by revisionists who insist upon the “listening process” being adhered to yet seem to ride very roughly over the other parts of the statement that draw an absolute “no-no” (at this time) for in any way endorsing same-sex practice, let alone seeing same-sex unions as holy.â€
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You imply that the “listening process†was not engaged in wholeheartedly by conservatives. This is patently untrue. Conservatives have struggled just to be heard. Zacchaeus Fellowship has been administratively kept away from the table…not allowed to speak in a “listening process†designed only to hear one side of the story.
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Your suggestions of a way forward lack the same thing that Rowan Williams’ do: a perspective from people on the front lines of this trench warfare. While I agree with your conservative stance, I do not agree with your suggested ecclesial solution nor your view of the “listening process.â€
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This debate has hijacked the Anglican Communion.  Gay activists, Christian or otherwise, in exclusive, committed monogamous relationships or not, have been working to achieve a goal that is biblically abhorrent. The Anglican Communion has been embroiled in a debate over one aspect of sexuality only, while at the same time failing to preach and teach on all of human sexuality.
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I am 40 and I have yet to hear a sermon from either a revisionist or orthodox clergyman or woman on purity in one’s sexual life. No teaching on the holiness code, nothing on divorce, or adultery even. The only time purity is discussed is when people are forced to respond or declare their position vis a vis the debate on homosexuality being a sin or blessed.
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The Anglican Church has failed to respond to the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.
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I am also a person who was seriously in need of teaching from my church. I grew up struggling with SSA and have elected to live chastely, having completed my own research alone, without mentoring or pastoral assistance. Who do you trust when some are pro and the con’s are too afraid to speak out because they don’t want to be labeled the moral equivalent of racists?
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Because of my personal struggle and my years of research I have a right to say that God’s word ought to be obeyed no matter the perceived cost. And I know that the call for pastoral care cannot be heeded by conservatives who haven’t truly thought through what they think, or are uncertain of their complete stance on all matters of sexual purity. Lack of confidence in the Truth does not lead to good pastoral care. Now I quietly give pastoral care to those who suffer SSA, because no matter how much it hurts me to be involved in the issue still, I know that if I don’t do it, others cannot, mostly because they lack the will to label a behaviour sinful.
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Calling for the provincial interventions to stop as evidence of good will is entirely inappropriate, and it would not be a call you would make if your bishop was Michael Ingham or Katherine Jefferts-Schori. The revisionist agenda has a negative effect on the theology of the church. Simply put when the worship organized by your synod office has you worshipping a god you do not recognize at a diocesan synod, it is time to protest and say that there truly are two competing gospels and that we cannot have communion together anymore. When the call from Windsor Report for alternate Episcopal oversight was not allowed to proceed in North America, it was time for a rescue mission for the faithful Anglicans. Those who are leading the revisionist ACC and TEC are no longer Christians; they are secular humanists who are substituting the MDG for the gospel. This is not a David Virtue exaggeration. Have you ever seen the bishop of your diocese leading the congregation in singing “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for†by U2 at a U2-charist service? If my bishop hasn’t found what he’s looking for, how can he lead the diocese to God through His revealed Word?Â
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I am still fighting within the ACC for the Truth of the gospel because God hasn’t let me leave yet. I do not want to leave the resources of my parish to a diocese that will use them to support the teachings of those like Jack Spong. I’m fighting for the Trinitarian theology, Christology, soteriology, theological anthropology, Biblical authority, the Lordship of Christ, the doctrine of atonement, the doctrine of original sin…it is so much more than just a debate about whether SSI is blessed by God or sin. The Holy Spirit is not the female person of the Trinity, nor is it appropriate to claim the Spirit’s guidance in a “prophetic†direction that is biblically incompatible. When fellow Anglicans disagree about the gospel on a level we haven’t seen since the third and fourth centuries, it is time to call a spade a spade as GAFcon has done. At least during the Reformation the question of Christ rising from the dead and his divinity was not up for grabs.
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Your suggested ecclesial solution would condemn people like me to tithing to a diocese that uses my money to support litigation against faithful Christians, kicks out people who ask for bible studies, has artistic displays depicting multiple paths to God, sells Jack Spong’s books in the Cathedral book store and supports teaching that says the “born that way†theory is “good science.â€
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How much longer do people all over the communion expect faithful Christians to remain in a denomination that compromises our witness so dramatically? Orthodox Christians have been leaving the ACC and TEC for over two decades because of this ethically compromising fight. We are complicit in condoning sin if we are a part of it any longer. When is enough enough?
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The “listening process†is designed to wear down resistance to the revisionist gospel. We are engaged in the “listening process†because people want to justify their sin and don’t want to accept the unified biblical witness on this subject, which declares that all sex outside the bonds of marriage between one man and one woman is sin. In the strictest sense, this includes divorce and remarriage as adultery. Look at Mark 10. We have some serious repenting to do, but not precisely for what Peter suggests. We need to repent of leading our little ones astray for over 50 years. We need to repent for participating in the “listening process,†as it was designed to achieve a revisionist position. We need to repent for not upholding the gospel and offering appropriate pastoral care to homosexuals who demand that we bless their sin. We need to repent for offering pastoral care that affirms self-identified gay Christians, partnered or single, in their sin. We have failed to uphold sexual purity for all.Â
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You want a solution Peter? Get ex-gay ministries to coordinate with African countries that need to know that there is an option between stoning people and “out and proud.â€Â Jesus called people to repentance, stopped the men from stoning the woman caught in adultery because dead people don’t repent (John 8). Jesus is concerned with our eternal salvation.  The solution is in the gospel, not the ecclesial system.
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Five million pounds, which translates to more than $10 million Canadian is a lot of money to waste on a non-decision which allows the TEC and the ACC breathing room to consolidate their positions, and allows C of E gay clergy to continue to use St Bartholomew’s to get “married†using the old BCP – something even the diocese of New Westminster has not dared to do.
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We need the global south to re evangelize North America, and we need that flanking manouver from Akinola and Venables’ army in the field, because these embattled troops are putting down their weapons and walking away from the fight if we don’t get help.
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I had hoped that the strength of will of the orthodox bishops present at Lambeth would manage to overcome the process of Lambeth, and issue a voted upon resolution affirming the biblical witness condemning homosexual sex and committing to care pastorally for those with SSA by offering redemption in Christ. I am not surprised by the result, but I am disappointed and discouraged.
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The wonderful British trait of carefully listening to and weighing both sides of an issue has been abused terribly. The Instruments of Unity, which have only moral and not binding force, stemming from that British notion of the “gentleman’s agreement,†are being abused. Do we really need to listen to people who accuse us of “institutionalized bigotry†and “sacramental apartheid†(Rev. Susan Russell – Inclusive Church)?
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Rowan Williams’ Lambeth ended at an impasse because there can never be compromise between what some people call sin, and what others call blessed. There is a fundamental disconnect here. That disconnect on the frontlines means that spiritually the church is a war zone. Spiritually we are all so exhausted I would say that we are suffering from spiritual shell shock.
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Is it really such a bad thing for the wheat to be separated from the chaff? Even if it really hurts?
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Jo
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I appreciate your honesty, but I don’t see “the church” coming to to a common mind. I dont see those of us on the “Reappraiser” side agreeing to that. I think you can expect a split. Sadly.
One final note Peter : A quick review of comments with respect to this thread should help you see very clearly why a moratorium will never happen. As I said before I applaud your efforts to think of a “way forward” but there is just too much that divides here in North America. When people refer to TEC has negative to the gospel, and that it somehow must die, you can surely see why those of us who are not conservatives are so unwilling to budge..even a little. And that truly truly is sad.
I want to thank everyone for their comments so far. I recognise that for many on the ground what I am proposing is really hard, but I genuinely believe that unless we turn the other cheek one last time, we will be responsible for schism. If we impose a moratorium, even for just six months in the first instance, that is enough time for TEC to demonstrate whether it is willing to participate in seeking a common solution as outlined by the Archbishop (no more ssb, no more ordinations/consecrations of those in same-sex unions).
I understand the point about tithing, but there are other avenues to direct your tithing into. For example, why not give a portion to Redeemed Lives in the US (or even here in the UK) to help those of us helping people struggling with sexual and emotional brokenness?
Peter I am really impressed by your piece here. IIt is a very genuine Anglican response and is, I think, what the vast majority of mainstream Anglicans would hope for.
I think it does put GAFcon in a very difficult postion. As you know, I think GAFcon is doomed from the start and will be torn apart before too long by internal tensions about matters other than the presenting one. But the whole of GAFcon is essentially based on the idea of boundary crossing. I suspect they will not be prepared to give that idea up.
But thank you once again for your clarity.
Peter, I think it’s important to remember that the struggle going on in the American scene has been going on for a long time – the 2003 General Convention was years in the making. Some saw the writing on the wall after the 2000 General Convention and when masses left for what became AMiA I can remember quite strongly feeling and thinking the same things you post here. I thought we did need to keep listening, we needed not to break fellowship, we needed to continue to engage and see if there was some way we could bridge the gap and stay together.
In Virginia we had a “listening process” on the human sexuality issue for SEVEN years. David Harper, New Zealand-born rector of Church of the Apostles, Fairfax (VA) has comprehensively written about the seven-year process that started in the Diocese of Virginia after Lambeth 1998 over at Stand Firm. It was a major process that in many ways laid a foundation for Bishop Lee’s protocol for departing congregations (until that was abandoned when it became clear the votes did not go the Diocese/TEC’s way).
One of the things that I think it still not clear to the orthodox in the COE – or perhaps it starting to dawn on our friends in England – is that the appointed and self-appointed “leadership” of The Episcopal Church is so indoctrinated on the theological, political, and social innovations that it pursues implementing that doctrine using scorched-earth techniques. It’s like a cultic group think has taken over the inner-circles of the church and if you don’t buy in, you are expelled. Oh, your church might still be inside the structures of TEC and you might get a Christmas Card from the bishop once a year, but if you are not for them, you are against them.
When the orthodox laity – and I need stress this very strongly that the “crossing borders” effort was in response to the laity who were going to leave en-mass unless emergency procedures were put in place temporarily – began to resist and their clergy joined them (no small sacrifice by the way) the reaction of the leadership in TEC was like people being denied their fix for their addition. They reacted explosively. They assumed that the laity were like drones, ignorant drones that the leadership could just control. But a biblically-literate laity is a dangerous, dangerous thing – and while the TEC leadership had not trained their laity to know their Bible, the orthodox had and that made the laity respond with a very strong voice.
The “border crossings” were a pastoral response to the pleas from the laity to do something so that we could remain Anglican. If Rowan Williams wants to know where his friends are in America, they are in the pews of those churches who risked everything to remain Anglican but could in conscience remain in the structures of the Episcopal Church. In the United States, the laity hold the purse in the parishes and the diocese and the bishops and clergy could spin all they want, but at the end of the day their coffers were coming up empty. Something had to be done.
The pastoral response of the Anglican provinces in Africa and the Southern Cone are meant to be temporary. But no lay person, after all we’ve been through, the lawsuits instigated by the Presiding Bishop, the defrocking of our clergy, the litigation that continues unabated is going to suddenly say to our primates to get lost. It’s not going to happen. If TEC stops the litigation – then we will have an opening. Our grandfathers did not play nice with Great Britain’s opponents in 1942-45 – we did not simply give up when the Germans flew by, but we fought back and why? Because we loved England and we knew that where England went, the US was sure to follow – and where the US went, England would be safe. That’s leadership and we are being shown the same kind of leadership from the provinces in Africa, the Southern Cone and now Sudan. To say to them now, at this critical hour, that it’s a sin for them to help us is akin as saying to the Americans in England in 1944 “it’s a sin for you to be here, go home.”
The unity in the church is not in the structures, but in the faith. Theological border crossing continues as TEC leadership embraces all kinds of theological innovations and those border crossings are what threaten the church not the extended hand of fellowship from our brothers and sisters abroad.
I’m going to repeat this because it’s very important in what seems to be happening not only in the Anglican Communion, but in other denominations. The unity in the Church is not in the structures, but in the faith. The structures reflect that faith and when the structures do not – which is the case in the Episcopal Church – then it behooves us to resist.Â
We saw the same attitude at Lambeth, where the Episcopal Church did not work inside the official press arm of Lambeth, but created their own operation separately. That is what TEC does – it uses its structures for unilateral engagement that undermines the work of the entire Communion. The irony is – and it’s a great irony – that by breaking away from the structures of TEC we are able to be Anglican. There is indeed a strong movement to create a separate Episcopal Communion and it would again behoove our brothers and sisters in the Church of England to see that the real “border crossers” are not the provinces abroad, but the theological border crossers of the leadership of the Episcopal Church. That is where the disunity is birthed and that is what we must – we must – resist.
Do you see what I am saying?
-Mary
Mary,
I see exactly what you’re saying. I guess I might be five years behind you, but I genuinely believe that as we stand at the brink of schism we need to make every effort to make sure we have clear consciences. If we carry sin forward into the future it will come back to bite us.
The only way to have that clear conscience in by picking up the cross of Christ and following Him. Â I don’t know of any other way, except step by step in the power of the Holy Spirit. Â We do have doubts along the way – and I think that perhaps what you are expressing is your doubts, lest we become proud. Â The path is filled with tears, but this is not the time to turn back. Â People have said many things, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. Â But as soon as I got back to my laptop I saw waiting in my e-mail inbox more filings in court from The Episcopal Church in the litigation now underway in Virginia. Â Even as the bishops are gathered in Lambeth, their lawyers are busy filing more papers with the courts. Â Nothing has changed – lots of words, but nothing has changed. Â
We keep asking over and over and over again to Bishop Peter James Lee if he will return to the negotiating table. Â And he won’t do it. Â I asked Bishop O’Neil of Colorado who is also engaging in lawsuits against the laity if he would negotiate instead of litigate and he said No.
This is where we are. Â When we talk about negotiating it sends a chill up the spines of these TEC leaders. Â It’s imperative that in order for their cultural and theological innovations to be successful that they keep the facade of “all is well” in place. Â It’s just a tiny minority of the unhappy, as Bishop Schori has described us, that is so uppity. Â I don’t know how they will continue to keep up that facade now after Rowan Williams comments at the final press conference, and that will be interesting to see.
Our unity is in the faith – not in the structures. Â Our prayers are that the unity of faith in the Anglican Communion, in the GAFCON network and the Lambeth network strengthens in the aftermath of this gathering in Canterbury. Â If Rowan Williams steps in and provides covering for us then there will be no need for the other primates to do so. Â He has not done in the past – will he do it now? Â
The last thing we should do now is sink our own allies as they are floating to shore from Dunkirk. Â We haven’t yet made land. Â It would be a horrific to sink our own boats. Â That’s called Friendly Fire.
Just something to think about. Â What will be very interesting to see is what Bishop Schori does to Bishop Duncan next month. Â Keep your powder dry and your ears to the ground.
-Mary
Very difficult discussion, about ecclesiology. I am not happy with some of the posturing from GAFCON or the tendency to have cross-border bishops. In particular, the bishop of Sudan’s comment ‘there are no gays in Sudan’ shocked me. Does he really not realise he sounds like the President of Iran ? On the other hand, Mary and Jo are right about TEC. TEC are going against the spirit of I Corinthians, in that they are taking believers to the secular courts, and then to the court of the secular media. I am not sure myself what sort of response conservatives should make to such rights-based action, but I do know that those of us who support ex-gay ministry should ask God to show us new ways of supporting it, commending it and basically insisting that it gets taken out of the ghetto and into the orthodox mainstream. At the moment, it isn’t talked about, and I think this is because sexual ethics is being downplayed for fear of offending congregations and driving people away. (There are lots of divorced people in Anglican congregations, for example, and the polls given for the Church of England in ‘Fragmented Faith ?’ the recent research by Leslie Francis et al., shows that Anglicans are very permissive of divorce even when children are involved. How on earth are children supposed to grow up with a positive attitude towards marriage with parents who hold such views ?
Andrew Comiskey sees the ex-gay movement as prophetic. I think so too, because it majors on discipleship – something that evangelicals have to give to the rest of the church. It is corroborated by Donna Freitas’ new research ‘Sex and the Soul’, based on interviews with students on America college campuses. She discovered that regarding adherence to traditional sexual ethics, both in principle and in practice, the divide was not between religious and secular institutions, but between evangelical ones and everyone else. This means that in non-evangelical protestant and Roman Catholic colleges in the States, the culture of casual sex and one-night stands is alive and kicking. *This* must be why revisionist approaches to homosexuality have caught on in the mainline protestant denominations like the Anglican church. It is an expression of a wholescale turn away from traditionalist Christian sexual ethics for the majority who have never experienced homosexual attraction. Therefore, the Anglican churches need to look long and hard at the background in how sexual ethics has been handled badly by Christians in recent decades. For the fact of the matter is that the use of pornography, casual sex and serial monogamy are quite common among heterosexual Christians.