Readers will recall this item.
Several contributors to Covenant-Communion have written an open letter, which you can read at A Word in Time: An Open Letter to the Anglican Communion Also available as a PDF here.
It starts out:
We the undersigned contributors to www.Covenant‐Communion.com believe that “a word in time” is now needed in order to assist the Communion to move forward in a constructive manner following the Lambeth Conference. We would like to speak such a word by specifically addressing the points Bishop Bob Duncan raises in his email to Bishop Gary Lillibridge, which has now been made public with Bp. Duncan’s permission…
“There is a difference, in our view, between being culturally Anglican and being ecclesiologically Anglican. An ecclesiological Anglican relates directly to the Archbishop of Canterbury through his or her own bishop and not through the primate.”
No, this is being ecclesiologically Rowanite (for the lack of a better term). Being ecclesiologically Anglican means being under the jurisdiction of one’s national church and recognizing the ABC as a foreign primate whom one regards highly without granting him or her any jurisdiction outside the Church of England.
Do the authors of this letter understand that the same kind of canonical requirements that prevent Bishop Duncan from halting Pittsburgh’s vote on its actions prevent TEC and any relevant diocese from acting on the moratoria asked of them? Neither the PB nor the HoB can make policy for the whole of TEC; only General Convention can do that, and it does meet for almost another year. The same is true at the diocesan level–a convention is required to vote on such matters…and most will not hold a convention until the fall or possibly even next year (depending on their… Read more »
I am tired of conservatives’ whining about the moral equivalence between the moratorium on diocese poaching on the one hand, and the moratoria on TEC and the Canadian church on the other. These people always have to have the upper moral hand. They can’t conceive that the diocese poaching is just as harmful to, rends the fabric of, the Communion as does the actions they find so offensive. God forbid that qualified men and women responding to the call from God should be made priests and bishops! The Windsor Commission tied the two together. Blame them. And the game of… Read more »
“What they’re relly trying to do is get TEC and the Canadian church to cease their activies while conservatives feel perfectly free to poach parishes and dioceses.”
Don’t forget the attempted theft of property. These people have no honor.
And note that once again, the gathering called for involves ONLY bishops! And (apparently) no gays!
Our Presiding Bishop would be a fool to walk into that room: lose-lose for her!
Oh so now it’s a problem of “moral equivalence” on the three points of the “moratorium” (which was never agreed to, or ‘signed’, by the North American Bishops, BTW). Will this nonsense ever end?
They make my a** tired.
“We think most people are clear that the crisis in our Communion was precipitated by specific American and Canadian actions” [they refer to +GR and same-sex blessings/marriage]
Ah yes, that lovely self-invented, self-justifying category: “most people”. Humbug.
Lord have mercy!
“Schismatics demand that schismatics get everything they want.”
That says it about as truthfully and concisely as one could hope to.
“An ecclesiological Anglican relates directly to the Archbishop of Canterbury through his or her own bishop and not through the primate.”
This is wholly invented, something of a cheek, and may not be of much interest to those breaking away forming a province of GAFCON rather than of the Archbishop. In fact, if Bob Duncan is primate, he might want them as Anglicans to go through him.
It’s worth taking a look at the comments on the Covenant thread. Cogent criticism of this letter has been offered by Sr. Gloriamarie Amalfitano and Shawn Strout.
FWIW, I believe this to be the Evangelicals’ version of a Hail Mary pass.
“An ecclesiological Anglican relates directly to the Archbishop of Canterbury through his or her own bishop and not through the primate.”
What an astonishing innovation! These are people who claim to be “traditionalists?” What’s up with that?
If this is the voice of the new fangled conservatively realigned global communion, I think we outside its presuppositional purviews can hear what it is saying to us – mainly, shut up. All the blame game going on – you tore the communion by giving the believers in New Hampshire the benefit of a prayerful Anglican doubt – you are not repenting of fairness and truth telling about the problems our traditional negative views of queer folks have been engaging now for about four or five decades – you deserve to have money and property stolen because you are not… Read more »
“Our understanding of the comments from the Windsor Continuation Group hearings at the Lambeth Conference is that no one really expects the jurisdictional crossings to cease without the concomitant cessation of blessing same sex unions and assurances of refusal to consent to the consecration of a bishop in a same sex relationship.”
Naw — cat’s out of the bag. Border-crossings won’t stop no matter what TEC and Canada do. With money at stake and passions in play, there will always be some reason adduced for them to continue. But, hey! Every border I’ve crossed had people moving in both directions.
Having withdrawn from the playground, the active schismatics are trying to entice the original team into their holding pen. As someone here has already suggested, this would be capitulation to .the dissidents. The Gospel is not a game of chance. “What is done in the darkness, will be seen in the light”.
Regarding the issue of Church property; surely the departing tenants are not entitled to take the furniture – which was there when they moved in
“Don’t forget the attempted theft of property. These people have no honor.” – Cynthia Gilliatt.
I agree with you 100%. The poachers gathered around +Bob of Qittsburgh have no honor. They are crooks! Thank God, the HoB will soon depose +Robert Duncan. Justice moves very slowly in TEC, but it does move.
To me being Anglican means to embrace the historical heritage of the English Church which goes all the way back to the 2nd century.
Cheers.
“Regarding the issue of Church property; surely the departing tenants are not entitled to take the furniture – which was there when they moved in”
Well, they’d say it was bought by their forebears. So, it’s really more like a wake, where siblings who have nursed a grudge for years against other siblings now vehemently feel entitled to Nannie’s jewelry because those other siblings have never obeyed them.
This is very cheeky. Fancy +Rowan convening a meeting of a dozen or so bishops by the end of September: minus attorneys and any other representatives of church life — where ARE the laity in this??? While bishops are nice things to have, I think the point has been reached where they’re more trouble than they’re worth. Like courtiers, they fail to see that the problem is their infatuation with some idea of their power on earth: they have become the root of a much wider problem, and it only gets worse the more they try to entrench themselves as… Read more »
“Like courtiers, they fail to see that the problem is their infatuation with some idea of their power on earth”
The only thing I would caution about this otherwise insightful assessment of the situation is that the answer is to change the attitudes of the Bishops, not do away with the Episcopate. I know you aren’t saying that, but there are those who would adopt this, as I said very insightful, attitude and use it as an excuse to radically innovate the Church. But, you’re absolutely right:
“Give up the victim status and go tend to your various flocks.”
“change the attitudes of the Bishops, not do away with the Episcopate”
and/or in extreme cases (lately San Joaquin, soon Pittsburgh, then Fort Worth and Quincy?), CHANGE THE BISHOP!
Lord have mercy, and God bless TEC!
When the ‘Covenant’ claimants speak of the need for a moratorium on law-suits agsinst them, they are surely forgetting that it was their specific threats to purloin properties of the Church that actually occasioned those law-suits. It they were to withdraw their claims, then there would be no law-suits. Simple!
n.b. I find it significant that the sole English signatory to this communique in the Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Islington. What does he hope to achieve by his cosying up to the Global South?
It’s a little late to change the Bishop, but well intentions work regardless.
The BLIND EC Should have known about their own Bishops who they freely ELECTED!!
Um . . . Hello!!
Livid!!
“Our Presiding Bishop would be a fool to walk into that room: lose-lose for her!” Hmmm, just read the report prepared for the diocese of Michigan (http://tinyurl.com/5ovfel ). “Given the data presented in the graphs above, the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan is in steep decline.” They are spending down trust funds at such a rate that bankruptcy looms in the near future. A honest appraisal at the diocesan level of a situation entirely analogous to the national level. Schori and Anderson are trying their best to suppress such information – Shh, don’t tell anyone that the TEC is now the… Read more »
The whole idea that Episcopal dioceses are available for plunder because they deserve it after consecrating a duly-called gay bishop approved by General Convention reminds me of the shibboleth that victims of domestic violence actually deserved their beatings.
Sister Gloriamarie’s response to this ‘Covenant’ article (found in ‘Comment’ attrached to the original article) is both timely and instructive.
Her insights into the hubris of Bishop Duncan’s calim of ‘Orthodoxy’ in his proclamation of an authentic need of a traditionalist re-assertion bears examination by Robroy, and other conservative commentators on this site.
Whatever TEC is able to do to dislodge Duncan’s continuing claim to represent the Anglican Church in the USA, ought to be done quickly – before he is allowed to further damage the credibility of the Anglican Communion around the world.
And, once more, robroy points to numbers as evidence that his position is correct. I thought, as Christians, we had long ago abandoned the philosophy that might makes right. Or is robroy adapting the Calvinist view that God rewards the righteous on earth as well as in heaven?
Robroy plays the numbers game again – but only when it suits.
Note his silence when we were discussing how the “orthodox” Diocese of Quincy is declining at about twice the rate of the rest of the Episcopal Church.
Note also how he never wants to talk the numbers game in reference to Greg Venables and his English Chaplaincy in the southern parts of Latin America.
Regarding the question of “…the Calvinist view that God rewards the righteous on earth as well as in heaven?” That would be consistent with Jesus’ Lord’s Prayer “may thy will be done on earth as in heaven”. With the evidence of Jonah, that Ninevah was saved by the prayers of the occupants of this earth who were then allowed to live in their spared city. Also with Abraham’s accepted challenge to God, that the righteousness of 10 souls of this earth would have been sufficient to save the souls of Sodom and Gomorrah on this earth. God is God of… Read more »