Well, here it is the far side of the day and my earlier posting on The Anglican Theological Mare's Nest has only had a chance to get more and more untidy. This afternoon The Living Church has announced that Bishop John Rogers, of AMiA fame, is the interim dean. Dean Paul Zahl, you may remember, resigned for personal reasons just recently.
Bishop Rogers seems a fine fellow. He is, of course, also massively engaged in an incursion by another Province in the life of the Episcopal Church. He, like Bishop Minns, is not invited to Lambeth, and for the same reason: the promotion of splintering and schism by mucking about in other people's gardens. His boss, Archbishop Kolini, like Archbishop Akinola, is invited, although they may not come. At any event Bishop Roger's appointment to Trinity will further confuse matters. Dr. Noll of Uganda Christian University writes that he believes Trinity needs to become a seminary for Network and Common Cause Partners. Will this help? Who knows. There are better evangelical seminaries and there are more Anglican ones as well. So Bishop Rogers will have his hands full.
Perhaps AMiA is not losing a bishop but gaining a Seminary. Who knows?
5/29/2007
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Trinity is certainly not a threat to the TEC no matter who the Dean is since there are better evangelical schools and ones that are more Anglican and Mark beleives Trinity is located in a slum so why would any self-respecting Episcopalian even consider attending such a loser of a school
ReplyDeleteDavid Wilson
Trinity class of 96
My memory is that Bp. Rogers resigned his TEC orders when he became an AMIA bishop. How in the world can Trinity's board expect to maintain their status vis-a-vis TEC if they do this?
ReplyDeleteOf course that may well be the point. Combined with the Ugandan comments, I think we see Trinity's decision.
FWIW
jimB
David, for what it is worth, when I was involved there the area around the school was indeed pretty much beat up and run down. (This would have been in the late 80's.) I found the people there very alive and the joy in being part of a new thing in theological education very real. So one of the things I admired about the School was that it was located in a run down world. (Not like, say, some of the other seminaries.) Quite a few (as you know) self-respecting Episcopalians have gone there. My comments about what is happening and about Dr. Noll's proposal are not about respecting persons who went there. I believe graduates from any of the Seminaries need to be assessed on the merits of their ministries, preaching, teaching, etc, and not prejudged on the basis of where they went to school. (That applies by the way to graduates from my own school ETS, who at times found it hard to be accepted in such wonderful parts of the world as the Diocese of the Rio Grande.) If I have in any way suggested otherwise, please forgive me. Indeed, the whole point of the past two blog entries was to precisely wish among other things that the breadth of seminary possibilities continued.
ReplyDeleteMark, Thanks you for your gracious response. The Trinity campus and the adjacent neighborhood is much improved from the 1980s when you last visited Ambridge. That were in the death throes of the steel industry collapse at that time.
ReplyDeleteI will always be grateful to you Mark, as I was on the Search Committee in 1991 that brought Bob Duncan to Pittsburgh as Canon to the Ordinary and you were the one who wrote us a letter recommending him. So in a way, you were quite influencial in helping to determine the recent history of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the ACN, TEC and the Anglican Communion. Thank you Mark for all you do and have done.
david...Dear Lord, I hope not! (grin) Remember you all elected him bishop.
ReplyDeleteIn The Episcopal Church we are all too closely knit to every get away from the connections. In a way that is what I like about the place. But sometimes it hurts.