Ruth Gledhill has an exclusive interview with the Bishop of Durham Tom Wright. You can read it on her blog under the headline Primates: Schismatics to be “pruned from the branch”.
Three excerpts:
…He was quite unequivocal. He said too many in TEC are guilty of “doctrinal indifferentism.” The Covenant Design Group in Nassau successfully produced a good document, he said. The Primates have little choice but to follow Windsor at the meeting next week. And if Windsor is followed, then Gene Robinson and those who consecrated him should voluntarily absent themselves from the councils of the Communion, including the Lambeth Conference, unless they express regret in the terms set out in Windsor. Only a Windsor-rooted response in Tanzania can save the Communion from schism. “Almost everybody involved with this question recognises that there is no way forward from here without pain. It is painful for everybody. There are not going to be winners and losers. There are going to be losers category one, two, three, four and five…”
And:
“…The question is, is there any solution that a solid central ground will assemble around? My view is that it would be a solution based on the Windsor Report and what has flowed from it. It is the only thing on the table. If we are going to scrap that we would have to go back three years to start all over again. The solution would consist of the Primates accepting what the Covenant Drafting Group did in Nassau. The word is they made good progress at that meeting. I assume that means they will have something to put before the Primates. Then the question is how far that can be taken and how soon. I assume the immediate plan is to take it to Lambeth 2008. There is also the question of what the provinces will say about it.
“The more sharp-edged question is who is seen to be speaking for the American evangelicals. Rowan has invited to Dar Es Salaam two of the leading Windsor bishops, the ones holding the ground around the Windsor report, who are not secceding and going to Nigeria but who are not going to waver in the terms that Ecusa got it wrong and it is still getting it wrong and needs to be called to order. The question is how that is going to be resolved in the first few days of the meeting. I do not have a game plan on how that is going to work. Rowan is head and shoulders above all of them in terms of his wisdom and ability. He listens extremely carefully to everybody and then goes away and prays about it. He is never an uncritical listener. There is noone who Rowan will allow to tell him what to do. He will think and pray through everything that he hears. His commitment is to work for the unity of the Church and the advancement of the Gospel. Those who want to go and do their own thing do not like it when the Archbishop of Canterbury says the unity of the Church means you cannot…”
And this:
“…If the Anglican Communion, and particularly the American church and others like it, can be renewed according to the pattern of the Windsor Report, which is of course according to the pattern of Scripture, then those who are looking to foreign jurisdictions will find a way to come back into the fold. Then there would be a sigh of relief all round. In American there are dozens of breakaway bits and pieces, it is confusing and very messy. It is very American. But it is very unhelpful to the cause of the Church and the Gospel. As for what would happen to Gene Robinson? Pass. I really do not think there is a good answer to that one. The Windsor Report quotes the Archbishop of Canterbury himself saying in 2003 that if Robinson were in most other provinces of the Anglican Communion, he certainly could not be a bishop. As a priest he would be under discipline because of what has happened in terms of his marriage and partnership. In most provinces he could not have been a bishop. Therefore to ask other provinces to come to Lambeth and accept Gene Robinson as one of their number is a very big ask…”
Read the whole interview.
If +Durham thinks that +Pittsburgh represent the Windsor rooted center of the Episcopal he eiether hasn’t paid attention to documents readily available here or is as woudl say “looney tunes.”
Well, I read the article. I have no doubt that Bishop Wright is a far finer Biblical scholar than I. I have no doubt that he is no “scholar” of the difficulties facing the Anglican Communion and (as he notes, among others) The Episcopal Church. First, to equate Bishop Duncan and Bishop MacPherson in their commitment to The Episcopal Church is simply inaccurate. Bishop Duncan has expressed his willingness to leave the institution of The Episcopal Church, and has by his statements and by his support of actions changing the canons of his diocese has amply demonstrated it. Bishop MacPherson… Read more »
If the Windsor Report is the only thing on the table then the AC really is finished. The GS Primates have already torn it to shreds by moving onto US territory with their missionary endeavors. TEC couldn’t agree on anything but partial compliance with it at General Convention and the much touted growing assembly of “Windsor Compliant bishops” turned up only 19 of them. Are we to assume that Rowan should invite only 19 TEC bishops and none from Nigeria, Bolivia, Uganda, Rwanda Singapore etc? A Windsor communion wouldn’t amount to much after all. It sounds as if NT W… Read more »
The Daily Telegraph had the right idea. (First time in my life I’ve ever said that!)
Let’s just let the Anglican Communion fade away.
If some of you want to share the table with some of us, that’s fine, but the bickering and bullying among the Primates and Primatial wanna-bes are doing much to convince the rising generation that the Christian religion is totally false.
But, Charlotte, I think the conservative version of it is exactly that. False. Wrong. Harmful.
Lets let the conservatives do as they wish and start something new.
Tom Wright is spinning expectations. It is a common political ploy but shameful when practiced by a bishop of the church. And Ruth’s scorn toward the Episcopal Church is long documented. However this all breaks apart, I’m ready for the lunacy to end. When the Episcopal Church sets up shop in his neighborhood for a new Episcopal Diocese of Durham, I’m sure he’ll be happy to sell all of his empty church buildings to a new planting of a growing and inclusive church. Perhaps when his little bitter GS party has withered away and the rightward shifting CofE with it… Read more »
“Rowan has invited to Dar Es Salaam two of the leading Windsor bishops, the ones holding the ground around the Windsor report, who are not secceding and going to Nigeria but who are not going to waver in the terms that Ecusa got it wrong and it is still getting it wrong and needs to be called to order.” Who is +Tom Dunelm referring to? Is it +Bob Duncan? If so, he needs to have his head examined. +Duncan is nothing but malignant schismatic who should have been deposed for breaking his ordination vows, attempting as he does to take… Read more »
_There is no one who Rowan will allow to tell him what to do._ It seems to me that some more than others have been telling him what to do (including, no doubt, Tom Wright) – or they will act. _His commitment is to work for the unity of the Church and the advancement of the Gospel._ He is acting for a unity of some of the Church, but not all of it – by the very expectation that it will indeed divide. _When there is some kind of parting of the ways it is always painful for everybody. …rootedness… Read more »
As for what would happen to Gene Robinson? Pass. I really do not think there is a good answer to that one. The Windsor Report quotes the Archbishop of Canterbury himself saying in 2003 that if Robinson were in most other provinces of the Anglican Communion, he certainly could not be a bishop. As a priest he would be under discipline because of what has happened in terms of his marriage and partnership. In most provinces he could not have been a bishop. Therefore to ask other provinces to come to Lambeth and accept Gene Robinson as one of their… Read more »
“If the Anglican Communion, and particularly the American church and others like it, can be renewed according to the pattern of the Windsor Report, which is of course according to the pattern of Scripture…”
I balk at this. It implies that there is a single pattern of Scripture, that we have identified it, and that it is given expression in a bureaucratic church document. There is a short-circuit here that provides a poor basis for letting all voices be heard.
If the Windsor Report is all that’s left for discussion, then I say let’s be consistent, trash it and start again.
Nobody has fully complied with it, particularly those demanding submission from TEC. Unless the Nigerians are going to be called to account for their border crossings (which is the more novel innovation of late), then I see no point in requiring anything of the Americans for simply following theological convictions that were already well established.
Would this be happening to the CofE instead of TEC had Rowan Williams insisted on Jeffrey John becoming Bishop of Reading?
“it would be a solution based on the Windsor Report and what has flowed from it. It is the only thing on the table. If we are going to scrap that we would have to go back three years to start all over again.” And he says this like it’s a bad thing?! Seriously: +Wright is SOOOOO *wrong*. He so does NOT get it (the “it” I speak of, is The Gospel). He is so the broken-off *splinter* saying that the living *branch* must be pruned! Oh well: God’s in God’s Heaven, the Holy Spirit is in TEC and, as… Read more »
“Just let the Anglican Communion fade away”?
Should we just let Christianity fade away too?
If you’re a Christian you should be willing to stand up for Christianity, regardless of what other Christians do or don’t do. If you simply want to wash your hands of it, then you don’t deserve the name Christian.
So then with Anglicanism. If you want to toss out the Anglican Church simply because of what other Anglicans are doing or not doing, you don’t deserve to be among them.
What you’re proposing is not only foolish and cowardly, but completely uncharitable and–in a word–unchristian.
Wow to think that the core conservative stuff of following Jesus is really pledged to be just this antigay. To think that this pledging is so egregiously aliented from being an embodied mammal, and from sex? I am starting for the first time to mull over how all this puritannical sex and body stuff is maybe a core image of some of what the doctrine of Original Sin points towards. What an anguished alienation, disowned via doctrines from the righteous conservative religious self that has repented of the parts of sex or embodiment which its feeble presuppositions do not permit… Read more »
Guess what? The rest of us are not going back into the Closets, even if your rush to new conservative realignment transforms the worldwide Anglican communion into one of the largest institutional closets – comparable to the other largest faith communities? – possible. Nor are we going to stop following Jesus, just because your conscience is so weak it cannot bear to learn that it was mistaken about people who are not straight, not to mention being willing to correct its own legacy flat earth errors as it mis-understood so much about human sexuality and about the human body. Alas.… Read more »
Don’t you get it? +Duncan is no radical in AC terms – he is very mainstream. Remember the issue: TEC is facing the AC having deliberately ignored pleas to restrain itself from actions it was explicitly told would “tear the fabric of the communion” and consequences would follow – we are now seeing the consequences. Remember +Rowan comes from the left but no ABC is going to sacrifice 70m+ in the AC who broadly agree for the sake of the small nos supporting the actions of the TEC leadership since 2003. Pls launch TEC Global. Don’t be scared of being… Read more »
Tom Wright’s words in this interview are stunning. He seems to have no understanding of the history or polity of TEC. Not to belabor what should be obvious, but TEC is governed by elected representatives, lay, clergy, and bishops. The final authority in TEC is the General Convention. No international body, and especially the Primates, has jurisdiction or authority over TEC. The fact that the Primates have “adopted” the Windsor Report (WR) has no binding force over anyone. Wright pretends not to understand that the WR is offered as a basis for international dialogue among the churches of the Communion.… Read more »
Wright asks us to take him seriously, while he studiously avoids noting that the main offenders against the WR are the very Primates for whom he has become an apologist. The GS Primates have amply demonstrated their disregard for the WR in assigning to themselves churches, and, perhaps in the near future, dioceses in the US of “disaffected Episcopalians”, in contravention of the provisions of the WR, and of the Ecumenical Councils that the Anglican Church has recognized. The GS Primates have demonstrated no respect for the “listening process” of Lambeth 1998, which their leader observes by advocating legislation in… Read more »
This “American Schismatic” is tired of funding the Anglican Communion when we seem to be no longer welcome by Cantuar el al. (perhaps our money is to help fund primates meetings, Lambeths). The Episcopal Church began after the American Revolution and before the Church of England ever gave us a bishop – we can do just fine on our own thanks to the Episcopal Church of Scotland those many years ago who gave us our Catholic Orders. And just to remind everyone – the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in our realm and neither does the Bishop of Durham.… Read more »
whb – great – pls take your cash and go launch TEC Global
(the money will last a few decades – but by then, at your current TEC decline rates, there won’t be much need for buildings etc……so it all makes sense)
pls note – African Primates may not have the richest provinces but they are very clear that they will not sell their principles for US$
Fr Joseph O’Leary quoted +NT Wright: “If the Anglican Communion, and particularly the American church and others like it, can be renewed according to the pattern of the Windsor Report, which is of course according to the pattern of Scripture…” and commented: “I balk at this. It implies that there is a single pattern of Scripture, that we have identified it, and that it is given expression in a bureaucratic church document. There is a short-circuit here that provides a poor basis for letting all voices be heard.” It’s the short circuit from little boy Tom who helped update a… Read more »
Hi Laurence-
You are asking for people to accept ‘the realtiy’ of gay life.
This is especially puzzling, since it is the one thing that everyone quite obviously accepts already. If it were not a reality, then what is it that we are all talking about here?
No-one has ever questioned whether it is a reality. They have questioned whether it is a good reality or a bad reality. This is quite a different question.
But surely you knew that already?
NP wrote
pls note – African Primates may not have the richest provinces but they are very clear that they will not sell their principles for US$
Eyup, NP – what you mean is that they won’t take gay-tainted dollars but will take oil-tainted dollars, even tho’ the corruption, violence and all the rest which seem to be connected with oil exploitation (anyone else remember Ken Saro-Wiwa) has done rather mre harm to Nigeria than any number of gay couplings.
It’s all about which sort of ‘taint’ you acknowledge. I’d rather give gay dollars my vote than oily ones.
whb writes:
“”This “American Schismatic” is tired of funding the Anglican Communion when we seem to be no longer welcome by Cantuar el al. (perhaps our money is to help fund primates meetings, Lambeths). The Episcopal Church began after the American Revolution and before the Church of England ever gave us a bishop – we can do just fine on our own””
And you wonder why the world hates you bloody Americans?
Take your filthy money and keep it.
Frankly, Christopher, that’s not for you to decide – mind your own business, if that’s possible for conservative Christians!
Dear drdanfee -Thanks so much for making me laugh out loud and adding some delicous humor to this rather morbid escapade. “Are all of us who follow Jesus necessarily constrained for epochs yet to unfold by this sort of gospel to keep on confusing potty training frames with sexuality? But now, intentionally so, deliberately so? Our absolute and final worldwide confession? Watching this one will be fun in a darkly comic sort of way. Like a kitsch midnight movie.” Truly. We need more to lift our hearts in the coming weeks, lest we think God is not totally able to… Read more »
RevKaren: “No international body, and especially the Primates, has jurisdiction or authority over TEC.” Well, of course not; nobody is claiming they have. What the body does have, though, is a final say in who is a member of that body and who is not. And that’s all that is at issue here. “I don’t think there will be a positive reaction in TEC to the call to submit to an unelected body of men, poised to shun the only elected woman in their midst, …” If, on the other hand, the Primates were all elected, then, TEC would of… Read more »
NP says: “whb – great – pls take your cash and go launch TEC Global (the money will last a few decades – but by then, at your current TEC decline rates, there won’t be much need for buildings etc……so it all makes sense)” Actually studies of TEC membership by Faith Communities Together have shown that the most progressive churches (as well as the most conservative parishes) in the TEC are growing, not declining. (See: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/FACTs_on_Growth.pdf ) The “decline rates” of the TEC are almost wholly attributed to parishes that have experienced a great degree of conflict. Once that conflict… Read more »
Mynster – you have a point – even the CofE’s income and endowments are not all clean money…..but how would you respond to whb throwing weight around because TEC still happens to have a bit of cash?
Rev. Karen, we’ve all heard this blather before:
“Not to belabor what should be obvious, but TEC is governed by elected representatives, lay, clergy, and bishops. The final authority in TEC is the General Convention. No international body, and especially the Primates, has jurisdiction or authority over TEC. “
The Primates gave ecusa three years to work things out according to ecusa’s polity; ecusa failed.
btw – isn’t Jesus the final authority? And where does Scripture fit in these days on the authority hierarchy?
Am I the only one who is getting thoroughly tired of the gay debate on this forum? This is supposed to be about THINKING Anglicans, not slogan spouting ones. Could we maybe all agree that there is a huge body of eminent Anglican theological writing on both sides of the argument. It is therefore entirely possibly to hold either view with complete integrity. Maybe we can just agree to differ, to live side by side and leave the final judgement to God? I know that’s too much to ask in the public arena, but isn’t it something we ought to… Read more »
To mynsterpriest: Is gay reality a good thing or a bad thing? Gee, I dunno, is heterosexual reality a good thing or a bad thing? I would have thought, ECUSA communicant that I am, that it depends. Can we not judge – if we must – on individual cases? Obviously mynsterpriest is expert judge-er. Is having black skin a good thing or a bad thing? How about having red hair? I have known not a few people who would say both are indications of bad-ness. This does seem like a dangerous path to wander down, but what do I–a heterosexual,… Read more »
I am reminded of Jesus speaking of the temple to his disciples “not one stone will be left …..” (notably as quoted by James Alison in his comments on our attitudes of being enthralled by the ‘sacred centre’). I am not sure how it came to be that certain extremists wanted rid of the American church come what may and why there is an unwillingness to try to live out this disagreement so that the truth may be discerned within the debate. After all it has been said that there needs to be a listening process and that the current… Read more »
Erika: No, we can’t stop talking about this issue, because the fundagelicals have decided that the only way to determine if someone is a Christian or not is to ask them what they think about gays and lesbians. With so many on one side of this ‘debate’ making this issue a touchstone, the signature and center of their doctrine, it simply won’t go away. And, on the other side, asking the gays and lesbians in the church to stop talking about it is to ask them to please go away, if only because discussing the issue is linked to defending… Read more »
Rudy: This American lived in the UK twice. I understand that there is an enormous amount of misunderstanding nourished by cliches on both sides. But please understand that Americans in the Episcopal church do get a little tired of paying for most of the Anglican Consultative Council and other big ticket items and then being vilified in the communion. This doesn’t mean that people have to take the cash and shut up. But it does mean that we might be right to question the contribution. Perhaps, we wonder, more good could be done with this money in supporting hospitals and… Read more »
Dennis, The problem is that we don’t seem to be talking, we’re shouting, each side getting more and more self-righteous. I’m not asking for the issue to be burried, I’m asking for a pause in the shouting, for the genuine acceptance of the integrity of people on both sides of this debate. If we managed that, I would no longer have to feel that people are trying to push me out of my church. I agree with you – it is MY church too and I have a right to be in it. In the following silence we might learn… Read more »
To The Virginian, Craig Nelson & Dennis (twice) — very fine posts — I thank you.
The most charitable approach I can come up with to +Tom Dunelm’s highly emotional response to gay issues is a very negative experience in his childhood — otherwise, it is baffling — his commitment to his own opinions once expressed is breathtaking — how did Durham ever find a mitre big enough? I certainly highly respect his New Testament scholarship, but his view of The Episcopal Church & “the Americans” is too idiosyncratic to be taken seriously.
The Virginian – I think you may have elided my post with the one above, crediting the ‘Gay reality’ comments in the first posting to me.
Or I could be wrong and be suffering from male menopausal memory disorder!
English (and I DO mean ‘English’) Christians who object to ‘the one who pays the piper calling the tune’ should remember should remember that the threat to withhold funds from projects/parishes which do not meet with approval has been made before. At least one of our posters from the ConsEv end has spoken of his (I think) longing for the day when the ConsEvs can shed the financial and missiological overburden of the rest of us.
Graham Kings, theological secretary of Fulcrum (Tom Wright supports), has written: To Cleave or To Cleave? at http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2007/newsletter13.cfm?doc=188 in the Fulcrum Newsletter, February 2007 and suggests there may need to be a creative interim measure of a ‘College of Windsor Bishops’ to oversee ‘Windsor compliant’ parishes and dioceses in The Episcopal Church, as in ACI’s proposal for an interium arrangement while awaiting a conciliar communion covenant. http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.org/articles/2006/ACIProposal.html [quoting] a “college” of bishops and dioceses within TEC which will be recognized by the wider Communion… without this requiring either an alternative province or the intervention of bishops from outside the US…… Read more »
Well, I don’t know how to say this, and I will probably blunder, but here’s the best I can: Watching all of this has been like being a small child hiding under the bed while Mommy and Daddy go at each other with the frying pan and the chair leg, beating each other bloody, night after night. And the small child says to itself: “It’s all my fault. I mean, they say they are fighting over me. So if I weren’t here, Mommy and Daddy would stop fighting and everything would be all right — isn’t that so?” Well, it… Read more »
Dennis wrote: “I suspect that when this washes out there will still be ties between the English church and the church in North America. The ties of blood, language and outlook run too deep. That doesn’t mean that the hierarchy of the CofE wont run off with the Nigerians, but the rest of the CofE will likely see more in common with America and Canada and New Zealand and Scotland and South Africa and most of Australia than with Nigeria.” To that I say a very loud “Amen,” and would add Wales, most of Ireland, most of Latin America, and… Read more »
“Hi Laurence- “You are asking for people to accept ‘the realtiy’ of gay life. “This is especially puzzling, since it is the one thing that everyone quite obviously accepts already. If it were not a reality, then what is it that we are all talking about here? No-one has ever questioned whether it is a reality. They have questioned whether it is a good reality or a bad reality. This is quite a different question. “But surely you knew that already?” Christopher, to realize how shameful that message is, just replace “gay” with “Jewish”: “Hi Laurence- “You are asking for… Read more »
“a creative interim measure of a ‘College of Windsor Bishops’ to oversee ‘Windsor compliant’ parishes and dioceses in The Episcopal Church”
And how, pray tell, does Kings think that ++KJS, the Executive Council, the HofB and, last but not least, General Convention (not to mention the “average layperson” like myself) are going to accept this . . . this . . . subversion?
Two words: NOT HARDLY!
Lord have mercy—Lord, uphold your servant Katharine on her travels/travails!
Mynster – where is the conflict in saying strong, growing churches in the CofE should not have to pay for the terminal decline of those who oppose them….and also saying, “TEC, pls keep your money, it cannot buy you influence”? There is no conflict here. There would be if I were saying TEC should not withhold funds from those who oppose them…..but most importantly, African provinces are not begging for TEC money even though some in TEC want to play that card for influence……anyway, TEC needs cash more to fund its last few decades of dwindling nos and income –… Read more »
Charlotte is right as always.
Craig Goodrich wrote: ”What the body does have, though, is a final say in who is a member of that body and who is not. And that’s all that is at issue here.” This is now being repeated so often that I’m beginning to doubt it’s true. To accept as a new Member a (part of) a former Colonial Mission field is not “a final say in who is a member of that body and who is not”. It is to accept a Colonial Mission field as a full Member in the Body of Christ. So the Primates accept new… Read more »
Tony asked: “And where does Scripture fit in these days on the authority hierarchy?”
It doesn’t – it never did. Unless, of course, you mean some Indo European Scripture.
The Idea of Hierarchy is Indo European; Karma/Mocksha, Emanation, 10 concentric Heavens, flat Earth, Vale of Tears, The Highest Being.
Not in the Bible.
Erika Baker asked: “Could we maybe all agree that there is a huge body of eminent Anglican theological writing on both sides of the argument.” NT Wright? Robert Gagnon? “It is therefore entirely possibly to hold either view with complete integrity.” Please do! “Maybe we can just agree to differ, to live side by side and leave the final judgement to God?” Sorry, not on the table, too late in the day. There is a concerted effort to break the Church asunder, which has chosen this non-issue as the presenting one. Only a few years ago a certain Dr Williams… Read more »
Charlotte: thats exactly the position I reached. I felt that to stay within the CofE as it stands would be to give support to institutionalised homophobia
We desperately need to leave the AC behind so that people like NP, who I am not and would never wish to be in ‘communion’ with, can enjoy their temples of bigotry whilst we build something better.