As the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Nottingham draws near, many articles have appeared concerning it.
The Episcopal News Service published Listening central as delegates, observers prepare for ACC-13
and also this account of the recent Province IV Synod: From Nigeria, New Zealand: Voices on Windsor Report heard in U.S. forum.
Presiding Bishop Griswold has issued this letter to ECUSA bishops which mentions that:
In addition to making our presentation we will deliver to the members of the ACC a document entitled To Set Our Hope on Christ. This report is offered as a response to the request put to us in the Windsor Report paragraph 135 which asks the Episcopal Church to explain “from within the sources of authority that we as Anglicans have received in scripture, the apostolic tradition and reasoned reflection, how a person living in a same gender union may be considered eligible to lead the flock of Christ.” The report was prepared by a small group coordinated by my Canon Theologian, Mark McIntosh of Loyola University Chicago. We can be very grateful for his efforts and those of Michael Battle, Katherine Grieb and Timothy Sedgwick (all of the Virginia Theological Seminary) Jay Johnson (the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California), Bishop Roskam, and Kathryn Tanner (University of Chicago). As well, we can be grateful for the work of Dr. Pamela Darling, an historian who has compiled an appendix which delineates our church’s exploration over these last 40 years of issues of human sexuality. Once the text has been delivered to the members of ACC it will be available online and you will receive word about how copies may be obtained in booklet form.
The Living Church has published this editorial comment: ACC Meeting Could Bring Clarity
and this news article, Bishop Griswold Confident Before ACC Meeting
The Anglican Journal has Church Groups Make Plans for Council Meeting in Nottingham.
The Church of England Newspaper had two articles:
Americans set to defy Primates’ call
Ordinands ‘should study homosexuality’
And the CEN has now added this week’s trenchant View from Fleet Street column, by Stephen Bates in which he comments:
…It is clear that the North Americans are no more going to retreat from what they – rightly in my opinion, for what it is worth – perceive to be a more realistic, tolerant and Christian attitude towards gays in the clergy, than that the bishops of the Global South will be struck by a blinding revelation that homosexuality does not have to be the defining, now-or-never, communion-breaking issue for Anglicanism.
The best analogy I’ve heard in all this has been that of Kendall Harmon, the South Carolina theologian, who says it is as if the two sides are playing tennis, but on separate courts, so that there is no one to bat the ball back from the other side of the net. As in any divorce, schism or civil war, it is when the two sides not only stop talking to each other but also cease listening – a process which implies the possibility of change and even reconciliation – that breakdown is inevitable. They may not openly admit it, but too many people in Anglicanism just want to bring that on.
Well, the time has come. It is surely evident that the strains of keeping together an international communion, traditionally based on mutual affection and respect for each other’s traditions and provincial autonomy, are just too great when stretched across societies of vastly different cultural, social and religious realities, particularly when it is evident that there is no mutual understanding and appreciation left to hold the show together…
Always interesting to read “reasserter” comments on Bishop Griswold at TitusOneNine. This letter attracted an especially interesting set. Here is the opening of comment #13 (spelling and punctuation as in the original): “We should be thankful that the Brits have sour attitude concerning firearms. Were the ACC packing, The presentation by team ECUSA, might just tempt them to begin putting us out of our misery.” Memo to Kendall Harmon: Excellent metaphor about the separate tennis games. But before I decide to “play tennis” on the same court as this man, I’d like assurances that he won’t shoot the players on… Read more »
This is very scarey. As a teacher I try to teach kindness and understanding, compassion and caring. I have taken classes on problem solving senarios with students aka conflict resolution. Its not violent and gets people to look at each others perspectives. I see we in education must be more vigilant with this approach. Jesus certainly didn’t carry a gun.