Anglican Communion : The Search For An Anglican Future

Posted by rturner on 2008/5/10 17:19:00

This is The Christian Challenge's latest round-up report of salient Anglican developments of the last few months. It is hoped that it will be helpful for those seeking to catch up, fill in some blanks, and/or get a sense of the big picture at the moment.

The Search For An Anglican Future

Special Report/Analysis by Robert Hart and Auburn Traycik
The Christian Challenge (Washington, DC)
www.challengeonline.org
May, 2008

“See you in court.” That seems, increasingly, to be the pastoral response of The Episcopal Church to those who act in institutionally irregular ways in order to defend orthodox belief. But while the pressure of North American woes will be evident this summer, as separate meetings in Jerusalem and Canterbury seek to shape the future of Anglicanism, could the tide be turning a bit for an under-attended Lambeth Conference?



ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY Rowan Williams has lately called for prayer, worried that this summer’s Lambeth Conference of the world’s Anglican bishops will be “besieged by problems.”

“Gee, ya think?” will be the likely reaction from many conservatives, who will wonder if he could only now be realizing how problematic a stage has been set for Lambeth, and indeed for the whole Anglican Communion.

With the issue of North American doctrinal deviations still not fully resolved - thanks in significant measure, some believe, to the actions or inactions of Archbishop Williams - the situation in world Anglicanism has continued to deteriorate. In the U.S. Episcopal and Canadian Churches, conservative realignment, and liberal aggression toward the realigners, have intensified, while the wider Anglican Communion appears headed into a wrenching summer that will further spotlight a diverging international church.

June’s conservative Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), a two-part gathering in Jordan and Jerusalem to be attended by representatives of 30 million of the world’s 55 million active Anglicans, is not intended by its planners as a rival to the July 16-August 3 Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, nor to signal secession from the Communion. Some participating bishops will go on to Lambeth.

Nonetheless, some prelates still appeared set at this writing to go to GAFCON but not Lambeth for several reasons of conscience, not least Dr. Williams’ decision last year to include in the Canterbury meeting American bishops who approved or took part in the consecration of divorced, actively gay cleric Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

And GAFCON itself reveals that within the present structures of the Communion there is already a second center in the Global South, one that puts the historic faith and mission of the Church before allegiance to Canterbury; one that - after a decade of trying in vain to solve the American problem in particular - has largely lost trust that Communion structures and processes can or will secure Anglican unity.

As Southern Cone Archbishop Gregory Venables put it not long ago, the “system” is blocking a “solution” - chiefly a sufficient means to address the fact that The Episcopal Church (TEC) has so far failed to fully satisfy calls to halt its pro-homosexual agenda, voiced (inter alia) in the 2004 Windsor Report and the Anglican primates’ (provincial leaders’) 2007 communiqúe from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (both of which are undergirded by landmark Lambeth ‘98 sexuality resolution 1.10). TEC has still not assured that it would fully stop same-sex blessings, and appears poised to repudiate at its 2009 General Convention (as some dioceses already have) a 2006 resolution calling for non-consent for further practicing homosexual bishops.

With TEC largely unrepentant, or only temporarily restrained, but (so far) remaining in the Communion, there has been no lessening of anomalous actions by those trying to remain loyal to orthodox faith and in fellowship with the Communion’s theological majority. An entire TEC diocese and its bishop have in recent months joined an already-steady stream of North American congregations and clergy realigning with one of the handful of Global South Anglican provinces offering refuge.

Liberal hierarchs, in turn, scream that such boundary-crossing arrangements flout the Windsor Report, but are not eager to address the fact that they exist only due to the contravention of Anglican teaching, and the lack so far of what conservatives would see as adequate alternate oversight - a provision supported by Anglican primates - in North American provinces. Instead, the liberal leadership’s response seems to many to be focused on punishing non-conformists, retaining material wealth, and enforcing their new religion by any means necessary. It is, as well, not the response of a church leadership that is worried about being suspended or expelled from the Anglican Communion.

IN TEC, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her supporters have been so zealous in going after disaffiliators and other “dissidents” that they have lately included two elderly retirees among several conservative bishops tagged for removal; become yet more litigious over church property; and - conservatives say - have run roughshod over church law.

In an action which has drawn charges of canonical invalidity, the Episcopal House of Bishops (HOB) voted in March to depose San Joaquin (CA) Bishop John-David Schofield, who recently resigned from the HOB and followed his Episcopal diocese in aligning with the Argentina-based Southern Cone province, and retired Bishop William Cox, 88, who was accused of ministering to faithful ex-Episcopalians. Cox also had already removed to the Southern Cone.

“This is a bit like saying ‘you can’t quit, you’re fired!’” said the Rev. Canon Daryl Fenton, Chief Operating Officer of the Anglican Communion Network (ACN), which represents 828 faithful Anglican parishes within and outside of TEC. “It will have no practical effect on the ministry of these two godly leaders, but instead makes crystal clear the scorched earth policy that the current leadership of [TEC] intends to prosecute against those who cannot in good conscience follow them out of the Christian mainstream.”

Bishop Schori also recently made a failed, but vigorous and, again, canonically-dubious, attempt to secure the expedited deposition of ACN Moderator, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, whose diocese has taken its first but not final vote to realign. She also inhibited 80-year-old retired Quincy (IL) Bishop Edward MacBurney for an “offense” similar to Cox’s, despite knowing (reportedly) that MacBurney’s son was on his deathbed. Next on the “hit” list may be Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker, whose diocese also may withdraw from TEC later this year, and (one assumes) other retired bishops who have in some way assisted orthodox refugees from TEC.

In another action that drew charges of canonical impropriety, Schori recently called and oversaw a convention in California that purported to continue or reconstitute the TEC Diocese of San Joaquin and accept as temporary shepherd former Northern California Bishop Jerry Lamb - despite the possibly void deposition of Bishop Schofield.

This action was clearly a precursor to TEC’s move in late April to file a lawsuit claiming the property of the seceded diocese - though the Dar es Salaam communiqúe called for an end to a resort to lawsuits among opposing Anglican parties. The suit, which is focused on direct holdings of the diocese rather than individual parish properties, names Bishop Schofield as the primary defendant, as trusteeship of the property of the San Joaquin diocese is vested in the bishop, under California law.

Meanwhile, there has been an uptick in litigation against individual parishes seeking to leave TEC for reasons of theological conscience. Unlike her predecessor, Frank Griswold, Bishop Schori rejects the idea that a diocese may negotiate a financial settlement allowing a departing congregation that intends to remain Anglican to keep its church property. That she is pressing her view, and that the national church is now more actively joining in court battles, with the help of Schori’s ubiquitous Chancellor, David Booth Beers, is evident in reports of church property disputes across the country. (See more in the latest issue's “Focus” section.) Adding insult to injury, the P.B. recently defended her church’s litigiousness by comparing the faithful who seek to retain parish property to child abusers. In both cases, she said, “bad behavior” is involved that must be confronted.

The question of Schori’s own “bad behavior” was, however, the subject of a memo that was circulating at deadline among a consortium of church leaders. Prepared by an attorney, the memo concluded that sufficient legal grounds exist for bringing Schori to ecclesiastical trial on 11 counts of violating TEC regulations. The memo was not optimistic, though, that the current political and legal climate in TEC would allow a presentment of the P.B. to go forward.

IN THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF CANADA, where the orthodox position on scriptural authority and homosexuality has been eroding, liberal bishops have threatened or initiated property lawsuits and/or disciplinary actions against a recent wave of congregations and clergy - including Evangelical luminary J.I. Packer - that have realigned with the province of the Southern Cone. Dr. Packer, author of the classic book Knowing God, was among nine priests who on April 21 denied a charge of “abandonment” of ministry leveled at them by New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham (who has implemented gay blessings in his diocese), but who relinquished licenses they held from the prelate. They said they now would receive licenses from Bishop Donald Harvey, a former Anglican Church of Canada prelate who is also now under the Southern Cone’s jurisdiction and overseeing 15 faithful Canadian parishes, with more, possibly, to come. (See Page 17 of the latest Christian Challenge for a fuller report on the Canadian situation.)

That jurisdiction and “turf” have become major components in the current Anglican conflict was once more evident as Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz made a high profile, but 11th hour, appeal for Archbishop Venables not to “interfere” in his province by attending a late April meeting of hundreds of new Canadian members of the Southern Cone at a Baptist church in Vancouver. Venables came anyway, saying he would not have come had the participants not already left the Canadian province.

Dr. Packer observed at the Vancouver meeting that “the principle of geographical exclusiveness for the diocese and its bishop has been breached in a way that cannot be restored. We are realigning within the province of Canada. It seems to me that...there must be a possibility for realignment of the faithful” away from situations in which “heresy, doctrinal and moral, is approved.”

-Williams: The Road Not Taken-

To conservatives, the path for Archbishop Williams should have been clear. But he has taken another road – one they see as based on something other than orthodox truth or even the entirety of the Windsor Report.

Williams, convenor of the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, moved in May 2007 to send out invitations to the confab – not waiting for decisive meetings in Canada in June 2007 and the U.S. last September. He excluded from the guest list faithful American bishops tapped by provinces like Nigeria and Rwanda to minister to TEC and Canadian Church refugees. But he included as invitees all North American bishops not in compliance with the Windsor Report’s requested moratoria on gay bishops and blessings, save for Bishop Robinson.

Williams then resisted calls from Global South leaders to convene a Primates’ Meeting to assess the September response of Episcopal bishops to the primates’ 2007 communiqúe (which might have resulted in the prelates concluding that TEC had left the Communion). After polling the primates by mail instead, the Archbishop admitted in an Advent 2007 letter that there was “no consensus” among them that TEC had responded adequately to the communiqúe, notably in the matter of same-sex blessings. While saying that no further elucidation could be expected from TEC, Williams nonetheless recommended two avenues of further discussion, one of them a now-appointed “Windsor Continuation Group” (which gives the sense that the initial Windsor Report will become yet one more never-ending process leading to nothing). As well, Williams’ letter repeatedly rapped cross-provincial pastoral arrangements for beleaguered faithful.

The Archbishop has wanted opposing parties to confront and resolve their differences at Lambeth, notably through the formulation of the Anglican Covenant, a pact proposed by the Windsor Report that is intended to help ensure unity in basic belief, settle disputes and administer discipline among Anglican provinces. While, currently, Anglicanism’s top-level “instruments of communion” (the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primates’ Meeting, Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and Lambeth Conference) wield only moral authority, a province adopting the covenant would ostensibly subject itself to its binding international regulations.

Some conservative primates in fact called for the covenant to be adopted before another Lambeth was held, to put the Conference on a better footing - an idea that Williams ignored. And at this point, moreover, it is unclear whether the covenant will, after all, be strong enough to fulfill its purpose: A recently-issued second draft of the concord has left some underwhelmed (see more on Page 22 of the latest Challenge), and the text is to undergo review at a Lambeth Conference that looks to be under-attended by the orthodox.

More importantly, the covenant will not come to the rescue any time soon. The Presiding Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Mouneer Anis, a member of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and ACC, said he was “shocked” to learn from ACC staff recently that the covenant is not due to be implemented until 2015, long after the Communion will almost certainly have fragmented, Anis maintained.

Significantly, too, Lambeth itself strikes some as geared to thwart the confrontation of real issues. As outlined by Dr. Williams in January, the Conference seems to have been reconfigured as more of a retreat/study/sharing program that will have fewer resolutions and more small group activities (which in TEC have been used as an effective control device).

VIEWED AS A WHOLE, Dr. Williams’ approach over the last year seems aimed at forfending any threat to continued Communion membership for the small, doctrinally-rebellious - but wealthy - North American provinces, at the expense of the Communion’s theological majority. (Notably, the ACC, which is under liberal leadership, receives more than a fourth of its funding from TEC.) Some even thought Williams’ performance deliberately calculated to repel what the Archbishop would view as conservative hardliners. For it did - and not just in the mostly conservative Global South provinces.

While one archbishop had rethought the matter by deadline (on which more in a minute), five Anglican primates said earlier this year that they would attend GAFCON but not Lambeth: Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, and Henry Orombi of Uganda. (Some reports also say that Tanzania’s leader will stay away.) Also still planning to skip the Conference at this writing were the archbishop and bishops of Sydney (the most populous part of the Australian Church). It appeared, too, that some Church of England bishops would not go, including the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali.

According to an April Times of London report, about 70 percent of the 880 bishops invited to Lambeth have responded affirmatively, though that number of attenders pales when weighed again the number of people those bishops will be representing. The Nigerian bishops alone, all of whom were expected at this point to be absent, represent more Anglicans than any other house of bishops, and more than several other national churches put together. Just two of the 131 Nigerian dioceses can out-number the entire membership of TEC, with its 109 dioceses. Indeed, the event that appears better positioned to represent most active Anglicans in the world is not Lambeth but GAFCON.

Recently, the five boycotting primates, responding to an appeal from 21 English Evangelical bishops to come work with them at Lambeth, explained in a letter why they could not do so - while also saying that their action is not an indication that they will ultimately leave the Communion.

The primates said it was not just Dr. Williams’ undifferentiated handling of the Lambeth invitations, which “suggest that institutional structures are superior to the content of the faith itself.” It was the length of the Conference and the time in which they would feel pressure to be in fellowship with bishops who consecrated Robinson in 2003, who have not followed Windsor’s request (Paragraph 134) that they withdraw from Communion councils pending an expression of “regret” (which the primates expected to amount to repentance), and some of whom are suing for the property of North American congregations that are now under the Global South bishops’ oversight.

They also expected constant harassment in Canterbury from protest groups supporting Bishop Robinson - who will be at Lambeth despite being banned from it. Fresh from his June civil union with partner Mark Andrew - which is to be blessed in an Episcopal church - Robinson plans to lurk on the periphery of the meeting on the campus of the University of Kent, where he doubtless will be swarmed by the media.

As well, the primates noted that, while at Lambeth ‘98 they had a co-religionist in the Archbishop of Canterbury of the time, George Carey, that would not be the case this time.

“We have come to the conclusion, from the failure of the instruments of communion to take action either to discipline [TEC] or to protect those who have asked the Communion for protection, that there is no serious space for those of an orthodox persuasion in the councils of the Communion to be themselves or to be taken seriously,” the primates wrote.

-A Reprieve For Lambeth?-

Nonetheless, a simmering debate among conservatives over the wisdom, or not, of attending Lambeth yielded in late April one significant conversion on the issue - that of Archbishop Venables.

By deadline, none of the other Lambeth-avoiding primates had likewise changed their position. Venables’ switch was, however, followed by word that two Network bishops, Duncan of Pittsburgh and Iker of Fort Worth - while not disagreeing with the boycott by co-religionist bishops - would attend Lambeth as well as GAFCON, to speak on behalf of U.S. faithful there in the face of expected liberal distortions of their position. The plans of the other eight ACN-aligned Episcopal diocesans were not clear at this point.

Informed conservative sources consulted by TCC, however, believed there would be little change in the overall strength of the Lambeth boycott, which one source put at around 250 bishops.

Possibly undergirding this idea were Venables’ remarks about his decision to attend Lambeth after all. He gave the impression that he was motivated by what he sees as the need for probably-divorcing parties to be in communication, and (again) the need for someone to be in Canterbury to represent the conservative voice to the press.

“I think someone has got to go...and speak to the situation,” and that “we have...to continue working at this,” he was quoted as saying by the London Times. But he added that he thought “the division is pretty final...I don’t think we are going to change people’s minds, but I think it would be wrong for us to get to a point where we acknowledge a division and try to organize it without being together and talking about it.”

“The Church as an institution is bound to have its limits. I think we have just hit the limit on this,” said Venables, whose province covers the southern half of South America. “The sad thing is that there seems to be no way the Anglican Communion can fully acknowledge that difference and find a way of gracefully dealing with it...If we have not done it in the Primates’ Meeting or if what the primates have proposed has not been accepted, I cannot see much hope coming out of Lambeth.”

PERHAPS HOPING TO CONVINCE Venables otherwise - and persuade other boycotters to come to Lambeth as well - though, Dr. Williams appeared poised at deadline to make what initially appeared to be a bid, albeit a very late one, to put the squeeze on liberal, pro-gay bishops.

Starting with remarks from the Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright, an Evangelical, it emerged that Archbishop Williams was going to write bishops attending Lambeth, asking them to affirm their willingness to abide by the recommendations of the Windsor Report and work towards the creation of an Anglican Communion Covenant. If not, they should “absent themselves” from Lambeth, Wright said.

Reports noted that this jibed with a statement in Dr. Williams’ Advent letter that bishops attending Lambeth must be willing to “work with those aspects of the Conference’s agenda that relate to implementing” the Windsor recommendations, including the covenant.

The letter evidently had not yet gone out at this writing, so its exact content remained to be seen. But if its terms are as stated, a number of observers questioned whether the letter was anything more than a gesture that would have no impact on Lambeth attendance.

Bishop Schori, for example, has repeatedly indicated that TEC, while perhaps pausing or muting its gay agenda, is not desisting from it. She recently said that TEC would support gay clergy at Lambeth, joined by more sympathizing bishops from outside the U.S. than might be expected. She also indirectly acknowledged in a BBC interview early this year that same-sex blessing services continue to take place in TEC (by charging that more of them go on in the Church of England, but are rarely spotlighted - a “double standard,” she said.) Will the terms of Williams’ letter now cause her (or him?!) to withdraw from Lambeth? Will other progressive American, Canadian, Brazilian and British bishops who have given formal or informal support to moves to normalize homosexuality in the church now absent themselves?

Likewise, a call for Conference participants to abide by Windsor would seem unlikely to change the minds of a lot of Lambeth boycotters - at least unless it really did spur the absences of bishops who have violated Anglican sexuality policy, and some leeway was allowed on Windsor’s proscriptions against boundary-crossings.

The Dar es Salaam communiqúe said conservative primates were unwilling to cease cross-border pastoral arrangements until the provinces concerned had provided the faithful with adequate alternate oversight. Neither TEC nor the Canadian Church implemented a pastoral plan proposed by the primates at Dar es Salaam. A more recent plan put forward for TEC, which would involve the services of Windsor-compliant Episcopal bishops and five foreign Anglican primates, may be more promising, but evidently has not been finalized, and still relies on the good will of individual bishops.

Of the expected letter from Williams, one well-informed source told TCC: “I think that this is yet another case of less than meets the eye. Bishop Wright consistently overplays to conservatives the import, bravery and wisdom of Williams’ actions. Frankly, I think that after [Williams’] canon lawyers put the fear of respecting (provincial) ‘autonomy’ into him, everyone, not just a few bishops, will get a mealy-mouthed letter not much different than what he has said already. It will change precisely nothing.” All the liberal TEC bishops “who have their flights booked will happily get on the plane and go to Lambeth.”

SO, IT APPEARED - at this writing anyway - that the outlook for attendance at the Canterbury gathering was unlikely to change much, and that Dr. Williams would be presiding over a Lambeth Conference that will, due to important absences, lack the standing of its predecessors.

The danger is that Lambeth “will display a disintegrating Anglican Church that has lost its effectiveness and has become a symbol of schism,” wrote Ruth Gledhill of The Times of London. Strikingly, she said GAFCON deserved coverage because, “There must be a future for what Anglicanism once represented.”

Looking at the media frenzy likely to be created at Lambeth by TEC’s Bishop of New Hampshire, Episcopal e-journalist David Virtue said it looks increasingly like the Conference “will be a massive gay pride campaign starring sweet newlyweds, Mr. and Mr. Gene Robinson, supported by a cast from (the gay groups) Changing Attitude (U.K.) and Integrity (U.S.) .” Robinson, he said, will be portrayed as “a victim of homophobia, by an elitist press waiting to whack [any] Global South orthodox bishops who...happen to show up and suggest that [homosexual behavior] is not good and right in the eyes of God.”

English commentator Andrew Carey argued that a situation in which Robinson becomes a “martyr,” and Lambeth “a shadow of its former self” could have been avoided had Archbishop Williams and the Anglican bureaucracy “actually taken any notice of the Windsor Report,” and specifically its request that American bishops who approved of or participated in Robinson’s consecration withdraw from Communion councils. This approach had merit, Carey said, in that it did not require a specific scapegoat (Robinson), and would draw attention to the real issues, which are TEC’s move to unilaterally change the church’s teaching, and the need to identify a biblically-faithful pastoral response to homosexuals.

It is small wonder that, by deadline, Dr. Williams had posted a seven-and-a-half minute video on the Internet, again making the case for the covenant, but also trying to save his vision of Lambeth as a tranquil “spiritual encounter.” The decennial gathering should not be “a time when we are being besieged by problems that need to be solved and statements that need to be finalized,” he insisted, “but a time when people feel that they are growing in their ministry.” The peace and quiet he is seeking for the Canterbury confab, however, looks likely to be elusive.

-The Episcopal Purge-

The liberal hierarchy’s recent efforts to cleanse TEC’s episcopal rolls began with the inhibition of San Joaquin’s Bishop Schofield, who as noted, realigned with the Southern Cone in tandem with his diocese’s overwhelming December vote to affiliate with that province. It was the first move by an American diocese to secede from the U.S. Episcopal Church since the Civil War.

Schofield’s case, as well as that of most other targeted prelates, pivots on TEC canon law, specifically Title IV, Canon 9, section 1, which deals with the “Abandonment of the Communion of This Church by a Bishop.” The canon indicates that the “abandonment” charge can be applied if the bishop has entered a religious body that is not in communion with TEC. Likewise, if the charge is that he functioned episcopally for another church, then “abandonment” is only applicable if that church is not in communion with TEC.

As none of the conservative bishops in question has gone anywhere outside of the Anglican Communion, it seems that only one of two conclusions can be made about TEC’s recent disciplinary actions or attempted actions against them on the basis of this canon: 1) TEC has renounced its own place in the Communion; 2) TEC is working on the premise that it can remain in communion with Canterbury, and Canterbury with it, while not being in communion with certain other provinces with which Canterbury is in communion - provinces that have declared or undertaken actions indicating broken or impaired communion with TEC. This “swiss cheese” concept of communion (which intervening foreign provinces seem to be relying on as well, though not by choice) is not new within Anglicanism, but hardly meets historic standards.

Bishop Schofield was inhibited by Bishop Jefferts Schori in January, and resigned from TEC’s House of Bishops before the HOB met in March. Support for Schofield was registered by, among others, 41 bishops throughout the Communion, who said they stood with him in this “decision for the faith once delivered to the saints.” Archbishop Venables said the inhibition had no effect on Schofield’s ministry within his jurisdiction.

Far be it from Schori and the HOB, though, just to accept Schofield’s resignation. And besides, in this instance, at least, the canons - which say that a bishop must first seek the HOB’s permission to resign - were going to be followed. On March 12, the House instead held a trial which found Schofield guilty of “abandoning the communion” of TEC, on the basis of which he was defrocked.

Schofield lamented the use in his case of disciplinary procedures that “were intended for those who have
abandoned the Faith and are leading others away from orthodox Christianity, as held in trust by bishops in the Anglican Communion - and which [TEC] had previously upheld also.

“The question that begs to be answered by the [HOB]” Schofield added, “is why bishops who continue to teach and publish books that deny the most basic Christian beliefs are not disciplined while those of us who uphold the Christian Faith are? I have not abandoned the Faith. I resigned from the American House of Bishops and have been received into the House of Bishops of the Southern Cone. Both Houses are members of the Anglican Communion. They are not - or should not be - two separate Churches.”

At the same meeting, the HOB also deposed for “abandonment” another bishop that had already left for the Southern Cone, William J. Cox, 88, retired Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Maryland (where he served mostly in the 1970s), and Assistant Bishop of Oklahoma. He was said to have illegally performed sacramental acts without the permission of the local bishop in 2005, when he ordained two priests and a deacon at Christ Church in Overland Park, Kansas, an ex-Episcopal parish, at the request of the archbishop of Uganda.

IN SHORT ORDER, a few media outlets and bishops began charging that the deposition votes were canonically void, and calling for the matters to be revisited. The canons required a majority decision by all members of the House entitled to vote, they said, not just a majority vote of those present. According to one report, on March 12 the HOB had 294 eligible voters, which means 148 votes were needed to depose a bishop for abandonment of communion. However, on that day only 116 bishops were registered at the meeting. Voting was by voice and was not unanimous.

Among objectors was new South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence, who was in a unique position to protest: his first election to the South Carolina see was invalidated by Jefferts Schori on a technicality. To pass canonical muster, and install Lawrence as bishop, the diocese had to go through the election and consent process a second time.

Lawrence wrote Bishop Schori that: “Under Canon IV.9.2, the [HOB] must give its consent to depose a bishop under the ‘abandonment of communion’ canon ‘... by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote.’ “ Article I.2 of TEC’s constitution “states in pertinent part that ‘Each Bishop of this Church having jurisdiction, every Bishop Coadjutor, every Suffragan Bishop, every Assistant Bishop, and every Bishop who by reason of advanced age or bodily infirmity . . . has resigned a jurisdiction, shall have a seat and vote in the House of Bishops...’ The language of the Canon has consistently required that a majority of all bishops entitled to vote, and not just a majority of those present at a meeting, must give their consent to the deposition of a bishop.”

Schori maintained that it was too late to protest the vote. She claimed that “any protest of a parliamentary action must be made at the time of the action by someone present at the meeting...That did not happen.”

Chancellor Beers took his shot, claiming that the deposition could be effected by a majority vote of those present. He said he and the HOB’s parliamentarian agreed before the vote “that the canon meant a majority of all those present and entitled to vote, because it is clear from the canon that the vote had to be taken at a meeting, unlike the situation where you poll the whole House...by mail. Therefore, it is our position that the vote was in order.”

However, the canon makes no mention of the vote being taken at a meeting. And Bishop Lawrence wrote that, although the language of the relevant canon is clear, Canon IV.15 specifically states that “All the Members shall mean the total number of members of the Body provided for by Constitution or Canon without regard to absences, excused members, abstentions or vacancies.’” .

Bishop Lawrence’s conclusion, in his letter, was forceful: “The Diocese of South Carolina demonstrated our commitment to the proper observance of [TEC’s] canons with two election conventions and 18 months of standing committee and bishop confirmations. Because we feel so strongly that the canons were not followed in the depositions of Bishops Schofield and Cox, we must respectfully refuse to recognize the depositions, and we will not recognize any new bishop who may be elected to replace Bishop Schofield, unless and until the canons are followed.”

FOLLOWING UPON THAT was a March 27 letter warning that Jefferts Schori may be facing a defamation charge if she does not withdraw her pronouncement of Bishop Cox’s deposition. Wicks Stephens, a lawyer a representing Cox, maintained in a letter to the P.B. and Chancellor Beers that the deposition, having failed to achieve the canonically required majority of “the whole number of bishops entitled to vote,” is “without effect and void.” He also contended that Bishop Schori was previously told of the canonical deficiencies in the vote deposing Bishop Cox. “In light of the foregoing, demand is hereby made that you right the wrong by which you have defamed Bishop Cox by immediately withdrawing your pronouncement of deposition and that you publish your withdrawal in the same manner and to the same extent you have published your wrongful actions,” Stephens wrote.

A Church of England Newspaper story also reported that, by Schori’s own admission, the canonical procedure leading up to Cox’s deposition had not been followed in several respects. As well, retired Episcopal Bishop William Wantland, a lawyer, maintained that Cox was deposed on an incorrect charge, having been accused of “abandonment” for an offense that involved the violation of diocesan boundaries, which Wantland said is addressed by a different canon.

So far, however, Bishop Schori has not budged; in fact, by deadline, she had sent out a letter to colleagues defending the legality of recent disciplinary actions. And the Schofield/Cox matters were only the start of her canonically-dubious activities of late.

IN HOT PURSUIT of Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, Schori has lately tried (unsuccessfully) to stir interest among fellow bishops for holding a special meeting in May, at which she plainly wanted to ram through Duncan’s deposition for “abandonment,” sans what other sources say is a canonically-required prior inhibition, and despite Duncan’s firm denial of the charge.

Why the hurry to get this done? Some sources suggested that Schori hoped it would force Archbishop Williams to decide whether to recognize TEC’s deposition - and indeed, TEC itself - by disinviting Duncan to Lambeth (a decision similar to the one he faces with regard to Bishop Schofield, though at last check Schofield was not planning on attending.)

What is more obvious is that Schori wanted to depose Duncan before Pittsburgh’s convention this fall, and thereby possibly prevent that diocese’s exit to the Southern Cone, and intimidate Bishops Iker of Fort Worth and Keith Ackerman of Quincy from leading similar moves at their conventions late this year. Fort Worth delegates voted overwhelmingly in favor of realignment at last year’s convention, and could finally decide the matter in the fall; Quincy may take its first vote on the issue this year.

“THE GRACELESS AND TOTALITARIAN MINDSET” now dominating TEC came further to the fore, in the view of the traditionalist Forward in Faith, North America (FIF-NA), in the recent attack on retired Quincy Bishop Edward MacBurney. Despite knowing that MacBurney’s son lay dying of cancer, Schori sent the prelate a letter of inhibition on April 9. Following public reports that may have placed pressure on her, she lifted the suspension only so long as to allow the bishop to take part in sacramental ministry for his son’s funeral.

In this case, the accused was not charged with abandonment but canonical violations stemming from his agreement to make a pastoral visit in June 2007 to a church in San Diego that is not part of TEC, but linked to a province (the Southern Cone) with which TEC shares Communion membership. MacBurney accepted Archbishop Venables’ invitation to visit the parish in “a spirit of Anglican unity and Christian generosity,” said FIF-NA.

The inhibition of MacBurney was sought by San Diego Bishop James Mathes, because he had not granted permission for the visiting prelate to act in his diocese. But again, in this case as well as some others, Episcopal officials seem to be claiming that they have complete control over anything related to the Anglican Communion going on on their “turf,” even while judging that anyone who has left TEC for the wider Communion has “abandoned” TEC!

MacBurney had 90 days from the date of inhibition to respond to the charge against him.

-The Raid On San Joaquin-

Meanwhile, the church that has complained of “border-crossing” wasted no time in invading the Southern Cone province of San Joaquin to try to reconstitute a TEC diocese there, and pick off (where it can) people who belong to the majority of churches that voted to leave TEC.

On March 7, it was reported that six parishes out of 48 in the original San Joaquin diocese had chosen to “remain Episcopal,” an option that Bishop Schofield had given to any parish or mission as long as it did not owe money to the diocese.

A comparison of the two jurisdictions’ websites, at the time of writing, showed the TEC diocese claiming to have 18 churches, including a new mission, and the Southern Cone diocese 40. But both dioceses list five churches with the same names in the same cities, but with different addresses, such as the TEC St. Nicholas in Atwater at a “temporary location.” Two congregations named St. Paul’s are in the town of Visalia, but the TEC St. Paul’s apparently has only an e-mail address. Meanwhile the San Joaquin-Southern Cone churches all have fixed locations; the bishop continues to occupy his cathedral, and some people who left parishes because of TEC’s liberal drift are returning. As well, Bishop Schofield said that parishes in other western Episcopal dioceses have begun to inquire how they can be part of the Diocese of San Joaquin. In the end, it appeared that the TEC diocese actually has 13 or fewer congregations, and some 600 members, out of a diocese of some 8,000.

STARTING WITH Bishop Schori’s dispatch of some representatives into the San Joaquin diocese to begin the reorganization process, TEC’s effort to re-establish a diocese in San Joaquin seems to have been peppered with canonically-questionable actions.

On March 29, Bishop Schori oversaw a convention of the rump San Joaquin diocese that (inter alia) accepted her recommendation that former Northern California Bishop Jerry Lamb, 67, serve as provisional shepherd; this, despite challenges to Schofield’s deposition, and charges from some quarters that Schori usurped the authority of the standing committee in calling the convention, and had not given the required length of notice for it.

Schori had taken it upon herself to create a new diocesan standing committee, even though six persons duly elected earlier to the committee who did not join the Southern Cone never resigned their positions and wanted to “remain Episcopal.”

A primary aim of the purge of standing committee members who were associated with the previous, traditionalist-led diocese, seems to be to ensure that the TEC Diocese of San Joaquin would be conformed to the new order. Immediately upon taking up his new role, Bishop Lamb received three women priests - the diocese’s first. While not rushing the issue, he also called for “conversation” about the role of homosexuals in the diocese.

The reconstituted San Joaquin diocese is being propped up by a cash infusion of $459,000 authorized by TEC’s Executive Council.

BUT MUCH MORE will doubtless be spent by the national church to bankroll its lawsuit (with the local Remain Episcopal group) to claim the seceded diocese’s property. Filed April 24 in Fresno County Superior Court, the suit, which was expected, will test for the first time a diocese’s rights under TEC’s 1979 Dennis Canon. The canon does not address the possibility of a diocese seceding, rather declaring only that parish property is held in trust for the diocese and wider church.

The same Episcopal News Service story that reported on the suit also maintained that “the continuing Episcopal diocese is moving forward with its goal of creating a culture of reconciliation.”

In an April 26 letter, Bishop Schofield reassured his flock that “we have been expecting this litigation” and “our legal team” had been preparing fruitfully for it for some time. He maintained that “nothing in [TEC’s] current constitution and canons prohibits a diocese from leaving one province and moving to another.”

LEGAL QUESTIONS also have been raised in regard to the Southern Cone’s move to accept the San Joaquin diocese into its fold. A spokesman for Archbishop Venables said the provincial leadership was aware of constitutional impediments before voting unanimously to issue its “emergency, temporary and pastoral” invitation to affiliate. “Both the House of Bishops of the Southern Cone and the General Synod decided to go ahead because of the nature of the emergency,” the spokesman said.

Archbishop Venables recently stated, however, that his province is starting the process of amending its constitution and canons to regularize the admission of parishes and dioceses beyond South America.

-Lambeth And GAFCON: The Conservative Debate-

Conservatives across the Communion are, as earlier noted, are not united about GAFCON and Lambeth, with some faithful bishops planning on going to both, or just GAFCON, or just Lambeth. And it may be - as witnessed by Archbishop Venables’ recent change of position on the matter - that just which bishops are in what camp will be somewhat in flux right up until the start of each event.

Some conservatives see the Middle Eastern confab, or its pre-Lambeth timing, as unhelpful or divisive. And some contend that it will be more disastrous for conservatives to stay away from than take part in Lambeth, as a boycott will abdicate the orthodox position on sexuality, and indeed the whole Communion, and the covenant that could save it, to liberal revisionist and compromising forces.

Conservative West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez, head of the Covenant Design Group, for example, has urged would-be boycotting co-religionists to reconsider, saying that “the future of Anglicanism - to a large extent - will be determined by the outcome of Lambeth.” At the same time, though, Gomez is among those who have deprecated claims that GAFCON would be a rival Lambeth. GAFCON is designed to be “a means for strengthening the conservative view within the Communion,” he said. Those attending would “come away refreshed and reinforced in their convictions, but it does not mean that that would be the end of the Anglican Communion.”

By contrast, the Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright, has accused GAFCON of being an alternative to Lambeth. In a January commentary, he charged that the conference’s rationale is that the Communion is “finished,” and that that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He used a biblical analogy to suggest that Anglicans should stay on the ship, which has not yet sunk, rather than launch lifeboats. To say yes to Lambeth is not to affirm liberal revisionism, he contended, but to move forward with Windsor and the covenant, which Williams has made clear “are the tools with which to forge our future. ‘Orthodox’ bishops should celebrate that, and join in the task,” he said.

More recently, he seemed to accuse GAFCON organizers of seeking to exploit the TEC and Canadian situations in order “shift the balance of power in the...Communion,” of suggesting that true Evangelicals must withdraw from Lambeth in favor of GAFCON, and of handing a “moral victory to those who can cheerfully wave goodbye to the ‘secessionists’.”

If Bishop Wright “thinks there is still a future for enforcement of the Windsor Report, the Anglican Covenant, or whatever new piece of paper will be waved in front of us promising ‘peace in our time,’ he is very much mistaken,” David Ould, a member of the Council of Australia’s Anglican Church League, wrote earlier this year. “The story of the last five years is one of intransigent contempt from TEC and her allies coupled with negligent and spineless activity from Lambeth.” Williams has “displayed next to zero determination” to hold to the course of Windsor and the covenant, he asserted. Worse is that “his senior officers on the ship, starting with [ACC Secretary General Kenneth Kearon] and moving downwards, are trying to wrestle the wheel away from him at every opportunity...Blaming GAFCON organizers for ‘manning the lifeboats’ and thus dooming the Communion to sink is the equivalent of the Captain of the Titanic doing the same...”

Another frequent commentator on church affairs, the Rev. Dr. Peter Toon, who initially saw GAFCON as a threat to the Communion’s future, recently revised his view, declaring his appreciation for “the...informed, godly consciences involved.”

Toon, the president of the Prayer Book Society of the U.S.A., retained hopes for “one Global Family, but renewed in truth and grace for mission.” But he wrote bishops not planning to attend Lambeth that if they truly believe that their participation in it would be “to deny that Jesus is Lord and that his Church is to be faithful to his Word, then obviously you cannot attend.

“Further,” he added, “you cannot stop...[at] being absent: you have to do something to proclaim to the Anglican Communion...that there is another and a better vision of what is the Communion - and this vision needs to be declared and known before the world is presented - via a big media presence - with the vision of the erring leadership...of Dr Williams and his team.”

That seems to be precisely what the GAFCON organizers and participants have in mind. They want to join forces to break through the logjam of “process” in the Communion with an uncompromised Gospel and cohesive program for spreading it that they can hold up for Lambeth. This kind of undertaking is something they feel prevented from doing at Lambeth, due to the reasons that will cause some to absent themselves from the Canterbury confab, and/or because of the way the Conference will be structured. Hence the necessity of GAFCON in their view.

GAFCON, which is by invitation only, is expected to be attended by as many as 300 bishops, as well as hundreds more clergy and lay leaders, and their wives, from the Global South and North America, and from both the Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic wings of the church. Included among those invited are all members of the college of bishops of the “Common Cause Partnership,” the North American coalition of Anglican faithful within and outside of the “official” Communion; the Partnership includes the Anglican Communion Network. At deadline, it appeared that GAFCON attendance could reach 1,000.

The entire event was originally slated to take place in Jerusalem, but was bifurcated after the Bishop of Jerusalem, Suheil Dawani, and Middle East Archbishop Anis expressed concerns that the meeting could inflame Christian-Muslim tensions and “import inter-Anglican conflict” in the region; Dawani recommended that the organizers make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem instead.

As rearranged, GAFCON now aims to separate its “political and spiritual components.” It starts June 18-21 with a private consultation in Amman, Jordan, of conference leaders, theological group members, and bishops who are serving in majority Muslim settings. The main event following on June 22-29, the “pilgrimage” to Jerusalem, will focus on worship, prayer, discussions and Bible study, “shaped in the context of the Holy Land.” Bishop Dawani plans to attend.

Key organizers and supporters of GAFCON are said to include, among others, the primates of Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Southern Cone, Tanzania, and Uganda; Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney; several North American bishops that are backed by foreign provinces; Pittsburgh’s Bishop Duncan; Church of England Bishops Michael Nazir-Ali (Rochester) and Wallace Benn (Lewes), and Canon Dr. Chris Sugden of Anglican Mainstream.

“GAFCON is organized to enable the Anglican orthodox to think, discuss and pray about the future of the Anglican Communion,” said the GAFCON Leadership Team.

“The GAFCON gathering does not mean schism. It seeks to set out a clear, biblically-faithful and orthodox vision for the future of the Anglican Communion, share with the rest of the Communion in all available forums and work at shaping the Communion towards that end.”

“Shared mission clearly must rise from common shared faith,” said Archbishop Venables. “Our pastoral responsibility to the people that we lead is now to provide the opportunity to come together around the central and unchanging tenets of the historic Anglican faith. Rather than being subject to the continued chaos and compromise that have dramatically impeded Anglican mission, GAFCON will seek to clarify God’s call at this time, and build a network of cooperation for global mission,” he said.

“The conference will grapple with the crisis of authority and ecclesiology that has occurred as a result of North American actions,” Dr. Sugden wrote. “We want to ensure that our relationships in the Anglican Communion reflect gospel values. We seek to affirm both biblical orthodoxy and Catholic order, but a Catholic order that will serve the Catholic faith, not the other way around.”

“History,” said the Leadership Team, “is poised potentially to turn on its hinges if this gathering of world Anglican leaders is successful.”

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Sources included the websites of The Church of England, Diocese of Pittsburgh, Diocese(s) of San Joaquin, Diocese of Quincy; The Living Church, Episcopal News Service, VirtueOnline, The Times (London), The Church of England Newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, Church Times, Anglican Journal, Reuters, The Washington Times, The Washington Post
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