Updated
On BBC radio this morning, the Bishop of Winchester Michael Scott-Joynt was interviewed. He thought that schism could be avoided if the leadership of the Episcopal Church would:
…stop oppressing a significant minority of itself, about a quarter of its bishops and dioceses, and allow them to exist and flourish in full communion with the rest of the Anglican Communion…
and he then repeated this:
…the really critical question is whether the majority of the Episcopal Church will allow space for what is something over a quarter of its bishops and dioceses, and many more than a quarter of its members to continue to hold the full beliefs of the church, both in terms of creeds, about Jesus, about God, and about marriage and Christian behaviour…
The Bishop of California, Mark Andrus was also interviewed.
Hear it all here (about 6 minutes).
Update Jim Naughton has responded to the Bishop of Winchester in Clueless Miter Man returns.
The Living Church has a preview of today’s session, On Day 1, Spotlight on The Episcopal Church.
From ENS Mary Frances Schjonberg reports Letter to Williams calls for rejection of alternative primatial oversight. The letter itself can be found here.
And Matthew Davies filed In Tanzania, Episcopal Church missionaries, Presiding Bishop share perspectives which seems to have got lost at the ENS site.
The Scotsman has this report: Church faces wider split over gay unions.
Michael Scott-Joynt is very sensible and honest.
+Scott-Joynt has always struck me as a man with a very frail grasp on reality-as-the-rest-of-us-experience-it. These comments only seem to confirm this impression. What, in the name of Lancelot Andrewes, is the good bishop of Winchester on about?
And, according to Scott-Joynt, the ‘oppression’ takes what form exactly? Is this active oppression or merely a refusal to allow the dissenting bodies to set up their own parallel bodies no longer under the constituted authority of TEC. Hardly oppression.
I have been trying for years to understand the “oppression” experienced by the “orthodox.” When questioned about the matter, the “orthodox” invariably talk not about actions but about theology. Often, they speak of the opinions held by their more moderate opponents, without being able to cite evidence that their opponents actually hold the views attributed to them. I’m sorry, but disagreement is not oppression.
As he has shown before, the Bishop of Winchester has no idea what he is talking about, and he lacks the good sense to know when he should keep his mouth shut.
But of course it is oppression. The trouble is that oppressors are never able to see themsleves as such and can therefore never give freedom to the oppressed. But the simple fact of the matter is that TEC has been inovating in its order, doctrine and morals for forty years and when orthodox bishops parishes and people seek to remain faithful to that which they have recievcd and to align themselves with faithful primates they are threatened with law suits. And so TEC is willing to contemplate all kinds of doctrinal abnormalities but when it comes to canon law morphs… Read more »
Have listened to the Scott-Joynt BBC interview. Where does the man find his “facts” (“a quarter of its bishops and dioceses”?) Could an individual in this senior post be pathologically delusional, or is he, as seems very possible in light of this and of his last week’s attempt to aggravate this situation, simply a bare-faced liar? Stephen Bates’ observation that Scott-Joynt’s previous comments were “deeply divisive within the CofE’s bench of bishops, where Scott-Joynt and Nazir-Ali are both regarded as insufferable by many of their colleagues” seems to have had no effect. Years ago, a co-worker remarked to me, of… Read more »
‘…stop oppressing a significant minority of itself, about a quarter of its bishops and dioceses, and allow them to exist and flourish in full communion with the rest of the Anglican Communion…’ SCott-Joynt Why doesn’t S-J etal ‘ …stop oppressing a significant minority of itself, about 20 % of humanity and of of its bishops and dioceses, and allow them to exist and flourish in full communion with the rest of the Anglican Communion… No one has stopped anti-gay beleivers from being Church and voting at GC etc. But they want ot expell lgbt peoole and apparently any one who… Read more »
I would have like the BBC reporter to have asked the bishop of Winchester if he favours the alternative jurisdiction proposed for England under the infamous “Covenant”. That might have made his standing on the issues clearer.
Apparently we’re supposed to quietly agree with the bishop that those in the other three-quarters of the Episcopal Church therefore do not “hold the full beliefs of the church, both in terms of creeds, about Jesus, about God, and about marriage and Christian behaviour.” I don’t agree with him at all on that. And I wish he would quit meddling from afar and come and find out what’s true about us.
The oppression has taken the form of refusing to negotiate in good faith with congregations that want to leave and instead trying to sue them out of their buildings, even when the diocese hasn’t paid one dime for the buildings. This has gotten so vicious it’s getting people’s attention in the Communion. And I would bet good money it’s affecting the Primates Meeting.
The Bishop of Winchester has got the wrong end of the right stick when he talks about oppression. The present Anglican crisis is not about controversies which are, if we are honest, no more or less heated than those which have inflamed Christendom for hundreds of years. It is about how we accommodate differences. One model is to reject difference altogether. Such a model is well suited to congregationalism – you choose to join a congregation, you all agree with each other, and you pick your leaders so they agree with you. This is the sort of church that Christopher… Read more »
I’m curioius where the Bishop of Winchester gets his figures. Only 7 or 8 dioceses have appealed for APO, which is decidedly less than 25% of 110 dioceses. Recent reports indicate actualy parish defections are in the 40s, far less than 25% of the 7000+ congregations that make up TEC. If he’s talking actual numbers of people represented by these bishops, dioceses, and parishes that’s still questionable because their are sizable progressive minorities among these entities (San Joaquin and Pittsburgh being two examples of dioceses that are far from uniform with their leadership). I’m not sure I understand where the… Read more »
His Grace, the Bishop of Winchester is suffering from a monumental case of chutzpah. He is pleading oppression on behalf of those who would happily and legally and forcibly if necessary oppress a good 10 to 15 percent of any given national population. I’m waiting to hear some righteous miter-shaking episcopal indignation over the legislation working its way through the Nigerian parliament, endorsed openly by a few bishops and tacitly endorsed by so many many more. I can only assume that the silent bishops would like to see similar legislation, condemned by everyone from Human Rights Watch to the Bush… Read more »
“And, according to Scott-Joynt, the ‘oppression’ takes what form exactly?”
His math is also deficient. About .5% have left for Africa, Peru, points south.
Meanwhile we ‘oppress’ them by trying to keep them from stealing TEC property. This after, in my diocese, Bp Lee accomadating and accomadating them, only to have them make more and more demands, insult him, send death threats to him, and finally try to steal TEC property.
Raspberry Rabbit, I can’t speak directly to this, as I am not (nor ever have been) an Episcopal priest. But I can tell you about what has happened in my corner of the United States. During the past 4 years, over a hundred Episcopalians have left their surrounding parishes to join my “Continuing” Anglican parish. Of these, I’d say around 10-15% are people one might style “right-wingers.” (BTW, though a traditionalist, I’m a left of center democrat politically). The rest are moderates. So, why did they leave? I’d say 75% of them never would have left if their clergy had… Read more »
And where does Scott-Joynt get his numbers? 25%?! Not even the most generous assessment could get him anything close to that. I’d love to the meet this Episcopal Church that is in such vast disarray. It simply doesn’t exist, at least not as people like Scott-Joynt describe it.
Well, Raspberry, I don’t know how the Bishop of Winchester would answer, but how about these for starters: The Diocese of New York’s recent lawsuit against the congregation of St Andrew’s, Syracuse, seeking to remove them from their building; How about the summary inhibition and deposition of the Revd Gene Geromel pronounced by Bishop Leidel in August 2005; Or the persecution of the Revd David Moyer who was deprived of his status as an Episcopal priest by Bishop Bennison; Or when Bishop Smith deprived the Revd Mark Hansen of the priesthood (an action contradicted by several diocesans and primates including… Read more »
+Scott-Joynt is trying to sell the meme that those calling for APO or a new province represents 25% of TEC. There is absolutely no data to support such an assertion. Whether he actually believes this to be true, I can’t say, but he is doing his best to gain support for the reasserters’ cause through overstating their position within TEC. He and the reasserts are trying to sell a bona fide split in TEC. It’s a gambit but it’s also not supported by the truth. In effect, he is positing – How can the AC not respond. Surely, SOMETHING must… Read more »
Is he prepared to let those who disagree with him in England do the same thing?
“…stop oppressing a significant minority of itself, about a quarter of its bishops and dioceses, and allow them to exist and flourish in full communion with the rest of the Anglican Communion…”
Michael Scott-Joynt should be advised that despite the overall flaws of the US health system, we do have world-class mental health services available for those who can pay.
A quarter? I don’t think it’s that many. less than a tenth of the church is trying to leave and is whining about being “oppressed”. the rest are willing to stay and engage, apparently.
Raspberry Rabbit, As long as it can be made to look like oppression, it suits the purpose. We all fall for the cachet of being the oppressed faithful remnant fighting against our oppressors. I can’t say that I, comfortable middle class man that I am, am oppressed because the Church won’t bless my relationship because I’m gay. Yet there are those who disagree vehemently with me on this. I call this the Quest for Victimhood. Everybody falls for it, me included, and you see it in all debates. How many arguments have you been in where it seems the attitude… Read more »
+Scott-Joynt has spent far too much time drinking the kool-aide at beautiful Camp Allen.His mean-spirited comments are both incorrect and unhelpful, and he betrays a glaring ignorance of the typical lay Episcopalian.In my home, we respond to hate speech with”I’ve got two words for you:shut the f— up!”
Congregations and clergy who support full bisexual, gay, lesbian, and/or transgender involvement in church life currently co-exist within the same denominational framework with congregations that limit BGLT involvment in church life.
Rev. Susan Russell’s gay-friendly congregation in Pasedena CA and Rev. Guido Verbeck’s anti-gay congregation in Shreveport LA are both allowed to exist.
So … pray tell … where exactly is the “oppression” here?
Raspberry Rabbit —
There is a tradition in The Episcopal Church (dating back to the 1976 General Convention with the approval of the ordination of women & the new BCP)of describing oneself as “persecuted” if you disagree with the bishop about something.
You know the joke, for Rome tradition is the magisterium, for the Orthodox it is the decisions of the ecumenical councils and for Episcopalians it is what the last rector said.
So our concept of this allegedly full conservative or traditional gospel must roundly include exclusive straight privileges to demean and define that small, apparently stable, statistical minority of people who are not straight. What are these essential legacy definitions? Why, as we all already know, they are: filth, danger, and immorality. Okay. On with the full gospel then. We have still further to go. Based on these legacy understandings – and many of us would say these are mis-understandings pretending to be understandings – we find a range of mixed public policy and church policy initiatives which would either bar… Read more »
A big church – not a mega church with one or two large congregations, but a worldwide church – and a long living church – not lasting for decades, or even a century or so, but for millenia – simply cannot operate on the congregational model. The congregation of like minded people does not last very long, because the congregation which it is based on does not last very long. It gets old, and it dies. It is hard to renew yourself when you don’t accept change and you expel dissidents. There are two models for a worldwide, long-lasting church,… Read more »
WannabeAnglican – You better believe they are considering it at the Primate Meeting – They are considering what it would be like to have a schism foisted on their own church by those outside their jurisdiction due to “doctrinal disagreements” and how they would respond when those seeking to set up a parallel church want to take their churches’ property with them.
C.B.
Michael Scott-Joynt has now joined the “official” ranks of “Liars with Mitres”…wow, it’s fascinating to see/hear such “matter of non-factual” nonsense projected/presented with a nice Engish Accent…makes me long for British “sensibilities” in my everyday religious life…again after being “taken to the tower” for a quick/deadly adios…a dios!
Mr. Simmons: That would be “the Diocese of CENTRAL New York” — with its see city in Syracuse. All of the “oppressions” you list are the result of the orderly application of the canons of the church. If people were faithful to their ordination vows, or simply chose to walk away from them — as they are free to do — there would be no need for the application of canonical measures. The situation in Virginia is a classic instance of dissidents wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They cannot both depart from the Episcopal Church and… Read more »
Oppression happens on both sides. When the Diocese of Pittsburgh forced non-network parishes to send their Province III contributions to the Network oppression by the majority was ok? I won’t even discuss the inhibitions of the priest in Virginia. The fact is if you don’t like the church you go to find another. The People of TFC, Truro ect… need to build their own building/facilities. This reminds me of the Roman Catholics who sued the Diocese of Pittsburgh for control of “their church.” If you don’t like Rome go somewhere else was the response. Maybe +Winchester is including in his… Read more »
Article has been updated with link to
http://blog.edow.org/weblog/2007/02/clueless_miter_man_returns.html
by Jim Naughton.
My question is who made sex a doctrine? I thought doctrine was something important like believing in Jesus as the Christ, Our Lord and Savior? I also thought doctrine was something about acknowledging baptism as entry into the Body of Christ and that the Eucharist was the place where people who might argue over whose side of the fence the leaves of the tree fall would kneel together at Christ’s invitation and share in his body and blood? I didn’t know that with whom one expressed one’s love, commitment and intent to live in a long-term relationship equalled doctrine more… Read more »
The question for Mark is, given the basis of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), whether he would be prepared to come under its jurisdiction, and, given the links to Reform, Anglican Mainstream and the distasteful Christian Institute, of the website of the churches under John Simmons, whether he would also contemplate also oversight from the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) given the presentations recently of Reform and friends. After all, these may be on offer to both in the near future.
Michael Scott-Joynt’s claim of 25% of the bishops and dioceses dissenting from the recent actions of TEC is probably somewhat accurate. While only a few dozen parishes have left over the past 5 years, many parishes who remain in TEC can see the possibility of leaving at some point or would like to leave now. Many evangelicals have already melted away from TEC and joined other churches, but a significant number remain. I can’t site the source at the moment, but I seem to recall a recent interview w/ a more liberal TEC leader acknowledging that about 20% of TEC… Read more »
BobinWashPA said:
“The People of TFC, Truro ect… need to build their own building/facilities.”
At TFC, they did build their own buildings – at least the multi-million dollar expansion about 12 years ago. There were no diocese funds in that project nor were any planned for further capital programs.
Chris – The doctrinal test being applied to the Diocese of South Carolina is the doctrine of loyalty to TEC. There was no issue as to whether VGR was loyal to TEC. The doctrinal issues are not the same, therefore the consent issues are not the same either.
C.B.
Chris, Oppression IS overstating the case. Disagreement is not oppression. When a parish demands that its bishop publically state that non-Christians will go to Hell, then, when he declines to do so, refuses to allow him into the church for confirmations, and then he disciplines their rector for this, this is NOT oppression. And Liberals groups being master strategists? Could you give an example? Seriously, I am not being entirely facetious here. All the stories I have heard have been of how skillfull, well organized, and well funded the Conservatives are in this, so I’d like some balance. I’m looking… Read more »
Apparently stopping thieves from stealing is oppression.
Additionally, the oppressed get to count for something like 5 times their actual numbers at least.
If we’re going to challenge Michael Scott-Joynt’s 25%, integrity also calls us to question seekers claim that 20% of humanity is GLBT or counterlight’s 10-15%. Even Kinsey didn’t think it was more than 10% and that hypothesis hasn’t held up well. Oppression may be overstating the case. But when we see cases like the Virginia Diocese refusing to assent to the consecration of conservative, evangelical bishops in South Carolina – after assenting to the consecration of +VGR – and much of the rhetoric used in interviews and conversations (i.e. “fundegelical”), hostility from some towards * evangelicals is certainly an appropriate… Read more »
Ford,
Here is an essay re: Integrity’s actions from the mid 1970’s to the mid 1990’s. Organization, strategy, tactics and funding run through every paragraph.
http://newark.rutgers.edu/%7Elcrew/gayhist.htm
Hat tip: Babyblue
I’m not criticizing the liberals’ administrative aplomb, just showing there is balance.
“Be shrewd as vipers and innocent as lambs.”
Lets be clear here — the people who are voting to leave TEC are not the same people who built the buildings. They are people who have been given stewardship of property which has been used by Episcopalian, in many cases, for well over 100 years. Instead of stewardship, they claim ownership.
I call that theft. Plain and simple. The people there might consider it “oppression” if TEC stands up to their theft, but it doesn’t make it so.
seeker, I’m not attacking you just questioning your data, which you said isn’t verifiable. MSJ’s estimate is somewhat verifiable and I’d point to a number of larger dioceses such as the Texas dioceses, Pittsburgh, South Carolina plus others that participated in the Camp Allen meetings. I don’t have actual polling data but a assuming even half the members of these dioceses would rather see a more traditional doctrine (not necessarily “conservative”)in TEC (a fairly good assumption given these are elected bishops) you’re talking about a six-figure count of Episcopalians. Given there are only 2.3M of us in TEC, you don’t… Read more »
My Lord of Winchester might do well to read Chris Hedges’ recent book, entitled American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2006) before pontificating again on how TEC oppresses conservative Americans.
Chris Hedges is a Harvard Divinity School-educated journalist, who elaborates on what Ford Elms briefly described above. He describes the “new religion” espoused by +Bob Duncan, the Bushies, the Neo-cons and the folks gathered around CANA’s Martyn Minns.
John Henry said:
“My Lord of Winchester might do well to read Chris Hedges’ recent book, entitled American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2006) before pontificating again on how TEC oppresses conservative Americans.”
This is starting to smell like viral marketing.
Why is it when liberals (religious or political) organize its called grassroots but when conservatives (religious or political) organize its sinister?
Chris
“Just because I think [*****] should preclude a person from church leadership does not mean I support the horrific actions people inflict on the [*****] community.” Insert the word “black”, and sounds remarkably like the so-called “white moderates” of 40 years ago, no? [And to be clear: NEITHER blacks, nor homosexuals, are condemned (per se) in the Bible. NEITHER the relationships of homosexuals, nor relationships of blacks, are condemned (per se) in the Bible, either (though BOTH have been *claimed* as such. See the widespread condemnation of white Christian conservatives of spousal relationships between blacks and whites 40 years ago)]… Read more »
JCF – the bible does not say: “all races are different and should stay separate in Christ” – it says the opposite and this is why the racists never had a biblical justification for their views in the US or South Africa. Your analogy just does not work – it is very weak. Again – you have a massive job to do to justify your position because you are trying to claim that the scriptures and 2000yrs of clarity on what they mean are wrong – and in fact they mean that something is good and holy when they say… Read more »
JCF asked: “But what does “reflect God’s image and deserve dignity, respect and security” MEAN to you..?”
Well.. “reflect” in these discussions tend to mean reflect…
Man, understood not as the human race but as MALE humans, is made in the image of God, the sub-ordinates merely reflect this image.
Believe it or not.
;=)
NP – you may well be too young to remember, but it was accepted teaching in the Dutch Reformed Church, in the heyday of South African apartheid, and in a number of other churches of the Reformed tradition, that black people were the sons of Ham, and thus bore the curse of Ham, which he incurred for looking on his father’s nakedness. Because of this black people were excluded from the church of the elect. That teaching has now been modified by all but a few extremists. It isn’t unduly hard to see the parallel which JCF and others attempt… Read more »
Crypto – yes, but the racists in SA were manipulating scripture to justify their own wishes – it is scripture which shows their error, right?
We are always going to come back to the heart of the argument – does scripture positively teach that people like VGR should be ordained or does it prohibit some people from leadership?
If ST Paul was in ECUSA in 2003, would he have been happy to consecrate VGR?
NP, Paul probably would not have been happy to consecrate +VGR. Maybe he would have been. You seem to think that, because of what he wrote about “malakoi” Paul would have been an Evangelical. If Evangelicalism is so much like what Paul believed and, presumably, taught, why did so many of the ideas it teaches not arise till 1500 years after Paul? Indeed, why do so many of its ideas contradict what the Church taught for 1500 years, and which She had received from Paul and others? Just because Paul might not have agreed with TEC on this doesn’t mean… Read more »