Pluralist Speaks followed up on my entry, following up on his, on mine and on a host of others beginning to try to work out a way to say to the Anglican Communion leaders and structures, "enough!" His self-mug is to the left. Pluralist Speaking has a name, Adrian Worsfold. He hails from New Holland, Lincolnshire, in the UK. His site is well worth the regular visit.
PLEASE NOTE we (or at least I) am/ are not talking about the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada relationships with the Churches of the Anglican Communion, but with the people representing "the four instruments of communion" and our relationship to their agendas. The leadership has begun to babel repeating over and over again the same request/ demands and the same wringing of hands about the difficulties, etc. That is what I believe we need to say enough to. We can never have enough of the fellowship with actual Christians and Anglicans all over the world.
Oops! Almost got off on trying to untangle the mess right here. Tomorrow. But never mind, more explanations are not really needed. The Anglican Communion leadership have left time bombs in the belly of the organizational life of the Communion and looking in there we an see them ticking away. It is the negligence of the Primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury that has led to this pretty mess and they were led around by the nose by people who wanted either control or wreckage. The thing is, if we simply hang in there going around and around too we will serve the ends of the control freaks and the wreckage mongers. Oops! More on that tomorrow. For the moment simply this: Res ipsa loquitur. Well, there it is.
Meanwhile the Pluralist, in his essay further outlining a letter to the POWERS THAT BE was kind enough to draw a cartoon of me, the son of a son of Barrow-in-Furness, round head and all. I kind of like it, and more am delighted that Pluralist drew it. Thanks.Tomorrow in the light of day I will attempt to take his imaginary letter, mine, and the many comments pro and con and work at perfecting the imaginary letter. After all there is time. The evidence of the negligence is not going to go away, even if it all blows up.
Keep on keeping on.
At the end of Lambeth, seeing how it had gone, speaking to the BBC, Gene Robinson said "The trouble with giving bullies what they want is that they always come back for more."
ReplyDeleteTEC has made sacrifices for the AC, notably Gene's exclusion from Lambeth.........more concessions to the AC will only lead to more sacrifices (of principle) being asked of TEC.
It is good people are realising this...and many are not willing to sacrifice principles for institutional unity which requires appeasement of "bullies"
Mark--
ReplyDeleteIt's always dangerous to allow people who wish you harm to tell you who you are, and my great fear is that that's what we're doing. We talk about these moratoria we've imposed on ourselves as if TEC had been celebrating gay marriages and consecrating gay bishops left and right until 2004, then we stopped as an act of self sacrifice to th e rest of the world.
In fact, successive GCs have declined to take the more radical steps presented to them (for example, we've never authorized a committee to prepare liturgies of ssb). The one "scandalously liberal" thing we've done was to ratify New Hampshire's bishop, but that arguably passed only because lots of people saw it as a lower bar than passing a resolution. Do you believe GC03 would have passed a resolution saying that "being an 'active homosexual' shall not be considered a bar to being consecrated bishop in this church"? I don't.
The truth is, there isn't a lot that we haven't done because of the moratoria (maybe Chicago gave up a couple of gay bishop candidates, though who knows? Maybe a bishop or two chose not to publish a ssb liturgy.)
Let me be clear: I speak as one who has generally been to the left of GC's positions on this issue. But I thought things were moving in the right direction at a reasonable pace. Back before we became obsessed with the opinion of the rest of the world, many of us were concerned about breaking faith with mostly moderate rank and file episcopalians.
I have a lot of sympathy for your "stepping back" position, but I worry that, freed from the great load of primatial bile, our leaders (who have been immersed in this stuff day in and day out) will forget that, contrary to what others often say, TEC is not New Westminster writ large. We have been more moderate than many people in leadership roles like to remember.
So, as much as I hate to say it, I think it might be a good idea to commit to not doing anything new at GC09. Maybe we should do Indaba groups, lots of listening, try to figure out who we are now as a church. I'm not serious about the Indaba groups, but I do think some intentional discernment would be a good idea.
"(maybe Chicago gave up a couple of gay bishop candidates, though who knows?"
ReplyDeleteI was there. Bp. Lee won on merit. I suspect had not B033 been there, we might have had the option of more lesbian / gay candidates, but among those on the ballot, he won on merit.
That is not a put down of the other candidates. I suspect several of them will be on other ballots and win. But for Chicago, with its intense commitment to deaconal ministry, a former chaplin to the national deacon's association had a non-trivial appeal. His view of the ministry of the church and the diocese's were very much aligned.
FWIW
jimB
Many thanks for that, and now there is more because of contributions by Graham Kings and Ephraim Radner (both articles at the Fulcrum website). They really are trying to set up a centralised policing institution and I'm just trying to say this has got to stop before it's too late.
ReplyDeleteThe answer, anonymous, is for TEC to carry on working with all its constituencies - in other words, unless clearly the consensus, it should make its changes carefully and with full consultation. The pace of change will no doubt vary in TEC and also between TEC and the northern neighbour. What it should not have is an imposition from on high, from the innovation of a centralised Anglican Communion behaving as if it is the new Church.
ReplyDelete