By Susan Fawcett

Since all kinds of uninformed reporters in the secular media have been adding their opinions to the mix, I thought I'd throw mine in there, which may be worth all the money you've just paid to get to see it, and may be just as objective as your hometown newspaper.

Here's a short, slanted, and totally oversimplified summary of what the House of Bishops' response to the Primates' Communique says (which, for the record, is nothing new at all):

Dear Primates:

First, we still love our gay and lesbian people. We agreed last summer not to consecrate them (though we're not making promises about anyone who might be single), or authorize any prayer book revisions for them, so that you would not write us off entirely. But only for a while. And yes, there are some of us who are doing everything we can short of those two promises to speak up with and for them. (If that troubles you, please see point The Fourth).

Second, we still love you and all of our Anglican Brothers and Sisters (though we're seriously peeved at a particular set of you who are using some seriously sketchy funding to put forward a massive smear campaign, take away buildings that were pledged to us, and give away a bunch of purple shirts to people who couldn't be duly elected to earn them). We love learning from you and with you. We want to follow Jesus right alongside you. We think we have a few things to contribute to you, too. Please don't stop speaking to us.

Third, even though we really do love you, we aren't going to let you push us around and change the rules of how the Anglican Communion works. No, you may not come into our house and tell us how to do things. That was never what we agreed to.

Fourth, since we agreed way back at Lambeth in 1998 that we should ALL be listening to the experiences of gay and lesbian people, and making sure they are treated with the dignity and respect that human beings tend to deserve, we've decided to make that 'Listening Process' a priority. So should you (since you said you would).

Fifth, we'd like to remind you that the Anglican Communion was never meant to be a legislative body. We're more like a family. You keep complaining that we're being 'colonialist,' and thrusting our ways upon everyone else. We think that (how do we say this pastorally? Sigh.) in this situation, perhaps that might be the pot calling the kettle black.

See you at Lambeth!

Love,
Bishops, Episcopal Church USA

And, again, totally oversimplified, here is my assessment of the Important Things that happened at the House of Bishops last week. Note that there is no mention of their response to the Communique in this list.

1. Our Bishops underlined for the Primates, for the umpteenth time, that they do not have the authority to make decisions for the Episcopal Church (that would be the job of General Convention, which is made up of lay people and clergy, who are elected to their positions at General Convention. We shan't go into how post-colonial this is compared to other
structures around the world, Thus, there's no sense in getting your knickers in a twist over what the House of Bishops writes to some Primates. If you're going to get upset about something, pick something that matters a little more.

2. The Archbishop of Canterbury joined them, and made some very interesting and refreshing remarks. For one, he suggested that members of disaffected parishes here in the US should look for signs of grace in the Episcopal Church (rather than creating some sort of other structure outside of it). The fact that he spoke candidly to the situation at all was a great gift. You can watch a video of his responses at a press conference here.

3. Our Bishops got out of their purple shirts and out of their offices and out of all the ridiculous yammering about politics, and did something to actually help people on the ground in New Orleans. Thank you.

The Rev. Susan Fawcett keeps the blog This Passage. She serves a parish the Diocese of Virginia, and supports the work of the General Convention publication The Center Aisle.

By Deirdre Good

Do not put your trust in rulers and in mortals in whom there is no salvation…Blessed is the one whose helper is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who guards truth forever, executing judgment for the wronged; giving food to the hungry (Ps 146: 3-7).

These words from Psalm 146 have been ringing in my ears ever since I read the Bishops' statement from New Orleans released earlier this week: "Put not your faith in princes! Trust and hope in God who alone redresses wrongs and who enacts justice!" Of course, the Bishops have done good work and to reach a degree of unanimity that responds to the Windsor Report while opening a way for full participation at Lambeth and commending a listening process is certainly pragmatic and noteworthy. But what good news does this statement proclaim to faithful glbt persons in the pews or at the altars of our churches every Sunday, in parishes here, in Britain, in Malawi, in Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Anglican Communion?

The Bishops declared: We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. This is a ringing declaration of justice (even if it misquotes Gal 3:28—the text says "male and female") but what does it actually mean in our dioceses or parishes? Does anyone believe gender discrimination doesn't exist on a local level? Just do a tally, for example, of the women and men rectors or clergy in your diocese and you will see what I mean. Or put yourself in place of a visitor to an Episcopal Church. No one can put a foot inside the door without being confronted by distinctions of all kinds from knowing your way around the books in the pews, to seeing whether people look like me and thus whether I'll be welcome. Are Bishops facilitating efforts to eradicate racism in their dioceses? Are dioceses discussing reparations for black Episcopalians?

Maybe the Bishops meant to interpret Gal 3:28 by one of the next declarations: We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. But is it the case in our parishes? Do I see glbt people like me represented at the altar, throughout the pews, on the vestry, in the diocese? Until I see something like fair representation in all these places (and others), statements like these have no teeth.

I have a job working for a church institution. But I know ordained glbt people who are not able to find employment in the church and whose God-given gifts the diocese in which they live is squandering. I know glbt lay persons who have been let go by their ecclesiastical employers. Where are the voices of bishops, deployment officers, priests and laypersons in our churches speaking out on their behalf or working quietly for justice and nondiscrimination?

So I say to the Bishops of our church: Let's work on implementing what you proclaim in your meeting by employing and promoting ordained and lay women and glbt people fairly and equally in your dioceses. To my gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered brothers and sisters I say: we always have the power of the purse to leave the church or to withhold our time and our talents to demand change. But if there is some hope that the statements from New Orleans hold out to us: that we have an ongoing and particular place at the table; that without all of us the body of Christ is fractured and broken; then let's take our witness –the angry patient tired but joyous witness of presence—as the church in the world to proclaim the incredible tireless love of God who guards truth forever and who always, always, always, executes justice for the oppressed.

Dr. Deirdre Good is professor of New Testament at The General Theological Seminary, specializing in the Synoptic Gospels, Christian Origins, Noncanonical writings and biblical languages. While she is an American citizen, she grew up in Kenya. Her blog is On Not Being a Sausage.

By Kit Carlson

Forces are at play in our world and in our church, and one of the best assessments I have heard lately of those forces came from a community reform expert. Peter Plastrik, co-author of Banishing Bureaucracy and The Reinventors’ Fieldbook, spoke recently at a training session for community leaders in East Lansing, Michigan. He outlined five forces, five “Gs”, that are affecting communities across America.

As he spoke, it struck me that these forces are the same ones affecting our church.

Plastrik’s “Five G’s” are:

Grand Rapids – as a metaphor for the global economy. The internet, easy international travel, and the ability to move jobs anywhere in the world have changed the economies of communities once based on manufacturing and local enterprises.

Goat meat – as a metaphor for immigration and all the challenges it brings. Consumption of goat meat in the U.S. has skyrocketed as immigrants from countries that eat goat arrive, bringing their national cuisines with them.

Greenland – as a metaphor for global warming. The ice on this large Arctic island is vanishing, and with climate change comes a host of new challenges for each community.

Gay people – as a metaphor for all the cultural challenges surrounding gender, age, and sexuality.

Geoffrey Canada – creator of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a community-based organization that seeks to serve 9,000 children, providing support from birth through college. Canada serves as a metaphor for self-empowered citizens, who don’t wait for government or other institutions to solve community problems.

A member of the audience added a sixth “G”, the Graying of America, as the long-promised demographic shift of the Baby Boom into old age begins at last.

Plastrik’s “G-forces” made a lot of sense to me. When people ask, “What is happening to our church?” they often think in terms of political movements -- liberals versus conservatives, progressives versus traditionalists. Instead, one might look at the power of these forces, playing out in the parishes and dioceses and provinces of The Episcopal Church and of the Anglican Communion.

G-1: The worldwide Anglican Communion was not so prominent 30 years ago. As the global economy has taken shape, a global Communion emerged in prominence and consideration along with it. And just as a global economy knows no borders, ecclesiastical relationships that cross borders and jurisdictions follow the same pattern of connections that criss-cross the planet and minimize the importance of local communities.

G-2: Rapid immigration into the United States brought Anglicans from around the world into American parishes. No longer is Anglican worship uniform across The Episcopal Church. Inculturation has come to us, and so we sing from many traditions, read scripture in other languages, practice Pentecost every day of the church year. The values and expectations of other cultures become part of our conversations about sex, worship, politics and a host of other issues.

G-3: The churches of the Gulf Coast still recovering from Katrina understand how climate change can affect our churches and communities. There is more to come, and Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana has already seen it coming. His call for the church to focus on ministries of relief and development instead of on schism and division comes out of hard experience.

G-4: There is not much to say that hasn’t been said about the cultural challenges of inclusion and acceptance of GBLT people. Joan Chittister said it best perhaps … the Anglicans just got to the issue earlier than most.

G-5: Self-empowered citizens, entrepreneurial community activists … the church is full of them. Duncan, Iker, Minns and those who would develop an alternate structure are entrepreneurs in their way. Why wait for the agonizingly slow movement of the Communion and its provinces to address Windsor, gay bishops, a Covenant, or any other issue? Why not set up one’s own alternative diocese, alternative province, alternative Communion?

Finally, there is that sixth G-force, one that Plastrik dismissed as not of interest to him. But the Graying of America, the graying of the Episcopal Church, is a real force. As I look across the faces of my parish, I see a community that has failed to effectively share the gospel with the generations coming after it. There are faithful elders and faithful Boomers … most of whom have grown children who do not themselves attend church, who are not raising the grandchildren in any faith, and who have abandoned religion as irrelevant. The leading edge of the church is dying off, and it is not replenishing itself.

And so the question is probably not – what to do about gay bishops or authorized rites of blessing. The question is really: How will we navigate these powerful forces? In a global, migratory, entrepreneurial, aging, culturally conflicted, climactically threatened world … how are we going to be Church? How will we proclaim the good news of Christ in the face of forces beyond our control?

The Rev. Kit Carlson, is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing, Mich. In 2003, she played the apostle Paul on the world's first internet reality series, The Ark, a project of the Christian humor website Ship of Fools.

By Roger Ferlo

It’s been a relatively quiet week here at the seminary in Alexandria, where manicured lawns and tree-lined streets place most of us a world and several social classes away from the ramshackle detritus of New Orleans’ 9th Ward. Nonetheless, we pay a lot of attention to New Orleans these days. Several of our seminarians come from that part of the country, and for two years now many of my students and colleagues have spent days and weeks at a time in that broken city trying to help in whatever way they can. So it was unsettling this week, even a little distasteful, to be asked to refocus our attention on the comings and goings of bishops gathered in New Orleans, rather than on New Orleans itself.

I thought I knew better. No good usually comes of this. In my long experience as a parish priest, there have been few occasions more dispiriting to me than these scheduled gathering of bishops. I say this not because I dislike bishops all that much. I admire a lot of them, count not a few as my friends, and most of the time feel rather sorry for them, isolated and misunderstood as they often are. But I find such occasions dispiriting because, in spite of everything I believe and teach about shared power and shared authority, I find myself buying the press’s line that the power and decision-making in the Episcopal Church in the United States are centered in the House of Bishops, and find myself hoping that whatever they decide this weekend down in New Orleans will set everything right.

And I am always proved wrong. There’s no reason to assume that these men and women will be up to such a task. It’s not their job. It’s a job all of us share. That fact underscores one of the ironies of Anglican history. In spite of our reputation in other parts of the Anglican Communion as a prime colonizer of heretical values and American power, the American church goes about its business in a distinctly post-colonial way. We long ago shed our allegiance to meddling foreign bishops. For two centuries our church has invested decision-making authority in a duly-elected bicameral legislature where both the ordained and the non-ordained have equal voice and equal standing. Meanwhile, many other bishops—particularly in post-colonial western and central Africa, and let it be said, in Great Britain as well, that ancient well-spring of colonizing fervor— have embraced hierarchical styles of leadership and authority that would have warmed the autocratic heart of George III. So also have many of their American admirers, particularly those bishops and wannabe bishops who were happy to participate in the quirkily democratic body we call the General Convention unless and until the votes didn’t go their way. To hear them talk, you would think that the Holy Spirit seems to be at work only when matters fall out in their favor. And now people who could not get themselves elected bishops by their own people in their own dioceses are finding ways to get themselves ordained as bishops under the aegis of foreign primates, self-righteously bent on saving me from myself, and re-colonizing a church that had assumed it had ended that kind of extra-territorial interference when Cornwallis surrendered to American troops in the first place.

So I guess it’s hard for me to be too sympathetic to the goings-on down in New Orleans. I have been an Episcopal priest for over twenty years, and an Episcopalian for more than half my life. In all that time, I can never remember signing on to conform to the theological opinions of foreign bishops. My ordination vows were pretty clear. Like thousands of my colleagues in the ministry, I have done my best to uphold the scriptures of the Old and New Testament as the word of God, and to conform to the doctrine and discipline of the Episcopal Church. I haven’t been very good at it, but I have kept at it. In that I’m in the same boat as everyone else, including the parishioners, priests and bishops who have served as deputies to General Convention over the years, as I did as a deputy from the diocese of New York in that now-demonized year of 2003. We haven’t been good at it, but we have at least been faithful.

So, as I said, thank God it’s been a quiet week here at the seminary in Alexandria. Our first year students have at last settled in, fired up to serve God in this branch of the Catholic church in spite of all these signs of disarray and fracture. These things go with the territory, as any resident of New Orleans might tell you. It was helpful (or was it a sign from heaven?) that the Morning Prayer readings this week were from the opening chapters of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.

Brave words, these. Who knows where Paul would have positioned himself in the present fracas. If anyone knew about disarray and fracture, it was Paul, and we know that he was never above fomenting a little disarray himself. But he was faithful. That’s all that can be asked of any of us in the end—fidelity to God’s embracing love as we have experienced it in Jesus, and fidelity to each other, members of Christ’s body, wherever we stand or refuse to stand on the issues that divide us. Signing on to this kind of love will get you pretty far, regardless of what the bishops say or don’t say—no matter what political catastrophes seem to lie in store for Christ’s body, wounded and redeemed.

The Rev. Roger Ferlo is Director of the Center for Lifetime Theological Education at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, where he also directs the Evening School of Theology. His books include Opening the Bible (Cowley 1997), Sensing God (Cowley 2001) and Heaven (Seabury 2007).

By Kathleen Henderson Staudt

What is the church for? In a 1938 lecture series on the BBC, collected in her book The Spiritual Life, the British writer and retreat leader Evelyn Underhill answered the question in a way that has challenged the church for the past century:

The Church is in the world to save the world. It is a tool of God for that purpose; not a comfortable religious club established in fine historical premises. Every one of its members is required, in one way or another, to cooperate with the Spirit in working for that great end: and much of this work will be done in secret and invisible ways. We are transmitters as well as receivers. Our contemplation and our action, our humble self-opening to God, keeping ourselves sensitive to his music and light, and our generous self-opening to our fellow creatures, keeping ourselves sensitive to their needs, ought to form one life, mediating between God and His world, and bringing the saving power of the Eternal into time.

Underhill appropriately focuses on the church’s mission in and for the world; to her mostly Church of England audience, she is challenging the image of the Church that became comfortable during the long centuries of what Loren Mead has labeled the “Christendom” paradigm, when most people were nominal Christians, even churchgoers, and the mission of the Church was seen as being overseas, far away and directed toward people distinctly “other” than the people in the pews. Mission was done by the institution; for the people in the pews, church attendance was a regular social obligation, to be taken with more or less seriousness depending on one’s particular spiritual needs and dispositions: to be part of a church was to support “a comfortable religious club.”

But Underhill recognizes that the institutional model, the “comfortable religious club,” is not a true embodiment of what the Church is called to be. Rather, each of us has a part to play in the mysterious work of God in the world, the Spirit’s work to restore, reconcile and heal. Her work focuses on the spiritual practices of the individual as guaranteeing the health of the “cells” in the Body of Christ on earth. For her, ordinary Christians, each of us pursuing the work that has been given us, are the ones who carry out the saving work of the Church, “bringing the saving power of the eternal into time.” In this short paragraph she lays out a theology of the ministry of all God’s people – the laos (λαός) – in the world.

Underhill’s image of the Church in the world invites what I might call a “poetic” way of looking at the church, the people of God – seeing the Church as a kind of work of art that communicates something to the world. It might seem that our disputes in the Anglican community about whom we may ordain and who decides how we should read Scripture have little to do with the ministry of the people in and for the world, but actually, poetically, they are important. Because we are an ordered church, our disputes about who we are and how we serve the world have focused, for the past 50 years, on whom we ordain. This may be appropriate to some extent since the ordained leaders of the Church do function as “metonymies” for our corporate identity – they are the parts standing for a whole. So if we claim to be an inclusive community, living and proclaiming the gospel in and for the world around us, it makes sense poetically that our visible leaders should reflect the diversity of the world we live in and the world we serve.

If the world looks at us as a corporate body and sees inclusiveness in our leadership and our practice, then we are communicating something about the hospitality of God. If they see us finding ways to stay together in Christ while holding a diversity of views, that is a revolutionary witness for our deeply polarized times. On the other hand, if all that the world sees is fighting and schism and mutual recrimination, then we are losing track of our real identity and purpose.

I turn to Underhill’s description of the purpose of the church in my prayers for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion at this time, remembering that we are part of something much bigger that we believe God is trying to do through us, the people of God, in the world. I take comfort, too, from a beloved hymn we sing pretty often these days, and appropriately so – not least because its title reminds us of who we are: “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord”. I was particularly glad that it was part of the Commencement liturgy at Virginia Seminary last June:

Though with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed
By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed
Yet saints their watch are keeping. Their cry goes up,”How long?”
And soon the night of weeping will be the morn of song. (Hymnal 525)

These words remind us that our tradition’s vision of the church as a “mystical body” is meant to give strength and energy to us as we try to live up to being the “Church visible -- the Communion of Saints “in the world to save the world, a tool of God for that purpose.” This vision does not deny that we have struggles and divisions. But both Underhill’s writing and the hymn call us back to awareness of our greater purpose and calling. It is a vision that sometimes seems improbable, but it is one that we are called to return to and refashion in our own generation, as faithfully as we can.

Dr Kathleen Henderson Staudt teaches courses in literature and theology at Virginia Theological Seminary and the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of At the Turn of a Civilisation: David Jones and Modern Poetics and Annunciations: Poems out of Scripture. Her blog is at poetproph.blogspot.com.

By Sam Candler

I must admit that I like large churches. I like the suggestion that their sheer size represents something of the grandeur of God. I like all the programs and mission opportunities they provide. I like the enormously talented staffs that they are usually able to afford. Many people have deep needs met in large churches, and the better large churches really do proclaim the gospel in effective ways.

I grew up, however, in a small church. There I learned much about the idiosyncrasies of community. I learned the values of diversity (when folks got upset, no one could up and leave for another church; we were the only Episcopal church around!) For many years, however, that church remained quite small. Our parish and mission life developed a cycle of boom and bust, up to various renewal movements then down to depressed clergy, then back up to mission trips, then back down to tedious music and dry liturgy. Lately, that parish has flourished with fine and healthy leadership among both its clergy and its people.

By “flourished,” I mean that the parish has grown in numbers of people and in numbers of dollars. I realize, of course, that growth can occur in other ways; but, again, I like physical flourishing and growth. My own parish is quite large, and I know that unless we are growing in people and in dollars, we might just be standing still.

But what if there are limits to growth? Several books on natural economy proclaim that very reality in the natural worlds of farming and energy production. I have eagerly enjoyed those books in the interest of earth stewardship and sustainability. Some scientists claim that the world’s production of oil has actually reached its peak, and we do not realize it yet.

Michel Pollan makes the same sort of point regarding the commoditization of agriculture in his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Once we determine everything’s value primarily in terms of its financial cost and reward, in dollar figures, and in “yield per acre,” we actually begin to cultivate crops that are less nutritious and less healthy for us. Finding it cheaper to grow huge supplies of beef and corn with synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics, and hormones (mostly made with petroleum products), we feed ourselves with items that are missing key ingredients.

At one point, Pollan contrasts industrial production with artisanal production. “Industrial farmers are in the business of selling commodities,” he says, ever more cheaply so that the enterprise can grow profits (page 250). On the other hand, artisanal production, “is based on selling something special rather than being the least-cost producer of a commodity” (page 250). Having read that, I considered our own communities of growth and health. Is there a size-limit to the community where Christians can know authentic community and be challenged to mission?

If we get too large, do we lose the sense of “something special?” I believe that point occurs when we begin to relate to religion as a commodity, as if church is only a delivery system for something sterile and industrial. Some of the biggest mega churches today realize the principle of “artisanal production.” They arrange members in smaller cell groups of study and accountability. These churches are successful both because some larger structure and larger set of resources has enabled them, but also because they remember the uniqueness of small communities of diverse faith.

Small groups, like small parishes, are where different seeds meet with different soils and wonderful fruits sprout. Small communities are where we learn to be fascinated with individual searches and discoveries, those journeys of people who become our true friends. A church, of any size, becomes sterile and lifeless when it begins to speak simplistically and to make faith into a “commodity,” like any big industrial producer.

A church which can change the world, however, knows the values of natural systems; “the efficiencies of natural systems flow from complexity and interdependence—by definition the very opposite of simplification” (page 214) is how Michael Pollan puts it. What he writes about eating, a necessary and natural element of human life, is also true about praying, an equally necessary and natural element of life. Healthier prayer occurs in those communities which are not afraid of complexity. Relatively speaking, those spiritual communities can be large or small. But they need complexity no matter what their size. Healthy churches need complexity and interdependence in order to realize the grand and graceful mystery of life itself.

The Very Rev. Sam Candler is dean of St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta. He helped start that city’s interfaith group, and leads regular community bible studies. He is also inspired by playing jazz piano, hunting, astronomy, and poetry. His sermons and reflections on “Good Faith and Common Good” can be found on the Cathedral web site.

By Steven Charleston

Luciano Pavarotti died. His amazingly vibrant, soaring voice is silent. Around the world millions of people will mourn his passing, even if they knew very little about the art of which he was a true master. Pavarotti became synonymous with opera for many people who had never imagined they would care for his art form. He welcomed them to a part of their life they did not know. Part of his genius was not only in his singing, but in his ability to translate that singing into a message the whole world could hear.

Now his voice is silent. In tribute to this great man, I would invite us all into that silence.

If Pavarotti was dedicated to bringing art to the people, what does his silence have to tell us? At the very least, it should remind us that the effort to share in artistic expression with other human beings is not a peripheral concern for us, but a central issue for the values we proclaim as the church. Justice, community, human dignity: these are the same issues underlying the arts. Pavarotti brought art to the people. What does that mean to us? It means Pavarotti enriched other human beings, those who were deeply aware of his art and those who were only curious. He expanded our range of appreciation and, therefore, of contact. He demonstrated how art can unite us as much as it can inspire us. Pavarotti built community out of the thin air of song. He drew people of widely different walks of life to a single stillpoint of sound. His legacy reminds us that communities are not just bound together by rules, money or power: at our best, we form community through the beauty of our difference and the breadth of our imagination.

The silence should remind us that as the arts go, so goes community. In fact, you can chart the demise of community in America by charting the slow death of its artistic soul. The massive cutbacks in school art programs have robbed generations of children of the option of human expression. As usual, the first to feel the impact are those who can least afford it. The abandonment of our public commitment to art has diminished us. The arts are not a luxury for spiritual life, but a necessity. Art is not just a set decoration for the affluent, it is a voice. It is the people’s voice. The arts are the medium of the poor, the defense of the dispossessed, and the champion of the marginalized. Throughout history the oppressed have found freedom in their right to speak through theater, music and the visual arts. Art is not just for the privileged few. It is for every person, perhaps most especially for those who’s other choices are so limited. Young men and women who have very few chances in life discover strength in the authority of their talent. Art liberates the individual. When we starve the arts, we starve hope. We starve justice.

The silence is growing. Voices are being stilled. It is not a trivial thing to speak up for the support of art in America. It is a liberating thing. People who care about justice must care about the voice of justice: the arts that embody our collective voice as a people of God. That voice of justice finds its resonance in cultural diversity, its authenticity in freedom and its message in the human spirit. If we lose it, we may never get it back. And that’s why the death of Luciano Pavarotti is such an important opportunity for us. Not only to honor the passing of this renowned artist, but to support the principle that guided his career. Pavarotti brought his art to the people. He believed that art belongs to the people. It is their voice. His death prompts us to ask : by whose right is that voice denied? Who benefits when the arts grow weak? What is the real cost of denying access to free expression to a nation’s people? Is it time for us to stop looking the other way while school art programs are starved for support? The passing of Luciano Pavarotti urges us to speak our answer.

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, former Bishop of Alaska, is president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, and keeper of the podcasting blog EDS's Stepping Stones.

By Howard Anderson

I was down in Louisiana at a CREDO conference, earlier this week, and it has occurred to me that as the House of Bishops was sequestered with the Archbishop of Canterbury (the ABC) over in New Orleans, his task in trying to be a unifying force in the life of the Anglican Communion was not one that is to be envied. Archbishop Rowan Williams has four, maybe five Primates colonizing the United States, in an interesting kind of reverse colonization. He has The Episcopal Church. Yup, he’s stuck with us.

TEC has several bishops (to read the press accounts you would think it is dozens of bishops) vying to be the “one true Anglican Church” in the U.S. Further, he has a group of Primates from the Global South demanding that TEC “do what they say,” or be expelled. And they are being led by a Primate from Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, whose province is no longer in the Communion by virtue of a change he had made in the constitution of the Church of Nigeria, taking out all references to being in communion with The See of Canterbury (The Archbishop of Canterbury), the only sure fire way to be in this Communion.

Within the Church of England, the ABC (I have a friend who is a Buddhist priest who refers to him at the ABCdefghij…) has a very muscular evangelical party threatening to make more trouble themselves if he does not take a firm stand on the side of a conservative sola scriptura decidedly not mainstream Anglican stance which, if a student of his had written such a thing, Professor Williams would clearly have failed them. And yet, he is required by his position to doff his miter and politely listen to their demands.

I could go on with the issues that face our much maligned archbishop, who seems at present to be pleasing no one, but I won’t. If the ABC has a sense of humor, (he may well have, I don’t know him) he would have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. There was a grizzled veteran priest friend of mine in Minnesota who used to intone this little ditty every time there was a church fight. “Onward marches the Church of God, trampling each other into the sod.” And it does appear we seem intent on trampling one another into the ecclesial sod. Whatever is happening at the House of Bishops, I suspect that it is not easy for anyone.

But being down here, I have been given inspiration and it’s not just the chicory coffee and Cajun cooking. This time of year in Louisiana, is a time of love. The “love bugs” are mating, and they are everywhere, on everything and everybody, totally oblivious to their impending doom at the hands of whomever they land on. There are piles of them everywhere, joined together in an embrace that will end in the death of the male, I am told. They are so intent on their connubial task, so creative in their spiraling, helicoptering copulating, that nothing else matters. It may well be a metaphor for the Church and its various parties. You see, the life cycle of the love bugs is less than a week. But they are so focused on their mating that they are not paying attention to anything else. It almost seems as if, like the love bugs, traditionalist and progressive Episcopalians are so locked in our struggles, so sure of the rightness of our positions, that we are oblivious to the consequences. And it seems that it is who mates with whom that is the presenting issue. So much energy, money, time and emotional labor is being expended in this love bug dance, that despite our Presiding Bishop’s attempts to keep us focused on mission, we are spiraling toward the same fate as the benighted love bugs.

My friend Margo Maris, a very astute theologian, is here in Louisiana, too, as part of the CREDO faculty. Today I saw her scribbling something on a napkin, her face alight with what was clearly an “I have a good idea” look. I’ve known her long enough to know that when she has a good idea, it usually is A REALLY GOOD IDEA! What it said on the napkin was, “What we all have in common is that we all call ourselves the remnant.”

I think she is right. The archbishop needs to point our to bishops like Keith Ackerman in the Diocese of Quincy, and Robert Duncan in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and their fellow aspiring schismatic bishops that they are, indeed, a saving remnant of orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church. Then he needs to point out to the progressives that they are, indeed, the remnant in the Communion that is still open to the movement of the Holy Spirit who has a nasty habit of “making all things new.” Then he can tell the disgruntled Primates from the global south that they are, indeed, a remnant people (and majority) that God will use to grow and shape the Church. Margo is right. We need to celebrate our remnant identities. While already the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan slipped into a phone booth and put on his mild-mannered Professor Williams hat, and wrote a wonderful collection of essays entitled Anglican Identities. Note the plural: identities. He understands that the whole universe has changed. Is light a wave or a particle? The answer is “yes.” Just as the mysterious three-in-one, Triune God is both one and three, so too, in the post modern era we can have more than one way to be a remnant. Maybe there is common ground after all.

After sleeping on her ideas, Margo said I should add a postscript. She had a wonderful image come to her. She said that when our foremothers looked at all the remnants they had left from years of sewing, they pondered what to do with them. None of the remnants were identical. They were all different colors, shapes, sizes and of different cloth altogether. “How will we make use of these pieces?” they asked. And with other women bringing their remnant pieces, they made quilts for warmth, pot holders to be able to pick up hot pots and pans, and they braided pieces into rugs that we could walk on to keep our feet from getting cold. Hmmm…how will we use our varied, beautifully-colored, odd shaped remnants? Only God knows. And I heard God was a very fine quilter indeed.

The Rev. Dr. Howard Anderson is Warden and President of the Cathedral College at Washington National Cathedral. He was a long time General Convention deputy.

By June Butler

I commend the bishops' choice of New Orleans for the House of Bishops meeting.

The theme for last night's ecumenical prayer service was "Humanity Renewed, Restored, Re-centered in God". The use of the Morial Convention Center as the site of the ecumenical service was symbolic of the partial recovery of the city, because the Center, along with the Superdome were the two largest shelters of misery for those seeking to escape the flood waters.

No help came for 4 days. I'm sure you remember the scenes from TV. I have never yet figured out how the press could be there filming the misery, but help was so long in coming.

To make certain that we were there on time, we arrived early at the Convention Center. While we waited for the service to start, we were entertained by a choir singing Gospel music. The white folks in the choir were grooving right along with the black folks. I give them points for keeping up.

As the bishops processed into the auditorium, I had to suppress a desire to stand up and cheer when Bishop Katharine passed. She has presence - a quiet dignity and grace about her - that comes through, literally, in passing.

Bishop Duncan Gray of Mississippi read the first lesson, Zechariah (8:3-13), and Bishop Katharine read the Gospel reading, Matthew (25:34-40).

The invocation and the pastoral prayer were given by Bishop Douglas Wiley and Elder John Pierce, neither of whom were Episcopalians. Black preachers often have a way of praying that draws God and his people into an intimate circle. Bishop Wiley's invocation of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and Elder Pierce's prayer did just that. Both were beautiful, and I experienced the powerful presence of God.

When Bishop Charles Jenkins introduced Archbishop Rowan Williams, he reminded us that Archbishop Williams was the 104th archbishop of Canterbury, whereas Bishop Jenkins was the 10th bishop of Louisiana. A tad more history on the side of the archbishop, no?

Archbishop Williams had toured the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, and thus was aware of desolation which still remains, for only a very few brave souls have had the courage to rebuild in that area. The archbishop spoke of what we owe to one another. "The bottom line is that what we owe to one another most deeply of all is gratitude - not even respect, not even the recognition of dignity so much as gratitude," he said. "We are indebted to one another.

I am indebted to your existence because I would not be myself without you. A community, a society, that can get to that level of recognition is one that lives from a deeper place." He went on, "If the church does not live by thanksgiving, I don't what it lives by." We owe each other, but most of all we owe Jesus Christ - for life, hope, strength, and joy. As Williams said, "We owe Christ big time, as they say."

He said the help to the city was to buy time for renewal, reconstruction, and restoration of the city of New Orleans, to help it once again to become "a place for the people". He quoted from the passage from Zechariah:

"Thus says the Lord of hosts: Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of their great age.

And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets."

He said, "What makes a great, godly city is that it is a safe place for older people to sit and children to play in the streets."

After his speech, the bishops went forward with their donations to Dioceses of Louisiana and Mississippi.

The finale was a musical presentation by the Irvin Mayfield Quartet of a slow Just a Closer Walk, I'll Fly Away, and a rousing When The Saints Go Marching In, which brought out the white handkerchiefs waving in the air and drew folks into the aisles in a second line, marching and waving their white handkerchiefs. I caught a glimpse of a couple of purple shirts in the marching group. I'll wager that this conclusion was unique for a House of Bishops prayer service.

June Butler, better known online as Grandmere Mimi, is a native of New Orleans who blogs at Wounded Bird.

By Derek Olsen

In an organization that has structured and arranged its ways of being in and out of weeks and months and years in a succession that passes through decades and crawls through centuries, old ways are covered by new ways, then rediscovered, then forgotten again in tides and waves of memories. Sometimes practices and ways and observances slowly drift to the bottom of the sea of memory and are silted over to be fossilized; at other times they are unexpectedly discovered and brought to the surface, admired for their anachronistic oddity then discarded yet again as obsolete. But sometimes these obscure treasures of time resonate when brought beneath the light of a new sun, revealing a vibrancy to once again be admired and treasured.

This week yields such an observance, or rather a set of them: the Ember Days. The Spirit moves as the Spirit wills and those who live by calendar of the Church come to note, to appreciate, to wonder at coincidences and collisions of observances and events. Indeed—we almost come to expect them. So at this time when the House of Bishops gathers, as the Archbishop of Canterbury and distinguished guests meet in New Orleans, it is no surprise that this week finds us at a time when the calendar itself urges us to pray for growth, for sustenance but above all to pray for the Church.

The Ember Days are of ancient origin. In each season of the year, a Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday are devoted to fasting and prayer. Formerly, they were Roman festivals to beseech the blessings of the gods: one in summer for harvest, one in autumn for the vintage, and one in winter for the planting of seed. By the second century, Christians in Rome had baptized these observances and sometime (probably in the third century) a balancing fourth was added for spring. In fact, in the early days of Christian practice these four markers anchored the church’s year when its calendar was yet in its infancy—no Christmas yet, no Advent, an uncertain and emerging Lent—just Easter, Pentecost, and the Ember Days…

Originally tied to the earth, to the birth and growth of crops, a new meaning was given to them by the fifth century: the Ember Saturdays became the quarterly dates for the ordination of deacons and priests. Thus, the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays became days of fasting and supplication not just for the earth, but for the Church, for its ministers and ministry. They became a time to pray for the Church.

As the centuries circled the contours of our current calendar began to appear—Advent, All Saints, Feast of the Holy Trinity—and the Ember Days receded, their fortunes waxing and waning as liturgical fashion regarded or discarded them until the Roman Church suppressed them at Vatican II. In our own Anglican world they remain little known and little observed but for postulants in the Church: for these are the days when they are required to write letters to check in with their bishops. The current Book of Common prayer locates them among the Days of Optional Observance and, if you flip to the collects you will find none appointed there in course. Nevertheless, if you continue past the seasons of the year, past the Feasts and Holy Days to the numbered group of collects you will find three under number 15, prayers for “For those to be ordained,” “For the choice of fit persons for the ministry,” “For all Christians in their vocation”—one for each day, provided to pray for the Church.

As media hubbub and heightened rhetoric converge on New Orleans, humming and swarming around the House of Bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury like so many gadflies, I invite us to recall and recollect the Ember Days. It is time to pray for seeds, for growth, and for a bountiful harvest. It is time to pray for the faithful, the ordained, and the consecrated. Truly—it is a time to pray for the Church.

Derek Olsen is in the final stretch of completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X dad appear at Haligweorc.

By Richard Helmer

Doubtless, much of the media coverage of the House of Bishops meeting this week will be prefaced with the same sound bites we’ve been hearing these past four years. We will hear the words “gay, sex, schism, and lawsuits” in reference to The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. This places before the House of Bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury an important, if not monumental task of leadership as they meet together: a battle with distraction.

The flurry of recent consecrations for the Anglican missionary organizations recently planted in this country by other Provinces, even under protest from the Archbishop of Canterbury, underscores the simple fact that a schismatic conflict within the Anglican Communion has now taken on a life of its own. To some degree, the way this will play out has been pre-determined by those who are willing to break Communion in the name of their purity of belief. Not even the Dar Es Salaam Primate Communiqué’s September 30th “deadline” seems worth waiting for. Threats from self-declared Global South bishops and Primates not to attend next year’s Lambeth Conference, a growing rejection of Canterbury as a focus of unity, four diocesan conventions exploring resolutions that would effectively remove them from The Episcopal Church, and dissenting bishops skipping out on substantial portions of the September House meeting only serve to round out a clear sentence: We are watching the unfolding of self-fulfilling prophecy. Some sort of realignment, some sort of “alternative Communion” is about to be birthed, and it is probably too late to turn back the clock.

Our House of Bishops confronts the additional challenge, then, of avoiding getting caught in the deception that their response to the Primates’ Communiqué, regardless of what form it ultimately takes, will appreciably affect the forces already hell-bent on division.

While many, including Rowan Williams himself, seem to remain convinced that the Windsor Report and its accompanying processes are the only game in town for the Anglican Communion going forward, the credibility of the Windsor process itself and, indeed, the ostensible neutrality of the resulting draft Anglican Covenant have been severely undermined by the Network and Global South leadership in recent months. Most notable was the active participation of Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies in the consecration of two American priests as bishops for the Church of Kenya’s oversight of former Episcopal parishes in the United States. (Try re-reading that last sentence out loud. By itself, it demonstrates how convoluted, confusing, and distracting the situation has become.) These types of consecration are expressly condemned by the Windsor Report – the same one Archbishop Gomez helped to author; the same one he and others then appealed to as a measure of The Episcopal Church’s fidelity in Communion.

The Dar Es Salaam Communiqué itself devotes no fewer than 21 of its 37 sections plus an appendix to addressing the complaints and pastoral needs of a handful of leaders in The Episcopal Church, upset over the confirmation and consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson and then hanging upon that one event a host of long-standing resentments and reason to foment division. The enormous weight of time and energy the Primates have taken on focusing on a relatively small group represents the clear distortions in perspective, if nothing else, from which we suffer as a Communion.

The most important leadership our bishops the Archbishop of Canterbury can offer us at this time may well be an intentional effort to put, at every available opportunity, the current disagreements over human sexuality and the over-wrought voices of division in the life of the Church back into their proper perspective. Some have already started doing this, not least of whom is our Presiding Bishop. So too have a significant number of our Diocesan bishops, a number of whom fall on markedly opposing sides of the human sexuality question. Indeed, part of the March “Mind of the House” statement was a declaration that our bishops, as a whole, would not engage in a losing proposition: the setting aside of the dignity of some of our sisters and brothers and the violation of our internal integrity for the sake of a dubious unity built on threats, distortions, and fear of difference. Instead, they argued that, differences over human sexuality notwithstanding, the substantive Christian tasks ahead revolved around the needs of forging common mission to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a world crying out with need. We need not look very hard to find evidence that a large portion of the Anglican Communion, regardless of where they stand on sexuality, agrees with that proposition.

But reframing the conversation this way at this time remains a monumental task. Much of the engine driving the rhetoric and actions of some of our most vituperative detractors is the simple fact that the combination of sex, the Bible, and lawsuits grabs emotional attention and headlines. Seeking reconciliation and willingness to hold disagreement honestly in community doesn’t.

The Network and Global South can publicly leverage deeply seated prejudices around which to rally otherwise disparate factions. The sad thing is that as the Network, the Global South Primates, and their ecclesiastical allies continue to press their media advantage this way, they risk falling into a very small publicity bed of their own making: a distracted gospel centered on the question of homosexuality…a stunted nub of tradition revolving around a handful of biblical injunctions devoid of context and vulnerable to the exaggeration of fear… an ugly, narrow, flimsy caricature of a great faith. That is not much upon which to build a Christian Communion, alternative, realigned, or otherwise.

Then the danger for those remaining in the greater Anglican Communion is also clear. So long as The Episcopal Church and the broader Church continue to engage the argument on these terms, we are at constant risk of falling into this very same bed.

The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion and, indeed the world as a whole, need the Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Gospel that brings justice to the hungry, dignity to the impoverished, healing to the sick, peace to the war-ravaged, and a powerful message of hope and redemption to a Creation groaning under considerable stress.

Declaring this Gospel in the face of easier sells is a tall order for our House of Bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury to meet this fall. But by meeting in New Orleans, highlighting a city whose people continue to climb out of a dreadful natural and humanitarian disaster, they have made a definite start.

Prayers be with them all as they battle with distraction for the sake of the Gospel.

The Rev. Richard E. Helmer is rector of Church of Our Saviour, Mill Valley, Calif. He has served in interfaith, ecumenical, diocesan, and national church organizations, including Episcopal Asiamerica Ministries. His sermons have been published at Sermons that Work, and he blogs regularly at Caught by the Light.

By Marshall Scott

So there I was, today, looking in at one of the Episcopal blogs -- one of THOSE blogs. You know the type: issues are raised by blog owners and moderators, who do have a clear position, but who are themselves relatively orderly and polite. Then, extensive comments are posted, most by folks who agree with the owners and moderators; some by folks who agree intemperately; and a few by folks who are, well, virulent. I do visit such sites, of more than one position, and some more than others; but they exist across the spectrum of our current Episcopal and Anglican disagreements.

And for each of those sites there are a few respondents who don’t fit the mold. They may hold the “other” position, or they may simply want to play [angel’s or devil’s] advocate. And among them there are gadflies. Gadflies are usually civil (and uncivil gadflies usually get moderated out), but are always both consistent and persistent. They are convicted of the rightness of their respective causes, principles, and authorities. They assert much more than they reason, however reasonable they perceive themselves to be. They are happy, or at least determined, to stand as Daniel in the lions’ den in order to proclaim their positions. They delight in taking on all comers. They find moral satisfaction in being challenged, and even more in being attacked; for blessed are they indeed if they “suffer for the sake of the Gospel.”

And, predictably enough, it does indeed become a den, although whether of lions, foxes, or adders is not always clear. A gadfly is inevitably successful in generating not simply challenge and discussion, but also an attack. Shortly some few of the regulars on the site fall into intemperate and uncivil posts, largely of thinly veiled (if veiled at all) ad hominem attacks. There are those, of course, who seek to discuss and to argue logically and civilly; but they can be drowned out by the volume if not the number of the more personal, less temperate responses. And those less temperate responses are less likely to be moderated away, because the moderator is so conscious of the suffering that has led the responder to speak truth, however intemperately.

So, there I was today, looking at one of those Episcopal blogs, and I was struck suddenly by my favorite verses from Proverbs:

[4] Answer not a fool according to his folly,
lest you be like him yourself.
[5] Answer a fool according to his folly,
lest he be wise in his own eyes.
(Proverbs 26:4-5, RSV)

I spent Saturday of Labor Day Weekend in the midst of a cultural experience. Specifically, I attended my first feis, my first Irish dancing competition. My niece made her first parent-less trip to come and compete. Family members outnumbered dancers in the room, but they faded from view, overwhelmed by the colorful riot of dancing dresses. They showed every color in the crayon box (although there is surprisingly little green and, less surprisingly, even less orange), decorated as they were with shapes and patterns that once showed family and tribe and allegiance.

In a way, the current Episcopal and Anglican discussions have all the ordered chaos of a feis: within the parameters of the larger event there is the dull mutter of the crowded room, the mingling of hundreds of conversations, until someone calls a tune. Then, for a period there is great focused interest, as most in the room watch the competitors doing their very best to outdo one another in optimizing the balance of authentic choreography, competent performance, and that little bit of added presentation that might hold the attention of the judge. After that there is applause for all, or at least for one’s own; and impatient waiting to see who has outdone whom; and a return to the dull mutter. There will, of course, be some ranking at the end, and some competitors will be thrilled and some disappointed, and their respective families with them. But most present simply want to have danced well, and to have heard their efforts appreciated.

In parallel, we who want to take our own places in this discussion, have opportunities in the blogosphere (and elsewhere, certainly) to share our reflections and to see the reflections of others. At our best, we’re also trying to optimize a balance of authenticity, competence, and that little bit of added presentation that we hope will allow us to stand out a bit. Most of the time as a common enterprise I think we manage relatively well; but sometimes it isn’t any prettier for us than for the poor, unprepared dancer. And in all those situations, there are the colors and patterns of opinion that claim family and tribe and allegiance. It is in just those circumstances that we need to think about the passage from Proverbs: whether our participation will challenge foolishness, or simply contribute to it.

It’s September; and there are those who have seen events of this September, and of the Autumn to follow, as critical, literally as moments of crisis. There is much talk of deadlines and decisions, of imposition and resistance, of the standing and falling of many in Zion. Because I continue to think these are struggles for identity (and I do think it’s about identity, with such issues as sexual morality and Biblical authority and historical precedent being discriminators within the identities at issue), they’re all the more liable to be personal, ad hominem responses. I think Episcopal Café is one place that has worked hard to maintain discourse instead of dissonance; and while most of us who write here would be considered “progressive,” we have all sought to offer our best, and to offer the best of the Episcopal Church as we see it.

But out there in the rest of the blogosphere, on our own blogs and in responding to the blogs of others, I think we need to reflect on Proverbs. We believe the voices of the Net are meaningful and in some sense representative in Episcopal and Anglican discussions. We believe them part of the conversation, along with sermons and official statements and press releases. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be putting our own view out, and we wouldn’t be reading and responding to the voices of others. As we do so, let’s think carefully, and respond appropriately. The lessons from Proverbs should give us all pause; and if they don’t, there is always that other proverb: “Better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

The Rev. Marshall Scott is a chaplain in the Saint Luke’s Health System, a ministry of the Diocese of West Missouri. A past president of the Assembly of Episcopal Healthcare Chaplains, and an associate of the Order of the Holy Cross, he keeps the blog Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside.

By Sam Candler

We hear claims from all parties about the most mistaken resolutions passed in recent Episcopal General Conventions. Was it the 2003 resolution consenting to the election of the Bishop of New Hampshire? Or was it the 2006 resolution calling for “restraint” in the consecration of “any candidate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church”?

My choice for most mistaken resolution might be the one of the year 1979 which removed “Protestant” from our formal name. It was mistaken on at least two levels. First, the removal denied a deep and critical piece of our historic identity. One might argue that the Anglican Church was probably “Protestant” even before the Reformation; here in the United States, we were at one point one of the proudest of Protestant churches.

Secondly, and more importantly now, the resolution which removed “Protestant” from our name was simply inaccurate. For, if we are learning anything in the last several years, it is that many of our leaders love to speak forth, to “pro-test,” in the name of individual conscience and faithful liberty. These claims and Protestant actions come from both the liberal and conservative parties. Liberals claim to declare a new interpretation of orthodox faith for a new generation. Conservatives wander around the world looking for re-alignment and a more perfect church. Essentially, both these maneuvers are Protestant moves.

However, I do not begrudge these Protestant moves. Good Protestantism is always critical of institutions, especially centralized bureaucracies. Good Protestantism, I would claim, exists even in the Roman Catholic Church. That noble and honorable Church, looking solid and immovable, yet contains all manner of progressive thinkers and idiosyncratic reactionaries.

At the best moments of our past, the Protestant Episcopal Church was able to honor both the theological conscience of the individual believer and the classical orders of apostolic faith. We were both Protestant and Catholic, to the frustration of other Christians who always wanted to peg us one way or the other. But we were broader than that, and usually more attractive.

While the world turns its media magnifying lenses towards this week’s Episcopal House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans, I advise us to look elsewhere for the broader life of the Episcopal Church. I have nothing against this House of Bishops meeting; I am among many who offer my prayers and support and love. It’s just that I believe the breadth and grace of the Episcopal Church exists more specifically in the thousands of parishes and communities of faith which those bishops serve. Most of the bishops in New Orleans probably agree with me; the real “Church” is among our people, not in the ordained positions of leadership.

We are a Protestant Church. How else to explain the diffidence and exasperation which clamors even now right along with the rejoicing and singing? How else to explain that awkward style in which our House of Bishops and House of Deputies act together?

We are a Catholic Church, too. Not many of us want to abandon the historic Christian faith. In fact, our structures appear more Catholic than most of our other Protestant denominational colleagues. The fact that we appear so hierarchical is probably why the generally unknowing public media keeps speaking of schism and looking for authoritarian answers.

We are mistaken if we think that any meeting of the Episcopal House of Bishops, or, indeed, any meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion, or any Lambeth Conference of Bishops, can affect our relationship with the liberating grace and love of Jesus Christ. That’s what makes us Protestant. No matter what occurs in Anglican hierarchies in upcoming months, our churches and communities of faith will continue in much the same manner – liberal or conservative—as we did before.

By the same token, we are also mistaken if we think that any meeting of those esteemed leaders can change our historic and universal faith. That’s what makes us Catholic. Yes, councils can err; but councils also tend to correct themselves. They tend to correct themselves if we, the members, hold on to each other. They tend to correct themselves if we remain Catholic.

Finally, however, no authoritarian answer will lead us out of our present frustrations. Let us not surrender too easily our own gifts of God’s grace to a legalistic and simplistic authoritarianism. Authoritarianism, whether liberal or conservative, is the enemy of healthy faith; it does legalistic and totalitarian harm in both Protestant and Catholic structures.

The name I most prefer for our dear and historic church is “Anglican.” That word represents deep, broad, and graceful Christianity. But at the 2009 General Convention, I would vote for restoring the grand name “Protestant” to our name. I would vote for including “Catholic” too!

The Very Rev. Sam Candler is dean of St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta. He helped start that city’s interfaith group, and leads regular community bible studies. He is also inspired by playing jazz piano, hunting, astronomy, and poetry. His sermons and reflections on “Good Faith and Common Good” can be found on the Cathedral web site.

By Jim Naughton

In February, the Primates of the Anglican Communion released a set of “recommendations” to the Episcopal Church; warned that if the Church did not comply there would be “consequences for the full participation of the Church in the life of the Communion,” and set September 30 as the deadline for the Church’s response.

On Thursday, just 10 days before the deadline, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and members of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council, begin two days of meetings in New Orleans with the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops to determine what sort of response is forthcoming. But much of the drama that one will no doubt find the press drumming up this week has already been drained from the situation.

In inviting the bishops of the Episcopal Church (with the significant exception of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire) to the Lambeth Conference next summer, the Archbishop has already signaled that he is not eager to exclude the Episcopal Church from “full participation” in the various quasi-governmental bodies that help hold the Communion together. And in jumping the deadline and ordaining bishops to work in the United States, primates such as Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Henry Orombi of Uganda and Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya have already played their most potent card to much fanfare, but uncertain—and quite possibly minimal—effect.

But if September 30 deadline has lost much of its dramatic luster, the meeting in New Orleans may nonetheless yield significant results.

One indication of what might transpire is given by the composition of the archbishop’s delegation. In March, the House of Bishops requested a meeting with the archbishop and the Primates’ Standing Committee. But the Archbishop will be accompanied not only the Primates Standing Committee, but the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council. Throughout the current crisis, the issue of which of the Anglican Communion’s four “instruments of unity” would make the final decisions on the issues of sexuality and membership has been hotly contested. The Primates, almost, by default, have taken the lead because they meet more often than the Anglican Consultative Council (every three years) or the Lambeth Conference (every ten). But a significant tide of resistance against primatial dominance has been building simultaneously.

In bringing the Joint Standing Committee, Archbishop Williams is opening up the process, although who will make the final decision (if a final decision indeed gets made) remains an open question. He is also enfranchising the one Communion-wide body not composed entirely of bishops.

Perhaps more important to the issue at hand, the Joint Standing Committee is also the body which commissioned the sub-group, led by Williams himself, to evaluate the Episcopal Church’s response to the Windsor Report. That report, forgotten after the Primates released their “recommendations” and set their deadline, gave the Episcopal Church relatively high marks. The meeting presents an opportunity for the Joint Standing Committee to make certain that Resolution B033 does indeed indicate that “the majority of bishops with jurisdiction… will refuse consent in future to the consecration of a bishop whose manner of life challenges the wider church and leads to further strains on Communion,“ as the sub-group concluded, and to seek greater clarify on the Church’s stance regarding the blessing of same-sex unions.

On both of these issues it seems at least possible that even many of the more liberal members of the House will be able to say the sort of things the committee wants to hear. A minority in the House doesn’t like the fact that a candidate in a same-sex relationship would not currently receive a majority of consents from diocesan bishops, and hence could not take office. But they acknowledge it as a political reality, and probably wouldn’t mind saying so.

The committee is especially interested in understanding the state of play in Episcopal diocese on same-sex blessings. Can the bishops say that neither the Church nor any diocese will authorize a “public Rite of Blessing” (per The Windsor Report and the sub-group report) or a Rite to Blessing (per the Primates’ Communiqué from Dar es Salaam)? The meaning of the phrase (public) Rite of Blessing has been debated intensely. And as neither the Archbishop nor the Joint Standing Committee has attempted to settle the issue, it is possible that this ambiguity is intentional. If the question is whether Episcopal diocesan bishops are willing to postpone the development of an authorized text to be used in blessing same-sex relationships, then the answer, in all likelihood is yes. If the question is whether every diocesan bishop is willing to enforce a ban on the blessing of same-sex relationships, the answer is almost certainly no.

The first interpretation seems to be the one shared by the authors of The Windsor Report and the sub-group report (although, again, this has been hotly debated). Both documents attempt (with uneven results) to capture the current state of play regarding the blessings of same-sex unions in Episcopal dioceses, and each raises warning in instances when dioceses where steps toward the developments of authorized text or standards were under development. In addition, the Archbishop is no doubt aware that unions are blessed in a number of Anglican provinces, including his own, and an evenhanded Communion-wide ban would be both unpopular and impossible to enforce.

The other difficult issue concerns the pastoral oversight of theologically conservative parishes that are out of sympathy with their bishop, and theologically conservative diocese’s out of sympathy with the Presiding Bishop and the General Convention. On this front it seems unlikely the bishops can do much better than the Episcopal Church has already done—unless Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori comes to the meeting with another oversight proposal.

A little history is helpful here. In March 2004, the House of Bishops passed a delegated episcopal pastoral oversight proposal which went as far as the House felt it could in guaranteeing sympathetic oversight to any parish that requested it. (The House does not have the authority to force a diocesan bishop to offer alternative oversight.) The plan was commended in The Windsor Report, which said it provided, “a very significant degree of security” to parishes that felt alienated from their diocesan bishop. The Primates, however, felt the need to establish a panel of reference at their meeting at Dromantine in February 2005, “to supervise the adequacy” of these alternative oversight arrangements.

(The remainder of that paragraph reads: “Equally, during this period we commit ourselves neither to encourage nor to initiate cross-boundary interventions. That is a matter for another time.” But do notice that various primates have released themselves unilaterally from the commitments they have made in these documents while continuing to call the Episcopal Church to account.)

The same primates who insisted on the creation of the panel became disillusioned with it, hence the proposal they embraced at Dar es Salaam in February, under which a Pastoral Council consisting of “up to five members: two nominated by the Primates, two by the Presiding Bishop, and a Primate of a Province of the Anglican Communion nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury to chair the Council” would be given broad powers not only to extend pastoral care of certain parishes and dioceses, but to participate in the adjudication of disputes within the life of the Episcopal Church. (In so doing they ignored a generous offer of alternative primatial oversight from Bishop Jefferts Schori that quite likely would have resulted in the same primatial vicar being named, and some of the same bishops, including Williams, being involved in his or her supervision, but would have vested final authority in Bishop Jefferts Schori.)

The Primates’ proposal was roundly rejected in late March by the House of Bishops in a vote that brought liberals and moderate conservatives such as Dorsey Henderson of Upper South Carolina and John Howard of Florida together to rebuff the Primates attempt to exercise an authority that no agreement, written or unwritten, confers upon them. The proposal was also rejected, in June, by the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s decision to accept the bishops invitation to their meeting came just three weeks after it was offered, and was the first indication that he did not necessarily view the Episcopal Church’s rejection of the Council scheme as grounds for exclusion from the councils of the Communion. The invitations to Lambeth were another sign that whatever the Episcopal Church’s perceived transgressions, he still considered himself in Communion with its bishops. He underlined this message by snubbing those bishops who had been ordained by African provinces to work in the United States. (At that time this included bishops of the Rwandan-backed Anglican Mission in America and the Nigerian-backed Convocation of Anglicans in America. The Churches of Kenya and Uganda have since ordained bishops as well.)

To clarify matters further, one of Williams' advisors last week told the Living Church that:

it was a serious misreading of the primates’ communiqué to say that an ultimatum had been given to the House of Bishops to take certain actions by Sept. 30 or face expulsion from the Anglican Communion. The communiqué had asked for certain clarifications from the House of Bishops, he said, but did not envision a breaching of The Episcopal Church’s constitution.

It may be that Williams had determined that he has given the radical conservative faction led by Akinola (and stag managed by his American allies) as much ground as he can. It may be that he considers its jurisdictional innovations more threatening to the future of the Communion than the two North American churches innovations on issues of human sexuality. It may also be that other leaders in the Communion, including some in Africa, have informed him of their concerns that Akinola’s faction may be willing to use other pretexts to plant its flag in other provinces when the moment suits them.

Whatever the case, House of Bishops has an opportunity to improve and solidify the Church’s standing within the Communion by offering the Archbishop and the Joint Standing Committee much of the reassurance that they seek. These reassurances will be all the more meaningful if the resolutions that embody them can be crafted in a way that appeals to theologically conservative bishops still committed to the Church.

It is not within the power of the House of Bishops, the Joint Standing Committee or Archbishop Williams to stop Archbishop Akinola and his allies from breaking from the Anglican Communion. But it is within their power to appeal to the substantial minorities in the Church and the Communion who are uneasy about the course the Episcopal Church has charted, but appalled by the rhetoric and tactics of Akinola and his virulent friends. And there has been no better moment to do so.

Jim Naughton is the editor of the Episcopal Café .

By Deirdre Good

The publication of personal letters by Mother Teresa to Jesus, her spiritual director, a few clergy, and her bishop -letters that she specifically asked to be destroyed-raises ethical questions. The letters acknowledge God's absence in her spiritual life for some fifty years and contrast the already known public persona to the private reality but this is immaterial. What right does Mother Teresa's spiritual director have to release letters that Mother Teresa wrote either to or for him? Do we honor the requests of the dead or not? What right does the editor of the book, Joseph Kolodiejchuk, have to publish them?

These letters are all that remain of trunk loads of correspondence most of which she destroyed. Perhaps Mother Teresa knew she would be declared a saint. She already recognized the public nature of her witness and work. She wrote to Father Joseph Neuner, S.J., on March 6, 1962: "If I ever become a Saint-I will surely be one of 'darkness.' I will continually be absent from heaven-to light the light of those in darkness on earth." Could this kind of sentence mean that she could foresee what would happen to her letters and that she covertly approved of others seeing what she wrote?

Some letters have been public for years. But the recent publication of more must be seen in light of her canonization. Mother Teresa has already been beatified. Full disclosure of her spiritual darkness in a book with carefully controlled commentary and interpretation seems to be a way to contain and present this material before her canonization is complete. The editor of Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light addresses this matter only once in the book: "Providentially, Mother Teresa's spiritual directors preserved some of her correspondence. Thus, when testimonies and documents were gathered during the process for her beatification and canonization, the remarkable story of her intimate relationship with Jesus, hidden from even her closest collaborators, was discovered. In contrast to her 'ordinariness,' Mother Teresa's confidences reveal previously unknown depths of holiness and may very well lead her to be ranked among the great mystics of the Church." As a student pointed out in a class discussion, this paragraph doesn't answer the question. But it is the only explanation offered by the editor of the book.

Is it possible the letters signify, not unlike the Virgin Mary, a construction of a feminine portrait of the Roman Catholic Church that can legitimate its own moral failures and justify its moral stances? Mother Teresa was unwavering in her commitment to the Church's teaching on abortion, and she never advocated for women priests. For all intents and purposes, she was loyal to the doctrine, discipline, and teaching of her church. But, as the Catholic Church itself has demonstrated in the many cases of sexual misconduct now surfacing, she did have a "darker" side. One motivation of this re-imaging -- we might even say re-branding -- of itself on the contours of her life is that it represents the Catholic Church's attempt to come to terms with its own past and engage in honest self-disclosure. But the veiled nature of the signification -- the fact that they chose a feminine image to shore up the status quo of a church that has failed to grapple with its own sexual misconduct and other moral failures suggests otherwise. Like the Virgin Mary, Teresa is evolving into a paradigmatic image of the challenges, hopes and fears of contemporary Roman Catholicism. In making these new revelations of her inner life, the church may have changed our perception of her, all the while failing to change itself.

We might also ask about the motivations of the book's publisher, Random House. On September 4, Publshers' Weekly noted "Random House reported an 8% decline in worldwide earnings for the first half of 2007, to 44 million euros ($60 million) while parent company Bertelsmann posted first-half losses primarily due to Napster legal difficulties." Random House CEO Peter Olson indicates that the fall publication list of the next four months (including Bill Clinton's new book Giving) will go some way towards meeting the full year's financial goals.

The extraordinary challenge Mother Teresa's spiritual life poses is in danger of being subsumed into our apparently insatiable desire for personal disclosure, of becoming a vehicle for rehabilitation of the Roman Catholic Church in a particular way, and of returning a publishing house to solvency. But despite the potential exploitation of Mother Teresa's spiritual life and my own deep reservations about overriding the explicit wishes of the departed, I participated in both - I bought the book. And I am grateful both to the author of the letters and to those who made it possible for me to read them. The miracle is that, murky ethical issues notwithstanding, we can witness in her letters an authentic sojourn in the heart of darkness as she carried out her mission to quench Christ's insatiable thirst for all human souls.

Professor Deirdre Good wrote this piece in conversation with Professor William Danaher at The General Theological Seminary in New York City where they both teach.

By Heidi Shott

Just yesterday morning, I was thinking about what to write for my monthly deadline at the Café. Several times a day I get flashes of ideas for essays – the commonplace moment somehow connects to some big idea - but then the phone rings or someone says, “hey, did you pick up my shirts at the cleaners?” or I get a pop-up on feedreader with a story about a cop in Glasgow who was attacked by an octopus and I can’t help but click. These interruptions make it hard to be faithful to all the ideas that present themselves for consideration.

But some ideas are more tenacious than others. There’s something in the way they keep rising to the top of my mind that makes them hard to ignore.

The James Taylor concert falls into that category.

In March for his birthday or perhaps in June for Father’s Day, (sadly, I can’t remember) my sons and I bought my husband Scott two tickets to see James Taylor in August. The plan was he would share the second ticket with me.

So one evening a few weeks ago, 50 miles from our quiet village, we sat down to a table at a lovely restaurant near the Civic Center in Portland. The young waiter asked if we were going to the concert.

“S’pose you have a lot of middle-aged people in tonight before James Taylor?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he grinned and concentrated on opening the wine.

Over the last 20 years we’ve been to a lot of events at the Civic Center. Once years ago I paid for my sons to ride the elephant at the circus, then they chickened out so I rode it with one of their friends. I’m against elephant riding in general, but I’d bought the damn tickets. We’ve seen Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby. We’ve gotten backstage passes to see the Barenaked Ladies twice because our only famous friend, Ned Steinberger, is a friend of the bass player.

As we took our seats on the floor of the Civic Center, eerily near the spot I bestrode the elephant, we saw that the place was sold out. It was sardined with people of the boomer persuasion. We played a game of spotting people under 30 with the couple to my left (you can do that in Maine). “There’s one!” chirped the 50-something engineer-type beside me.

“Well, yeah, she’s under 30, but look, she’s with her mom,” Scott said.

“Right,” he said, disappointed, “doesn’t count.”

“Our son is here,” said his wife. “He’s 32. But he won’t sit with us.”

One night in the lazy summer of 1982 - the summer Scott and I painted the barn on my family’s farm, played a lot of badminton and didn’t do much else - we drove to Saratoga Performing Arts Center to see James Taylor and his band. Most people were on the lawn with their blankets and buckets of beer, but we had tickets inside. It was a great show but I didn’t notice that anyone in the audience seemed particularly old, including James and Karla Bonoff who opened for him.

At this concert, however, there was no opening act, no band, just James Taylor, his guitars, and a fellow musician playing various keyboard instruments to complement the show. He started out with a wave and hello and launched into “There’s Something in the Way She Moves.” He had all 8,000 of us from the intro. His untouched voice; his deft, self-deprecating manner; all was a balm. Just about everyone in the room had either come of age with or grown up with these familiar songs, depending on their place on the boomer continuum.

I remember first hearing “Fire and Rain” played by my brother Jim, ten years my senior, around 1970. By the time I started high school in 1976, I was listening to “Greatest Hits” every night as I nodded off to sleep. “You’ve Got a Friend” was the last song on Side A and my record player would click off all by itself. The cover of the “JT” album spent several years mounted on the wall next to my bed. He still had hair back then.

In college, Scott and I listened to “Flag” and “Dad Loves His Work” on the 15-hour road trips between school in Boston and his home in West Virginia. After we were married and terribly lonely working as teachers in Micronesia, pining for mail and books we hadn’t already read, two copies of “That’s Why I’m Here” on cassette arrived from different friends on the very same day. Years later, I listened to “New Moon Shine” over and over during those first quiet winter months of doing little else but sitting and nursing our twin sons. This extended soundtrack of my life, our life together, is an odd and precious thing.

It’s crazy to think that this man who I don’t know nor will ever meet and, moreover, have no desire to ever meet, has accompanied me through these last 35 years. At the concert an alarming number of people felt compelled to shout personal greetings to him, which he absorbed graciously. The concert ran three hours with four encores. We got our money’s worth certainly. We had a nice dinner out, alone, like a real couple on a date. We talked about the first concert 25 years before in Saratoga when it took us 45 minutes to find the car, back when we never suspected we’d be together all these years later.

As a person of faith, I can’t help but wonder what it is about James Taylor – this gawky, bald, 60 year-old - that draws 8,000 busy middle-aged Mainers to buy tickets and sit on folding chairs in a dusty ice hockey rink/monster truck arena…and to be able to hold that attraction for 40 years. As someone who thinks a lot about marketing the Church, I can’t help but wonder what we’re doing wrong. The song that we’ve been gifted with is a million times sweeter than “Sweet Baby James.” If you read the Gospels with a fresh eye, it’s hard to escape that the person of Jesus is wildly attractive and charismatic. Read the Gospels cold, and you know why the fishermen of Galilee dropped their nets to follow. Talk about backstage passes!

But what are we doing in this Episcopal Church of ours? On what are we focusing our attention? We’re not so great at crafting an achingly sweet soundtrack that draws people back again and again and again.

One of the most disheartening stories I ever heard as a diocesan communications officer was from a single mom who had stopped going to one of our churches. Bumping into her after not seeing her for a few years, I asked why she’d stopped attending. She told me that she’d arrived one Sunday with her two daughters and someone caught her before she sat down to remind that it was her day to provide snacks and juice for coffee hour after the service. Her life was complicated at that time and she’d forgotten.

“I panicked,” she told me. “I had exactly $25 in my checking account, but I was too embarrassed to tell the person who chided me for forgetting. That I didn’t have any money wouldn’t have occurred to her in a million years.” Though I knew this woman was doing better now, I could see how much it cost her to recount the story. “I grabbed my girls, drove out and bought juice and crackers, and set them up in the parish hall. Then we left and we’ve never been back.”

If only we knew how to flip the switch to be better at this stuff. If only we knew how to absorb the winsome attractiveness of Jesus and offer it freely to everyone – people we agree with and people we don’t, people we find interesting and people we don’t. In the James Taylor model, despite his addictions and demons so publicly chronicled, there’s a guilelessness, a generously proffered gift, a constancy over time, that his admirers are drawn to. It’s not a bad model after all.

That night James sang:

“The secret of love is in opening up your heart It’s okay to feel afraid But don’t let that stand in your way ‘Cause anyone knows that love is the only road”

I started this column last night with my laptop in bed. I was going great guns when Scott said, “Time to turn out the light.” So I woke up this morning and finished it. I’m just glad I remember who to send it to.

Heidi Shott has served as press officer to Bishop Chilton Knudsen of Maine since 1998. She is also communications director of the Genesis Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides expertise and low-interest loans to nonprofits engaged in community development. Heidi's essays about trying to live a life of faith may be found at Heidoville.

This is the second of a two-part article.

By Frederick Quinn

Half way down Douala Street was a walled compound of tin-roofed cement buildings of various sizes, Bishopscourt, headquarters of The Church of Nigeria and Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, with whom I visited on March 31, 2000, the week after his public presentation as head of the Anglican Church in Nigeria.

The bishop was once a carpenter. That was evident early in our interview when he sprung up frequently and barked orders at workers stringing electrical lines in his office. He recalled an encounter when he was a lay catechist in Kebbi in Nigeria’s North, in the 1970s. When the regional Archdeacon came to town, looking for the congregation’s leader, Peter was up on the roof hammering in nails with the workers. Later, as a young priest in the new Nigerian capital of Abuja, government workers mistook him for a construction foreman because he was always arriving in their offices with an armful of building plans.

The fifty-six-year old Prelate was in constant motion, leaning toward visitors one moment, then bouncing up and down on his sofa seat to make a point. Peter J. Akinola was born in 1944 in Abeokutain, in Nigeria’s thickly vegetated Yoruba South. His father died when he was four years old, “and I have no memory of him. Later people told me he was a good and descent man.” Money was lacking for school, so an uncle in Nguru, Youbi State, in the faraway North, said, “Come and you’ll find some job.” A conventional Christian, Peter sang in the church choir, taught Bible classes, and graduated to lay reading lessons at the evening service.

By 1968 he had moved from a job as a postal worker to becoming a skilled carpenter and cabinetmaker, with his own shop and showroom, and several employees. He was doing well, but strange dreams intruded. “I found myself telling my age-mates and friends not to drink, go to the cinema, have so many girl friends. I heard them saying, ‘look, Bishop, if you don’t like our lives, get out of here.’”

“Then one fateful day in October I came to my workshop. A church representative was there with a letter asking the parish to send two young men to Zaria for seminary training. My uncle, who had brought me there many years ago, said, ‘Peter, the church council met and looked around the whole church and you are the only one they recommended. You should go for the interview.’ I could not refuse my uncle.”

“That night, I had a very clear dream. I was rebuking my godmother, a very saintly woman. She said gently, ‘Peter, what are you doing?’” Peter made the trip, taking with him 4,000 Nigerian pounds to buy supplies for a lucrative government contract recently awarded to his carpentry shop. He thought the seminary interview would be brief; he would flunk, and be sent home. At Zaria, the warden of the Theological College of Northern Nigeria, Jeremy Hinds (“This man was so influential on my life, I named my first son for him”) gave him the key to Room 12. “I waited for the interview on Saturday, but on Monday they told me ‘you can start classes. We do not have to interview this man. The Church Council said this was their candidate.’ Peter returned to Nguru, returned the money advanced on his furniture contract, paid off his workers, and headed for the theological college where “I grew stronger in the faith, grew stronger in the Lord. I came out tops in my class.”

Suleja was an isolated truckers’ stop, a crossroads on the North-South road when Peter was assigned there in 1978. The parched region soon became Nigeria’s new capital and Peter headed out on his Honda motorbike to visit newly arriving government workers in their homes. “Parlour churches” formed, Anglicans met regularly in living rooms or under large trees, and truckers made their buketria, an edge of town trucker’s cafeteria, available to Anglicans and Roman Catholics for Sunday worship. It was a time of explosive growth for the Church. Growing numbers of catechists and lay readers headed out as missionary teams into villages on Friday nights and returned on Sunday evenings, preaching wherever they could find listeners.

In 1979 Peter left Suleja for three years at Virginia Theological Seminary. Hoping to return to Nigeria as a seminary professor, he was instead assigned back to Seleja for three more years. “I cried and I cried and said ‘No way!’” In Nigeria, bishops assign clergy to parishes and Peter was told, “We need a pioneer, someone who is not only a pastor but a builder.” He stayed in Suleja from 1981 to 1984, and then became Provincial Missionary from 1984 to1989. By 1985 twenty-eight Anglican churches had been built in the new capital. Following established Church Missionary Society precepts, each church should be self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing.

In 1989, Akinola, completing five years as Provincial Missionary, gave a progress report to the Synod of Bishops, after which a senior bishop told him, “Peter, you are not properly dressed.” “I raced back to the hotel for my cassock, and someone called me, ‘The Primate wants to see you immediately!’ I wondered what I had done wrong. The Primate handed me a paper and said, ‘Give me your reply quickly.’ I cried, and yelled, and screamed. That was the last thing I had ever thought of in my life, to be named a bishop. There were rumors of other senior bishops who were interested in the post, those who had trained in Britain and elsewhere. Canons and archdeacons and graduates of old theological colleges were around, and I was not part of any of those groups.”

In November 1989 Peter became bishop of Nigeria’s twenty-sixth diocese. (There were one hundred twelve dioceses in 2007). Bit by bit the church added additional institutions, medical dispensaries, schools, rural development projects, and a large primary school. Bishopscourt includes an office block and meeting rooms, clergy housing, and a five-bedroom bungalow for the Archbishop (who has six children), plus a ninety-room guesthouse to provide relatively cheap accommodation to Christian visitors to the nation’s capital, with proceeds being used for mission work. A small bookshop featured flyspecked copies of the deceased media evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman’s I Believe in Miracles and a sampling of the self help spirituality and success books increasingly popular in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s population, divided into over two hundred and fifty ethnic groups, was estimated at 135 million persons in 2007. The country faces daunting problems. World Bank estimates place per capita GNP at $260, average life expectancy at fifty-two years. The adult literacy rate is 57% and the probability of dying before the fifth birthday (both sexes) is 14%. Christian and Muslim populations are roughly comparable, with a 10% edge usually given to Muslims. Possibly seventeen to twenty million of the fifty-some million Christians are Anglicans. The growth of the church in Nigeria eclipses that of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain combined.

The Singapore Ordinations and Archbishop A