Giles Fraser comments in the Guardian op-ed pages, US bishops have bent the knee to the will of the bully.
Robert Pigott at the BBC has Threat of Anglican schism still looms.
Episcopal News Service has Disaffected, breakaway bishops debate cooperation around parallel ‘Anglican’ province and also Anglican Communion’s secretary general reflects on House of Bishops’ meeting.
Excellent Giles Faser. He says it how I see it. It is a relief to be validated. His analysis is telling.
Interesting comments from the public too.
Giles Fraser is right……and it is not a surprise that the ABC has put “unity” so high on his agenda with a price being paid by his old liberal friends. I have been saying on TA for weeks that if you look at his record in the last 4 years, he was (like with J John, TWR and Tanzania) always going to pressure TEC to give in to him just sufficient to try and keep the AC together. Colin Coward and some others have said I was going to be displeased with the ABC’s results…….and I am in that he… Read more »
I for one am sick of the whole thing. ECUSA has done what the liberals always do. Perhaps we should have anticipated it. As usual they have settled for a quiet life and tried to ameliorate their actions with fine words about valuing the contribution gay and lesbian people make to the life of the church. Well, they can’t have it both ways. Either we are full members of the church and thus eligible for all the offices of leadership as discerened by the Holy Spirit or we are not. Since they have decided, along with the conservative opponents that… Read more »
I don’t generally get so visceral WRT Giles Fraser, but really: “the church has once again purchased its togetherness by excluding the outsider. “ this is a bit over the top. I mean, I appreciate that straight people are on our side and all, but I will go to Mass on Sunday like always, I will receive at the same altar rail as I have for the past 7 years. I really am not all that excluded. I can’t be a bishop? God isn’t calling me there anyway. I can’t get married? What does my being married have to do… Read more »
Thank you, Ford. The HoB did just exactly what I expected it to do, and I am glad that it did. I too will be taking the Eucharist this Sunday and every other Sunday at my Episcopal church. I left TEC right after I was confirmed in it because of Lambeth ’98. I know the price I paid spiritually for doing so. I’m back and I’m staying because the full inclusion of gay people in the church cannot happen if we are not there every day making our witness to Christ’s love.
Giles Fraser is being rather hyperbolic. The bishops are providing the requisite supply of FUDGE for this occasion, and have made clear that their compromise is only a provisional tactic. Yes, it is a front-line battle against religious fascism, but maybe splitting the Anglican communion in a childish game of mutual condemnation is a less effective way of fighting this battle than the policy of patient reasonableness that the bishops have adopted? Also they should develop a rich positive discourse about gayness and gay relationships rather than rely on ill-thought-out gestures. Then they might make the same gestures with more… Read more »
‘I for one am sick of the whole thing. ECUSA has done what the liberals always do. Perhaps we should have anticipated it. As usual they have settled for a quiet life and tried to ameliorate their actions with fine words about valuing the contribution gay and lesbian people make to the life of the church. Well, they can’t have it both ways. Either we are full members of the church and thus eligible for all the offices of leadership as discerened by the Holy Spirit or we are not.’ (Richard Ashby) Yes the liberals always do this. I too… Read more »
“the church has once again purchased its togetherness by excluding the outsider. “
Giles Fraser has it right. Spot on.
As I see it, the bishops of The Episcopal Church have extended the position they are in now. It is all a bit shabby, but far from being the final position. The Archbishop of Canterbury did virtually nothing, and he is being thrown a fish. At this point TEC has chosen some skillful manouvres. Once the schismatics run off, it will be harder for the rest of the Communion to moan about progressive inclusion from TEC, indeed there may be a stronger balance in favour once the schismatics cause their upset. There is a little bit more waiting to do.
I’m personally far more interested in the (for once) clear statement against the very extreme homophobia in the Anglican Communion and in the world – a statement that have have been made a long, long time ago. The leaders of the Anglican Communion – and every other Christian church in the world – should have immediately censured Peter Akinola for his actions in attempting to put the weight of the Church behind the imprisonment of innocent gay people in Nigeria. Instead, he continues on his merry way. THAT is where all this energy should have been focused in the first… Read more »
Susan, I truly felt I was putting a noose around my neck saying that, so your support is very much appreciated. Fr. Joseph, Amen! bls, “nobody ever calls on the Church itself to repent” I do. It’s not only me. More of us should. She has a lot of which to repent. I call the Church an icon of the Kingdom of God. Well, after the Revolution in Russia, there were some icons found buried in the mud, some made into mangers for cattle, sone thrown into outhouses. Perhaps the Church is like that, smeared with the dirt of Her… Read more »
The short way of putting it is that TEC’s HoB described the current position until the next General Convention — if the bishops pretended to overturn a decision of General Convention that I agreed with, I would be extremely upset, so how can I be be offended at their acknowledgment of the authority of the House of Deputies?
Dr Fraser may be accused by some of immoderate language, but he is telling a truth. Dr. Williams may be given understanding that he finds himself in a very difficult position, but he is denying a truth. Before his elevation to the episcopate Dr Williams was quite prepared to hold bishops to account for their requirement that others pay the price of keeping the Church of England & the Anglican Communion together. Then he recognised that unity without integrity is nothing worth. Now . . . I shudder to think what he recognises. I don’t recognise the priest and theologian… Read more »
Pluralst: I have been waiting a bit for the dust to settle, but my reading is about the same as yours and a variety of others (though I disagree in terms of who to label as schismatics). This is the usual smoke and mirrors approach that the HOB and TEC have become expert in taking. There is really nothing here that TEC/HOB has not said in the past, and it will probably make virtually no difference in terms of how TEC conducts itself (absent perhaps a brief period of “watchful waiting”). NP: See above. If anything, this is merely a… Read more »
Speaking as an older retired priest who has served both in England and America, I would like to say how very tired I am of the shrill self-righteous egocentricity of sloppy-thinking liberal churchmen, narrow evangelicals, aggressively self-pitying gay activists and all the assorted other me-first Anglican opportunists who seem to care nothing for their church unless they are at the head of the serving line. From my slightly contrarian point of view, it appears that gay Anglicans have been welcomed for many years in all the orders of our clergy, without much question at the communion rail and have had… Read more »
The last few days I have been re-reading Stephen Bates’s A Church at War: Anglicans and Homosexuality (2004/5). I came across a statement by the South African Archbp Ndungane after the 2003 GC, which is very pertinent to the situation today: “Some kind of hypocrisy is going on in the church. Gene Robinson and Jeffrey John have been open and honest about their private lives. It is no secret that they are gay clergy and there are gay bishops and the institutional church seems to be turning a blind eye when we should be encouraging honesty. If Gene Robinson had… Read more »
It seems as though neither my fellow-travellers (supporters of full inclusion of GLBT persons in the life of the church) nor our conservative opponents really understand the role of bishops in the Episcopal Church. Our bishops function in relationship with the other orders of ministry in TEC, lay, priests, and deacons. They do not make decisions about the life of the church independently. We say, “our bishops teach the world what the church believes; they do not teach the church what to believe.” In TEC, the whole church, through General Convention decides what we believe (other than the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral,… Read more »
They can’t even agree on womens ordiantion…so are they orthodox or heterodox?
The REFORMED EPISCOPALIANS denounce the sacrifice of the Mass, real presence and baptismal regeneration …whilst alal these are sacred to Forward in Faith….what a mish mash.
NP, thank you for telling me that “institutional liberals” in the TEC(HOB) have let down people like LGCM and Changing Attitude. I’m not sure what kind of a person an institutional liberal is, but I don’t feel let down by pro-gay TEC bishops or CofE bishops. Other LGBT Anglicans and members of Changing Attitude will disagree with me. I object to the way in which you and other conservatives write my script for me and know what I am going to be pleased and displeased with. I am going to be pleased if some conservatives who have abandoned Anglican polity… Read more »
As we consider, reflect, respond – maybe we should be wary of falling unwittingly into the framework traps the conservative realignment often sets for us, which depend on our failing to notice what is happening in these silent and unacknowledged conservative narrative strategies. Black/White, Either/Or, Good/Bad, Up/Down, In/Out – these implicitly limited, split, two-sides-only frames – are very often the sole or preferred way that the realignment believers are framing so many of our differences, including our hot button conflict issues. There is nothing funnier, nor sadder actually, than constantly observing how the conservative realignment pundits and posters reject and… Read more »
Anyone notice this from the Pittsburgh Schismatic?
“Most of the Common Cause meeting is closed to the public because, Duncan said, “We need to speak the truth to one another. We need to do some hard thinking and hard talking. The future of Anglicanism in North America is at stake.””
Tripe. The meeting is closed to the public because that is how schemers hide their agendas.
“It is also centered about the false notion that somehow ‘studies have shown’ that ‘gayness’ is genetic. No reliable studies have shown this.” No studies have found a ‘gay gene,’ and likely research won’t find one ‘trigger’ gene – my understanding is that as scientists learn more and more about genetic processes, they are finding not a lot of ‘trigger’ genes, but complexes of genes, hormones, and other complicating factors in process. What studies continue to demonstrate is that sexual orientatation is innate, and is relatively set, at a fairly young age. It is evidently a lot like handedness, which… Read more »
I found NPO’s comments quite amusing, simply because he is so totally out of step with his conservative friends.
Almost to a man they are furious and say they are not satisfied with TEC’s stance. They have made it clear enough that they intend to depart.
That being said, an Anglican Communion without them may be a lot more prepared to handle diversity and accept different opinions on non-essentials.
My possible response to this, as a gay man, is to resign from the Episcopal Church and simply be a baptized Christian. I don’t have to volunteer to be a member of a Church which has decided that I have a disorder which excludes me from two of the sacraments. I will probably continue to go to my church because I have friends there, who support me over against the explicit written doctrines of their church. I think it might be good to spend a little while like a fox without a hole or a bird without a nest. I… Read more »
Susan God bless you. It will be strong souls like you that will help heal this millenia of injustice. Just like there were souls prepared to fight against Black Noir legislation, apartheid and for women to vote and married women to be able to work and leave abusive husbands. Fraser’s paper is is the voice of conscience for those who have felt betrayed. Go back and read the Old Testament. Look at Ezekiel – his attention seeking strategies could be seen as downright weird. Daniel and Joseph, who were confined because they refused to be compromised. The book of Jeremiah… Read more »
JW:
Thank you for your words, and thank you for your honorable life of service.
Malcolm:
Careful now, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. It seems to me that we just finished having a “closed to the public” meeting of the HOB. I’d hate to have to think that this was because they were “schemers” seeking to “hide their agendas”.
Steven
James: I don’t attend church either at the moment, but things remain still better in TEC than the CofE and better in either than in most of the Anglican world.
No excuse of course.
It is one thing to have parts of a meeting in camera, and quite enough to have virtually the whole of it so.
Why, the House of Bishops even let poor “oppressed” conservatives like Baby Blue and Matt Kennedy blog live from the meeting.
I wonder if Susan Russell would have been allowed into the room for this aggregation of schismatics, let alone have been allowed to blog an approximate transcript to the world.
_Am I the only person reading NPs comments to note a degree of revisionism in his statements compared with what he was predicting 2 months ago?_ No you are not. NP said that the Archbishop of Canterbury would, as he has in the past, follow the dictates of the bigger number, so that he would not lose the Nigerians, for example. He rolled off the list of meetings and decisions. Over and again I have said, look at what is being said, particularly from the Time interview onward, and crucial was the keeping people talking and invitations to Lambeth. NP… Read more »
Don’t those Buddhist monks mowed down by the Burmese tyrants send a message to the cagy, shabby clergy of the Christian churches?
I’m just doing some history work on Liberal Catholics at the moment and in one obscure area hit upon a phrase that illustrates what the Archbishop of Canterbury may have meant when he called the boundary crossing bishops “illicit”. _Bishop Ulric Vernon Herford, known as Mar Jacobus, Regionary Bishop of Mercia and Middlesex. Herford was consecrated to the episcopacy in 1902 by Mar Basilius (Luis Mariano Soares) of the Syro-Chaldean Church in India, which broke away from the Holy See in the 1860s. Herford was a wandering bishop quite apart from Rome, so Summer’s orders were therefore “valid but illicit”,… Read more »
Colin – in the last few weeks, you have been telling me that I was going to be very disappointed! I am NOT very disappointed that your old mate Rowan has forced TEC HOB to agree not to give the AC another VGR problem and not to authorise ssbs…………. I know TEC HOB does not mean to keep to its plegges and is “playing the long game” as it has not managed to persuade many in the AC so far but I see little honour in their position. I think Giles Fraser’s assessment is honest and less concerned with church… Read more »
Cynthia Gilliat wrote: “You get a left-handed person who writes awkwardly…”
Which is why this is awkward. Making people do things does not work.
Well, NP, we’re not likely to have a response from the Primates because they are not going to meet prior to Lambeth. If the Primates were truly unified in their opposition to the Episcopal Church, as you and others imagine in your fantasy, there would have been an immediate and positive response from the other Primates and from the ABC to the Nigerian request that a meeting be held to assess the TEC response. It won’t happen because neither the ABC nor the majority of Primates see the need for a meeting. I doubt that there will be a reply… Read more »
Yeah, Colin…. Tanzania was not issued by ALL the Primates? I imagined that? Now we have TEC’s response and you claim to be happy with it! You have not been telling me in the last few weeks that TEC HOB was going to agree to no further VGRs and no authorisation of SSBs and that this was good and right…..have you??? No, you said I would be very disappointed….but Rowan has actually got TEC to put their principles to one side in order to try and placate “conservatives”……and you claim to be happy with that! I know you desperately do… Read more »
Ford and Cheryl, Thank you for your kind comments. I wish all of you would pay closer attention to revkarenm’s comments about the role of bishops in TEC. This is why I am not screaming about betrayal. Yes, acceptance of gays is not consistent across TEC congregations, and I wish it were. In my own congregation there has been controversy about gay laypeople serving at the altar and there is no way at this point that openly gay people could be ordained in this diocese. However, this is the American South, where we still have racially motivated church burnings, demonstrations… Read more »
Giles articulates the dangers of global religious fascism. The question is, how to prevent it spreading. Keeping the North American churches in will certainly keep the AC moderate, and the ABC knows this. The HOB respond to the struggle against the aggressor by turning the other cheek -a Gospel imperative, surely. By incorporating the exact wording of the Dar Es Salaam communique and B033, they’ve deflated the arguments against them. Not giving an inch more or an inch less on the presenting issue, but emphasising the need to keep talking. There can be no negative response from the rest of… Read more »
I hate to give extra attention to NP – except to note that if (s)he did not exist (s)he would have to be invented. What a useful foil! When I read the conservative blogs they are repetitive and essentially boring (though strident) unless a liberal is there to spark the discussion up a bit. Thank you NP for providint that spark here although it often borders on the ludicrous – especially when you “shape shift” or conventently change the subject – that is a less than admirable quality.
Anopther thing for me, Susan, is that I don’t really see why I have to cut myself off from God because the person sitting next to me doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me included in Church life. Seriously, that’s on his soul, not mine. God doesn’t cut me off, has never cut me off, even when I cut Him off. Granted, living together in harmony is an important part of our being Christians, but it is only one part of our relationship with God. I did that “get all fussed up over the injustices of the Church” thing for… Read more »
“The bishops support full civil rights for LGBTs”
I give them full marks for saying so.
I hope to see them doing so by filing amicus briefs in suits seeking equal rights, and by speaking out when state legislatures pass bills and propose amendments to state constitutions barring gays from civil marriage and, in my own state, domestic partnerships. I did not hear them when that amendment came up for ratification by voters.
Fr Joseph I don’t know if they are been mowed down, but they do need our prayers and support. When Tutu came to Perth, West Australia in the 1980s, I took lots of notes and it became the front page article of the socialist paper and was picked up by the mainstream press. That wasn’t a reflection of neither my nor Tutu’s prowess, but of God’s circumstances contriving to heal the seemingly insurmountable. You see, at that time Malcolm Fraser happened to be Australia’s Prime Minister, and he had strong ties back to Oxford and thus a personal interest in… Read more »
Yes, NP, there probably will be an AC split. Your mates in Nigeria and Kenya are going to walk away.
But are you going with them, NP?
NP wrote “Yeah, Colin…. Tanzania was not issued by ALL the Primates? I imagined that?” Yes actually. It was clear from the reports at the time that it was a vexed meeting. With an accusatory camp in one side room seeking ways and means to throw accusations and ultimatums at others, and hijacking the agenda to push their barrow. There were also later claims that some documents that were claimed to be signed by some parties were refuted by those parties as not having been seen or edited and issued without their full knowledge and consent. Nasty shot. Undoes the… Read more »
Susan I’ve saved the best until last. Some other political postings needed attention before I could attend to your personal needs. It is a delight to have you on this forum. You are personally a joy to myself as you articulate first-hand what I have been saying hypothetically exists for some time. There was another thread a few weeks ago where one nasty poster commented that we were talking about hearsay from circumstances that did not apply to ourselves. My retort at the time was that I was talking from personal experience, and that I don’t think I am that… Read more »
James, if you are waiting for the perfect Church, you will be waiting until “he comes again in Glory”. We need your witness here and now IN the Church. That goes, frankly for all. We can only be fully the Body of Christ on earth – together – in prayer and love.
Cheryl – it is not “nasty” to ask someone if ALL the Primates issued a communique….is it???
Colin Coward posted: “Am I the only person reading NPs comments to note a degree of revisionism in his statements compared with what he was predicting 2 months ago?” No, Colin, this is a pattern that I have been noting for some time. Whenever NP has been caught by a revelation of some truth that disproved what he/she had been previously contending, NP used subterfuges to go on to some other (hoped for) distortion of logic about events in the Anglican Communion by which the neo-Calvinists intended to separate TEC and ACC from the non-“Global South” Provinces. Divide and conquer.… Read more »
There is a value to preserving the Anglican Communion which should not be missed. Being in communion with various illiberal forces certainly has affected what TEC is doing. But it seems likely that the influence goes both ways, and, if even for only “political” reasons, the stances and actions taken by illiberal Anglicans (for instance, church leaders in Africa) have likely been moderated by their interactions (struggles) with TEC. Achieving unity (or at least trying to) by making gay Episcopalians pay the price for that unity sounds very cold. And the price certainly seems too high when one thinks of… Read more »
“Cheryl – it is not “nasty” to ask someone if ALL the Primates issued a communique….is it???”
No, but it shows how naive you are, and how unwilling you are to see reality.
NP asked: “Cheryl – it is not “nasty” to ask someone if ALL the Primates issued a communique….is it???”
Well, NP… We do not actually know that since these communiqué are not signed.
(contrary to what some claims)