What;s with the members of the Communon Partners? Mucking about again.

It begins with the "Communion Partners" group. Its a tangled web they weave. Good men all, I am sure, but they weave a strange fabric, in which there is both hierarchy only at the diocesan level and hierarchy at the Communion level, and nothing in between in The Episcopal Church save a voluntary gathering of autonomous dioceses. It gives me a headache, bordering on migraine.
 

Here is how the weaving plays out.

There is a group of bishops in The Episcopal Church who call themselves "The Communion Partners." The list of "active" (that is not retired) bishops, as of 2012 is as follows:
 

The Rt. Rev. John C. Bauerschmidt*
The Rt. Rev. Russell E. Jacobus

The Rt. Rev. Paul E. Lambert*
The Rt. Rev. Mark Joseph Lawrence
The Rt. Rev. Gary R. Lillibridge
The Rt. Rev. Edward Stuart Little, II*
The Rt. Rev. William H. Love*
The Rt. Rev. D. Bruce MacPherson
The Rt. Rev. Daniel H. Martins*

The Rt. Rev. David M. Reed
The Rt. Rev. Michael G. Smith**
The Rt. Rev. James M. Stanton
The Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf
The Rt. Rev. Gregory O. Brewer

This group has as its vision and purpose the following:

In light of our understanding of the integrity of the Dioceses of The Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Visitors concept announced by the Presiding Bishop, we have considered a need  to maintain and strengthen 

• our ties with the Anglican Communion
• our fidelity to the canonical realities, integrities and structures of the Episcopal Church
• and our exercise of our office as a focus of unity.

We believe such ties will provide the opportunity for mutual support, accountability and fellowship; and present an important sign of our connectedness in and vision for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as we move through this time of stress and renewal.

Purpose

Communion Partners 

• provide for those concerned a visible link to the Anglican Communion. Many within our dioceses and in congregations in other dioceses seek to be assured of their connection to the Anglican Communion. Traditionally, this has been understood in terms of bishop-to-bishop relationships. Communion Partners fleshes out this connection in a significant and symbolic way.
• provide fellowship, support and a forum for mutual concerns between bishops. The Communion Partner bishops share many concerns about the Anglican Communion and its future and look to work together with Primates and Bishops from the wider Communion. In addition, we believe we all have need of mutual encouragement, prayer, and reassurance. The Communion Partners will be a forum for these kinds of relationships.
• provide a partnership to work toward the Anglican Covenant and according to Windsor Principles

The Communion Partner bishops will work together according to the principles outlined in the Windsor Report and seek a comprehensive Anglican Covenant at the Lambeth Conference and beyond.


You may notice that in none of this is there mention of working together as bishops part of a syondical thing called The Episcopal Church, there is only the "fidelity to the canonical realities, integrities and structures of the Episcopal Church." The whole of the Communion Partners vision and purpose is bound up with dioceses (and their bishops) on the one hand and the Primates and bishops of the Communion on the other.
 

So, here they are.

Now several members of this band of bishops have joined as "friends of the court" in Texas. Of the seven who have joined with the Anglican Communion Institute in this brief,

The Rt. Rev. Maurice M. Benitez,
The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe,
The Rt. Rev. Paul E. Lambert,
The Rt. Rev. William H. Love,
The Rt. Rev. D. Bruce MacPherson,
The Rt. Rev. Daniel H. Martins,
The Rt. James M. Stanton 

All, except Maurice Benitez, are members of the Communion Partners.  (Thanks to The Living Church for the article on this.)

In this brief they argue that " “These amici curiae support the traditional polity of The Episcopal Church founded on the autonomy of its constituent dioceses and therefore submit that the trial court erred both as a matter of fact and as a matter of law when it found that The Episcopal Church has a hierarchical authority superior to the diocese and its bishop.”

They do so while at the same time opposing the decision by those who in the Diocese of Fort Worth who left the Episcopal Church. 


They are arguing for a principle, and in a principled fashion. But the effect of their argument is to negate the ruling of the court, at least on the basis it made its ruling, and the end would be to throw open the question of the legal right of those who left to take with them the property, title, name, rights and such, that pertained to the Diocese of Fort Worth. If the court accepts their friend of the court plea, then it must reject the findings that led to the judgment against those who left the Diocese of Fort Worth.


The end result, of course, is that whether or not these friends agreed with now deposed Bishop Iker and company, they would be supporting his case.


Well, that's complex enough.

But wait, there's more: We might note too that it is members of the Communion Partners that are putting forth a resolution on the Anglican Covenant that essentially signals our pledge to adopt following a short period of further exploration.  Bishops Bauerschmidt, Martins and Smith put forward this resolution.


But it gets more interesting.


This week GAFCON  held a leadership conference in London. GAFCON is the group of bishops, clergy and others that met in Jerusalem several years ago and spelled out an alternative universe for Anglicanism in the future - complete with the Jerusalem Declaration (which is considered by many of them to be the better sort of "Anglican Covenant") and a vision of having some of the instruments of communion cast in new ways. GAFCON has in turn spawned the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a network to support its message in venues around the Anglican world. 


They met, as it were, in the belly of the Beast, in London.  Among those attending was at least one member of the Communion Partners, Bishop Mark Lawrence.

Now Bishop Lawrence is always a person of interest to those of us who wonder for the future of The Episcopal Church and its place in Anglican-land.  He has signed on to the Communion Partners, and here he is at the Leadership Conference of GAFCON in England.  

And who else is there? 

It is reported by Bishop Guernsey  that "Archbishop Robert Duncan, who sits as a Primate on the Primates Council, will lead our (ACNA)  Church’s delegation. My wife, Meg, and I will be there, as will Bishop Julian Dobbs. Bishop Martyn Minns, in his role as head of the GAFCON London office, is one of the conference organizers."

Is Bishop Lawrence part of the GAFCON Leadership Conference? and at the same time part of the Communion Partners?  Interesting indeed.  Bishop Lawrence apparently believes that GAFCON is the place to be in support of the Communion Partners agenda. 

Now the Communion Partners is opposed to those in the Diocese of Fort Worth who left The Episcopal Church, but support the notion that there is no hierarchy in The Episcopal Church of the sort that would support the ruling in favor of the continuing Diocese of Fort Worth. GAFCON, however, is looking for a more strident and perfected form of global Anglicanism that would take the weak hierarchical structure of the current Anglican Communion which is not a church but a fellowship and transform it into a world wide church, with leadership from the Global South.

Well, good luck Bishop Lawrence. You have excluded the middle in order to maintain your own independence, but in doing so you also are open to the accusation that you are playing into the hands of potentates and powers who are no fools and will so reduce your diocesan powers to a point where you will wish for the days of mere pressure from the church that ordained you and gave  you license to be bishop. 

Meanwhile, out there in Anglican-land the GAFCON folk are making it clear: They want a Primates Meeting that becomes a Primates Council with an elected chair, and dear friends they will then feel just fine about the Anglican Covenant, for with the right chair of the Primates Council and sufficient sign on from Communion Churches the Primates Council can become the real and hoped for star chamber, deciding who can and cannot be members of the council, acting as an instrument of the Communion bent on the exclusion of members who do not sign on to the Jerusalem Declaration, accepting into their number people like the deposed Bishop of Pittsburgh, now the Archbishop of an alternative universe to The Episcopal Church.  And all without changing a thing about the Anglican Covenant, the instruments of Communion or even signing on to the Anglican Covenant.

If the Primates Meetings becomes a meeting with an elected chair, with rights that include determining who can sit as part of the Primates Meetings independently of the Anglican Consultative Council, then there is no reason to suppose that given the right chair of the Primates meeting, we might see Archbishop Duncan seated and whoever is Presiding Bishop removed. 

And of course, we might then see that same Primates Meeting become more and more a council gathering authority to itself as a "house of Primates" and finally determining which dioceses within TEC are really part of the Communion and which are not. And believe me, they will use the Anglican Covenant card when they want, and ignore it when they want. The Anglican Covenant will be irrelevant except insofar as buying on signals acquiescence to rule by majority decision of the Primates. 

This whole thing is hierarchical to such an amazing extent that I cannot understand how Bishop Lawrence can be there. Perhaps he is a visiting outsider, perhaps on a diplomatic mission. Perhaps as a bridge builder. But we don't know that. Right now it looks like he is the diocesan of a diocese in search of a hierarchy not his own.

So here it is: The Communion Partners support dioceses and the Anglican Communion and admit the realities of canonical life in The Episcopal Church, but don't think there is much good to say about The Episcopal Church having a hierarchy.  Some of their members want us to buy onto the Anglican Covenant with a pledge to sign as soon as possible. At least one of their members is at a leadership conference whose uber-leadership includes a deposed bishop of The Episcopal Church now leading an alternative church to The Episcopal Church. 

It is yet another nail in the coffin of the Anglican Covenant, when its supporters hold to diocesan hierarchy and Communion hierarchy but don't have much truck for the stuff in the middle. The only thing to keep those Primates from policing the diocesan house are the houses of our common synodical life, the General Convention and its exercise of authority through the canons to direct the life of this church.  

The Anglican Covenant is not a neutral matter. It is an instrument open to control by various power groups, the Primates being among them. If the Primates Meetings becomes a Council with elected leadership and duties beyond meeting for mutual support and advice, then we are in deeper trouble than we can imagine.  Except of course we can.