Enough: it is time to move on.

Several commentators have suggested that the time has come to say, “Enough!” It is a time of growing frustration by some of us with an emerging effort at governance by persons and bodies that have no mandate from any people of God to do so. The organized structures of the Anglican Communion, also known as the “focus of unity” and the “instruments of communion” have more and more acted as if they are the voices of a magisterium or a patriarchy, having powers beyond that of recommendation.

As some who read this blog understand, I am deeply committed to the bonds of affection that constitute the Anglican Communion. But in these last days I have increasingly come to believe that these bonds have almost nothing to do with the struggles both from within and from without to mandate from afar solutions to "our" problems. This is not the Anglican Communion to which I have given much of my ministry and energy. This is a perversion of fellowship into some other form of relationship. For a much better and quite readable statement on this I recommend Johnathan's essay. The Daily Episcopalian's expressions of doubt about the whole thing are also calm and reasoned comments.

With some fear and trepidation I offer the following as a statement of some of the concerns that others and I have. What value there is in this I do not know. We shall see.

This is a long piece, for which I am tempted to apologize. But instead I ask your patience. It is, after all, grist for the mill.

We will all be changed.

Mark

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The Vocation of the Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church has struggled to affirm its place in the organized structures of the Anglican Communion. The need to continue that struggle is now in question.

The continued participation of The Episcopal Church in the instrumentalities of the Anglican Communion is not essential to our continued faithfulness as a Christian body, nor is it the basis for our fellowship with other Churches in the Anglican Communion. We must not confuse the gift of fellowship for the vocation to which we are called.

The uninvited and unwelcome efforts to pressure The Episcopal Church to bend to the teachings of a supposed magisterium or the decrees of agencies of the Anglican Communion, teachings and decrees that have no authority save that which are self assigned must be countered by certain reminders of our own reliance on the essentials of Christian community, unencumbered by ecclesiastically “foreign” intervention.

Decent respect for the opinions of faithful Christians of all communities and communions requires that we should declare the reasons for our belief that The Episcopal Church is and always has been a freely gathered community of faithful Christians.

The Episcopal Church and its Call to Serve.

We as a Church have engaged the peoples of the United States and other countries in mission, and we are ordered as a Church as a missionary society. In these efforts God has challenged us at every turn to a vocation of pilgrimage, seeking always a better place, both here and in Promise. That vocation has involved at least the following:

• The Episcopal Church asserts in its preface to its first Book of Common Prayer (1789) that “..when in the course of Divine Providence, these American States became independent with respect to civil government, their ecclesiastical independence was necessarily included…” and later “this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship; for further than local circumstances require.” (pgs 10-11, Episcopal Church BCP) This Church has therefore held in tension two remarkable, but sometimes differing gifts: the gift of ecclesiastical independence and the gift of a Godly inheritance in the ministry and witness of the Church of England.

• From the outset this Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, understood that we were ecclesiastically independent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the Church and State of England. In the United States there would be no Archbishops, no established Church. We would have no King or Governor to whom any attribution of divine right or power would be made. We would find ourselves numbered among the “different religious denominations of Christians in these States,” “left at full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective Churches, and forms of worship, and discipline, in such manner as they might judge most convenient for their future prosperity; consistently with the constitution and laws of their country.” (BCP, pg. 10)

• We determined to be an Episcopal church, but not a monarchical or patriarchal church. Our bishops would be elected from among the clergy by lay and clerical members of a diocesan convention, would serve the pastoral and missionary needs of the respective dioceses, and would be paid from the offerings of the several congregations of their dioceses or from the missionary funds of the whole Church.

• It was determined by the laws of the land that there would be no established religion, and The Episcopal Church came to understand its vocation to be a church for the whole nation. At every point in its missionary and ecclesial formation the Episcopal Church has sought, and often struggled internally, to open its heart and mind to greater inclusion of the peoples within its jurisdictions. That struggle is a mark of a church set upon the course of becoming a church for the whole people.

• We have determined to be one with the Church of England in all “essential point(s) of doctrine, discipline, or worship,” departing not “further than local circumstances require.” Local circumstances required that we not engage the society as the established church and we are thankful for that. Nor did we feel that Archbishops, loyalty oaths to the head of state or the head of church, or discipline determined by ecclesiastical decree, were of the essence of the faith. We therefore felt it appropriate to order our common life as a free and independent body of Christians, related on the basis of essential doctrine, discipline and worship, to the Church of England. We are not now, and never have been, related to the Church of England in ways that would infer that the Church of England’s Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is in any way Archbishop, Metropolitan or Patriarch for this Church.

• From our beginnings we also acknowledged our profound indebtedness to the Episcopal Church of Scotland who set apart our first bishop and gave us new ways of expressing the essentials of our faith in worship. We were, from the outset, aware of belonging to a wider Episcopal fellowship than that of the Church of England alone.

• We have participated in this wider fellowship in many ways, but primarily in the gatherings of bishops from Churches related to the Church of England that began meeting in a decennial conference called “The Lambeth Conference,” the first in 1867, and in cooperative missionary efforts in the world. At every turn we have informed and have been informed by the ministry of the peoples of our several churches.

• Our House of Bishops has enumerated in the Chicago – Lambeth Quadrilateral the basis on which union with other Christian bodies might be achieved. The introduction to that document, in its Episcopal Church version, (BCP, p. 876) assumes the Quadrilateral would require: (i) unity to be on the “deepest and truest” level, (ii) that we understand baptism as the basis of membership in the Holy Catholic Church, (iii) that we acknowledge the costly forgoing of “preferences of her own,” (iv) and that we not seek the absorption of various churches into one. This preparatory and spiritual quadrilateral introduces the now famous Quadrilateral and does so with the assumptions not of an established church, but a church in the midst of churches.

• We have been an active agent in the wider Anglican Communion efforts to do mission in settings understood increasingly as contextual in nature. We have not been by any means perfect in this, but we have increasingly honored those we have ministered to, affirming them as persons and communities that would express the Christian faith as their context and circumstances would require.

• In all this we have also been mindful of our own failings and those of our society. The Episcopal Church, to its great shame, did not take an official position on slavery in the years leading up to or during the Civil War, leaving the matter to the outcome of civil strife. As a Church we entered late into the struggle for equal rights for all citizens and in particular for women and for people of color. In the Church we began to address those changes in a significant way with the increasing inclusion of women in the governance of the Church and with the growing (but not yet perfected) effort to break down the power of racism in our lives and in our society.

• As a Church we have set ourselves on a course to grow as a community of believers no longer separated by our prejudices, origins or social status. Nothing, we have learned, can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. At the same time we have determined to hold one another accountable in forms of church governance that increasingly attend to those who have previously been excluded.

• To this end we have subjected ourselves as a Church to the criticisms and support of people of the churches of the Anglican Communion, those of the wider Ecumenical community of which the Anglican Communion is a particular example, and of Christians everywhere. We have valued both criticism and support as part of the companionship we have with all communities of Christians.

The Challenge to our Vocation as a Church:

Yet we find now that in many respects the wider instruments of the Anglican Communion, and in particular the body of ecclesiastical personages called the Primates and Moderators, have challenged our vocation – a vocation to be a church increasingly inclusive of all the peoples of the jurisdictions and areas in which we are present, contextually responsible to the concerns as understood locally, and to the land itself, and open to God’s promise in Jesus Christ that all has been made new.

Such a charge requires that we list the efforts to impose oppressive restrictions on our life as a Christian community, impositions that minorities in our own Church in concert with members of other churches in the Anglican family have attempted to effect:

· The Episcopal Church has been subjected to the widest sort of criticism in the Windsor Report and has made great efforts to address the concerns raised. We have not been in any way encouraged by the Archbishop or the Primates; rather they have lifted the Windsor Report from its status as a critique and a set of recommendations to that of a litmus test of loyalty to an emerging power, an international church with the structures of a Patriarchy.

· The Episcopal Church has been charged in the Windsor Report with breaking the bonds of affection that holds the Anglican Communion together. This is stated as a matter of the immediate past, occasioned by the ordination of a partnered gay person as bishop. Yet those bonds were broken in many cases by others much earlier, and for our decision to ordain women, a decision taken as a matter of moral urgency in our own church.

· The Episcopal Church has been accused of having acted without prior consultation in the ordination of women, in the ordination of gay and lesbian persons, in the blessing of same sex partnerships and in the ordination of gay and lesbian persons in such committed relationships. There is considerable evidence that nothing we have done has been without open discussion both among ourselves and with Anglicans elsewhere. What has become apparent is that the accusation is that we acted without permission, and the assumption has been made that we ought to have sought such permission.

· The Episcopal Church is accused from within by a minority of its own members of having “left” or “walked away” from the Anglican Communion. Those voices have been joined by voices from other parts of the Communion. Yet we have been faithful members of this fellowship. We have participated fully in its life. We have been engaged in mission efforts throughout the world, honoring the concerns and needs of the peoples among whom we have served, and in cooperation with other mission agencies and churches. We have made our contributions to the working groups of the Communion. We have supported greater communications among the churches of the Global South. We have supported the rapid indigenization of ministries throughout the world. We have supported the central budget of the Communion. The Episcopal Church has not walked away or left the Anglican Communion. We have dared to consider the Windsor Report and the statements of the Primates as matters for our deepest consideration and as the basis for engagement, rather than as mandates requiring our acquiescence.

· The Episcopal Church has considered its presence and engagement in the life of the Anglican Communion to be an expression of its vocation in the world. But we have in these past several years been increasingly shunned –

· We have been asked to voluntarily withdraw our representatives from the Anglican Consultative Council;

· Several Provinces have declared that they are no longer in communion with this church and they have undertaken alternative or parallel church development in the jurisdiction of this Province, this without regard to the Windsor Report, several Lambeth resolutions or ancient canon.

· Our former Presiding Bishop has been shunned by other Primates, without objection from friends or host;

· Our Presiding Bishop has been told by at least one other Primate that he will not sit at table with her, and there has been no objection from friends or host;

· The Archbishop of Canterbury has consistently engaged the organized minority in the Episcopal Church in ways that encourage their refusal to comply with the decisions of this church, and has done nothing to moderate their actions;

· The Archbishop of Canterbury has appointed committees and commissions whose work is described as advisory and then applied that advice in ways that appear directive and advance interference in the life of a Church not his own;

· The Archbishop of Canterbury has convened a Panel of Reference that has interjected its opinions regarding The Episcopal Church and its intention to be fully inclusive of women. He has raised no objection to the recommendation of the Panel that The Episcopal Church be asked to assure that “theological views on the ordination or consecration of women should not be a ground on which consent might be withheld by the Province/House of Bishops.” (Panel of Reference report on Fort Worth, 17b)

· He has raised no objection to the recommendation that “the Archbishop of Canterbury continue discussions with the Diocese of Fort Worth and with the Episcopal Church with the aim of securing the place of Fort Worth in the Communion.” (17d) This in total disregard of the fact that the Diocese of Fort Worth already has a place in the Communion by way of its inclusion in The Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church as a Faithful Community.

We have not been wanting in attentions to those who are our critics, but we cannot continue further in acquiesce.

The Episcopal Church cannot claim to be without fault in these matters, and indeed it has stated again and again, and particularly at the 2006 General Convention, its willingness to both hear and heed the call that it be receptive of the godly advice of the wider fellowship of the Anglican Communion. It has expressed its regret for having contributed to strains in the bonds of affection that holds the Anglican Communion together as a fellowship.

But we cannot be subject to interference by others in the determination of the application of our own canons or to the disrespect to jurisdictions of this church or the officers of its administration.

We are a church that ordains women, and we have elected a woman as Presiding Bishop, Primate and Chief Pastor. While there may have been in this matter accommodation for the sensibilities of particular bishops or dioceses that accommodation is drawing to a close. Our Presiding Bishop is the Presiding Bishop for this church as a whole. Those who have problems with her gender will have to be patient (for no bishop serves forever) or leave.

We elect our bishops and their election is subject to consent by elected lay and ordained representatives of dioceses (remembering that bishops too are elected leaders). We pray that these representatives are guided by the Holy Spirit. It is not a matter for other Churches to determine if we are right or wrong in so electing. We are willing to receive recommendations regarding restrictions on the matter of consents, but we cannot have them mandated from afar.

We are in the process of working through the context in which we will affirm and bless gay and lesbian partnerships. We are not of one mind in the matter. But we are determined that God is working a purpose out in our struggles as a church to be as open to God’s blessings as God is open to blessing.

In all this we believe we are a faithful Christian community, a Church among the people we have been called to serve, and in all essentials a body of believers committed to the catholic and reformed faith we have received.

The restrictive and punitive efforts of the various “instruments,” commissions and committees of the Anglican Communion are contrary to our understanding of our vocation as a Church and may indeed make our continued engagement with Anglican Communion structures as they now stand increasingly difficult, if not impossible. The emergence of instruments for a magisterium and a patriarchy in the Anglican Communion are contrary to our understandings of our vocation and of union in its “truest and deepest” sense.

It is our intention to continue to be in communion with as many of the churches of the Anglican Communion as will have us. We will seek other companions not of this flock as well.

We will not confuse that continued fellowship with the possibility of a break in relations with one or the other of the various bodies that constitute the structures of the Anglican Communion – vis: the Primates Meeting, The Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

We believe there is no need for any of the breaks in the bonds of affection that tie us together as a fellowship. These bonds are of fellowship, not of some exercising lordship over others. We have only one Lord, Jesus Christ, all others are with us companions on the Way.

The desire by some in the Communion to be an ecclesial kingdom like other kingdoms – that is to say to become a patriarchal international church – is misplaced. We desire neither Rome nor Geneva – neither an international hierarchy nor a state / city church. There is no need for an Anglican equivalent to the Patriarch of Constantinople or Rome. We are protestant, catholic, and free.

We will seek companions in Christ where they may be found, and in all things we will seek companionship with Christ who has found us.

As for those who wish to disenfranchise or shun us, “we must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation,” and hold them, as we hold the rest of the Christian churches of the world, in our prayers and with the hope of more gracious times when God will grant us greater, deeper and truer union.