The recent remarks of Bishop Michael Langrish in the USA previously mentioned here have been published in full on his diocesan website. You can read them at Some Reflections offered to the House of Bishops of ECUSA.
(*Addendum* This diagram, included in the article by Andrew Goddard mentioned below in a comment, may also be useful for readers of the original article.)
This has been reported today in the Church Times by Pat Ashworth as ECUSA could wreck it all, envoy warns US Bishops.
The Episcopal News Service reported this also, in Exeter bishop, South Indian scholar offer texts from House of Bishops’ meeting.
The other speaker whose remarks are published by ENS is Sathi Clarke, a priest of the Church of South India and a professor at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C. who delivered a paper on biblical interpretation: Sathi Clarke’s speech at Spring 2006 House of Bishops meeting .
It all depends on what is meant by ‘seriously engaging’ the Windsor Report. That very flawed document has been scrutinized, studied, and parsed by many in TEC. There have been a variety of responses. There have been a variety of lengthy analytical papers written and published. To me, that is engagement. But if ‘serious engagement’ is code for ‘accepting every recommendation and accepting as factual everything written in it,’ then I suppose there is a problem. The report is a report. It is not legislation. It gets historical process regarding women’s ordination quite often factually wrong. If ‘serious engagement’ is… Read more »
The Anglican Communion Institute has just published a perceptive analysis by Dr Andrew Goddard of The Bishop of Exeter’s Reflections. Well worth reading for its helpful insights.
http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.org/articles/Exeterpiece02.html
Re Sathi Clarke’s speech: This started off very strongly; for some strange reason in the first sections I came close to tears, but it began to go nowhere somewhere in the middle: “the wicked and unrighteous accommodators and collaborators with the imperial empires of this world has been overlooked in an extended and bitter dispute over matters of sexual orientation.” This is preposterous. The overlooking of the most pressing sins of the world by Christians is not because of a dispute over sexual orientation. I mean, REALLY, is it that easy to excuse the failings of those (all of us)… Read more »
I would like to know how The Anglican Communion Institute and bishop regard the context which allows some African dioceses to accept for baptism men with more than one wife without asking or requiring them to put aside all but one of them. I think it is a pastoral practice of great sensitivity, since in those cultures, to put aside a wife is often to doom her to slow death by starvation. I do not see it as a tacit demand for the same ruling in other contexts. Polygamy is in fact illegal in all US states, and is prosecuted… Read more »
To say nothing of the fact that in the “real” “church catholic” bishops can’t be married at all!
I think that +Exeter would have been right to indicate that ECUSA must accept the Windsor report in full. Liberals may try to sell a half-hearted response as “just enough for Windsor” (ie for ABps Eames and Williams) but the Windsor report was only just enough for the non-liberal Provinces. So the only acceptable response for non-liberals is *either* the proposed Windsor compromise in full, *or* negotiate another compromise starting again from the *FULL* rather than minimum requirements of the rest of the Communion. Slicing the opposing position twice is not an agreement, or true compromise, it’s just trying to… Read more »
Re the CT headline:
“*The Gospel*: ‘wrecking’ the comfortable status of the religiously self-righteous since AD33!”
Having read Bishop Langrish’s address, and then Dr. Goddard’s analysis, I am clear that he and I are not reading it out of the same context. I have said elsewhere that I thought this was a moderate statement, in no small part because of (1) how often he acknowledged that these were his personal opinions; (2) how often he spoke of the importance of respecting context (I agree with Dr. Goddard that Exeter did hold up that no context is supreme; but I do see the critique in Exeter’s address that Dr. Goddard did not see of the “Global South’s”… Read more »
Cynthia wrote: “Polygamy is in fact illegal in all US states, and is prosecuted when discovered.” Not a very helpful statement, with regard to Christian sexual morality, unless we know precisely what “polygamy” means in this context. For example, a non-exhaustive list of questions might include the following: 1. Mr Abdulrahman has acquired three wives in Muslim religious ceremonies. He has made no attempt to register these marriages under the civil law of the state in which he resides. he has not taken advantage of any financial advantages, such as tax breaks, granted to married men under state law. Has… Read more »
Mr. Harrison misses my point. Nobody in TEC would fear that recognition of the pastoral issues of polygamy in Africa would presage massive shifts in American marrige customs. All I meant to point out is that the churches that comprise the Anglican Communion differ in many areas of practice. Some ordain women as deacons and priests. Some do not. Some consecrate women bishops. Some do not. Some allow remarriage after divorce. Some do not. TEC consented to the election of +Gene Robinson and said that in fact same sex relationships are blessed in some places. TEC did not say anyone… Read more »
Bishop Langrish wrote: Looking around me I see those who not only stand firmly by Lambeth 1.10, but also see it as the litmus test of orthodoxy, and who are further opposed to, or have given up on, Windsor and all that it stands for. Probably nothing that happens is going to satisfy them. Andrew Goddard commented: Group One (or at least the bottom right-hand corner of it) embraces ‘those who not only stand firmly by Lambeth I.10, but also see it as the litmus test of orthodoxy, and who are further opposed to, or have given up on, Windsor… Read more »
Who exactly are these people? Persumably David Virtue, the ACI, the Anglican Churches of Nigeria and the Southern Cone, (and indeed a significant proportion of the Global South), AMiA, the Diocese of Sydney, Anglican Mainstreamers and Reform worldwide – for a start. All of these are out of communion with ECUSA: and none of them have said that they will reopen communion with ECUSA if it merely adheres to Windsor. The Global South’s position has been clear for years: “all homsexuals and their supporters must reform and resign”; for them, Windsor may be just enough to stop them splitting from… Read more »
Simon — I think Sinner (although I initially read it as “Sinner on Monday” which I prefer) is on target here — AMiA started before anyone was talking about Gene Robinson. The problem with compromise for it’s own sake is that it can shortchange the truth — that is, if what the General Convention of The Episcopal Church did in 2003 was right & the “all homosexual acts are sinful and anyone involved in such an act must repent & become heterosexual or perpetually celibate”* crowd is the extreme position, then a compromise like the Windsor Report is a compromise… Read more »