Special Report/Analysis By Auburn Faber Traycik
October, 2007
The Christian Challenge (Washington, DC)
www.challengeonline.org
“NO ONE’S VISION WON” in the Episcopal House of Bishops’ recent final response to Anglican primates (provincial leaders) on the homosexual issue, asserted gay New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson.
Which is another way of saying that unambiguous orthodoxy lost.
Almost immediately, a battle of wills began brewing between conservative Anglican leaders determined to redress that unhappy situation, and Anglican “friends in high places” who maintain that it largely ceased to exist with the Episcopal bishops’ September 25 reply to the primates.
But the campaign to “sell” the American response as adequate was encountering some stiff international resistance and had, by deadline, been ostentatiously undercut by no less than Bishop Robinson himself.
The result? “There will be [an] Anglican Communion and [an] Episcopal Church after this is sorted out,” opined one religion weblog, “but who belongs to which is the $64,000 question.”
THE LATEST CHAPTER in the Anglican drama began unfolding in New Orleans, where bishops and special guests at the September 20-25 House of Bishops (HOB) meeting - Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and other Communion representatives - saw both the lingering devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and signs of recovery and new life, including in the local church. But some observers could not help seeing the venue as an apt metaphor for the storm that The Episcopal Church (TEC) has visited on the Communion, particularly since its 2003 consecration of Bishop Robinson, a divorced man with a male partner.
It was in that tempest-tossed town, though, that - after ten years of dodging the wider Communion’s repeated appeals for reform - Episcopal bishops seemed to bring a little calm, appearing to halt much of their pro-gay agenda, for now. In confirming a General Convention call to “exercise restraint by not consenting” to partnered homosexual bishops, and pledging not to authorize public same-sex blessings, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said that her colleagues had made sacrifices in order to retain TEC’s place in the Communion. The HOB statement’s careful, compliant-sounding language was a distinct change from the huffy and dismissive first response that the House gave in March to the entreaties the primates made in their February communique from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
But initial reaction to the HOB response among leaders across the 77 million-member global church divided along factional lines. While liberals tended to view it as sufficient (or perhaps too generous), most conservatives said the statement falls short of meeting the primates’ requests for a clear turn away from gay bishops and blessings - e.g., the bishops banned only “public” same-sex rites - and for adequate alternate oversight for the faithful. It would not be enough, at this late stage, to halt foreign interventions or the further dissolution of TEC, they contended. Four Episcopal dioceses will consider realigning this fall, with one report claiming that a foreign province is prepared to “adopt” them. And, bishops of the Common Cause Partnership - ten faithful Anglican groupings in an out of TEC that include over 600 congregations - recently took initial steps toward a new American province.
The conservative reading of the HOB statement was effectively supported by some liberal TEC leaders, not least Bishop Schori: She confirmed within days of the House’s meeting that her province is not retreating from, but merely pausing, its pro-gay agenda. As well, the homosexual Episcopal group, Integrity, welcomed the HOB reply as progressive in its support for homosexuals and portending further gains for them at the 2009 General Convention.
AMONG EARLY RESPONSES were those from two of the primates who have taken Episcopal refugees under their wings and consecrated American bishops for them - both of whom said that the HOB did not signify the sought-for change of heart.
“What we expected to come from them is to repent,” said Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi.
Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola said in part that, in February, the primates gave TEC “one final opportunity” for “an unequivocal assurance” that it would conform “to the mind and teaching of the Communion.” What the HOB offered “is not a whole-hearted embrace of traditional Christian teaching, and in particular the teaching...expressed in [1998 Lambeth Conference sexuality] Resolution 1.10...”
He said it seemed that the House had “ignored” the primates’ pleas for “clarity and a rejection of what hitherto has been [an] endless series of ambiguous and misleading statements.”
Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone of America compared the HOB response to someone saying, not that “‘I am going to stop drinking’ but that ‘I won’t drink tonight.’ They’ll stop for a short time but there’s no real change in attitude or any sign of interest in listening to the other point of view.”
-The ‘Buy American’ Campaign-
Yet it quickly became evident that a concerted effort was underway in the Communion’s top echelons to try to ensure that TEC gets a pass and that the ten-yearly Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops goes on as planned in Canterbury next July - making any conservative leaders not convinced that TEC has toed the line the odd men out.
Archbishop Williams - who had two days of private meetings with TEC bishops in New Orleans, at their request - appeared to be trying to convince his colleagues that the HOB statement signaled enough modification of TEC’s pro-gay agenda that the U.S. Church should not suffer the loss or downgrading of its Communion membership. His effort was punched up by a swiftly-issued, favorable report on the HOB response from a top Communion council (on which more in a minute).
Williams was at this writing still resisting calls from the powerhouse Global South to call a full Primates’ Meeting to assess the HOB reply, after some liberals threatened a boycott over fears that they might be “strong-armed into taking punitive action against the Americans,” said The Church of England Newspaper. Instead, in the days following the HOB meeting the Archbishop was reported to be phoning individual primates to seek their support for the House’s statement. West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez told TCC that Williams had also written all 38 primates, asking each to consult on the matter within his province and respond by the end of October.
“He knows his best chance is to keep the primates separated and unable to confer together in a meeting,” said American Anglican Council (AAC) President, Canon David Anderson (soon to be consecrated a bishop in the Nigerian-backed Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA)).
ONE REPORT inferred that Dr. Williams hoped the HOB statement would gain enough support “to call the bluff of hardline conservatives who have threatened to boycott next year’s...Lambeth Conference” if American bishops he has already invited to the confab, despite their violation of Lambeth 1.10, are also there.
(The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, also has recently turned the screws on potential boycotters, claiming that a province that skips the Conference will effectively remove itself from the Communion. However, this begs the question of why a province breaching Anglican doctrine - which would seem to be a more serious offense - does not also place itself outside the Communion.)
“It would appear that everything has to be all right so that Lambeth can go ahead” - attendance at the Conference, instead of orthodox belief, “now being made the true test of who is really part of the Anglican Church,” Archbishop Venables told TCC.
FLANKING WILLIAMS' EFFORT, as earlier noted, was the report on the HOB response from the Joint Standing Committee (JSC) of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC - a body heavily funded by TEC that is chaired by Bishop John Paterson of New Zealand, a liberal; Canon Kenneth Kearon, another liberal, oversees the ACC’s “secretariat” - the Anglican Communion Office - in London). Members of the JSC had joined in the closed-door meetings in New Orleans, but, like Williams, departed before the HOB statement was completed.
But the JSC’s detailed reaction to it - hurriedly released without endorsement by four of the 13 members who had been in New Orleans - concluded that Episcopal bishops had “clarified all outstanding questions” the primates posed to them for response by September 30, and “given the necessary assurance sought of them” in the matter of same-sex blessings and partnered homosexual bishops. The report (which conservatives thought was primarily penned by Kearon or his deputy, Canon Gregory Cameron) said that there were still difficulties to be resolved in the areas of alternate oversight for, and litigation against, U.S. faithful, but that on the primary issues, the Communion “should move toward closure” at least for now, and that foreign interventions in the U.S. Church should cease.
-A “Superficial Shift”-
The Williams/JSC gambit hit its first snag, though, when Archbishop Mouneer Anis of Jerusalem and the Middle East, one of the four JSC members whose input was excluded from the committee report, strongly dissented from it. Archbishop Anis had been away in Syria and Lebanon with Archbishop Williams, but his request for a couple of days to study the draft prior to its release was not honored.
The HOB response “represents a superficial shift” from the House’s previous position, said Anis, going on to cite the reasons for his conclusion. Episcopal bishops have “not responded positively” to either the primates’ Dar es Salaam communique, or the 2004 Windsor Report, which recommended ways to repair Anglican relations damaged by TEC’s 2003 approval of a gay bishop and same-sex blessings. “Instead they used ambiguous language and contradicted themselves within their own response,” he said. Anis’ remarks were subsequently appended to the JSC paper as a minority report.
On the Global South Anglican website, informed commentator Michael Poon also detailed ways in which the JSC report had changed wording so as to “redefine” the primates’ requests to TEC.
Archbishop Venables said: “The subtlety of the language of the HOB’s statement, plus the very arbitrary nature of the first response of the JSC, together with the strong emphasis on being at Lambeth to show readiness to continue in dialogue, conveniently ignores most of what has been said and written by Communion leaders over the last nine years, and reverses the positions of the key players, leaving the orthodox as the rebellious, intolerant, bad boys, and the liberals smelling like roses…It’s difficult to avoid the impression that this has all been orchestrated.”
THAT IS CERTAINLY the view of Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi. He maintained that the JSC injected itself uninvited into a process the primates devised without expectation of its involvement, and during the HOB meeting inappropriately coached Schori and her colleagues on wording for the House’s statement that would “assure endorsement by the Joint Standing Committee.” A similar assertion was made by The Church of England Newspaper.
Moreover, Orombi charged that Bishop Schori, a JSC member, had participated in the committee’s evaluation of the HOB response, a “gross conflict of interest,” he said.
In March, the HOB invited Archbishop Williams and members of the Primates’ Standing Committee to attend the New Orleans meeting; it is unclear at what point or how the ACC committee members were included. Orombi, one of five primates on the JSC, declined to attend because he worried that the committee’s presence would prevent an honest response from the HOB, which is basically what he now contends has happened.
“The [HOB] report is severely compromised and further tears the existing tear in the fabric of our beloved Anglican Communion,” Archbishop Orombi wrote. He felt that the primates could not know “what [Episcopal bishops] mean by their words until we see their meaning demonstrated by their actions.”
Indeed, Orombi made clear that what underlies many conservative dismissals of the HOB statement - and militates against Williams’ campaign for its acceptance - is the mistrust that TEC itself has created by its track record of saying one thing and doing another.
The Ugandan leader said he could not take seriously a statement wherein TEC bishops pledge “as a body” not to do something. He recalled that former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold joined other primates in a 2003 statement decrying the devastating consequences of consecrating an actively gay man (Robinson), but then told reporters that individual primates were free to disagree and that he would preside at that consecration.
Orombi concluded that TEC has “decided to walk apart.”
-Global Backlash Builds; Robinson Says HOB Was “Misunderstood”-
Seasoned U.K. religion reporter Ruth Gledhill marveled at the London leadership’s “almost-desperate determination to resolve the issues facing the Anglican Communion without giving rise to schism,” though the current approach to this objective plainly risks fallout across the Communion’s mostly conservative Global South and parts of the north that would far outstrip the loss of TEC. That raises the question of whether one type of “schism” is more palatable than another, and if so, why.
The AAC’s Canon Anderson believes a top-level push to “re-establish the hegemony of the spiritually revisionist West” is underway, significantly driven by financial concerns, especially those surrounding the heavy commitments to Lambeth that cannot be met without TEC funding. Others suggest that Williams has bought into a “play for time” strategy in the belief that keeping all parties at the table long enough will lead to ultimate resolution.
WHATEVER the case may be, however, major pressure had begun building at this writing against the attempt to paper over the TEC cracks.
Primates at the early October meeting of the formidable Council of African Provinces in Africa (CAPA), now led by Indian Ocean Archbishop Ian Ernest, took a dim view of HOB statement, as well as the JSC report, deeming it “severely compromised by numerous conflicts of interest” and therefore not credible. It seems “a determined effort to find a way for the full inclusion of [TEC] with no attempt at discipline or change from their prior position,” they said.
Repeating similar appeals earlier made by Nigerian bishops, the primates of CAPA, which has 13 member provinces, urged that Lambeth ‘08 be postponed, and instead that a “special session of the Primates’ Meeting” be convened to review both the words and actions of TEC and to finalize the proposal for an Anglican Covenant - a pact being formulated to help ensure unity and mutual accountability among Anglican provinces - and set a timetable for its ratification. While postponing Lambeth would be “costly,” the prelates said “the alternative - a divided conference with several provinces unable to participate and hundreds of bishops absent would be much more costly to our life and witness. It would bring an end to the Communion, as we know it.” Postponement would allow space for “the current tensions to subside” and “the hard work of reconciliation,” and ensure that those invited to Lambeth “have already endorsed the Covenant and so can come together as witnesses to our common faith,” the leaders said.
At stake in this crisis, they asserted, “is the very nature of Anglicanism...It is not just about sexuality but also about the nature of Christ, the truth of the Gospel and the authority of the Bible. We see a trend that seems to ignore the careful balance of reformed catholicity and missionary endeavor that is our true heritage and replace it with a religion of cultural conformity that offers no transforming power and no eternal hope.”
A statement from the whole Global South Coalition, which includes Asian provinces as well as the Southern Cone, was likely before the end of October, said the West Indies’ Archbishop Gomez - a moderate conservative whose support Dr. Williams would need if he is to successfully defend the TEC reply. But Gomez told TCC his initial response was that the JSC report “was more generous than I feel they should be” about the HOB statement.
PRESSURE INCREASED when the Church of England’s prominent Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, backed the calls for an emergency Primates’ Meeting to deal with the TEC and Lambeth issues. Earlier this summer, it was reported that as many as six in ten of Williams’ fellow C of E bishops could join several African provinces in skipping Lambeth if it is not preceded by the requisite discipline and reconciliation, or the exclusion of violators of Resolution 1.10 from the event.
“My difficulty...is not with a particular person, such as Gene Robinson, but with those who felt it right to approve and to officiate at his ordination,” Nazir-Ali said. “Unless they are willing to say that what they did was contrary to the Gospel, and we all of us from time to time need to repent about what we have done wrong, I would find it very difficult to be with them in a council of bishops.”
And by deadline, Bishop Robinson himself had gone a long way toward pulling the rug out from under those trying to claim that the Americans have passed muster, declaring in a letter to Integrity that the HOB and TEC are not of one mind, but rather “ many different minds,” and that the JSC “misunderstood” the HOB’s position on public same-sex blessing rites.
“Neither in our discussions nor in our statement did we agree to or declare...a moratorium on permitting such rites to take place,” he said. “That may be true in many or most dioceses, but that is certainly not the case in my own diocese and many others. The General Convention has stated that such rites are indeed to be considered within the bounds of the pastoral ministry of this Church to its gay and lesbian members, and that remains the policy of The Episcopal Church.”
That makes it a bit less surprising that Robinson voted for the HOB statement, though it makes the case
of those who say TEC leaders’ formal statements cannot be taken at face value. The gay prelate said the statement was “the best we could do at this time,” and that he can “live with it,” but only until General Convention ‘09.
-The Primates’ Requests v. The HOB Response-
In their February communiqué from Dar es Salaam, Anglican primates - noting inconsistencies and a lingering lack of clarity in TEC’s position on homosexuality - had called on TEC’s House of Bishops to:
1) “make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorize any rite of blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention” (in line with paragraphs 143 and 144 of the Windsor Report (TWR)); and
2) confirm that the adoption of Resolution B033 (squeezed through at the 11th hour at the 2006 General Convention) means that a candidate for bishop living in a same-sex union “shall not receive the necessary consent” (in line with TWR 134) “unless some new consensus on these matters emerges” across the Communion. Resolution B033 calls on diocesan bishops and standing committees to “exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church,” (phrasing which the HOB agreed in September applies to those in same-sex relationships, among others).
The primates also asked Episcopal bishops to:
3) Suspend legal actions regarding property and other matters arising out of the current conflict, though they also said that property should not be alienated from TEC without its consent; and
4) Cooperate with a Pastoral Council, consisting of persons nominated by the primates, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and TEC’s presiding bishop, that would arrange alternate primatial and episcopal oversight for the faithful both within TEC and now outside it. The scheme was intended to end foreign interventions that have so irked the liberals, and provide space for all sectors of the church to work together until an Anglican Covenant was in place. (Long before September rolled around, TEC leaders had nixed this plan, claiming that it violated the church’s polity and autonomy.)
IN THEIR SEPTEMBER REPLY to the primates, Episcopal bishops were seen by most media reports as standing behind Resolution B033 regarding gay bishops. The actual text of the HOB statement is not that plain speaking, however. In it, the prelates merely “reconfirm” what Resolution B033 says, without expressly saying they will abide by it (except perhaps by reference to an earlier report by a JSC sub-group that was also favorable to TEC, but whose conclusions were not accepted by the primates in February). Notably, an earlier draft of the HOB’s September statement admitted that there is “disagreement” among the bishops as to how B033 “is to be interpreted and applied.” As well, liberals have reminded in the past that General Convention resolutions are advisory, and after B033 was adopted last year, 20 bishops and nine dioceses repudiated it. The first test of the bishops’ purported commitment to uphold the resolution may come soon, though, from the Diocese of Chicago, where a lesbian priest, the Rev. Tracey Lind, is being considered for bishop.
Episcopal bishops did pledge “as a body” not to authorize rites to bless same-sex unions in their dioceses, but only “public” ones - the primates wanted a ban on “any” such rites - and then only until General Convention “takes further action.”
The opening for mischief remained, too, as the prelates clung to the claimed need for “a breadth of private response to situations of individual pastoral care.” (This wording was backed by the primates in 2003, perhaps not understanding how the liberals would interpret it).
The House maintained that most Episcopal bishops make no allowance for blessing gay unions, though that confirms that some do. According to the Rev. Susan Russell of Integrity, gay weddings are authorized by the diocesan convention or the bishop in 11 Episcopal dioceses, and “happen” in others.
And the HOB again tried to claim that TEC has not approved any rite of blessing for same-sex unions. This, despite the fact that 2003 General Convention Resolution C051 gave carte blanche to “local faith communities” to use any rites they cared to for “celebrating and blessing same-sex unions.” (That is the “policy” to which Robinson was evidently referring earlier in this article.)
The shell game that has grown up around this matter was illustrated when Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno told reporters in New Orleans that “same-sex blessings do not occur in my diocese with my permission” - whereupon Episcopal e-journalist David Virtue noted that one such union had been cemented at All Saints’, Beverly Hills, just two days earlier, as reported by The New York Times.
Queried about the incident, the associate rector of All Saints’ - the aforementioned Susan Russell - said: “Same-sex blessings occur in the Diocese of Los Angeles all the time. We don’t ask for permission because Bishop Bruno has told us that he cannot give it until General Convention approves an official liturgy. He has told us that we are free to exercise appropriate pastoral care” for parishioners.
“So what are the primates to think?” asked Cherie Wetzel of Anglicans United. “When a bishop tells you that [such rites] are not permitted and they happen with public acclaim and pictures of the happy couple in the Times, where is the truth?”
THIS WAS CAPPED by a list of demands in the HOB statement in support of homosexuals. The prelates called for Archbishop Williams to find a way to invite Bishop Robinson, the only TEC bishop so far excluded from Lambeth ‘08, to the Conference; for wider implementation of the process of listening to homosexuals mandated by Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (which, however, deemed homosexual behavior unbiblical); and for “unequivocal and active commitment to the civil rights, safety, and dignity of gay and lesbian persons.” They also reasserted the full inclusion of homosexuals in the church.
The House declined to address the issue of lawsuits. And within days, Bishop Schori further turned up the heat on the faithful, declaring that a church facility should not be sold to any congregation that plans to affiliate with another Anglican jurisdiction. It is still up to dioceses to decide whether or not to negotiate settlements for property with departing congregations, but Schori’s comments seem likely to deter the few that might consider doing so.
And the HOB statement called for a halt to “incursions by uninvited bishops” in accord with the Windsor Report and the statements of past Lambeth Conferences and Ecumenical Councils of the Church. Since the HOB’s initial rebuff of the primates’ communique, including its Pastoral Council plan, in March, there has been a decided uptick in foreign interventions in the American Church, chiefly in the form of providing indigenous bishops for TEC refugees. (See more in “Focus.”)
AS AN ALTERNATIVE to the primates’ proposal, the bishops endorsed Bishop Schori’s plan - unveiled without forewarning at the HOB meeting - to appoint eight (and more recently 12) TEC bishops to serve as “episcopal visitors” for dioceses that request it, while agreeing that the idea might benefit from “communion-wide consultation.” The bishops said they thought the arrangement was consistent with the already-extant DEPO (Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight) plan - which most of the faithful view as inadequate.
Further, conservatives had already rejected any alternate care under the sole authority of the revisionist presiding bishop (whose gender also is a problem for some). That - and the fact that there was no consultation in advance with supposed beneficiaries of the plan - made the episcopal visitors idea an apparent non-starter.
“Feels to me like a case of ‘too little, too late,’” said Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker, one of six or seven prelates who earlier appealed for alternate primatial oversight. “Wasn’t DEPO a failure for the same reason?”
“It has just gone too far,” one unnamed conservative prelate was quoted as saying. “It is like asking people, knowing what we know, would you like to board the Titanic and sail with us? What we have is a clash of world views with eternal consequences.”
Bishop Ackerman reiterated that the issue extends well beyond homosexuality, to fundamental beliefs. He noted the failure of Resolution B001, affirming the authority of Scripture and other basic elements of Christian faith, at General Convention, and the election of a presiding bishop who says there a variety of ways to God.
Bishops Ackerman, Iker and Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan departed the HOB meeting after the encounters with Williams, saying they could contribute nothing more to it.
“We came out of respect for Dr. Williams,” two of the orthodox bishops were quoted as saying. “We came, we spoke up, but it is very clear, despite all the niceness and ‘conversation’ that [TEC] has committed itself to a course of action that leaves no room for us.”
WHEN PRESIDING BISHOP SCHORI told reporters at a press conference that the HOB statement represented true sacrifice on the part of House members, “it rang hollow,” Mrs. Wetzel wrote.
Wetzel agreed that the seeming endorsement of B033 will almost certainly forefend the election of another gay bishop until after the 2009 General Convention, when, however, “B033 will certainly not be renewed.”
Indeed, based on the HOB statement, Integrity said it is “confident that [TEC] will continue to move forward” and that “General Convention 2009 [will] be a tipping point for equality. We will be working hard in the months ahead to repeal B033 and to authorize development of a rite for blessing same-sex relationships...”
-Stateside: Initial Reaction And Fallout-
“I think it lessens the possibility of schism,” Massachusetts Bishop Thomas Shaw said of the HOB statement. “I think this is going to meet the needs of the Archbishop of Canterbury...”
“A schism of sorts seems inevitable,” said the Very Rev. Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. It was there on September 30 - the date by which Anglican primates had asked for TEC’s response - that Bishop Schori said unequivocally that there would be no retreat from the full inclusion of homosexuals. TEC is “willing to pause,” but is “not going backward,” she said, a sentiment that was voiced by other TEC bishops.
The HOB statement may “slow things down a bit,” but revealed TEC’s commitment “to move forward in terms of innovations in faith and order,” Bishop Duncan told a reporter during a landmark meeting that got underway in Pittsburgh as the New Orleans confab was ending. There, U.S. and Canadian conservative leaders aligned with the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) took initial steps toward a “separate ecclesiastical structure” in America, as urged by Global South primates last year. The first-ever Common Cause Council of Bishops meeting September 25-28 drew more than 50 prelates who shepherd tens of thousands of American faithful who are either in TEC, under foreign jurisdiction, or in extramural Anglican bodies.
At the same time, with Episcopal bishops having failed to moot the reason to do so, four TEC dioceses - Pittsburgh, Quincy, Fort Worth and San Joaquin (CA), remained on track to consider leaving TEC this fall in order to remain in the Anglican Communion - a significant escalation of the crisis. San Joaquin will consider the question on second reading in December, and therefore may be the first diocese to take this unprecedented step. Together, the dioceses, all of them part of CCP, include some 200 parishes.
“If we do nothing, there will probably be a mass exodus not only of individual members, but also entire congregations,” said the president of Fort Worth’s Standing Committee, the Very Rev. Ryan Reed.
“It’s become obvious over three decades that two churches now exist under the same name,” said Quincy’s Bishop Ackerman.
Lawsuits by the national church are doubtless prepared for filing, though lawyers have advised American dioceses that they enjoy greater protection than parishes because they are deemed to be legal entities in their own right.
Meanwhile, Rio Grande Bishop Jeffrey Steenson is poised to become the sixth Episcopal prelate to exit TEC this year, announcing during the HOB meeting his intention to resign within a few months and become a Roman Catholic.
The provinces of Nigeria and Rwanda together are planning to consecrate a further seven American bishops for ex-Episcopalians now under their oversight, bringing the total of African-backed American bishops to 18. In further explanation of this, Archbishop Akinola wrote in a recent paper, “A Most Agonizing Road to Lambeth 2008,” that the long intransigence of TEC in the face of a decade of remonstration by Communion leaders, the alienation TEC has caused among U.S. faithful, and the primates’ failed attempts to provide for their protection through the Panel of Reference or the Primates’ Pastoral Council, formed the backdrop for Nigeria’s decision to initiate CANA and now to consecrate bishops for it.
-Behind Closed Doors In New Orleans-
What had gone on in the private meetings in the Crescent City between Episcopal bishops and Communion officials - supposedly a last ditch effort to avert schism? Though Archbishop Williams said that the encounters with TEC bishops increased mutual understanding, word that leaked out of the meetings suggested that there was no lack of tension and straight talk on both sides.
In his graceful but forceful remarks, electronically circulated, the aforementioned Archbishop Anis of Jerusalem and the Middle East joined others among the JSC visitors in telling the HOB that the consecration of Bishop Robinson had strained Christian relations with conservative Muslims in his province.
“My friends, you may believe you have discovered a very different truth from that of the majority of the Communion,” Anis told his American colleagues, in part. “It is not just about sexuality, but about your views of Christ, the Gospel and the authority of the Bible. Please forgive me when I relay that some say you are a different church; others even think that you are a different religion.”
Even liberal Australian Archbishop Phillip Aspinall was said to have urged clearer reassurance from TEC. He asked how the wider church can trust the U.S. Church’s claim that it has not authorized same-sex blessing rites.
Archbishop Williams was said to have “rapped the Americans over the knuckles for triggering the crisis” by consecrating Bishop Robinson, and urged them to accept moratoria on gay bishops and blessings. He was also said to have warned the Americans that a flat refusal to cooperate would lead him to strip their voting rights at Lambeth.
But liberal Episcopal bishops, said The Daily Telegraph, appeared to be “in no mood to capitulate.”
When Williams reportedly suggested that the choice was between fidelity to gays and fidelity to brethren in the Communion, he was accused by Bishop Robinson of “dehumanizing” homosexuals. And Bishop Shaw of Massachusetts scored the Archbishop for failing to honor the American Church’s “prophetic discernment” in consecrating Robinson. Some prelates complained that the African bishops had not been chastised for their border-crossings. And several liberal bishops “politely rubbished Dr. Williams and his office” and informed him that the catholic faith meant not fidelity to theological norms, but inclusion of all people.
WILLIAMS DREW more attention, though, for publicly seeming to downplay the expectations of the primates’ communique and Windsor Report, and the implication that there would be consequences for TEC if it did not provide the requested assurances.
The Archbishop asserted, for example, that the September 30 date by which primates had asked the HOB to reply to its Dar es Salaam communique was not a deadline or “ultimatum,” but a convenient date following the House’s September meeting. It was more like a starting point, and “compromise” was the aim, he said.
Meanwhile, he scored African-backed pastoral care for Episcopal refugees as complicating the situation. He also suggested that the burgeoning Global South, which has newer churches, should learn from veterans like the Church of England and TEC, even though both northern churches are in decline. As well, he called for embattled conservatives to look for God’s grace in their situation rather than leave their church.
“Conservatives believe...that Dr. Williams is now openly siding with the liberals and allowing the Communion to fall apart by default, leaving conservatives stranded,” The Daily Telegraph noted September 24.
-Why Risk It?-
Indeed, in light of more recent events detailed at the start of this article, Williams “no ultimatum” assertion now emerges as part of a pattern that - despite repeated claims that he is trying to avert schism - seems calculated to keep an unreformed American Church in the Communion and thereby provoke conservative hardliners into absenting themselves from Lambeth ‘08 and perhaps ultimately from the Communion.
A few observers think that this is in fact the Archbishop’s objective - a Communion that holds on to most (if not all) provinces and comprised of liberals, moderates, institutionalists and Third World conservatives who feel they cannot survive without TEC subsidies.
If Dr. Williams really is trying to forefend a split, though, one can understand that he would conclude that the shortest means to that end is helping TEC do enough in terms of its doctrine and policies to maintain its Communion standing; it would certainly save a lot of headache, and heartache.
Clearly, however, his bid to try to save TEC, while it has yet to prove itself to the wider Communion, has meant flirting with disaster. His handling thus far of the Lambeth Conference issue, for example, seems to have destined that meeting - short of its postponement or a change in current arrangements for it - to be an expensive embarrassment, with perhaps hundreds of bishops staying away and maybe attending a rival Lambeth.
All of which has evoked deeper questions, noted earlier, about why, to save the U.S. Church (which has given no sign of fundamental change), Williams has appeared willing to risk inviting, on his watch, a much larger fracture across the Communion than would be represented by the exclusion of TEC.
Some think it obvious that, while Williams has pledged to uphold Communion doctrine on the presenting issue, his personal nature and theological leanings prevent him from going to the mat for it. “Dr. Williams himself is not prepared to lead the Communion in any proper sanction against The Episcopal Church,” wrote Andrew Carey in The Church of England Newspaper. “We can therefore expect further tragic fragmentation in the coming months.”
Canon Anderson believes, along with many others, that it is equally obvious that the primate’s chief motivation is money; that it is TEC’s role as a major contributor to the Communion budget, as well as Williams’ theological sympathies, that are behind the Archbishop’s gamble.
“Williams not only came to New Orleans with a closed mind to the provable facts (of the U.S. situation), he came with a plan to swiftly undercut the...Global South and those orthodox Americans whom they have supported,” Anderson said. Within days, “optimistic pundits” had been shown to be wrong in thinking that Williams cares about the Communion’s “morality and integrity,” the Windsor Report or the primates’ communiques from Dar es Salaam and Dromantine (2005). “What Dr. Williams cares about is holding onto American financial support, [and] the revisionist provinces of England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, and allowing pantheistic and homosexual agendas to continue their unfolding and flourishing.”
Anderson cited “trustworthy sources” as revealing that Williams “is already obligated” for Lambeth Conference costs at the University of Kent in Canterbury next summer, with payments of some $880,000 due on October 1 - within days of the HOB meeting - and again on December 1. As no Lambeth in modern memory could have been held without TEC funding, was the possibility that such assistance could be withdrawn if the U.S. Church failed to get a passing grade, Anderson wondered, why Williams’ “actions to secure a blessing for TEC were so frantic?”
Another plausible theory, noted by The Daily Telegraph, suggests that the Communion’s secretary general, Canon Kearon, with his experiences of the peace process in Northern Ireland, has a growing influence that has “reinforced Williams’ natural tendency to believe that the crisis can be resolved peacefully if only all the parties can be kept talking long enough.” This, of course, is similar to the view of Bishop Schori, who believes that if TEC can just manage to remain in the Communion and keep the gay debate going, the global church will come around to its position.
“Archbishop Williams’ basic motivation is to keep everyone around the table,” agreed Archbishop Venables, “probably because he thinks that this is something the Church should do.” But Venables believes that Williams is well aware that any resolution reached by that means will be through attrition. “Keeping everybody talking will allow new blood to come in to pick up the dialogue and hopefully forget the stark and uncompromising position of Lambeth ’98 Resolution 1.10. There will be a gradual moving on of the original protagonists,” he said.
WHATEVER IS DRIVING Dr. Williams’ strategy, it would seem in the wake of the HOB meeting to have reached a crossroads. The primatial jury is still out, of course, but it is already evident that the HOB statement will not fly with a significant segment of the global church. The Communion’s future will pivot heavily on how Williams now handles key matters going forward.
Of course, even Archbishops of Canterbury must contend with historical forces beyond their control. In all probability, TEC’s long recurrent role as artful dodger of orthodoxy, even if it has slightly receded for now, has set in train fragmentation and realignment among Anglicans that cannot now be averted. n
Sources: Reports by Cherie Wetzel, Anglicans United; Anglican Communion Network, Institute on Religion and Democracy, religion.theledger.com, ugleyvicar.blogspot.com, episcopalmajority.blogspot.com,Michael McManus, Church Society, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Living Church, VirtueOnline, kxmc.com, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Episcopal News Service, Reuters, Church of England Newspaper, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Times-Picayune, San Francisco Chronicle
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