From Anglican Essentials via TitusOneNine:
Jun 8th, 2010
Q: What is your reaction to the decision made public by the Secretary General to remove TEC members from the ecumenical council
KJS: I wrote to the ABC before that decision was promulgated expressing my concern. I don’t think it helps dialogue to remove some people from the conversation.
Q: In Dar es Salaam there was a call for a fourth moratorium for a cessation of litigation. We now have only three moratoria but both TEC and the ACoC claim to be missional churches; how does the spectacle of lawsuits look to the unchurched?
KJS: the reality is that sometimes the church does need to resort to civil courts to assert its rights. It’s not just TEC and the ACoC, the church in Jerusalem is in court with a former bishop who absconded with assets belonging to the Diocese of Jerusalem. Similar things have happened in Sudan, in Mexico, in Columbia, Ecuador, it’s not unique to North America. (me: it seems to be worse in North America – KJS shrugs)
Q: In your speech you named the 16 countries that TEC covers. Since you have received the letter asking members to stand down from important international committees, do you see a point at which your status in the Anglican Communion could be so diminished, that you would consider the formation of a rival communion of like-minded churches?
KJS: We share a common passion across the communion for engagement in God’s mission. When we focus on that, we tend not to get so excited about the few things that we disagree about.
Q: On the sanction imposed by the ABC on TEC for the ecumenism committee, the argument was that because of what has happened TEC doesn’t represent the faith and order of the communion. Is that fair? Secondly, how is it going to effect the work of TEC since you have a very strong interest in ecumenism?
KJS: Certainly our bilateral conversations will continue. I think it’s very unfortunate because it misrepresents who the Anglican communion is: we have a variety of opinions on these issues of human sexuality. People act as though one resolution from the 1998 Lambeth conference decided this for all time. If you look at the history of the Lambeth conference, they have gone back and forth: one in the 20s said that contraception was inappropriate and the next one said, yes it was appropriate and by the time you got 2 or 3 further down the road, it was the duty of families to plan. So our understanding about ethical issues evolves as it needs to, because our context evolves. For the Anglican communion to say to the Methodists or the Lutherans that we only have one position is inaccurate. We have a variety of understandings and, no we don’t have consensus on the hot-button issues of the moment.
Q: Are you going along with canon Kearon’s suggestion that you are not invited to send representatives. Will you send them anyway?
KJS: It’s not a matter of a suggestion, these people have been removed from the commissions with the one exception of eascufo; that person has been demoted to a consultant role.
Q: You talked about moving beyond buildings. The ACoC is currently struggling with that; can you share anything about the TEC experience?
KJS: I think that’s been one of the great gifts of the 4 dioceses whose bishops left TEC. Those renewing dioceses, particularly in those congregations that have been excluded from their former buildings have discovered the freedom, as well as the onerous nature of setting up for worship every Sunday , of not being tied to a particular place. It has enlivened them in ways that they really didn’t expect. They would love to go back to their historic buildings, but they’ve discovered something about lightness in a room that has been very important. (I may not have heard that last sentence correctly. I don’t think she was talking about the Unbearable Lightness of Being). The other piece I point to is that emerging communities that are not tied to a particular location also discover something important about how community gathers on the road. When Jesus said, “the Son of man has no place to lay his head”, there’s an important teaching in that. We get so attached to our favourite pew that we can’t see God except through that particular perspective. When we move across the room or to the local coffee shop or to the athletic field to gather for worship, we discover something quite different.
Q: Has the ABC responded adequately to cross border interventions?
KJS: I don’t think he understands how difficult, painful and destructive it’s been, both in the ACoC and TEC. When bishops come from overseas and say, well, we’ll take care of you, you don’t have to pay attention to your bishop, it destroys pastoral relationships. It’s like an affair in a marriage: it destroys trust and I believe it does spiritual violence to vowed relationships. It is a very ancient teaching of the church that a bishop is supposed to stay home and tend to the flock to which he was originally assigned.
Q: you mentioned in your Pentecost letter – from the duelling Pentecost letters – “we note the troubling push towards centralised authority “ in response to Rowan Williams. Is not the resistance to cross-border interventions a similar push towards central authority on a smaller scale?
KJS: The resistance to cross-border interventions is for the reasons I’ve pointed out: it destroys pastoral relationships. It prevents any possibility of reconciliation; it prevents growth in understanding among people who disagree. The idea that one person in one location in the world can adequately understand contexts across the globe and decide policy across the globe, I think contravenes traditional Anglican understanding of local worship in a language understood by the people. This is what we were arguing about 500 years ago.
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