Reuters Church of England votes to make women bishops
Press Association Synod ‘backs idea’ of women bishops and also Fight bombers with love: Archbishop (this refers to part of the Presidential Address by Archbishop Sentamu)
BBC Church backs female bishops move and Head to head: Women bishops
And also Call for love to fight terrorism
Paul Roberts has written up this morning’s events on his blog here. Ruth Gledhill has General Synod Day Two.
ENS has Sentamu calls for ‘gracious magnanimity,’ comments on Convention and also Women bishops approved in principle at Church of England’s Synod and Synod’s structures contrast with Convention’s. And later, Synod affirms women bishops; debate draws mixed reactions.
Associated Press Church of England: appointing women bishops ‘theologically justified’
4 CommentsTheo Hobson has written Sowing the seeds of change on commentisfree.
Michael Bordeaux writes in The Times about The religious maelstrom of modern Russia.
Also Jonathan Sacks writes that Bonds of friendship will prevail over those who seek to divide us.
Richard Frith writes in the Guardian about the Mission to Seafarers.
16 CommentsJonathan Petre in the Telegraph has Call for enclave of male clergy in the Church and also reports on Prison service axes Christian course. (On that matter, see also Charles Moore here.)
Ruth Gledhill in The Times has Church decides if it is ready for women bishops. She also has her blog entry about Day One.
There is also coverage of the archbishop’s statement in the Living Church and an ENS report on the synod from
Matthew Davies.
The BBC has Church to discuss female bishops.
The Yorkshire Post has Michael Brown writing that: Church tiptoes up to the issue of women.
0 CommentsInformation about Friday’s business can be found on the Church of England website: General Synod – Summary of Business Conducted on Friday 7th July pm. Audio files of all today’s sessions are now available.
2 CommentsArchbishop’s address to General Synod on the Anglican Communion ACNS copy here and Audio here
I am glad to have the opportunity of offering in these few minutes a very brief update on the current situation in the Anglican Communion, particularly in the light of the recent session of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention – which was, of course, attended by my brother Archbishop, who made an outstanding contribution to its discussions. The first thing to say is that the complex processes of Convention produced – perhaps predictably – a less than completely clear result. The final resolution relating to the consecration of practising gay persons as bishops owed a great deal to some last-minute work by the Presiding Bishop, who invoked his personal authority in a way that was obviously costly for him in order to make sure that there was some degree of recognisable response to the recommendations of the Windsor Report in this regard. I think that he – and his successor-elect – deserve credit and gratitude for taking the risk of focusing the debate and its implications so sharply.
However, as has become plain, the resolutions of Convention overall leave a number of unanswered questions, and there needs to be some careful disentangling of what they say and what they don’t say. This work is to be carried forward by a small group already appointed before Convention by the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC. And I have also written directly to every Primate to ask for a preliminary reaction from their province. The next Primates’ Meeting in February next year will digest what emerges from all this.
You will be aware of a number of developments in the public arena in the last couple of weeks, notably the request from several US dioceses for some sort of direct primatial oversight from outside the US, preferably from Canterbury. This raises very large questions indeed; various consultations are going forward to clarify what is being asked and to reflect on possible implications. There has also been an announcement from Nigeria of the election by the Nigerian House of Bishops of an American cleric as a bishop to serve the Convocation of Nigerian Anglican congregations in the US. I have publicly stated my concern about this and some other cross-provincial activities.
A working party is also being established in consultation with the Anglican Communion Office and others to look more fully at the question of what sort of ‘Covenant’ could be constructed to fulfil another significant recommendation of the Windsor Report.
Mention of this leads me to say a word about my own published reflections in the wake of General Convention. In spite of some interesting reporting and some slightly intemperate reaction, this contained no directives (I do not have authority to dictate policy to the provinces of the Communion) and no foreclosing of the character and content of such a covenant. Were any such arrangement to be proposed, it would of course have to be owned by the constitutional bodies governing Provinces. The proposal has already been dismissed in some quarters as a capitulation to fundamentalism and in others as a cunning plan to entrench total doctrinal indifferentism.
Both characterisations are nonsense. Perhaps you will allow me a word or two of clarification and further thought on all this. When I said, as I did in my reflections, that the Communion cannot remain as it is, I was drawing attention to some unavoidable choices. Many have said, with increasing force of late, that we must contemplate or even encourage the breakup of the Communion into national churches whose autonomy is unqualified and which relate only in some sort of loose and informal federation. This has obvious attractions for some. The problem is that it is unlikely to bear any relation to reality. Many provinces are internally fragile; we cannot assume that what will naturally happen is a neat pattern of local consensus. There are already international alliances, formal and informal, between Provinces and between groups within different Provinces. There are lines of possible fracture that have nothing to do with provincial boundaries. The disappearance of an international structure – as, again, I have observed in recent months – leaves us with the possibility of much less than a federation, indeed, of competing and fragmenting ecclesial bodies in many contexts across the world.
A straw in the wind: in Sudan, there is a breakaway and very aggressive Anglican body that has had support, in the past, from government in Khartoum. Among the varied grounds advanced for its separation is the ludicrous assertion that the Episcopal Church of Sudan is unorthodox in its teaching on sexual ethics. Some mischievous forces are quite capable of using the debates over sexuality as an alibi for divisive action whose roots are in other conflicts. And churches in disadvantaged or conflict-ridden settings cannot afford such distractions – I speak with feeling in the light of what I and others here in Synod know of Sudan. It helps, to put it no more strongly, that there is a global organisation which can declare such a separatist body illegitimate and insist to a local government that certain groups are not recognised internationally.
So I don’t think we can be complacent about what the complete breakup of the Communion might mean – not the blooming of a thousand flowers, but a situation in which vulnerable churches suffer further. And vulnerable churches are not restricted to Africa… But if this prospect is not one we want to choose, what then? Historic links to Canterbury have no canonical force, and we do not have (and I hope we don’t develop) an international executive. We depend upon consent. My argument was and is that such consent may now need a more tangible form than it has hitherto had; hence the Covenant idea in Windsor.
But if there is such a structure, and if we do depend on consent, the logical implication is that particular churches are free to say yes or no; and a no has consequences, not as ‘punishment’ but simply as a statement of what can and cannot be taken for granted in a relationship between two particular churches. When I spoke as I did of ‘churches in association’, I was trying to envisage what such a relation might be if it was less than full eucharistic communion and more than mutual repudiation. It was not an attempt to muddy the waters but to offer a vocabulary for thinking about how levels of seriously impaired or interrupted communion could be understood.
In other words, I can envisage – though I don’t in the least want to see – a situation in which there may be more divisions than at present within the churches that claim an Anglican heritage. But I want there to be some rationale for this other than pure localism or arbitrary and ad hoc definitions of who and what is acceptable. The real agenda – and it bears on other matters we have to discuss at this Synod – is what our doctrine of the Church really is in relation to the whole deposit of our faith. Christian history gives us examples of theologies of the Church based upon local congregational integrity, with little or no superstructure – Baptist and Congregationalist theologies; and of theologies of the national Church, working in symbiosis with culture and government – as in some Lutheran settings. We have often come near the second in theory and the first in practice. But that is not where we have seen our true centre and character. We have claimed to be Catholic, to have a ministry that is capable of being universally recognised (even where in practice it does not have that recognition) because of its theological and institutional continuity; to hold a faith that is not locally determined but shared through time and space with the fellowship of the baptised; to celebrate sacraments that express the reality of a community which is more than the people present at any one moment with any one set of concerns. So at the very least we must recognise that Anglicanism as we have experienced it has never been just a loose grouping of people who care to describe themselves as Anglicans but enjoy unconfined local liberties. Argue for this if you will, but recognise that it represents something other than the tradition we have received and been nourished by in God’s providence. And only if we can articulate some coherent core for this tradition in present practice can we continue to engage plausibly in any kind of ecumenical endeavour, local or international.
I make no secret of the fact that my commitment and conviction are given to the ideal of the Church Catholic. I know that its embodiment in Anglicanism has always been debated, yet I believe that the vision of Catholic sacramental unity without centralisation or coercion is one that we have witnessed to at our best and still need to work at. That is why a concern for unity – for unity (I must repeat this yet again) as a means to living in the truth – is not about placing the survival of an institution above the demands of conscience. God forbid. It is a question of how we work out, faithfully, attentively, obediently what we need to do and say in order to remain within sight and sound of each other in the fellowship to which Christ has called us. It has never been easy and it isn’t now. But it is the call that matters, and that sustains us together in the task.
ENDS
© Rowan Williams 2006
Today’s Church Times has several reports (and others not on the web until next week):
Nigerians set to write off Lambeth by Pat Ashworth
Requests for alternative Primatial oversight leave ECUSA guessing by Douglas LeBlanc
Leader: Is the Communion too much bother?
Columnist: A new way to silence prophecy? by Giles Fraser
22 CommentsMargaret Duggan recently previewed the forthcoming group of sessions at York in the Church Times What’s on for Synod in York.
And the Church Times also had Bishops’ stalemate presents C of E with quandary and Why the House has lost confidence in the power of TEA.
There was also this leader: Women bishops — a collision course?
Update Friday
Bill Bowder has this report: Pension task-force asks clergy to tighten belts. The latest pension report can be found here as an RTF file.
The Living Church has questioned the canonical status of the “election” of Canon Martyn Minns as a bishop by the Church of Nigeria. See Canon Minns Election Appears to Violate Nigerian Canons:
15 CommentsThe election of an Episcopal priest as a missionary bishop to the United States by the Anglican Church of Nigeria appears to be in violation of a Nigerian canon which stipulates that eligible persons to the episcopate must belong either to the Church of Nigeria or a diocese in communion with it. The Church of Nigeria broke communion with The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia after the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson was consecrated Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire in 2003.
The Church of England Newspaper has four articles this week relating to the major news stories of the Anglican Communion:
Mixed response to call for two-tier Communion by George Conger
Six dioceses appeal
Caution as US priest is made Nigerian bishop. This includes the following claim:
Four bishops affiliated with the Network voted for Bishop Schori with the express purpose of “bringing down the house of cards”. The four swung the close election to Bishop Schori, prompting a charge the three retired and one sitting diocesan bishops had behaved badly, and had acted with “unmitigated evil”.
Rival Lambeth warning by George Conger
Fulcrum published this response to General Convention and Canterbury’s Reflections.
LGCM published this response, which is titled Retrograde General Convention: Episcopal Church Fails To Challenge Homophobia By Embracing Windsor Report, but scroll down for the full text, the latter part of which is a response to the Reflection.
Ekklesia had more to say in its helpful roundup.
6 CommentsThree recent reports from the Malawi press:
Daily Times Hooligans attack Anglican Church by Deborah Nyangulu
Nation Anglicans fight in church by Francis Tayanjah-Phiri
Nation 10 arrested in Anglican fracas by Willie Zingani
10 CommentsUpdated Friday
A statement from the standing committee now appears on the diocesan website.
——-
The Diocese of Dallas has joined the list of ECUSA dioceses seeking “alternative primatial oversight”, according to the Associated Press in this report yesterday: Dallas’ Episcopal diocese joins others in bishop rift.
The Episcopal Diocese of Dallas on Wednesday joined a growing rejection of the church’s newly elected bishop because she supports same-sex relationships.
Bishop James M. Stanton, the head of Dallas’ diocese and its 40,000 members, wrote a letter asking Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for a “direct pastoral relationship” from overseas instead of being under the American church and its new leader.
The diocesan website does not yet contain anything about this though. Neither does the personal website of the bishop, James Stanton. Since the report appeared in the Dallas Morning News it can’t have escaped the attention of Dallasites. So in the absence of any statement to the contrary, I presume it is true.
Update titusonenine has this press release also.
Update And also this statement from the Standing Committee.
4 CommentsHarold Meyerson has written Co-dependence day. The right wing of American Episcopalianism wants the Archbishop of Canterbury to save it from its crazy modernist brethren.
Stephen Bates has written Things fall apart. Rowan Williams’s plea to the Anglican communion to hold together appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
12 CommentsFirst, we apologise for the difficulties some of you have had accessing TA recently. The same difficulties have delayed publication of more news items. We hope they will be resolved soon.
Now, here are two report from ABC Radio in Australia. First:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Sydney on the state of Anglican Communion
Concerning what Peter Jensen says here about Archbishop Akinola, for a full set of links to what Peter Akinola really said (or not) go here.
And second:
UK Guardian journalist Andrew Brown on the state of Anglican Communion
As a footnote to that, here’s a comment from Andrew’s blog this morning.
(News reports are appearing today, Tuesday, about Monday’s Nigerian story.)
Two more reports have now been posted on the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) website:
First, a Communique from the Episcopal Synod of 27-28 June.
Second, a report from the First National Anglican Conference on WELFARE OF THE NATION: THE ROLE OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION IN NATION BUILDING.
Some quotes from the first document:
1. CONGRATULATIONS
Synod notes with satisfaction the efforts of the Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), His Grace, The Most Rev. Peter J. Akinola, in giving the Church of Nigeria, CAPA and Global South a purposeful and effective leadership. It further expresses its approval of his actions and pronouncements against errors of revisionist ideologies. With much delight and enthusiasm, Synod received his citing by TIMES Magazine as one of the 100 persons that shaped the World in 2005, and encouraged him not to relent in his efforts in exercising his ministry.
2. THE ANGLICAN COVENANT
Synod is satisfied with the move by the Global South to continue with its veritable project of defending the faith committed to us against present onslaught from ECUSA, Canada, England and their allies. The need therefore, to redefine and/or re-determine those who are truly Anglicans becomes urgent, imperative and compelling. Synod therefore empowers the leadership of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) to give assent to the Anglican Covenant.
3. THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE
The Lambeth Conference which is one of the accepted organs of unity in the Anglican Communion is due for another meeting in 2008. the Synod, after reviewing some recent major events in the Communion, especially the effects of the ‘revisionists’ theology’, which is now making wave in America, Canada and England, observed with dismay the inability of the Church in the aforementioned areas to see reason for repentance from the harm and stress they have caused this communion since 1988 culminating in the consecration of Gene Robinson, a practicing homosexual in 2003 as a bishop in ECUSA. Synod also regrets the inability of the See of Canterbury to prevent further impairment of the unity of the Church. It therefore, believes strongly that the moral justification for the proposed Lambeth Conference of 2008 is questionable in view of the fact that by promoting teachings and practices that are alien and inimical to the historic formularies of the Church, the Bishops of ECUSA, Canada and parts of Britain have abandoned the Biblical faith of our fathers.
4. GLOBAL SOUTH CONFERENCE
Synod underlines the need for maintaining the age-long tradition of a ten-yearly Conference of Bishops in the Anglican Communion for discussing issues affecting the Church. It therefore calls on the leadership of the Global South and Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) to do everything necessary to put in place a Conference of all Anglican Bishops to hold in 2008 should all efforts to get the apostles of ‘revisionist agenda’ to repent and retrace their steps fail.
The second document includes the following points, among numerous others:
At the end of the conference it was resolved that:
11. [That the church should] Learn to speak out when human rights are subverted and violated in the nation and against societal ills that hamper true nation-building, as well as participate in partisan politics.
And also this:
26 Comments7. On marriage, the conference agreed that marriage between man and woman is the official position of the Anglican Communion, and confirmed by its laws, and condemned in its entirety homosexuality and same sex marriage.
Today’s Guardian carries yet another piece about the Anglican Communion. This time it is editorial opinion, and is entitled Divine divisions.
The concluding part:
26 Comments…Lambeth’s gamble is that, faced with the enormity of allowing the next 10 years to be dominated not by ministry but by schism, with all that implies by way of painful, wasteful rows and expensive lawyers, the US conservatives will have to face up to the fact that they cannot sustain themselves apart. With the prospect of meaningful negotiation, the liberals will back off too. At that point the two sides may finally begin to engage with one another, and try seriously to find a common way through their difficulties. If the US church calms down (the Canadians are cited as the model of temperate conduct), there is a chance at least for a world-wide lowering of the temperature. But it could all too easily go the other way. Here, the Church of England is already dangerously divided and open to ideas of parallel jurisdictions. Its traditionalists certainly appear ready to seize the opportunity, in tandem with the African churches and other conservatives, of capturing the heart of Anglicanism. It’s not surprising, then that liberals are already talking of making common cause with the North American churches and warning that division could sever the church from the very top down to the humblest parish.
The best hope for avoiding the schism of which Dr Williams warned lies in redefining the argument. Lambeth would like the rival factions to understand that the row between two fundamentally opposing points of view is superficial. What happens next is not about gay bishops, nor same-sex weddings, nor polygamy. Rather it is about the church’s architecture and the degree of autonomy enjoyed by its constituent parts. Faced with the terrifying idea of first establishing and then policing the doctrinal purity for the core churches implicit in the twin-track approach, the rival factions are being challenged to stop it happening. In the end, though, Dr Williams will have to choose between unity – and bigotry.
A very belated posting. For previous posting on this topic see here.
The Diocese of Southwark website has Bishop’s letter re Rev Richard Coekin as a PDF file. The letter is dated 15 June. The full text is below the fold.
7 CommentsThe Washington Post has awoken to the story on its doorstep, in Episcopal Protest of Top Bishop Increases by Alan Cooperman.
The Witness has an article by Bishop Barbara Harris She Will Not Be Alone.
Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh has issued a press release Pittsburgh Action Called Divisive:
… “This request is divisive, yet without substance,” said PEP President Joan R. Gundersen, “since our primate, the Presiding Bishop, has virtually no power and exercises no ‘oversight’ over dioceses and their bishops. It is an irresponsible attempt to create a media event, without regard to the genuine harm this does to parishes in the diocese, to The Episcopal Church, and to the Anglican Communion. It represents a premature judgment of our Presiding Bishop-elect, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, of Nevada. The move by the Standing Committee has brought distress to Episcopalians committed to The Episcopal Church, as parishioners fear the organizational estrangement being sought by their bishop. It stirs up division and anxiety in the many parishes that are divided in their response to the recent church controversies and to the course of action being pursued by Bishop Duncan.
The alleged withdrawal of the diocese from Province III is even more disingenuous. Not only does the diocese already have little involvement in provincial affairs, but the Bishop of Pittsburgh well knows that the creation of provinces and the assignment of dioceses to provinces can only be done by canon of the General Convention. It would not be unprecedented for a diocese to ignore its province, but neither the Standing Committee nor the Convention of the diocese can remove the diocese from Province III; only General Convention can do that, and not before 2009. Creating a tenth province, as suggested by the resolution, likewise, can only be accomplished by General Convention. “A province of Network dioceses would be a pastoral disaster,” Gundersen suggested. “At least 13 parishes in this diocese have declined to be part of the Network and declared a commitment to The Episcopal Church. Despite assurances from the Standing Committee, these parishes, and similar parishes in other dioceses, either will be abandoned or forced into a being part of the Network against their will.”…
Neil Alexander has issued A statement from the Bishop of Atlanta in response to the recent reflections of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the future of the Anglican Communion.
Roger Herft Archbishop of Perth in Western Australia has written an article in the Sydney Morning News entitled Love and generosity should guide fractured Anglican Church. This deserves careful reading.
Archbishop Andrew Hutchison of Canada preached this Sermon at Southwark Cathedral last week.
5 CommentsUpdated again Tuesday
Monday
Richard Ostling of the Associated Press has written this report on the first item below: African Branch Criticizes Anglican Plan.
Tuesday
Both the Telegraph and the BBC have now caught up with Monday’s story. So has Reuters.
Tuesday’s Nigerian story is here.
First the Nigerian House of Bishops has issued this response to Rowan Williams: Re: THE CHALLENGE AND HOPE OF BEING ANGLICAN TODAY. It deserves to be read in full.
Second this newspaper headline has appeared in The Tide : Anglican communion to restore Nigeria’s glory. This of course refers not to the “Anglican Communion” but rather to the “Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)” which is the name by which the Anglican Church of Nigeria is known locally. For background on the conference being held, see here and also the full text of the press briefing. For other news reports, see here, and also here.
24 CommentsThe Sunday Telegraph interviewed Christina Rees, Coming very soon… women bishops.
The same paper had a report by Jonathan Wynne-Jones headlined Liberals may split from Canterbury over homosexuals.
Both the BBC and the Independent report on Ben Bradshaw’s criticism of the Church of England.
Christopher Morgan in the Sunday Times reports that St Alban is holier than St George.
What Rowan Williams actually said about St Alban can be found here. Other pictures of the occasion can be found here and here.