GenCon ‘09 To Wider Communion:
What’re You Going To Do About It?
Commentary Report
By Auburn Faber Traycik
The Foundation for Christian Theology
August 5, 2009
It is interesting to find ourselves writing this review of the latest pronouncements from The Episcopal Church (TEC) on this particular date. Eleven years ago today (August 5), the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops overwhelmingly adopted a resolution (1.10) reaffirming historic sexuality doctrine and deeming homosexual practice “incompatible with scripture.” As events would have it, it was on this same date six years ago that the Episcopal General Convention gave its approval for the consecration of divorced, actively homosexual cleric Gene Robinson – a direct rejection of 1.10.
Since 2003, much has changed – notably the North American ecclesiastical landscape – but the general trajectory of TEC has not.
From our perspective, the only surprise about July’s Episcopal General Convention in Anaheim would be if any U.S. Anglican/Episcopalian was surprised by it, or thought that it made any significant change in The Episcopal Church’s position, intentions or practices, despite the sensational headlines it attracted.
The only really new (and we think, commendable) thing the convention did was to be honest enough about where it stands that it finally convinced some holdout observers – most notably Durham’s scholarly Bishop, N.T. Wright - a leading moderate, institutionalist conservative, and close confidante of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams – that TEC has broken from the Anglican Communion. That was an important development for conservatives (on which more later).
Even so, there is now such a lengthy record of dealings with the U.S. Church that we do not understand why it was not glaringly obvious to Wright and others of his mindset long before this point that TEC's liberal-dominated leadership might slow its destructive efforts to revise Anglican doctrine and order but would never be persuaded to halt or reverse them for the sake of global Anglican unity. Not by Scripture or Tradition, nor by Lambeth 1.10, nor by the 2004 Windsor Report and its requested moratoria on actively gay bishops and same-sex blessings (as well as cross-boundary interventions), nor by repeated admonitions from Anglican primates and the Anglican Consultative Council, nor by the efforts to secure a unifying covenant between provinces, nor, finally, by the appeals of Archbishop Williams, the last of which were made on the spot in Anaheim.
There, the Archbishop stood by Communion sexuality policy in urging that the convention do nothing to widen divisions in the global church. Yet he has been lenient with and protective of The Episcopal Church, due, some believe, to his personal sympathies with its views, his apparent distaste for real discipline, and/or a widely-suspected fear of losing TEC’s major contribution to the Communion budget. Rather transparently, Dr. Williams has sought to block any course of events that could lead to TEC’s exclusion from the Communion for its brazen contraventions of Anglican sexuality policy. In the run-up to Lambeth ’08, for example, he preferred to incense leaders representing the Communion’s faithful majority rather than bar U.S. violators of Resolution 1.10 (save only Bishop Robinson) from the once-a-decade Conference in Canterbury last year. There, Dr. Williams’ "indaba" program of candid conversation gave TEC participants a soft landing, while becoming the latest of his ineffectual approaches to resolving the Communion’s current conflict.
SET AGAINST THIS BACKGROUND of favoritism toward TEC, Dr. Williams’ decision to cross an ocean and a continent to deliver words of encouragement as well as admonition in Anaheim implied a confidence or hope that General Convention would actually heed his appeals for restraint; a belief that somehow, in the case of TEC, sparing the rod had not spoiled the child.
If so, the Archbishop badly miscalculated, especially about a convention that – due to the secession of four dioceses and other losses – had a smaller conservative minority of delegates than previous conventions.
So it was that Episcopalians in Anaheim, supposedly meeting in the spirit of “Ubuntu” (“I in you and you in me”), rewarded the Archbishop’s efforts on their behalf with a figurative third-finger salute and clear decisions to allow homosexuals access to all levels of ordained ministry (Resolution D025), and to begin work toward a churchwide rite or rites for blessing same-sex unions (Resolution C056).
But C056 also has an immediate effect. It says that bishops - especially those in civil jurisdictions that permit gay marriage or unions - may provide “generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this Church.” The resolution set no limits on that response.
Meanwhile, practicing homosexuals have already been included among the nominees for bishop announced in the Dioceses of Los Angeles and Minnesota.
-Bye-Bye, B033-
Of course, as we suggested earlier, neither D025 or C056 were really anything new: Both resolutions built upon and more clearly established what already had been authorized or going on in practice in TEC for quite some time. For example, a previous convention approved any same-sex blessing rite that a "local faith community" cared to use, and the church’s canons have long stated that the ordination process is open to all persons regardless of sexual orientation.
In re-emphasizing the latter position in D025, however, that resolution was taken by many – including, initially, by TEC’s own official news organ – as a repeal of Resolution B033, the 2006 measure urging dioceses to withhold consent for the consecration of further partnered gay bishops. B033 was given grudging, 11th-hour approval at the 2006 convention in response to international Anglican calls for TEC to signify its adherence to the requested moratoria - though the measure was widely seen as temporary concession necessary at that time (but now not for another nine years!) to ensure that Episcopal prelates could process into Canterbury Cathedral and attend a tea party with the Queen as full participants in the ’08 Lambeth Conference.
For indeed, as D025 made clear, TEC wants to keep its membership in the Anglican Communion, even while refusing to abide by its standards.
To be sure, since at least 2006, TEC, which itself encompasses off-shore jurisdictions, has had a “Plan B” to make itself the nucleus of a rival Anglican Communion if threats to expel the province from the official fold are ever realized. However, one likely but unvoiced reason that it wishes to retain its standing in the establishment Communion is that the affiliation gives the American province - whose declining numbers already qualify it for sect status in the U.S. - the recognized and historic international platform it needs to be considered credible and worthy of attention. Moreover – and more ominously - Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her liberal colleagues seem to believe that TEC is called to remain engaged with the wider Communion so as to convert more of it to the U.S. Church’s positions.
-Uniqueness Of Christ, Heresy, And Persecution-
And in that endeavor, The Episcopal Church is almost certain to bring its influence to bear on more than just the issue of sexuality: Revealing again the depth of TEC’s anti-orthodoxy, the Anaheim convention , in discharging Resolution C069, bypassed another opportunity to affirm the uniqueness of Christ in a multi-faith world.
As well, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori denied that an individual can be saved through a sinner's prayer of repentance. In her opening address in Anaheim, she termed the notion "that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in a right relationship with God," the "great Western heresy."
“TEC means to push ahead with its current heresies, false doctrines and aberrant practices, and find new ones to add, and yet [demands that it] be fully a part of the Anglican Communion,” Bishop David Anderson, head of the American Anglican Council (AAC), wrote recently.
TEC’s persecution of the orthodox, also unrestrained by international appeals, was on display again in Anaheim as well. The convention allocated $7 million – reportedly a large increase - for legal assistance and aid to reorganizing and other TEC diocese s that are trying to claim the property of dioceses and congregations that, for theological reasons, have largely realigned with other parts of the Communion, notwithstanding the fact that it is the same Communion of which TEC claims to be a part. All this, while the convention acknowledged declining revenues by slashing program and headquarters staff up to 30 percent. Since the 2003 convention’s approval of Robinson’s consecration, and the resultant departure of four dioceses and hundreds of congregations or congregational groups, the number of property lawsuits by the national church and its dioceses has risen dramatically. Meanwhile, Mrs. Jefferts Schori “has come very close to deposing more faithful American Episcopal bishops and clergy in her three-year tenure than have been deposed by all presiding bishops of TEC since 1789,” noted the AAC’s Bishop Anderson.
“There is also a near-frantic concern among TEC leaders” that the new Anglican Communion in North America (ACNA), led by Archbishop Robert Duncan and comprised mainly of refugees from TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, "not be given any recognition by the Communion, as that will set up an equivalency that they can’t live with,” Anderson recently observed.
Indeed, when word came that the Church of England’s General Synod may consider recognizing the ACNA, Bishop Jefferts Schori sternly warned against any such action, stating that “schism is not a Christian act.”
But the aforementioned Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright - a theologian, author, and contributor to the Windsor Report - countered in a Times of London column which dropped like a sort of bomb while the convention was still underway that it is TEC that is “formalizing the schism they initiated six years ago” by consecrating Robinson as bishop. The Anaheim convention’s outcome “marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion,” Wright declared. “In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to `walk apart.’”
-KJS: Honest, It’s Not As Bad As You Think-
Apparently attempting some damage control after the convention, Bishop Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson claimed in a letter to Archbishop Williams that General Convention “has not repealed Resolution B033.” Resolution D025, they wrote, is “descriptive rather than prescriptive in nature – a statement that reaffirms commitments already made by The Episcopal Church and that acknowledges certain realities of our common life.” They admitted, though, that some diocesan bishops and standing committees may see D025 as giving them “more latitude in consenting to episcopal elections.”
Episcopal News Service, though, had earlier quoted the Rev. Susan Russell, president of Integrity USA, a GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered) Episcopal advocacy group, as saying that she was confident that D025 "moves us beyond B033.” In adopting D025 “we told the truth about who we are …This is a church that is ready to move on. It was a clear vote for mission for this church." (And as we noted, two dioceses currently have open homosexuals among bishop nominees.)
In a separate letter to Dr. Williams, Jefferts Schori and Anderson also maintained that, while C056 allows each bishop to determine what “a generous pastoral response might mean in her or his diocesan context,” the resolution “does not authorize public liturgical rites for the blessing of same-gender unions.” The Book of Common Prayer’s marriage rites and view of marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman remain unchanged, they contended.
-GenCon’s Challenge-
For our part, we regard Ms. Russell’s “take” as accurate, and the efforts of the P.B. and Deputies’ leader to put lipstick on a pig as amusing but irrelevant: No matter how you spin them, D025 nor C056 are outside the parameters of orthodoxy.
From where we sit, then, the main import of General Convention was that – however inadvertently - it confronted the “Mother” Church of England, the wider Communion and its leadership with a weighty and pivotal question, albeit one that has been dogging the global church for a long time. (GenCon has also challenged conservatives remaining in TEC, but we will leave them for another time.) The implied query from the Anaheim meeting to other Anglican provinces goes something like this: General Convention “told the truth about who we are,” so what of substance – if anything – are you now going to about it? We happily note that, in more than a decade of international wrangling, you have neither arrested our heterodoxy nor clearly disassociated the Communion from TEC. If that situation continues, will you be content with the message that it sends to the world, to the wider Universal Church, and to God Himself – that in some measure you condone our version of Anglican Christianity, and are willing to have us proselytize for it among Anglican brethren and others? Or - if Bishop Wright is correct that TEC is “walking apart” from the rest of the Communion - will we soon see the Church of England and other provinces officially join the 20-some provinces that have already declared broken or impaired communion with TEC? Will they join other provinces in recognizing the new ACNA?
GOING TO THE HEART OF THE QUESTION, ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan recently said the key choice to be made for Anglican Christians, the Communion’s councils, “interdependent provinces,” and Archbishop Williams, is “between two religions, two roads, two cities, two sets of conflicting values and behaviors. In Deuteronomy, chapter 30, Moses sets the choice as between blessing and curse, life and death. For contemporary Anglicanism the present choice is this stark.”
No one likes stark choices, least of all the present Archbishop of Canterbury. But in a recent column titled “Rowan Among the Ruins,” Anglican e-journalist David Virtue argued that Williams’ “own time came and has now gone. There is no retrieving it.” The Archbishop’s attempt to remedy the TEC situation - which Virtue saw as based on the liberal sentiments of the “Affirming Catholicism” movement, which Williams helped found - has failed, because it did not rely primarily on the authority of Holy Scripture. “The time has come for Williams himself to choose,” Virtue wrote.
-The Archbishop’s “Choice”: The Anglican Ways-
The evident “choice” of the Archbishop – the man who plays such a large role in setting the course for the Communion - is outlined in a July 27 reflection titled, “Communion, Covenant, and Our Anglican Future.” The document is one of Williams’ strongest and least ambiguous statements on homosexuality in several years, and has much to commend it from the orthodox viewpoint. Perhaps the faithful can thank General Convention for that. The Archbishop’s recommended way forward may give them more pause, however. (More on that in a minute.)
In his statement, Williams gave the convention, and homosexual and liberal Anglicans their due, but indicated that TEC leaders’ assurances that the convention actions did not have the “automatic effect of overturning the requested moratoria” on gay bishops and blessings were unlikely to be convincing to the wider Communion, or “allay anxieties” that TEC had chosen to walk apart.
He further made clear that blessing LGBT relationships cannot be viewed simply as a “justice” issue because it is ultimately a theological one, and if the theological argument is not there, the church cannot move forward on the issue. TEC had gone ahead with same-sex blessings and practicing homosexual clergy without engaging in a “painstaking biblical exegesis” and seeking a “wide acceptance of the results within the Communion,” as “a major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.”
As things stand, “a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole,” the Archbishop also said in part.
Nor should any member of the clergy—bishop or priest—be “living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond,” he added. The homosexual or unchaste heterosexual lifestyle “is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions, and thus it is hard to see how [persons involved in such lifestyles] can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires.”
By permitting gay clergy and blessings without first “including in its discernment the judgment of the wider Church,” TEC risked “becoming unrecognizable to other local churches,” Williams wrote.
The way ahead, Archbishop Williams said, was through an Anglican Covenant between provinces which would provide structures of “mutual recognizability, mutual consultation, and some shared processes of decision-making.” (The draft pact is still going through a final20revision phase, so TEC has not voted on it yet.)
HAVING DELIVERED this rebuke to TEC, though, Williams’ translation of it into practical, institutional terms is one that veers away from choosing between two religions, or between keeping the status quo for TEC or giving it the boot. He does not acknowledge what happened at GenCon as schism, or an end to the Communion. Instead, he re-commends a concept he outline d a few years ago: that of a two-tiered or two-tracked communion of covenanted and non-covenanted provinces – an inner and outer circle, if you will, and “two styles of being Anglican.”
Some observers likened the scheme to Williams’ indaba experiment, viewing it as another creative but sad attempt by the Archbishop to hold a fractured and fracturing Communion together, and/or to buy more time in the hope that the two tracks now going in opposite directions would somehow ultimately converge.
We suspect (seriously, though we realize this may generate some mirth!) that it is also Williams’ attempt to suggest a more civilized and pleasant model of schism for the 21st century. Figuratively speaking, the parties move into different houses in the same general neighborhood rather than as far away as they can get from each other, and try to cooperate where they can, though the role of the second tier in the affairs of the first would be limited - supposedly.
Of his concept, Williams wrote:
“There is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a ‘covenanted’ Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with ‘covenanted’ provinces…
“It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are – two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion. It should not need to be said that a competitive hostility between the two would be one of the worst possible outcomes, and needs to be clearly repudiated. The ideal is that both 'tracks' should be able to pursue what they believe God is calling them to be as Church, with greater integrity and consistency. It is right to hope for and work for the best kinds of shared networks and institutions of common interest that could be maintained as between different visions of the Anglican heritage…”
-Is It Really Enough?-
To us, the key question is whether the ostensible removal of TEC to (as one report put it) “the periphery of the life and witness of th e Anglican Communion” is an adequate solution in this case.
Will a separate-but-still-linked arrangement do enough to end the Communion’s current mixed message about homosexual practice, which seems to be that it is sinful in most parts of the world but not in a few others? We doubt it.
And how real or artificial - or invisible to the average onlooker - will the distinction between the inner and outer circle be? These questions seem await answer if and when further details of the plan take shape. But at least one conservative leader saw in the scheme the opening for the supposedly-demoted TEC to “continue to dominate.”
How credible or workable is the arrangement? Consider it as applied in another context. If, for example, the Socialist Party was troubled by the development of a virulent and incorrigible libertarian element in its midst, would anyone not find it highly amusing if, instead of expelling the dissidents, the Party set them up as a second or lower tier of its organization and touted the “two styles of being Socialist”?
A MORE SERIOUS ISSUE is the peace and welfare of the Communion’s faithful majority, a concern that seems to have been regularly subordinated to efforts to try to “keep everyone at the table,” even when some are badly misbehaving. Giving TEC a reduced status within or on the fringes of the Communion, rather than fully ostracizing it, may seem a better way of proceeding in the new millennium, but better for whom? We think that another of the AAC’s leaders, the Rev. Dr. Phil Ashey, is correct in concluding that “the battle for orthodox Anglican Christianity in TEC has been lost,” and the “battle for Christian orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion has already begun.” And in that struggle, he argues that TEC presents a “clear and present danger” to the Communion.
Elaborating on a point we made earlier, Ashey said recently that “TEC believes that its `Manifest Destiny’ is to share its convictions with the rest of the Anglican Communion, and to convert [it] to the false gospel which lies behind its repudiation of confessional Christianity, personal salvation through Christ alone, Communion teaching on human sexuality and holy orders (as stated in Lambeth Resolution 1.10) and the moratoria on gay bishops and same sex blessings.”
IN THE MAIN, Dr. Williams should be lauded for his July 27 statement, which goes farther in reapproaching the homosexual issue from the catholic standpoint than anything we have seen from him in quite a while. But –while we know the odds are against it - we hope and pray that he takes the good sense he demonstrates one critical step further. For the peace and welfare of most Anglicans, we hope he will join Bishop Wright – and provinces that have already weighed in on the issue by cutting or reducing ties to TEC - in fully acknowledging the current reality in TEC, and supporting moves in the Church of England to do the same.
Actions speak louder than words, and whatever TEC says to the contrary, it has acted over and over like it is not part of the Anglican Communion. That is the reality.
Is there not some simple, swift way to meet the real need that we think now exists to officially acknowledge that, without it running afoul of or getting bogged down by arguments about the current limits of authority in the Communion, the need to wait for the covenant’s adoption, etc.? Is there not some expeditious way to do what General Convention did (rather courageously, if you think about it) – tell the truth in a way that has consequences?
How improbable it seems, based on his past track record, but how refreshing it would be, if Archbishop Williams, instead of presiding over the conversion of the Anglican Way into the Anglican Ways, joined other archbishops in simply recording their conclusion that TEC has adopted for itself the role of a jurisdiction outside the official Anglican Communion, and continuing about their duties on the basis of that understanding!
With two TEC dioceses already fielding homosexual candidates for bishop, and the situation quickly growing more volatile, it seems likely that events will unfold differently – (e.g.) that conservative Global South archbishops will step into the breach and issue some statement or take some action of their own, and Dr. Williams will have to decide whether to follow their lead or go his own way. But it does not have to be that way unless the Archbishop wishes it to be.
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Sources for the foregoing included The American Anglican Council, The Living Church, Episcopal News Service, VirtueOnline, The Washington Times, The Church of England Newspaper
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