The Diocese(s) of Ft. Worth: Jesus Loses Either Way

When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels—to say nothing of ordinary matters? If you have ordinary cases, then, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to decide between one believer and another, but a believer goes to court against a believer—and before unbelievers at that?  In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?--1 Corinthians 6:1-7

Jack Iker spent years at war with the House of Bishops, declaring The Episcopal Church hopelessly apostate. Now, he bizarrely claims to be a Bishop of the Diocese of Ft. Worth after a much-publicized schism where he led most of the Episcopalians out of The Episcopal Church. Why?

Mammon.

By claiming that the Diocese of Ft. Worth of the Anglican Church in North America (a splinter group of former Episcopalians trying to get recognition as an "official" Anglican national church) is the same as The Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth, Iker and his lawyers hope to be able to keep the property of The Episcopal Church.

And the court is as bewildered as can be. The 2nd Court of Appeals has ruled that "a corporation cannot sue itself" and that a judge deciding the merits of the case would be "unnecessarily confused by presentations from two opposing factions who claim to be the 'The Corporation' and 'The Fort Worth Diocese.'"

Instead of following St. Paul's suggestion that wayward (or whacky) believers be left to their own devices rather than being hauled into court, The Episcopal Church has now created another mess. Even Jack Iker has figured out the PR benefits of letting dissidents take their toys with them: the (ACNA) Diocese of Ft. Worth has allowed individual congregations to retain their property if they chose to stay part of the (TEC) Diocese of Ft. Worth. Who's looking more Jesus-y here?

What happens next in this dispute is anybody's guess. But as a Deacon of The Episcopal Church (the real one), I have a bit of advice for our leadership: let them go in peace and take the hit to the balance sheet. In the end it doesn't matter. This is just stuff. Our treasure is in heaven.

Continuing this court case is only going to further alienate the world from the Church. And that means no matter how the lawsuits turn out, Jesus loses either way.

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Birtherbury

In the USA, we have an annoying fringe political group, proudly known as "birthers," who insist, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that President Barack Obama was not born in this country and thus is an illegitimate President. The birthers protest at political rallies with signs demanding that the President show his "real" birth certificate, since the certified copies provided by the State of Hawaii are, according to them, fakes.

It seems the virus has spread to England and been caught by The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. According to Episcopal Life Online, before Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori of The Episcopal Church was permitted to preach and preside at the Eucharist this past Sunday at London's Southwark Cathedral, she had to present proof of her ordination as a deacon, priest and bishop. This, apparently to satisfy some obscure subtitle of English canon law. But, if that were the only outrage the PB suffered, one might chalk it up to bizarre British church bureaucracy and shrug it off. Perhaps the Brits were still miffed about that flubbed block by goalie Robert Green that cost England her expected victory over Team USA in the first round of the World Cup. Or maybe they were out of Earl Grey at Lambeth Palace.

But the Archbishop was not content with a simple insult to his visiting American guest, he felt to compelled to add an injury as well. He ordered her not to wear her mitre, the traditional "Bishop's hat," the symbol, along with a shepherd's crook or crozier, of the bishop's authority. Though calling the order "beyond bizarre," she complied, and carried her mitre, rather than wear it in the procession into and out of the Cathedral.

The Archbishop was, in fact, denying that she is a bishop in the Apostolic Order, something heretofore only asserted by the Anglican equivalent of the birthers, those far-right bishops clamoring for the ouster of The Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion.

The time has come, it seems for The Episcopal Church to ask: Are we going to walk away from 500 years of Anglican theology that all duly consecrated bishops are equal in apostolic authority and that none, whether Bishop of Rome or Archbishop of Canterbury are the Head of the Church and create an Anglican Pope? That's what the far right, and apparently Archbishop Williams, seem to be heading towards.

I served as the Chaplain to the Presiding Bishop a few weeks back during the consecration of our new Bishop Andrew Waldo. She was calm, kind, humble and surprisingly funny. She no more needed a deacon to be doting on her than she needed a hole in her mitre. But she welcomed me to her side and together we welcomed in a new Shepherd for the Diocese of Upper South Carolina. I'm saddened that she was insulted by Rowan. Saddened, but not surprised.

And I won't be surprised if, speaking ex cathedra, Rowan Williams shortly finds Himself to be Infallible. That will be the day I no longer consider myself an Anglican.

"The earthquake has not destroyed our hope for the future"--Bishop Duracin

ÉGLISE ÉPISCOPALE D’HAITI

COMMUNION ANGLICANE

86, Rue Rigaud Pétion-Ville, Haïti

Boite Postale 1309

epihaiti@hotmail.com

MGR JEAN ZACHE DURACIN                                                                                                                    

BUREAU DIOCESAIN

Evêque d’Haïti Pétion-ville

Tél. : 257-8116

  

‘The earthquake has not destroyed our hope in the future’

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Seven weeks after we were hit by the 7.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, the situation is still very serious in Haiti.

As you know, many people were killed, perhaps as many as 300,000. Thousands and thousands of others have been injured. In the Church, we have lost many people. Millions of Haitians have no place to live; many are sleeping in the streets in tents, and some of them still have not found any shelter at all. All the infrastructure of the country, as well as all the key institutions of the Diocese, have been destroyed, especially in the capital of Port au Prince. The situation is very difficult.

Many of our famous churches are gone, especially Holy Trinity Cathedral, which was not only a place of worship, but a place of culture. The Cathedral was a very important institution for the whole country. Yes, it has been physically destroyed, but our faith is still here and our communities are still alive. The earthquake has not destroyed our hope in the future. Despite the difficulties we face, many of our parishes have grown larger since the earthquake, because more and more people trust our Church and are turning to us for help spiritually, socially and morally.

We are still a strong Church and we will continue to work with you in partnership to be able to build up the Kingdom of God on earth through evangelism, education, health care and our development programs. We will work together to preach a holistic Gospel so that human beings may become more fully human in the face of God.

We will have to rebuild all of our communities. We in the Diocese are working very hard to have a Master Plan to replace the physical structures of the Church, so that we may continue to serve Haitian people with the same love, the same care, and the same support that we have always shown. Our mission will not change. We pray that God will continue to give us strength to do all this work despite so many difficulties. We ask you to please be patient and wait for our guidance as we put together this plan so that we can determine how our resources can be used most effectively. Once we have made our decisions, we will announce the plan. To assist us in using all of our resources in the best possible way, and to provide the best accounting of donations, I ask all of our partners in traditional programs to resume sending donations through the Partnership Program. The fastest and safest way to do this is by wiring the money into the Partnership Program account; the Rev. Kesner Ajax, Partnership Program Coordinator, can provide that information to any who require it.

I am grateful for all of the support and assistance of The Church Center and especially of the Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori. Her visit to us in February, even though it was short, gave us great strength here in Haiti, and I am deeply thankful for our time together. We appreciate very much the willingness of The Church Center to continue to work with us in the Master Plan to rebuild the Diocese.

In addition, I give thanks for the visit of The Rt. Rev. Pierre Whalon, Bishop Suffragan of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, who is visiting right now on the Presiding Bishop’s behalf.  I also give thanks to all of the bishops  and dioceses of The Episcopal Church for their prayers and support, and for telling our story. Some of them have been directly involved in supporting me and my wife, Edithe, during our difficult time; all of our family is especially thankful for this.

Special thanks must be given to Episcopal Relief and Development; all of us are grateful for its assistance and work in providing us food, shelter, water, medicines and all other forms of support to help us survive these difficult times.

In addition, it was very good to receive The Most Rev. Thabo Cecil Makgoba, Primate of Cape Town, and The Rt. Rev. Laish Boyd, Bishop of Nassau and The Bahamas, who are visiting at this moment. I also give thanks to all other bishops and archbishops of the Anglican Communion who have expressed their support to us.

The earthquake of Jan. 12 was our baptism; now is our new creation. In this new creation, we pray to all work together, and we ask that you give us the time we need, first to care for our people, then to rebuild the Kingdom. 

In this Lenten season, the season of repentance, conversion and intense prayers, we ask you to remember our Diocese and all the people of Haiti in this difficult moment. We also ask you to continue to support us by your prayers and your gifts, so that by Eastertide, we will be able to sing together with great joy, “Alleluia! He is Risen!”

I bid you my blessings for this holy season.

The Right Jean Zaché Duracin

Bishop of Haiti

Dear Rowan: This is as Good as it Gets for The Episcopal Church

What if this is as good as it gets? –Jack Nicholson


A couple of weeks ago, The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles elected the Reverend Canon Mary Glaspool as one its two new Bishops Suffragan, both of whom are women. Mary Glaspool is not just a woman, but she is also a partnered lesbian. The predictable, end-of-the-Anglican-Communion refrains began immediately, the Right frothing that this was absolutely, positively, the very last straw up with which they would not put. This time they were really leaving or throwing The Episcopal Church out. Or something like that.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams got into the act. “The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop-elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole,” he said in a statement released by Lambeth Palace just hours after the election.

Meantime the Archbishop maintained his stony silence over Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law, which is being supported by Anglican leaders there. Finally, this week, he came forth from his medieval residence on the Thames to sip tea with a reporter from The Telegraph. In a wide-ranging interview, he finally said something about Uganda: “Overall, the proposed legislation is of shocking severity and I can’t see how it could be supported by any Anglican who is committed to what the Communion has said in recent decades. Apart from invoking the death penalty, it makes pastoral care impossible – it seeks to turn pastors into informers.”

So there you are, scoffers: the Archbishop says that Uganda’s law makes pastoral counseling impossible. Those Clinical Pastoral Education courses that clergy take really don’t prepare them to counsel someone who’s dead, I suppose.

Those of us who were hoping that the Archbishop might actually issue something approaching a prophetic statement on Uganda (this being Advent, after all—the season of John the Baptist) now have our prophecy from Anglicanism’s leader. It was paired with his comment about Mary Glaspool’s election and The Episcopal Church: “It confirms the feeling that they’re moving further from the Anglican consensus.” I suppose he added a bit of cream to his tea right about then.

The Anglican Communion is a worn-out remnant of the British Empire, with no more relevance to the needs, hopes and concerns of the world than a thousand year-old palace in downtown London. The Episcopal Church moved away from Lambeth when Samuel Seabury was consecrated its first Bishop without Canterbury’s permission in 1783. During the past two centuries, we haven’t prayed “God save the Queen” during Morning Prayer and we are not going to start now. So take us or leave us. This is as good as it gets.

The Bishop's Election

It's December in Columbia, which means that it's either sunny and hot or cold and rainy or both. The rest of the world is caught up in the spirit of Retailmas Christmas, while Episcopalians in Upper South Carolina gather in an Advent gray hope. Hope that their beloved Church will overcome the forces of secession, division and bigotry. Hope that their Church, led by a new Bishop, will regain a prophetic voice, defend the dignity of all people, speak truth to the Power that resides in the big white building across from our Cathedral and show South Carolina what a Christian community should look like.

I will be posting regular updates today via Twitter and Facebook.

Almighty God, giver of every good gift: Look graciously on your Church, and so guide the minds of those who shall choose a bishop for this Diocese that we may receive a faithful pastor, who will care for your people and equip us for our ministries; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
                            The Book of Common Prayer, page 818

Father Waldo Explains His Reference to Excommunication

(This post is slightly revised from the earlier edition, after a couple of editing errors were corrected. We are saved by Grace, not by works, thanks be to God!)

In an effort to become as notorious a false prophet as Balaam and Simon Magus, I decided to predict the relative chances of the candidates for Bishop. In that post, I wrote that Father W. Andrew Waldo had cited the rubrics in the Prayer Book for withholding communion from those “living a notoriously evil life" as one of the range of possible actions that could be taken in response to a priest who blessed a same-sex union. Since that seemed like a position that would comfort conservatives and unnerve liberals, I so noted.

The problem with this entire process has been our (the people of this Diocese) inability to get our minds wrapped around who these candidates are. As a result, opinions are being formed based on what people have written in the past or upon what they said in two minute responses to questions from delegates and interested members. We have had virtually no real interaction with these candidates in the form of thoughtful, nuanced and well-articulated dialogue. Which is a pity, really, since we are going to live with one of them for a very long time.

Fr. John Burwell and now, Fr. Andrew Waldo, have chosen to engage at a deeper level with the people who read this blog. We haven't been able to hear from the others. But the election is still 11 days away. We have plenty of time. It's Advent, after all.

Below is Fr. Waldo's response to my previous post: 

 

Tim,

I thought it worth clarifying my walkabout comments about the disciplinary rubrics since, clearly, I failed to make my point fully or accurately in the time allotted.

First, I do not believe the blessing of same sex unions to fit under the rubric of “living a notoriously evil life” in any way, shape or form. The part of the disciplinary rubric in question is in the second paragraph, in which in this theoretical case, by defiance or just unwillingness to engage a sincere and substantive process a priest has “done wrong to his/her neighbors” by willful actions that derail a larger, delicate and fragile process.

Second, my reference to the disciplinary rubric at all assumes the following,

• that the diocese has embarked on a robust and substantive response to the mutual listening process called for by Windsor, a process too-often ignored or perfunctorily engaged by conservatives and liberals alike
• that a priest blessing a union has done so as a provocative act in defiance of a dialogic process underway within the larger diocesan community
• that it sequentially follows item three, and is grounded in item four, below

Third, the disciplinary rubrics are a last resort. Further, my comments assume that Jesus’ process for conflict within the community, found in Matthew’s account—speaking to a person first, then with witnesses, then to a council of elders (Standing Committee, most logically)—has been followed, hopefully prior to the event itself.

Fourth, and critically important, I have never understood the disciplinary rubrics to be a reactive “weapon” in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities but a considered, thoughtful, compassionate, and prayerful response growing out of the community’s understanding of its own health and well-being. It is a fruitless and utterly divisive action if seen or used in any other way. Used thoughtfully, with the compassionate support of the community in question, it is an act of healthful accountability. My interest in engaging a robust mutual listening process grows out of a deeply held belief that that community includes and deeply engages all people—liberal, conservative, gay, straight, white, black, brown—who these days seem to have to learn again how to be and stay in fruitful relationship.

So my comment was not about the raw exercise of Episcopal power and control, but it attempted (misleadingly, it seems) to address how seriously I take process in addressing contentious issues. This includes how leaders under the bishop’s authority either support or undermine processes intended to heal and move forward. Too often in the church, liberals have run rough-shod (to use a word a lesbian colleague of mine used recently) over conservatives, and conservatives have ignored the witness of thoughtful, scripturally-rooted liberals. This has to change, and it can only change if we make covenant with each other actually to engage the subjects and to stay with each other through the process.

The walkabout question was a good, important and understandably provocative one worth asking. I hope this provides a substantive clarification.

Advent blessings,

 Andrew Waldo+

Handicapping the Bishop’s Candidates

In these last few days before the delegates of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina choose their eighth Bishop, the tension is palpable. Little knots of people gather around coffee urns or in parking lots whispering, worrying, wondering. The Episcopal Church, as its name implies, takes on the personalities of its Bishops. So Diocesan elections tend to be anxious affairs. The next Bishop will set the course for this Diocese for many years to come, and thus this is a particularly anxious time for Upper South Carolina Episcopalians. Conservatives are hoping that the new Bishop will be an ally of South Carolina’s Mark Lawrence, who has already led his Diocese to withdraw from the Councils of The Episcopal Church, one step short of actual secession. Moderates are hoping that the new Bishop will continue on the course set by Dorsey Henderson, a middle way that seeks to engage, rather than withdraw. Liberals are just hoping that they can stay in the denomination that they have come to love, having given up any hope that a liberal will be chosen.

 

Before the Thanksgiving holiday break, the six candidates held two “walkabouts,” an exhausting ritual of parading before hundreds of delegates and their friends, giving two minute responses to dozens of questions, some relevant, some not, all intended to elicit clues to the way they would preside, if elected. The walkabouts produced some interesting, but not wholly surprising results.

 

The Reverend Canon Dr. Neal O. Michell defended his comparison of The Episcopal Church to a prostitute. The Very Reverend John B. Burwell defended his record on the ordination of women ( and that record includes a female associate on his current staff, The Reverend Dr. Hazel L. Wilkinson). The Reverend Jerre Stockton Williams, Jr. positioned himself as a frenetic Emergent Church pastor, comfortable in the theological muddiness of post-modernism. The Reverend David Thompson, who seemed stiff and wooden in his prepared opening remarks, proved deft and animated when he responded to questions extemporaneously. The Very Reverend Dr. Philip Linder was eloquent, calm and thoughtful in his responses. The Reverend W. Andrew Waldo was the most surprising of all, moving to the right of everyone but Michell and Burwell with his statement that he would consider the excommunication of a priest who blessed a same-sex union against his orders.

 

All of the candidates have gifts, from theological depth (Waldo, Thompson, Linder) to strategic planning (Michell), church growth (Burwell) and new paradigms for reaching the “unchurched” (Williams). Each of their gifts comes wrapped in a distinct package and none of them would be completely predictable. Given that, is it possible to predict who will win on December 12? Probably not, but here are my predictions (keeping in mind that I have predicted a Chicago Cubs pennant for two decades):

• Michell will start strong but fade quickly when conservatives realize that they cannot muster a majority with him
• Burwell will never get traction, in spite of his Upper South Carolina roots, and his desire to reach out to those who disagree with him
• Williams will start poorly but will pick up votes as the day goes on
• Thompson will start poorly, but will gain strength and could be a contender if he gets strong quickly enough
• Linder will struggle to gain a clergy majority, but he is the odds-on favorite with the laity, and all he needs to do is gain a few votes on each ballot
• Waldo will run strong in both houses and will be the clear early clergy favorite, but will struggle to get lay votes

So who will win? Beats me. But the Cubs will open the 2010 season at Atlanta on April 5, and will win the 2010 National League Pennant. Hot dogs anybody?

The Bishops Candidates: Will They Speak Out Against Uganda?

The Lambeth Conference, that diennial display of purple that purportedly defines who is Anglican and who is not, made a promise at its 1988 gathering: to “listen pastorally to the experience of homosexual persons and ... to assure them that they are loved by God...” and to “minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn the irrational fear of homosexuals...” (Lambeth 1988 1:10)

Testing whether that commitment is worth anything at all, the Anglican Communion has maintained an embarrassing silence in the face of Uganda's impending legislation to imprison and execute homosexuals. That silence is even more stunning when you realize that the majority faith in Uganda is Anglicanism. Even though Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Archbishop of York John Sentamu (a native Ugandan) have been implored by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations to take some action, none has been forthcoming.

I'm pretty much used to the Church (Anglican and otherwise) failing "to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with....God" (Micah 6:8), so I can't say I'm surprised. But the Diocese of Upper South Carolina has an opportunity here. We have six candidates for Bishop, all of who have proclaimed their devotion to Lambeth's promise and their acceptance of gay and lesbian people as full members of the Body of Christ. Will they issue an unambiguous statement, either jointly or individually, condemning the bill and calling for repentance from Ugandan church officials who support it?

Father Burwell Responds

Father Burwell has responded to my post in two emails sent last night. Rather than take any of what he said out of context, I will print them in their entirety below.

Dear Tim,

Thank you for taking the time to get to know me a little bit better today and I appreciated your kind report of our time together. I still feel we are closer on our theology than you do, but I can live with that.  I only wish that you had mentioned more of the why I voted in favor of the four resolutions. In his speech to the convention the bishop passionately urged us to support the first four resolutions.  The first resolution was not perceived by us the way you did, and I thought I made that clearer that I evidently did.  If I had thought it was as you presented it, I too would have had problems with it. 

Like you, I do agree resolution is problematical.  But Resolution 2 was a resolution on strategy for engagement with the wider church, not a plan to begin leaving it.  Resolution 2 did not take a stand on Scripture, ethics, or even the doctrine, discipline or worship of the Church. As a strategic proposal, the resolution was, in fact, amoral (neither immoral nor moral).  As I mentioned to you, because am a priest who made an ordination vow to support his bishop and because I am a dean chosen by the bishop to represent him, I do not consider disobedience on amoral issues to be an acceptable course of action. Quite simply, I am duty bound to follow my Bishop's leadership in this matter, even if the strategy is not one that I myself would pursue. Thus, when faced with a vote on an issue of amoral strategy, I believe I can disagree privately with my bishop but I must publicly support him when he specifically and publicly asks me to do so.

My vote on Resolution 2 was motivated by catholic ecclesiology. I see the promises I made in my ordination vows requiring fidelity with my Bishop on matters of this nature despite my personal reluctance to pursue such a strategy. Had Bishop Lawrence asked something of me that plainly contradicted the teaching of Holy Scripture or the Church throughout the ages; that would have been an entirely different matter.  No one is ever obligated to obey Episcopal leadership when to do so would require sin against God. I have conducted my entire priestly ministry with these principles ever before me.

I can not understand how my loyalty to my bishop in a non-moral resolution on a strategy intended to engage the church (not leave it) by staying and making a statement of conscience should call into question my fitness to serve you as bishop. I simply can not understand how something like this completely negates (or at the very least discounts) all of my gifting in the very areas Upper South Carolina said it wanted for their next bishop. 

Is this grace? I wouldn't treat you this way and I humbly ask you to reconsider.

In Christ,

Jbb+

Email #2

Tim,

One last note and I'll shut up. You also wrote that Dioceses do not have the canonical right to reject individual resolutions with which they disagree. Actually, while canons passed by convention are binding, resolutions are not. This is why a canon was passed requiring ordination of females.

If resolutions of the Church are indeed as binding as canons, why were Bishop Browning and 28 other bishops allowed to go unpunished when they posted a statement years ago saying that they would not abide by a resolution passed by the 1979 Convention? Here is a quote from /Toward a Full and Equal Claim/: "...we cannot accept these recommendations or implement them in our dioceses..."

Their statement of 30 years ago was praised in the wider church as a statement of conscience. That is what SC was doing, in the eyes of the people who crafted it.

I promise I'll say no more till I hear back from you. Thank you for hearing me out.

In Christ,

Jbb+

The Bishop Candidate: The Very Reverend John B. Burwell Part 5 Lunch at Queen Anne's Revenge

The Very Reverend John B. Burwell,wrote to me after one of my posts and told me that I had misunderstood him. Some of our email exchange was posted here. We agreed to meet for lunch today to sit down in person and try to understand each other.

We met at Queen Anne's Revenge, a pirate-themed restaurant in the Disney-esque planned community of Daniel Island. We joked about how in the future there might be crack-dealer themed restaurants, with family-oriented rides at theme parks celebrating those fun-loving gangstas. He paid for my delicious lunch of shrimp and grits. I found him to be an engaging person, who seemed genuinely hurt that I didn't get him.

I told him my faith story, to help him understand why I hold onto The Episcopal Church like a lifeline, and why those who seem so insistent on theological correctness leave me cold and angry. He told me that he shares my passion for The Episcopal Church (no abbreviations today) and why he would never, ever, under any circumstances, leave it. He told me that he had paid a steep price for his outspokenness among the secessionists in his Diocese, describing himself as being "shunned" for walking out of an August 13 meeting of the Standing Committee where five resolutions were prepared for the special diocesan convention of October 24. The text of those resolutions is here.

The first of those resolutions,“The Lordship of Christ and the Sufficiency of Scripture” was passed by 86.7% of those present, including Fr. Burwell. I could not have voted for it, since it contains a statement that I take exception to: “The substance of the 'doctrine, discipline and worship' of  The Episcopal Church ...is expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Creeds, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral and the theology of the historic prayer books.” The (Apostles' and Nicene) Creeds, yes. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, maybe. The Thirty-Nine Articles and "the historic prayer books:" not so fast, buster.

The Thirty-Nine Articles are received by The Episcopal Church as part of the heritage of the Anglicanism, and while they are in the Book of Common Prayer (in the section under "Historical Doctrines of the Church"), they are not part of the doctrine, discipline or worship of The Episcopal Church.  According to the Canons, the doctrine of The Episcopal Church "is to be found in the Canon of Holy Scripture as understood in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and in the sacramental rites, the Ordinal and Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer.” The Discipline of the The Episcopal Church according to the Canons is “found in the Constitution, the Canons, and the Rubrics and the Ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer”. The worship of course, is found in the Prayer book's Daily Offices and the Sacramental and Episcopal Services, as well the Book of Occasional Services. As to "the historical prayer books," well that is a long, seperate subject in itself. Suffice it to say the there is one authorized Prayer Book for The Episcopal Church, that of 1979. All the others are interesting historical documents in themselves, but we don't use them in worship any more. This all is pretty weird considering the title of Resolution was "the Sufficiency of Scripture."

Resolution 2 is really problematic. It authorizes "the Bishop and Standing Committee to begin withdrawing from all bodies of the Episcopal Church" with which the Diocese of South Carolina disagrees. Further, it declares that "the passage of Resolutions DO25 and CO56 to be null and void, having no effect in this Diocese." The reference is to resolutions passed by General Convention this year. Dioceses do not have the canonical right to reject individual resolutions with which they disagree. They are binding upon all jurisdictions of the Episcopal Church until amended or superseded.

Resolutions 3 and 4 are perfectly innocuous, considering that Dioceses have the right to have missional relationships with other Dioceses anyway. They are written in a sort of "Here I Stand" breathlessness, but they are like saying "we love Jesus." You don't need a resolution to do it.

Resolution 5 is a particularly noxious bit of sexual purity doublethink which says that the Diocese of South Carolina "will not condone prejudice or deny the dignity of any person, including but not limited to, those who believe themselves to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered." Instead, it will "speak the truth in love as Holy Scripture commends for the amendment of life required of disciples of Christ." In other words, "those who believe themselves to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered" better stop believing that or risk damnation.

So how did Fr. Burwell vote? "I helped defeat Resolution 5, " he said, "because it singled out sexual sin from other other sins." On the others? "I voted for Resolution 2, because I am a Dean and in submission to my Bishop. To do otherwise would have required me to resign." He also supported 1,3 and 4.

We talked about the diaconal charge of submission and Fr. Burwell reminded me that he is not just a priest, but a deacon, and thus in absolute submission to his Bishop. Since Bishop Mark Lawrence told him he must vote for it, he did. Too bad he didn't resign over the issue. A resignation over that issue would have been seen favorably in Upper South Carolina, and just might have guranteed him selection as the Eighth Bishop of this Diocese.

John Burwell told me repeatedly, "I am not a politician. Sometimes I just say what comes to my mind." I suppose that was a defense against my telling him that his comments about Spanish language versions of Day By Day were offensive.

At the beginning of this process, I was determined not to endorse any of the candidates, but to explore their record and to try to determine how they would lead us as a Diocese. I will have to submit to whichever of them becomes Bishop or renounce my Ordination vows. My job as a Deacon is to tell you the truth.

John Burwell is a kind man, and I am thankful for the grace with which he reached out to me and received me. I am grateful to have gotten to know him better. He is deeper, more thoughtful and more engimatic than the one-dimensional character I had pictured him to be. The work he has done at Holy Cross reveals a gifted church planter and developer. He and I are miles apart theologically, but I am sure that his love for Jesus is genuine, and in The Episcopal Church that's supposed to be what keeps us in communion with each other.

Still, it all comes down to this: John Burwell's votes last week at his own Diocesan Convention call into question whether he can serve this Diocese or The Episcopal Church as a Bishop.

The Bishop Candidates: The Very Reverend Dr. Philip C. Linder

The Search Committee produced a slate of five candidates from which the Diocesan delegates, it hoped, would select the eighth Bishop of Upper South Carolina. A group of those delegates (three clergy, three lay) submitted a petition to include a sixth, The Very Reverend Dr. Philip C. Linder, Dean of Trinity Cathedral, Columbia. (Another disclosure is necessary here: I have known Philip for a number of years and I have deep respect for his ministry, his sense of Kingdom justice, and his courageous stand in public square on a number of key issues, beyond The Issue which threatens the soul of the Episcopal Church.)


Dean Linder was among the original nominees, but withdrew before the final selections were made. In a letter to his congregation after withdrawing, Linder wrote: “God has been relentless in his unwillingness to let go of my heart and soul, and I have sought to be faithful in my attentive listening and discipline of prayer to discover God’s will through his Son, Jesus Christ…This journey has led me full circle back to Trinity Cathedral, where I believe God, and I pray all of you, desire for me to continue to serve as your priest and dean.” Apparently the urging of those who signed the petition has convinced Dean Linder to change his mind.

Philip Linder’s faith journey is a familiar one to many Episcopalians: son of a Roman Catholic father and Lutheran mother, he was formed by the sacraments and when he met his future wife, who was Episcopalian, he joined The Episcopal Church. He began the discernment process for Holy Orders while still in college. He describes himself as “deeply passionate about my love for Jesus, The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and my desire to serve the people of God.”

He says that his management style is to surround himself with “really gifted people” that he expects “to be excellent in their field, with me as guide, encourager, and colleague.” He says that as Bishop he would bring three key qualities to the office: “loyalty to the vision of the diocese and to the oath at consecration to ‘guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church;” trust, which he describes as “assured reliance on the character, ability, and truth of the leader;” and flexibility: a willingness “to learn from one another and …to think outside of the box.”

On The Question, Dean Linder is clearly a moderate conservative. At the the 2006 General Convention, Linder voted in favor of resolution B033, which called upon Dioceses “to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.” That was coded language for non-celibate homosexuals, since obviously a certain Nazarene carpenter comes to mind when one ponders those “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church.”

Following that vote, he wrote in an op-ed piece in The State:

What is at stake here is the very soul of the Episcopal Church and Anglicanism. Our Anglican theology and heritage has held for centuries against radical liberalism or radical conservatism, maintaining that God’s truth is to be ultimately found in the tension of those extremes, and not in the extremes themselves. Today, human sexuality has become the front where those seeking to undermine Anglican identity for their definition of truth are waging the battle." (The original link to the article is no longer available, and ironically the only copy of it I could find was on the website of the radical anti-homosexual, anti-abortion and anti-Catholic activist, Steve Lefemine. The Spirit blows where it will.)

By the 2009 General Convention, says Dean Linder, he felt that “B033 would not hold anymore on its own, so the deep question for me was how can we find that Anglican place of middle ground? I felt we must come to the great Anglican principle of the via media—that the truth lies in the tension of the extremes.”

Linder served as a member of the World Mission Committee at General Convention, which was tasked with forming “a way forward” through the current morass. The way forward that emerged was resolution D025, “Anglican Communion: Commitment and Witness to Anglican Communion.” That resolution stated:

That the 76th General Convention recognize that gay and lesbian persons who are part of such relationships have responded to God's call and have exercised various ministries in and on behalf of God's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and are currently doing so in our midst; and be it further

Resolved, That the 76th General Convention affirm that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church, and that God's call to the ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church is a mystery which the Church attempts to discern for all people through our discernment processes acting in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church; and be it further

Resolved, That the 76th General Convention acknowledge that members of The Episcopal Church as of the Anglican Communion, based on careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and in light of tradition and reason, are not of one mind, and Christians of good conscience disagree about some of these matters.

D025 was an acknowledgement of, in Bishop Henderson’s words “where we are” as a denomination. The resolution recognizes the “mystery” of the call to ordination, and the deep divisions which exist because of God’s mysterious call of “unworthy servants” to ministry to the rest of the unworthy. In other words, it recognizes God’s “inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.”

As one of the authors of D025, Dean Linder says he is “fully committed to the Church’s theology of welcoming all baptized members into the full life of our church.” Still, for Dean Linder, that commitment does not include the blessing of same-sex relationships. He writes: “I firmly believe that neither The Episcopal Church nor the Anglican Communion is in any way prepared theologically or emotionally to embrace” same-sex blessings. In the long Christian battle over ritual sexual purity that began with St. Phillip’s baptism of an Ethiopian eunuch, Dean Linder is much more in tune with St. Peter’s ambivalence than St. Paul’s enthusiasm.

Dean Linder has two large challenges in becoming the next Bishop, both of which are rooted in his ambivalence: the first, on his call to being Bishop, since a few days before being drafted as the petition candidate, he was clearly convinced that he was supposed to stay on as Dean of the Cathedral. The second will be to explain how, if gay and lesbian Christians are “full members of the body of Christ” by virtue of baptism, and may be called to Holy Orders, how blessing their faithful, monogamous relationships can be withheld.

Of course this second question is one all the candidates have to answer. The conservatives will say that gays and lesbians are not called to Holy Orders and that their service as bishops, priests and deacons is “absolutely null and utterly void,” to borrow a quote from the Pope. I hope the answer from moderates will emerge on November 21 at St. John’s Shandon.

The Bishop Candidate: The Reverend Jerre Stockton Williams, Jr.

Thanks to Mark for noting that a combination of human imperfection, fatigue, single malt scotch and dyslexia had resulted in the deletion of Fr. William's last name in the original post. This is the corrected edition.

The incarnation of the Word of God means God’s self-communication in Jesus Christ. There is a reflection of the incarnation of the ‘Word’ in all human living. Every act and gesture is a word spoken. We are not platonizing or over-spiritualizing our view of sex when we say that every sexual act, feeling, or emotion has the power to become a disclosure of spirit to spirit. Sexuality is never something ‘by itself’. It is always a meaning incarnate.—Daniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love

Four candidates from the Bishop’s Search Committee have been examined so far in a vain attempt to unveil which two are the “moderates to liberals.” So I began my analysis of the final Search Committee Candidate in the hope that he could be the one lone liberal (maybe the Search Committee just can't count).

Fr. Williams is the rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Kerrville, Texas. He is the son of a noted constitutional law scholar and federal judge. He is also the nephew of one of the twentieth century’s leading Process Theologians, Daniel Day Williams, Professor of Theology at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Daniel Day Williams wrote one of the most influential works on human love and sexuality, The Spirit and Forms of Love. One would expect then, that Fr. Williams would display the type of scholarship reflective of such an intellectual provenance.

Fr. Williams (who is also a lawyer by training) is not a liberal like his uncle. His faith story is a riff on the standard Evangelical conversion account:

I had a profound experience of God’s grace through Jesus Christ and his Spirit. One night I was reading the Sermon on the Mount (some sort of Sunday School assignment), and it suddenly hit me: this is all about motives and I am so far away from where God wants me to be. I mostly did the right things outwardly, but it was always for my reasons: my good grades, my popularity, my achievement, my being in good standing with teachers, my, my, my. Although I did not think of it this way at the time, I was a Pharisee. I was immediately convicted by the gap between who God wants me to be and who I am. Somehow through Christ’s Spirit I was led right into Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and everything clicked. Suddenly I knew, not just intellectually but deep in my heart, that I was not so lovable in God’s eyes, but he loved me nonetheless, and even died on the cross for me.

Please don’t think I am hostile to evangelicalism. For all its flaws, and its tendency to wander off into literalism, solipsism and existentialism, evangelicalism is part of the modern Christian theological mainstream. I consider myself an heir of its tradition, though as a convert to the Anglican/Episcopal way, I have become suspicious of its emphasis on personal experience over theological rigor. A deep study of the letter to the Romans was part of my story too, so I do not have a problem with Williams going from the Kingdom justice of the Sermon on the Mount to the “Romans road” to salvation. (Note to cradle Episcopalians: those are Evangelical code words. If you have to ask, never mind…) What I’m worried about is if he ever came back.

Fr. Williams set off on his journey towards ordination with a clear call, which he heard in the words of Canticle 9: “Make God’s deeds known among the people; see that they remember that his name is exalted!” He still wears a stole embroidered by his wife with those words.

His method of dealing with conflict is first to “deal with any basic, immediate issues that could escalate the underlying conflict. The second and even more important task is to create a surrounding environment where all sides feel supported, and heard. My purpose is to seek resolution and reconciliation between the parties involved….This should and can be done with Christian charity and respect for all of the parties or sides. Of course, all of this is surrounded with love and constant prayer for the Spirit’s presence.”

However, Fr. Williams’ approach to the conflict around sexuality that threatens to rend our denomination does not follow his "purpose to seek resolution and reconciliation between the parties involved." Fr. Williams is a founder of Communion Partners, a group of Bishops and Priests who are committed “to becoming ‘a part of a “Covenanted” global Anglican body in communion with the See of Canterbury.’” That is a commitment which can and will “escalate the underlying conflict.” The so-called Anglican Covenant has been discussed in earlier posts, so I’m not going into it here. Suffice it to say that, rather than an “instrument of unity,” it is likely to become an instrument of division.

The Communion Partners sent as emissaries a group of seven Bishops to meet with Archbishop Rowan Williams on September 1. (The Dioceses of Albany, Dallas, North Dakota, Northern Indiana, South Carolina, West Texas and Western Louisiana were represented.) That meeting resulted in a report, which contained this interesting request to “Communion-minded members of The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion”:

We encourage dioceses and congregations, in the spirit of GC09 Resolution B030, to engage in “companion domestic mission relationships among dioceses and congregations within The Episcopal Church."

Resolution B030 was designed to encourage larger, financially stable Dioceses to have “companion domestic mission relationships among dioceses and congregations within The Episcopal Church, and especially with the member dioceses of the Domestic Missionary Partnership.” Members of the DMP are like mission congregations, they receive support from General Convention to help them carry out their missions until such time as they can stand on their own two feet. If the Communion Partners were interested in helping our mission Dioceses serve the Navajo or Inuit, I would go to their website right now and sign up. But that is not what this is about.

The Communion Partners are using the language of B030 to do something which was not intended in the resolution: “create a clear Communion identity within TEC.” While the Communion Partners may lament the fact, there is already a “clear Communion identity within TEC.” (What is it with the abbreviations, anyway? At best they are annoying, at worst they are a sort of shorthand for “The (apostate) Episcopal Church.” Why not just say it?) As long as the ABC invites the Bishops of TEC to LC then we have a CCIWTEC. Dioceses do not need to bind themselves together in little clusters, like the church in Corinth, where one group followed “Paul, another Apollos, another Cephas, another Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:12). That was divisive in ancient Corinth and would be divisive today, even under the rubric of creating a “clear Communion identity within TEC.”

Father Williams needs to explain why he does not think that The Episcopal Church has a “clear Communion identity,” but yet he is committed to remaining in it? Why in the world would he want to be a Bishop in a Church that has “essentially rejected the teaching of 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 as the mind of the Communion?”

I’m not buying it, but I guess the Search Committee did. Or maybe they just didn’t know how really radical this thinking is. Or what a liberal is. Or why it is so distressing to so many that all we have to choose from is five, Southern, white, middle-aged, conservative male candidates.

The Bishop Candidates: The Reverend W. Andrew Waldo

Theological liberalism, is according The Encyclopedia Britannica, “a form of religious thought that establishes religious inquiry on the basis of a norm other than the authority of tradition.” The Catholic Encyclopedia describes it as “certain tendencies in the intellectual, religious, political, and economical life, which implied a partial or total emancipation of man from the supernatural, moral, and Divine order.” I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that, by any known standard for evaluating theological thinking, the Bishop Search Committee’s appraisal of its slate of candidates as including “two moderates to liberals,” is simply wrong. It is a slate of five conservatives.


The Reverend W. Andrew Waldo, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Excelsior Minnesota, is among them. Fr. Waldo was in a previous episcopal election process, as a petition candidate for Bishop Suffragan in the Diocese of Alabama in 2007. He also serves on the faculty of CREDO, the Episcopal ministry that helps both clergy and laity discern the future direction of their vocation.

Some might find evidence for a latent liberalism in the fact that Fr. Waldo is a signatory to the Clergy Letter on Religion and Science. The Clergy Letter Project “is an endeavor designed to demonstrate that religion and science can be compatible and to elevate the quality of the debate of this issue.” The Clergy Letter states that:

Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts. We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist.

Hardly liberal, those thoughts are comfortably within the mainstream of conservative theology. This approach does not reject the authority of the Holy Scriptures but attempts to elevate it by freeing it from the clutches of both liberalism and fundamentalism (which uses rationalism to “prove” Biblical literalism).


Of course, there is also Andrew Waldo’s thoughtful essay on whether or not congregations should engage in the theologically dubious (but increasingly common) practice of “open communion,” by inviting unbaptized persons to the Lord’s Supper. In that, essay, he wrote:

Are we going to trade substantive, attentive, and deep reflection on entering the Christian journey in exchange for a hope that being what some would call radically open will somehow accomplish the main point about what it means to be Christian? Can we be eucharistically accommodating and at the same time offer a meaningful ordeal that forms loyalties and strong faith communities? Is even that new ordering– having fully open communion and fully developed catechesis–the better way? Would it not be worth considering how we are concretely hospitable in every way that we encounter others–in our narthexes, worship services, parish halls, homes, outreach ministries and study groups– and to invite and walk with those who would learn of costly discipleship and seek Christ in the waters of baptism?

If the broader polity is not of concern to the locality in which change is taking place, we encounter the ecclesiological dimension of this issue. At the very least, I would suggest that Episcopal clergy in particular who seek this change have an obligation to make a case for all of us. That way, the conversation is engaged at lay and ordained levels, and, above all, it is engaged beyond the walls of a particular community.

As we seek to answer these questions, the stakes for our church are profound, for we live in a culture that is plagued in the most deadly sense of the word by undifferentiated inclusivity. And yet in baptism we have a rich opportunity to provide differentiated, strong leadership. The final questions then are basic: Who are we, really? To whom do we belong? And how are we going to communicate our faith to others hospitably?

Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds remarkably conservative to me, and even opens a window into Fr. Waldo’s thoughts on what the Search Committee really wants to know: would he, as Bishop, bless the unions of same-sex couples? Before we examine his answer to the only question that matters to some people, let’s look at Andrew Waldo’s faith journey.
The son of an Episcopal priest in Montgomery, Alabama, Waldo rebelled against the faith of his fathers. He says he was “the prosecuting attorney at the dinner table—questioning, probing, and challenging everything my parents believed. But I knew this: I wouldn’t be able to budge them one inch. Their faith was deeply grounded on the rock of Jesus Christ.”


He went off to study music at the New England Conservatory, and following the failure of his first, early marriage, he heard the voice of God calling him to faith. He is a born-again evangelical, with a strong sense of the God Who demands a new life from those who are called. He was listening to a rehearsal of Hernando Franco’s Magnificat, when the Blessed Mother’s words sprang to life: “He has shown strength… scattered the proud… cast down the mighty…and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry…and sent the rich away empty.” (Deacons love the Song of Mary, but then we would.) He found himself in a process of discernment, “grounded in faith in Jesus Christ as my lord and savior.” (Those are not the sentiments of a liberal, in case you’re wondering.)  “Grounded in faith in Jesus Christ,” Fr. Waldo is liberal about one thing: he liberally seasons his words with scriptural allusions and references, revealing that faith clearly. In fact, of the candidates we have looked at so far, Waldo is the most unequivocally Biblical.

On the matter of same-sex blessings, Waldo is no less firm than the others: “not permitting blessings until the Church has come to one mind.” But he recognizes that the questions before us are difficult and he trusts “the Holy Spirit to guide us, and that we will find a way forward within the bounds of the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church.” Liberals (and some moderates) will be disappointed here—this candidate is not one of them, and he will not move the Diocese away from our conservative moorings.

He is not, as noted earlier, a fan of “undifferentiated inclusivity.” And, as he wrote in his essay on communion and baptism, he would challenge the people of God in Upper South Carolina to ask: “Who are we, really? To whom do we belong? And how are we going to communicate our faith to others hospitably?” Those are the questions that we really need answers to, rather than worrying about the sexual orientation of the person next to us at the communion rail. Only we can answer them, not our Bishop, our priests, or our deacons.

The Bishop Candidates: The Reverend David. F. O. Thompson

The Reverend David F. O. Thompson is Rector of St. Bartholomew's, North Augusta, South Carolina. He has been part of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina since his arrival at St. Bartholomew's and during his long ministry there St. Bartholomew's has grown into a solid, mature Christian ministry. [Full disclosure: I have known Fr. Thompson for a number of years, and though we are not close, I have always found him to be thoughtful, kind and ready to engage a challenge, spiritually and intellectually.]

His faith story is one familiar to many Episcopalians: he never had a “Damascus Road” experience, he never had to get lost in order to get found by God. His “innate faith was strengthened and enlarged by hearing the faith stories of others.” The narrative of faith and the shared story of God's people are themes throughout his responses. He writes theologically, almost too carefully, with an eye to the long arc of Christian history, and without dogmatic or partisan rancor.

He describes his management and leadership styles as “open and cooperative” with a goal of creating shared vision among the laity and the governing board (the vestry). He has a very healthy view of the dynamics of organizational governance, even envisioning a Diocesan Executive Council (the governing body of the Diocese) being transformed into “a board that helps develop and reviews the strategy thus becoming more a part of the creative process and not just a repository for reports.” He does not, he says, shy away from conflict, but sees it as “a source of opportunity and fertile ground for the work of the Holy Spirit.”

Fr. Thompson's response to the third question, on the blessing of same-sex relationships, acknowledges the painful and difficult place in which the Episcopal Church finds itself. Theologically, the work around sexuality is unfinished, and we live in an almost, but not-yet state of inclusion for gay and lesbian people in the Church. Because General Convention has not authorized the blessings of same-sex unions, Fr. Thompson would not permit them. Though in the previous answer he wrote that “ministry is not about engaging in safe activities, for the Church is called to take risks.” Same-sex blessings are not one of the risks Fr. Thompson would embrace.

He is quite firm, however, that “the same-gender issue is not an issue of salvation and should not be at the center of the diocese's focus or ministry” and that people do not “choose” their sexual orientation. He also expects that, eventually, General Convention will authorize same-sex blessings and when that happens, “I would consult with the leadership of the Diocese and do what is best for all concerned.”

Since Fr. Thompson has not written or spoken widely about same-gender issues, we only have his response to this question to gauge his pastoral theology. He is essentially a conservative, unwilling to go beyond the councils of the Church, concerned more with mission than with issue-driven politics. If Fr. Thompson is elected Bishop, one would expect a continuity with the policies of Bishop Henderson: no non-celibate, unmarried persons would be ordained and same-sex blessings would not be permitted. Though the Search Committee has pegged Fr. Thompson as one of the two “moderate to liberal” candidates, he is not a liberal by any reasonable definition of the term.

It is not my intent to endorse any of the candidates, but instead to explore who they are and try to discern how they might lead based on a careful analysis of their answers. My reading of Fr. Thompson is that he would lead carefully and pastorally, and not take the Diocese too far to the either the right or the left. In fact, each time he describes his theology, it is as “Trinitarian,” which would, one hopes, go without saying for any minister of the Gospel. One might wish for a little more Jesus here, a little more passion, a little more justice. But the Trinity is a theology of community, and David Thompson cares more for community than controversy. In a time of extremes, he is a conservative centrist.

The Bishop Candidates: The Reverend Canon Dr. Neal O Michell: Part 2--Yo' Momma?

Let’s say you are an Episcopal priest, having gone through a deep and prolonged period of prayerful discernment about your ministry and its future direction. And further, let’s say that, pulling weeds in your garden or washing the soap off in your shower, you hear the voice of God say: “Hey, dude!” (because God’s a dude and never, you know, talks to girl priests anyway, because they’re not dudes, like Jesus and his Dad and the apostles and all, and so not really priests anyway. I mean you can’t call them Father, right?) So you fill out those long and numbingly repetitive Church Deployment Office forms for Bishop and get some of your friends to nominate you for every vacant episcopate between Fairbanks and Miami, or at least those in safe, white Southern dioceses that want orthodox-by-God Bishops who won’t ordain homosexuals and liberals (who are just homosexuals in the closet). What then? How would people know if you’re the right man for the job?

Neal Michell says you should: “perform a Google search on your bishop candidate. What has he written?” When you Google “Neal O. Michell,” you find out that he’s written this:

We Americans so chafe at being identified with the infidel. We don't want to be associated with the reprobate TEC, and so we will reject the primates' plan and preempt their timetable because we are so ashamed of TEC. It may be that God wants to shame us just as he shamed Hosea by calling him to marry a prostitute. It may be that God wants us to endure the embarrassment of TEC and trust the authority that God has placed over us—the primates—to bring a God-ordained order out of the chaos that the leadership of TEC has brought about.

Of course, you shouldn’t be upset when people begin to wonder if you really want to be a Bishop in a Church that you’re ashamed of, because she’s a prostitute. (All right, I’m going to admit it: The Reverend Canon Dr. Neal O. Michell has angered me by calling my mom a whore. Thus, keyboard dripping with sarcasm, I have written this post. Now I can never be Bishop.*) The people of Upper South Carolina need to know if Canon Michell currently disavows his previous shame at being a part of “TEC.” That’s a really important question, since he also wrote this:

I learned a long time ago that when interviewing candidates for a staff position, vicar or rector or church planter, “past performance is the best indicator of future performance.”

It would be rather difficult, I would think, to be Bishop in a denomination that one is ashamed of. Perhaps Canon Michell could explain why we need to ignore his past performances.

*Of course I can’t be Bishop anyway, because Deacons haven’t been allowed to be Bishops since 1545 when Deacon Reginald Pole was made Archbishop of Canterbury by the Pope. Poor Deacon Reggie managed to be the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, forever reminding the Church which of the three Holy Orders is the “inferior order.”

The Bishop Candidate: The Reverend Canon Dr. Neal O. Michell

Neal O. Michell is Canon to the Ordinary in Dallas, having served for seven years as Canon Missioner for Strategic Development. He was previously a finalist in the episcopal search processes in the Diocese of Texas, the Diocese of Dallas, and the Diocese of Tennessee. He is an author of several books on church leadership and a well-known workshop leader, specializing in church growth and development. He is the author of Covenant-communion.net, a website and online community for conservative Anglicans. His essay after the election in Dallas is thoughtful and sad, and well worth the read, for anyone who has suffered any sort of public loss.

But he is now one of the finalists in Upper South Carolina and we need to know if he is the one the Holy Spirit has chosen to lead us forward. His responses to the search committee's questions give some insight into what he thinks and how and where he would lead. His management style, he says, is based on the communal vision of a learning community, visional, historically aware, accountable, and celebration. In other words, we aren't the first ones in this race towards salvation, we need to share the vision of those gone before, we need to hold each other accountable and we need to learn to laugh once in a while. He deals with congregational conflict, he says, by listening and proposing solutions that will be more than a zero sum game. This is all good, well-written advice, under-girded by years of experience.

The problem with the answers to the questions (by all of the candidates) is that the Search Committee never gives them an opportunity to talk about spirituality, prayer, baptism, justice, ecumenical or inter-faith issues or any of the real things we need to know about a prospective Bishop. It's as if the sole purpose of a Bishop is to settle congregational disputes and issue encyclicals on sex. (Yes, you've heard this before, sorry. I just am amazed, even yet. Okay, I'm done.) So we have to peel off the onion layers in order to find out what is really in the candidates' minds.

The third question is the first opportunity we really have to look closely at Canon Michell. In his counsel to the theoretical priest wanting to bless a same-sex union, he would say that “the Church does not authorize the blessing of same sex unions. We are part of a larger family, not just of The Episcopal Church but of the Anglican Communion and a part of the larger Church catholic. As an Episcopal diocese we are committed to the apostolic faith and to apostolic order. Our commitment to apostolic faith means that we are not really free on our own to do such things as the blessing of same sex unions. Those are not the norms of the Anglican Communion, nor are they permitted among the churches of our ecumenical partners, namely the Roman Catholic churches and the Orthodox churches.”

Bishop Henderson has said as much so this is nothing new. Canon Michell would, as part of his getting to know the clergy, establish groups to begin to talk about their faith journeys, resurrection stories and to pray for each other. "I would call these same groups to study the Anglican Covenant, and then, I would have these same groups begin to study the whole sexuality issue: first by bringing in theologians to inform us and to lead us in conversation. I would then encourage the clergy to repeat this process in their own churches.”

Canon Michell is a strong supporter of the dubiously named “Anglican Covenant,” the Windsor Process "solution" to the Anglican Communion's disagreements over human sexuality. The Covenant, first proposed at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 2007, has undergone several revisions, as recently as May 2009.

A little history is in order. The Protestant Reformers were big on covenants, confessions and statements of faith. The Church of England, on the other hand, refused to go beyond the Ecumenical Creeds (the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, and the Athanasian Creed), believing that those had bound together the church for more than a thousand years, and thus had stood the test of time and the fires of schism and heresy. The closest Episcopalians come to anything like a covenant is the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1886- 1888--and it's really a covenant with ourselves. The quadrilateral is a four-point statement that says Episcopalians are willing to be in communion with any Christian body that accepts:

• The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the revealed Word of God.
• The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith.
• The two Sacraments,--Baptism and the Supper of the Lord,--ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.
• The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church.

That was it, simple sweet and easy to digest. Of course, it never really got us too far down the road to ecumenism, but that's another whole story. Now the authors of the Windsor Report want a radical change to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church by insisting:

• that Anglicanism is so fractured or ephemeral that a communal covenant is necessary to hold it together
• that there are "Instruments of Communion": the Lambeth Conference, Primates' Meeting, and Anglican Consultative Council which must be given the power of a Magesterium to approve who is truly Anglican and who isn't
• that the role of the provincial Primates is judicial and quasi-papal

Now, I am sure that I have over-simplified the Anglican Covenant, and I might be accused justly of having caricatured it, but I supposed that you didn't want too wonky an analysis. Let's just say that the Anglican Covenant has not been, and likely will not be approved by General Convention. So it's dead, right?

Not so fast. Canon Michell, (he's a lawyer, by training) argues that individual dioceses of a Province may enter directly into the Anglican Covenant with the Archbishop of Canterbury, thus making them official members of the Anglican club, even if their Provincial assembly (like the American General Convention) rejects it. “It is the dioceses in The United States that are in communion with the See of Canterbury which comprise the Episcopal Church. It is their being in communion with the See of Canterbury that makes the individual dioceses collectively to comprise the Episcopal Church, not the Anglican province known as The Episcopal Church which authorizes individual dioceses to be recognized as in Communion with the See of Canterbury and, therefore, legitimately Anglican.”

In a 2006 interview with Upper South Carolina's own Sarah Hey, ( one of the unofficial leaders in our Diocese of the “orthodox”--as opposed, I guess, to the heretics) on the traditionalist website Stand Firm in Faith, Canon Michell was questioned by Ms. Hey for what she considered the Diocese of Dallas' insufficiently conservative stance on a number of issues. In that interview Canon Michell stated:

"We really are two different churches under one roof. We don’t really agree on what constitutes the mission of the church. We don’t have a common mind about what constitutes evangelism. We certainly have no common mind on what constitutes authority and whether past decisions are binding on the churches. There is nothing really wrong our core documents: the Prayer Book, constitution and canons, and so on. The de jure of our common life is fine. How we govern ourselves is a mess. I’m not sure the denomination is salvageable. An amicable divorce is probably in the best interest of all parties."

Those comments are problematic. Back in 2006, Canon Michell felt that The Episcopal Church had perfectly sufficient core documents, but his answer to the Search Committee indicates that he now supports an Anglican Covenant as a core document of Anglicanism. Further, Canon Michell believes that dioceses should "go it alone," without the support of the Province in they reside. Back then, he thought that the only solution to our divisions was “an amicable divorce,” and now he assures the people of Upper South Carolina that he is committed to staying in The Episcopal Church.

No big deal. People change their minds all the time. But Neal Michell is too fine a theologian to be this sloppy with his thinking, so I'm not sure what has happened to change his mind. Either we are insufficiently governed and need “Instruments of Unity” with police powers to make us more Catholic and less Anglican, or we need to just chop the whole thing up, align ourselves in ghettos of like-minded people and call Anglicanism an interesting theory, like global warming. (That was a joke. Don't spam me!)

If we are making decisions on who gets ordained in our church based on the ephemeral dream of reconciling with Rome (as Canon Michell asserts), then that hope just received a death blow on Tuesday, when Pope Benedict XVI approved an "Apostolic Constitution" to accept Anglicans who want to convert to Roman Catholicism, either individually or in groups, while maintaining some semblance of Anglican worship. Both Canterbury and Rome tried to put their smiley faces on, but it is clear that Rome is no longer even interested in the fiction of a catholicity which includes Anglicanism. That only leaves Orthodoxy, but they are going to demand that, not only do we get rid of women clergy, but change that pesky little filioque clause in the Nicene Creed.("Who proceeds from the Father and the Son"). If you think sexuality is hard, remember this was the centerpiece of the original Great Schism, and Humpty Dumpty never quite got glued back together.

At the very least, Canon Michell should explain why we need to kill Anglicanism in order to save it and in which of the "two churches" comprising the The Episcopal Church he wants to be Bishop.

The Bishop Candidates--A Response from the Very Reverend John B. Burwell (and the Deacon's reponse to the reponse)

date Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 8:40 PM

subject From John Burwell

Deacon Tim,

I do not blame you for being suspect and skeptical about me. If another opinion would help, I would invite you to contact the Reverend David Williams of St. Stephens, Charleston. Here's a recent Quote from Fr. Williams on his website (http://www.ststephenscharleston.org/aboutus.htm):

One may ask, “Well, where does St. Stephen’s stand in all of this?” Being who we are – “indiscriminately inclusive” – I think says it all. We are not fundamentalists in the way we approach Scripture, and we are a diverse and inclusive congregation and plan to remain that way. Were it possible, we would bless same sex unions. ... As for the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the priesthood and episcopacy, there can be no question in my mind that we support it, not as a matter of justice, but as a matter of what is right since baptism is the key to ones entrance into the “Christian faith and life,” not ones sexual orientation.

Although David and I do differ on sexuality issues we are very good friends, nevertheless. His email address is rector@ststephenscharleston.org. You call him at 843-723-8818.

Better yet, you might ask me! I'll be happy to answer any question you ask me as non-politically as I can. To answer what appears to be your most pressing question, I do not desire to leave the Episcopal Church. I do not plan to leave, and furthermore, I would not work to take the Upper Diocese of South Carolina out of the Episcopal Church were I blessed to be your bishop.

I am praying for you and for the EDUSC. Would you pray for me?

In Christ,

Jbb+

I sent this response to Fr. Burwell this morning.

Dear Fr. Burwell:

Thanks for the email explaining your intention to stay within The Episcopal Church should you be elected Bishop of Upper South Carolina.

As a Deacon, my job is interpret the needs, concerns and hopes of the world to the Church. I can only hope the Church responds in faithfulness. From the perspective of job security for the Holy Order of Deacons, I guess that's good. Until the Lord returns in glory, we are assured of being able to shout into the wind, speak in unknown tongues and continue to make ourselves annoyingly and largely irrelevant to a Church which wants comfortable words instead of anything having to do with the needs, concerns and hopes of the world.

One thing the world does not need is a Church which reflects the divisive, secessionist, self-validating zeitgeist of what passes for civic engagement these days. The world is not concerned to discover a talk radio Church, an obstructionist Church, a Church which protects the rich, the well-fed, the healthy, at the expense of the poor, the hungry and the sick. What the world hopes for is a Church that looks a little more like Jesus and little less like the power structures that it has to endure each day.

I know that you can fill up Church buildings by appealing to Christians who believe that the values of Jesus are enshrined in the American nation (or one of its political parties). I know that you can rally the faithful when you struggle against the godless, liberal, homosexual, abortionist agenda. I know that people who are uncomfortable with uncertainty are always going to be attracted to a form of faith which not only claims to have all the answers, but rewards the powerful for knowing them already. I know that kind of religion really appeals to people, particularly in a place that so reveres political secessionism, it honors a flag which was carried by an insurrectionist army intent on destroying its own spirit. I know those things. I just do not believe that they are the needs, concerns and hopes of the world.

Frankly, I couldn't care less what side of the ritual sexual purity debate you're on, whether or not you believe in ordaining women, homosexuals or frogs. I don't care if you want an Anglican Covenant or lay presidency at the Eucharist. If you become my Bishop, I will have to submit to your authority. But that does not mean that I will hesitate to speak the truth to you, regardless of whether that offends you.

In that spirit, here's one last bit of Diaconal rant: your comments on the Convention blog from July 15 were probably meant to be humorous, but they weren't. They were offensive, insensitive and, smacked of racial bigotry. They are not sentiments that any Episcopal minister should hold, and they are certainly not sentiments that a Bishop should hold. The fastest growing congregation in the Diocese of Upper South Carolina is not in a comfortable, wealthy suburb. It is a congregation of Spanish-speaking immigrants, many of whom are economic refugees here without legal documentation. You ask why they are in the Anglican church? Because they heard somebody at Iglesia Episcopal de Santa Maria explaining how knowing Jesus would fulfill their needs, concerns and hopes. If you are to be the Bishop of this Diocese, my prayer for you would be that you come to know those people and their great faithfulness.

And speaking of prayer: yes, I will continue to pray for you, and hope that you would remember me as well in your prayers.

Pax Christi,

Tim

The Bishop Candidates: The Very Reverend John B. Burwell--Part 3: Same Sex Blessings and the Way Forward

In his answer to the third question from the Search Committee, Fr. Burwell begins by citing the catholic nature of the Anglican Communion, “where the actions of some can and do affect the lives of all.” On whether the blessing of a same-sex union could be sanctioned, he writes: “At present, the Mind of the Communion is against such an action as reflected in Lambeth 1.10, the Windsor Report, Dar Es Salaam and all recent Anglican Communion gatherings.”

There’s a problem with that last sentence: it’s not true. The “Mind of the Communion” is not against such actions. The “Mind of the Communion” is confused, at best. As a matter of fact, in some parts of the Communion, same-sex unions are already being blessed. Fr. Burwell cites “Lambeth 1.10, the Windsor Report, Dar Es Salaam and all recent Anglican Communion gatherings” as proof of the unity of the Communion’s Mind.

While the 1998 Lambeth Conference passed Resolution 1.10, stating that homosexual activity is “incompatible with scripture” it also passed Human Sexuality, a theological inquiry into human sexuality and the Church’s teaching. That report concluded: “We have prayed, studied and discussed these issues, and we are unable to reach a common mind on the scriptural, theological, historical, and scientific questions that are raised. There is much that we do not understand.”

The Windsor Report stated: “We remind all in the Communion that Lambeth Resolution 1.10 calls for an ongoing process of listening and discernment, and that Christians of good will need to be prepared to engage honestly and frankly with each other on issues relating to human sexuality. It is vital that the Communion establish processes and structures to facilitate ongoing discussion. One of the deepest realities that the Communion faces is continuing difference on the presenting issue of ministry by and to persons who openly engage in sexually active homosexual relationships. Whilst this report criticises those who have propagated change without sufficient regard to the common life of the Communion, it has to be recognised that debate on this issue cannot be closed whilst sincerely but radically different positions continue to be held across the Communion. The later sections of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 cannot be ignored any more than the first section, as the primates have noted. Moreover, any demonising of homosexual persons, or their ill treatment, is totally against Christian charity and basic principles of pastoral care. We urge provinces to be pro-active in support of the call of Lambeth Resolution 64 (1988) for them to “‘reassess, in the light of … study and because of our concern for human rights, its care for and attitude toward persons of homosexual orientation.’”

Fr. Burwell’s reference to Dar Es Salaam, is to a 2007 gathering of Anglican Primates in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The report that emerged from that gathering, while deeply critical of the U.S. and Canadian churches, also noted: “The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke for us all when he said that it is through liturgy that we express what we believe, and that there is no theological consensus about same sex unions.” It would seem that “no theological consensus” is the best way to describe “the Mind of the Communion” on human sexuality.

Next, Burwell confuses blessings of same-sex unions with marriage, when he writes: “We must find other and better ways to be pastoral and to love to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters without tinkering with the sanctity of Holy Matrimony.” The question, of course, was about blessing same sex unions, not gay marriage. Maybe this why one reason the Anglican Communion cannot be of one mind: we can’t even get basic the hermeneutics right.

As to moving past our current difficulties, Fr. Burwell states: “If we make a firm commitment to devote the resources of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina to missional efforts we will, as a result, focus on the important (Matthew 28:16f) and be less inclined to be seduced by what is known as the tyranny of the urgent. That is how we move forward and move past our divisions.” On that, John Burwell and I could not agree more.

Reading John Burwell’s obfuscations and confusion in answering the Committee’s question is disturbing. But not as disturbing as reading what John Burwell really thinks. In fact, the real question for John Burwell is this: What do you believe about the Episcopal Church? And did you mislead the Search Committee when you told them that you “support, without question, remaining in The Episcopal Church?”

On a 2006 blog post, Burwell was quoted as saying:

I have to keep reminding myself that this is not my battle. This battle belongs to the Lord. He will win it. We prayed for clarity, and boy-oh-boy, we got it. By voting the way this House has decided to vote today on so many resolutions, they have indeed clarified themselves. The other House, the House of bishops concurs. We really do have two religions trying to exist under one roof. We are a house divided against itself. Jesus is quite clear about the ramifications of such a design.

A January 7 2007 Courier and Post article had this to say about Fr. Burwell:

John Burwell, rector at Holy Cross Church on Sullivan’s Island, said the Episcopal Church is now “under judgment.” “We have erred and strayed from his ways like lost sheep,” he said in a September interview. “We have done ourselves in, and as a consequence, the church is under judgment. Schism is caused by sin. ... We are two churches under one roof. It’s like oil and water — it’s just not going to work. Unfortunately, it appears that there will be a realignment.”

Two religions trying to exist under one roof? Oil and water? Does that sound like someone who supports, without question, remaining in the Episcopal Church?

The Bishop Candidates: The Very Reverend John B. Burwell-- Part 2 Management Style and Conflict Resolution

Fr. Burwell’s response to this question can be blamed partially on the question’s utter inanity. It is an example of how leadership in the American church has become confused with leadership in corporate settings, as if the qualities which would make one the darling of Wall Street would equate to being great in the Kingdom of God. Burwell says he is collaborative and “well-trained in Systems Theory and in all aspects of resolving conflict.”

He condemns a “culture permeated by divorce, by ego, by consumerism which believes that the customer is always right,” which, by the standards of Jesus Christ are justly condemned. Without mentioning the Biblical basis for it (strange for an evangelical), he outlines the Matthew 18 method of conflict resolution: going to the one who has offended you and trying to make amends. (Mt 18:15-17) He does not tolerate third party complaints or vows of confidentiality and says that people who gossip are “terrorists in the Church.” He urges all to take the initiative and try to resolve conflict “as Christ on the cross assumed the burden of bridging our separation from God.” He says he does his best to listen to the parties in conflict “from a non-judgmental perspective and I commit to make it as safe as possible to deal with the issues being raised.”

All of that is good. But does Fr. Burwell believe it, especially when it comes to conflict within the larger Church? He writes: “Within the Church we each need to be held accountable for our speech.” One assumes that “speech” includes written comments, so I would like to examine briefly how Fr. Burwell is dealing with the current conflicts in the Episcopal Church.

The answer: he’s certainly not non-judgmental. Fr. Burwell was the chair of the deputation from the Diocese of South Carolina, and as such, he made daily posts on the Holy Cross website. In one of those posts, from July 7, he writes of the Presiding Bishop’s opening address: “She said if you believe in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ you are a heretic.”

But Fr. Burwell’s observation is a bit off. I won’t go so far as to label it “terrorism,” however, it’s not exactly what the PB said. Here is the excerpt from her address which aroused Burwell so:

The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention: Ubuntu. That word doesn’t have any “I”s in it. The I only emerges as we connect – and that is really what the word means: I am because we are, and I can only become a whole person in relationship with others. There is no “I” without “you,” and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the one who created us. Some of you will hear a resonance with Martin Buber’s I and Thou and recognize a harmony. You will not be wrong.

What the PB said is both clear and scriptural: Jesus died for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:2) The Western evangelical emphasis on personal salvation is a departure from the New Testament’s insistence that Jesus died to redeem the world. It’s a common theme in the Gospels and throughout the Epistles as well. When evangelicalism was infiltrated by Enlightenment rationalism with its emphasis on individualism, it jumped the track into heresy. Katherine Jefferts Schori was proclaiming orthodoxy, “what we have always believed, everywhere.” Where evangelicalism has its “Buddy Christ,” the scriptures (and the traditional teachings of the Church) proclaim the Savior of the World. While individuals are certainly saved, they are saved as part of God’s cosmic plan to liberate the entire creation from sin (Romans 8:19-21).

So, I have to say that Fr. Burwell’s management style is pure Wall Street, and his conflict resolution style, as far as the conflicts within the Episcopal Church go, is not one befitting a Bishop. Unless, of course, that Bishop intends to leave the Episcopal Church.