Bishop Iker Describes Inhibition by PB as ‘Irrelevant’

From The Living Church:

Posted on: November 24, 2008

A letter inhibiting the Rt. Rev. Jack L. Iker, Bishop of Fort Worth, and documents supporting her reasons were issued by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on Nov. 21. Bishop Iker, whose diocesan convention voted overwhelmingly to leave The Episcopal Church and affiliate with the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone on Nov. 15, issued the following response to the Presiding Bishop’s announcement:

“Katharine Jefferts Schori has no authority over me or my ministry as a Bishop in the Church of God. She never has and she never will,” he said. “Since Nov. 15, both the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and I as the diocesan Bishop have been members of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. As a result, canonical declarations of the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church pertaining to us are irrelevant and of no consequence.”

The inhibition, which required the consent of the Title IV [disciplinary] Review Committee, is actually the third submission that Bishop Jefferts Schori made to inhibit Bishop Iker. On two separate occasions the Presiding Bishop’s chancellor, David Booth Beers, wrote the committee on behalf of the Presiding Bishop, seeking to have him removed along with Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh during the fall House of Bishops’ meeting.

“The Presiding Bishop finds the attached materials problematic because they reveal concrete steps taken by Bishop Iker that demonstrate his persistent position that the diocese may choose whether or not to remain a constituent part of The Episcopal Church, a choice that it does not have the authority to make under the church’s constitution; his conviction that the diocese has no choice other than to depart from The Episcopal Church; and his intention to lead the diocese out of the church and into affiliation with the Province of the Southern Cone,” wrote Mr. Beers in a 64-page document sent Aug. 26 to the Rt. Rev. Dorsey Henderson, Bishop of Upper South Carolina and chair of the review committee. This document was appended on Sept. 12, with additional statements of an allegedly incriminating nature against Bishop Iker.

In previous actions against Bishop Duncan and Bishop John-David Schofield of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, Bishop Jefferts Schori moved to de-recognize the elected standing committees of those dioceses and replace them with loyalists who voted against disaffiliation from The Episcopal Church at the diocesan conventions. In the case of Fort Worth, the standing committee had received no communication as of Nov. 23, nor has The Episcopal Church publicly announced Bishop Iker’s inhibition. In both Pittsburgh and San Joaquin at least one member of the original standing committee refused to transfer out of The Episcopal Church.

Steve Waring