Passing the Blame Around

From the IRD website:

Ralph Webb

In an essay entitled "Lab Report" from her forthcoming book A Wing and a Prayer, new Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori laments signs of conflict in the world, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet she is most concerned with "some pretty profound disunity"1 in the Anglican Communion. On this issue, her words for some fellow primates in the Anglican Communion are as strong as the words that she has been using when communicating with orthodox Anglicans in the Episcopal Church (TEC).

What is the source of this "pretty profound disunity"? In the bishop's own words, it's "primates lobbing fiats of dis-fellowship, edicts of impaired communion, and, when all else fails, intercontinental ballistic bishops."2 While she does not mention any primates by name, she apparently blames the current crisis in the Anglican Communion on the orthodox primates who have declared that their provinces are in "impaired communion" with the Episcopal Church.

In a soon to be released book, Jefferts Schori accuses conservative bishops of "lobbing fiats of dis-fellowship" in an attempt to foster disunity.

The phrase "intercontinental ballistic bishops" appears to be Jefferts Schori's caustic characterization of overseas primates who have taken TEC's orthodox Anglican parishes under their wing. Progressive Episcopalians long have decried what they call "boundary crossings"—cases in which bishops of another province take actions within TEC dioceses without the diocesan bishop's permission. This term has been applied to acts such as confirmations and the ordination of clergy, as well as the aforementioned instances of parishes leaving the Episcopal Church and placing themselves under another Anglican province.

From here, the "Lab Report" gets "curiouser and curiouser" as Bishop Jefferts Schori proceeds deeper into her own Alice in Wonderland-like rabbit hole. She makes this comment: "This is not the friendly rivalry of a game of pick-up basketball. It is the grievous division of Joseph and his brothers."3

This last biblical image is both revealing and puzzling. According to the story in Genesis 37-50, Joseph was favored by God and his father Jacob. He also was hated and envied by his brothers. This hatred and envy were so intense that they sold Joseph into slavery. He was taken to Egypt, where many years later he rose to become Pharoah's second-in-command. His brothers were reunited with him after a famine forced them to go to Egypt for food. Through a lengthy process, all of the brothers were reconciled with Joseph and, ironically, were spared from death due to Joseph's mercy on them. The story relates God's providential, if mysterious, outworking of all things for good—a truth later affirmed by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans.

So how does this story relate to the Anglican Communion? "Joseph," to Bishop Jefferts Schori, must be the Episcopal Church. "His brothers," then, are the orthodox Anglican primates. By comparing TEC with Joseph, Bishop Jefferts Schori implies that TEC is following and is favored by God. The primates, meanwhile, appear in a much less favorable light.

Does Bishop Jefferts Schori have a particular moment in the story of Joseph and his brothers to which she wants to compare the current situation in the Anglican Communion? At least three possibilities present themselves.

First, the primates could be the brothers in the early part of the story, when they are jealous of both Joseph's famous coat and the favor shown to him by both God and man. In this case, the primates are implicitly charged with the sin of envy.

Second, the primates could be the brothers at the point when they dispose of Joseph. Do the primates have destructive ends in mind for the Episcopal Church? Are they selling gays and lesbians into slavery by standing for traditional Christian teachings on sexuality? Perhaps this was the train of thought in the Presiding Bishop's mind. Or, third, the primates could be the brothers who many years later find that their left-for-dead brother is actually the source of their salvation from famine. If this is her intention, Bishop Jefferts Schori may be looking toward the day when the primates eventually recognize that the Episcopal Church has been right on the issues that have divided the Anglican Communion.4

It's possible that any combination of these three possibilities is on Bishop Jefferts Schori's mind—or none of them. She may have other connections in mind, or even just a vague, not fully formed association of the current crisis with the story of Joseph.5 In any case, however, the implied association of the primates with Joseph's brothers seems ill-informed and even insulting.

More importantly, in her description of the Anglican Communion crisis, the bishop acknowledges no culpability on the part of the Episcopal Church in the current crisis facing the Anglican Communion:

*
She ignores the July 2003 warning of many primates that if TEC proceeded with actions at odds with traditional Christian teachings on sexuality, it would place itself outside the consensus of the Anglican Communion.

*
She sidesteps former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold's signature on an October 2003 statement in which the primates recognized that if TEC continued on its path, the whole Anglican Communion would be torn apart. (Bishop Griswold almost immediately turned around and declared his intention to participate in the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. He fulfilled his promise the following month.)

*
She disregards the deep internal strife within TEC. Even supporters of the highly controversial B033, the major resolution at the 2006 General Convention responding to the Anglican Communion's Windsor Report, admitted that the resolution was only "the best that we [could] do."

She also does not mention Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' critique of TEC's actions in his post-General Convention letter of June 27:

[N]o member Church can make significant decisions unilaterally and still expect this to make no difference to how it is regarded in the fellowship; this would be uncomfortably like saying that every member could redefine the terms of belonging as and when it suited them. Some actions—and sacramental actions in particular—just do have the effect of putting a Church outside or even across the central stream of the life they have shared with other Churches. It isn't a question of throwing people into outer darkness, but of recognising that actions have consequences—and that actions believed in good faith to be 'prophetic' in their radicalism are likely to have costly consequences.

Instead, Bishop Jefferts Schori charges that the root cause of the Anglican Communion's mess is "the great sin of the church … the desire to be right."6 And what do the primates "desire to be right" about so much that they would, from her perspective, "[lob] fiats … [and] edicts" across the Communion? They desire to serve God faithfully in their teaching regarding issues and institutions such as marriage. Is marriage a "bond and covenant [between one man and one woman]… established by God in creation," as the Book of Common Prayer says? Or is it something culturally bound and therefore malleable?

Certainly the bishop herself "desire[s] to be right" concerning her overarching "vision of shalom." She is in earnest about the UN's Millennium Development Goals as an expression of her progressive social justice-inspired "dream of God." Jefferts Schori outlined these planks of her vision for TEC in her investiture sermon. Sadly, neither they nor her unorthodox theology will heal the wounds of either the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion.

For TEC's new Presiding Bishop to make headway with orthodox Anglicans both in the United States and around the world, she needs to offer more than just words of "shalom." As a start, she needs to accept TEC's contribution to the current crisis. And, through her words and actions, she needs to show an understanding of and respect for the positions of those who differ with her.



1Katharine Jefferts Schori, A Wing and a Prayer: A Message of Faith and Hope (booklet of excerpts). New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2007. 11.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

4She said as much in a June 2006 interview with PBS' Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly: "I hope that our decisions at this General Convention send several messages to the rest of the communion: … that people of all colors and races and nations and language groups and sexual orientations are fully part of this creation that God has blessed us with."

5Bishop Jefferts Schori does express confidence in God's turning evil actions into good, with the evil being defined as "hate toward us" (p. 13). While she speaks in general terms here, her previous comments raise the question of whether she would understand the orthodox Anglican primates' disposition toward TEC as "hate toward us."

6Ibid.

Date: 12/4/2006