About those letters
As I’ve mentioned below, The Living Church is reporting that David Booth Beers, chancellor of the Episcopal Church "has written identical letters to the chancellors of two traditionalist dioceses demanding that they change language “that can be read as cutting against an ‘unqualified accession’ to the Constitution and Canons of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church."
This report has generated an outpouring of blog-based analysis and reaction. Father Jake likes the move, and doesn’t care for Bishop Iker’s response. Mark Harris says the chancellor is doing his job. The Admiral of Morality, a delightful newcomer, suggests, like Jake, that the letters signal “the arrival of a new Presiding Bishop who, fresh from Canterbury, is prepared to act boldly and swiftly in the name of Christ and His Episcopal Church.”
Commenters on Kendall Harmon’s blog aren’t happy, but aren’t alarmed either. I think they understand that nothing definitive has happened here. The rhetoric is more reich-related on Stand Firm in Faith. (I can understand being upset about this, as it seems to represent a change in course at Church Center, but all this jackboot business, please)
I generally agree with Jake and Mark on the issues confronting our church, but I am more uneasy than they about these letters. My unease may be rooted in reasons peculiar to myself, or to a person in my profession, but I think it hints at a broader problem: namely, the seeming unwillingness of our leadership to recognize the virtue of dealing more openly with the press and with Church members regarding the problems before us.
When your organization is involved in an ongoing controversy, it is extremely advantageous to be able to control the content and timing of news stories. The Episcopal right understands this well, and keeps creating well-timed news events that get reporters’ attention, and foster the impression that they are on the march while the Church leadership is in retreat. Here was an occasion, however, where both the content of the next news story (“Chancellor sends letters”) and the timing of the news story (a clock that starts ticking when the letters are mailed) were entirely in Church Center’s control.
If it is a given that the content of the letters will become public, the most media-savvy thing to do is to release the letters broadly with an explanation of why you were doing what you were doing and why you were doing it now. This not only insures that your side of the story leads whatever pieces might be written, it also guarantees that your interpretive framing of the story will be taken seriously.
The other benefits of this approach include damping down rumor and speculation--People are less likely to wonder about your intentions if you explain them; demonstrating that you have nothing to hide or fear; and reassuring the members of your organization that the organization can be counted on to report upon its own activities in a timely and relatively forthright way.
If you choose not to follow this approach, and the content of the letters come out from a different source, not only don’t you reap the advantages I’ve outlined, you reap their inverse.
Controlling the timing of a news event is also a tremendous advantage because it allows you to make sure that the story breaks when it does you the most good or least the harm—depending on the type of story it is. If, for instance, you are about to introduce the new leader of your organization to the general public, if that person is more or less a blank public slate, if you are eager to sell this individual’s tenure as the beginning of a fresh new day, and if you have spent a great deal of time and a little bit of money to build the stage on which this new leader will make her entrance, then controlling the timing of a potentially distracting news story means that you can make sure it breaks after the big event. Otherwise you turn advantage into disadvantage by forcing your new leader to talk abut precisely the issues you are trying to move past.
Finally, a release that places an individual development in a broader context---We are doing X so that we can (do/avoid) Y and therefore achieve Z.—persuades your potentially anxious membership (which is getting its information about your intentions from skeptical, unfriendly or uninformed sources) that there is a steady hand on the wheel, and an alert navigator in the passenger’s seat. In the absence of such reassurance, the passengers are left to study the unfamiliar scenery rolling by outside the window and trust that the driver is heading home by another way.
When we don’t communicate information, we communicate anxiety.
People don’t come to church to have their anxieties amplified.
Are we there yet?
Wise words, Jim.
I would hope that you would send some of these thoughts to Bishop Katharine. I think she would be quite receptive to them.
Posted by Jake | October 31, 2006 2:36 PM
Yes - good advice. No one seems to have seen the letter and all we are hearing are quotes by Bp Iker. I wonder what it actually says.
Posted by ann | October 31, 2006 4:10 PM
Jim, I appreciate your honesty in this post. I've been concerned that so few of those on the reappraising / progressive side seem to find these letters troubling (at least based on what I've seen on Fr. Jake, Mark Harris and Susan Russell's blogs).
I've also been very surprised by the dead silence on the HOB/D list today on this matter (appart from AF's original post with the news).
Not even touching the question of the advisability of what has been done, the timing has got so many of us stunned.
Your comments on the whole PR situation are quite similar in their overall thrust to a comment I wrote on Stand Firm:
One more thought to share on the timing of this. Something I just read by Dr. Peter Toon caused this to crystallize for me.
I find myself thinking this is a HUGE miscalculation by 815. According to Toon+ (and I am convinced he’s right) There is a very large percentage of ECUSA that would like nothing more to be able to hide from the crisis, pretend it doesn’t exist, and just get on with 1) their comfortable parish traditions and life; or 2) mission and evangelism.
+Schori could have ensured the rejoicing and support of many had she taken a course that would have allowed her to appear as if she were “above the fray” and proclaim that she was going to “raise ECUSA above the mire of all this conflict.” I thought that was the route she WAS taking given the incessant focus on the MDGs the past three months.
Imagine if she’d done something like go to Sudan. or Korea. or South Africa. (Kind of like +Frank’s Asia tour during the Global South Encounter meetings in Egypt last year.) The kind of glowing press she would have gotten! “THIS is what ECUSA truly stands for… It is all about MDGs, peace, justice, reconciliation…”
We would have never heard the end of it. But what does she do even before she’s officially PB? She ESCALATES the crisis and turns the heat up from active simmer to full boil, ensuring that her name will be dragged into the mire, that ECUSA will remain page 1 news in many major newspapers, that the crisis will remain present and dominate the news for weeks and months to come, not be set aside.
Posted by KarenB | October 31, 2006 4:38 PM
On the other hand - no time like the present to confront abusive behavior - might as well get this out and deal with it. No amount of PR or spin will make it any less messy. People I hear from (and not just the usual liberal bloggers) appreciate the action after years of allowing all this sort of stuff to happen without comment. But I would still like to see the letter.
Posted by ann | October 31, 2006 5:44 PM
It is good advice. But from my perspective, there is a problem with the fundamentals of the current situation that make it difficult for ECUSA to follow. I think you touch on it when you say "When your organization is involved in an ongoing controversy, it is extremely advantageous to be able to control the content and timing of news stories. The Episcopal right understands this well, and keeps creating well-timed news events that get reporters’ attention, and foster the impression that they are on the march while the Church leadership is in retreat."
Of course, I'd suggest that it is unfair to characterize those as "news events". They are real events. And the fundamental problem for ECUSA is that, as near as I can tell, while the Network clearly wants to have something happen, the national church institutionally does not want anything to happen. It just wants things to blow over. I'd say that is a failed strategy by now, but it is difficult to be proactive with media events when you are trying not to create events and the other side is.
The alternative would be, as you say, to create some events and exercise some control over how they are publicized. But to do that, the national church will have to admit that something is probably going to happen, and then the barn door is open. That is why I think the national church will as an institution have a hard time doing what you suggest. Because at that point, the "wait them out" strategy is gone, something is likely going to happen, and ECUSA may not be able to control what that will turn out to be. You may have wrapped your mind around such a possibility, but for some institutionalists, it is change, and scary.
Now, the letters could signal an effort to change the passive strategy into a hard line, proactive one, and then maybe they could use more of your spin. But if they are instead an effort to try to stake out a position prior to negotiations, well, they seem pretty ham-handed and likely to backfire, particularly to the extent they strengthen the hand of the global south in their discussions with the ABC. (Incidentally, an unremarked side-story is whether Schori mentioned these to Williams in her meeting. Iker has said he faxed them to the ABC later in the day after Schori left. If she did not mention them and the ABC only learned about them hours later, that would seem, well, really, really not good.)
All are my orthodox views, of course, so feel free to disregard.
Posted by pendennis88 | November 1, 2006 9:30 AM
Thank you Mr. Naughton for the well thought out points.
The Church and of course the bishops, have many questions to answer.
To the latter I have directed "Five Questions for the Secessionist Bishops"
Posted by The Admiral of Morality | November 1, 2006 10:25 AM