Hi Don,

A fascinating series. As always, you encourage us to think about what many might see as just "givens." For me, though, the episcopate is not just a "given." I grew up in the Baptist tradition, mostly of the Southern variety. We had no bishops. Each congregation was the final authority unto itself. So, I will admit that the episcopacy remains more of an intellectual construct for me than something "in my bones." That will take a few more years at the least.

Having said that, though, I saw a real disadvantage to the congregational polity of the Baptist tradition. It often led to a lot of splintering. Granted, we've had our fair share of splintering in the Episcopal Church lately, but not at all to the scale often experienced in my previous tradition.

So, for me, I appreciate the episcopacy as a sign of unity - the unity of our diocese and the unity among dioceses as expressed when the bishops come together in council. I think this visible, embodied sign of unity is extremely important for the Church today. And, I hope, that embodied sign of unity will be one that listens well. I'm grateful for a bishop with that particular gift among others.

But the listening to which you refer does not only occur at the local level in one's diocese. It also needs to occur at the catholic level, i.e. among dioceses and among provinces. For that reason, I believe our current bicameral system provides an important set of checks and balances. The House of Deputies emphasizes the local point of view, and, I hope, the House of Bishops emphasizes the catholic point of view. So, I would not want to see that basic structure change.

However, could other tweaks occur that would allow for better communication at General Convention? Indubitably. I have yet to attend General Convention, but I understand the Houses meet separately. Why not meet together? Then more direct communication could occur. Also, I am sure there are tweaks that could happen on the committee-level (where the real work of any legislation gets done) as well.

So, I believe your emphasis upon listening is absolutely essential. It is a quality for which all of our bishops should strive as well as the rest of us! But that listening needs to be not only local but catholic and that is a gift our bishops provide us that is immeasurable!

In Christ,
Shawn Strout
Diocese of Washington (DC)

Lots of text in these three posts, Father Schell. I will just focus on this sentence: "What if our bishops found their primary identity, voice and purpose from listening to the people of their diocese rather than from speaking to each other?"

First, is this right? Every bishop I've known has been keenly focused first of all on their flock, of which he or she is the chief pastor. Second, I can't conceive of an Episcopal or Anglican ecclesiology in which bishops don't speak to each other, being the bridge between local church and church catholic. It's a conciliar ideal that goes way, way back.

Shawn and Chris,

Both of your responses take "catholic" to mean "universal" or "global," and part of what interests me is that Ignatius, the first person who uses the word of the church, is using it to describe the "wholeness" of the local congregation gathered around the bishop.

I'm wondering if inherited habits of Roman thinking shaped the administrative sense of "Catholicism" for Christianity as it was proclaimed and eventually administered from Rome. The effort to standardize liturgy and practice to Roman norms comes pretty early. In a recent piece in Worship magazine Nathan Mitchel argued that St. Patrick, in bringing Romanized Christianity to Christian Celts was contributing to the suppression of a much less authoritative, more sacramentally ordered and local Celtic understanding and practice of bishop.

And the angry and shocked assertion that more episcopal voices makes us more Catholic and Important episcopal voices even more so was what the American Episcopal church was facing from the Anglican primates meeting over our churchwide affirmation of New Hampshire's election of Gene Robinson.

Is the RC College of Bishop's attempt to rein in the Roman Catholic sisters conciliar because it's a group of bishops?

My first patristics teacher (a student of Georges Florovsky and himself Orthodox) used to argue that the ecumenical councils were only midpoints in extended theological controversies. Something raised and discoverd in local teaching or prayer raised a question that the imperial order decided needed a resolution. Bishops gathered and wrote a decision or definition. Then time and the voice of popular piety decided whether to embrace the decision, so councils called in the same way and with the same number of legitimate bishops might be remembered as councils of anti-councils, their decisions the opposite of what we want to claim as conciliar theology. For the first seven or eight centuries, despite imperial sanction and attempts to seek tidy resolution, the fact the "the bishops have spoken" didn't carry weight until the church's broad consensus confirmed what they'd said.

Chris,

To your question of experience, my experience doesn't match yours, at least some of the time. Sometimes our bishops are remarkable and patient listeners, but sometimes at least some of them seem to find their clearest authority when the listen to other bishops and speak to their dioceses.

So, when you write, "Every bishop I've known has been keenly focused first of all on their flock, of which he or she is the chief pastor," I'd say that's not my experience.

I think of is the times I've heard bishops say of themselves or with frustration of other bishops, "you have to remember the conversation between sessions in the House of Bishops. When we gather we feel answerable to each other and to the House."

Of course bishops will talk to each other, and they have good reason to, but is the House of Bishops really a clergy peer group for bishops? Rome, the Anglican Primates, and too often over the past years Archbishop Rowan Williams seem to think that bishops' voices make an opinion catholic and that something can't be authentically catholic unless enough bishops (and the right bishops) have assented to it.

In our Episcopal polity, I find an interesting comparison between Senate and House of Representatives, House of Lords and House of Commons in the U.K., and the House of Bishops and House of Deputies for our church.

Lords and Bishops are both lifetime membership groups. And while U.S. Senators have a term, it's three times as long as a congressperson's and their constituency is an institutional and geographic unit rather than people - the senate is an "upper house" where it's not "one person, one vote."

How do upper and lower house and questions of where leaders find their identity apply to church structure? The permanent members of the House of Bishops meet twice a year while elected deputies serve a term in the House of Deputies and then only return if they're reelected. The structure suggests that their legitimacy comes from the people who elect and send them. And whose are the bishops?

Ask bishops if they belong to the diocese or to the House of Bishops? And do bishops (and the rest of us) understand "my diocese" suggests possession when a bishop speaks it and belonging when a clergy or layperson does?

Am I right in thinking that among Eastern Churches, there's not really a diocese like we would see it, but rather there is a bishop in a city - hence Metropolitans everywhere - and that priests put themselves under the jurisdiction aka "omophoron" (pallium) of the usually - but not always - nearest bishop? Thus they are structured rather like a circle around a point rather than a garden in a boundary? Isn't the ECLA structured somewhere in between? Just wanting to clarify alternate ways of gathering and leadership before jumping into a conversation.

Clint, I don't know the answer to this really useful question, but do imagine a "diocese" like "Brooklyn and all the Aleutian Islands" would have to work something like you're describing. I really like your images of a circle gathered around a point and a garden within a boundary. I hope other readers may offer what they know of Orthodox practice (especially in the U.S. where the multiply-missioned, ethnic and post-ethnic autocephalous churches seem to require relationship thinking to sort out creative interdependence, accountability, and effective bonds of affection.

Clint, I was also thinking this morning of ways we've combined pyramidal organizational charts with our understanding of hierarchy, and how the metaphor of "top down" emerges from that. Intriguingly two of the images Jesus offers in the Gospels have a different geometry - Vine and branches is bottom up and shepherd is horizontal and the geometric question of when the shepherd moves ahead of the flock (traveling) and when the shepherd takes the position behind the flock (at the gate of the sheepfold).

Donald, my apologies for being such a slow thinker - this comment arrives after Episcopal Cafe has already archived your post. I am spending two days a week in pulmonary rehab and two days a week recovering from it, which means that everything else has to fit into three days, one of which is Sunday. [sigh]

I so agree with your observation that ++Rowan has knocked our idea of episcopacy all caterwhompus. It floors me that the whole Communion was invited by the Crown Nominations Committee to comment on what we hoped for in the next ABC. I am afraid that I responded that I hope for an Archbishop who can tend the Church of England and not try to be a global Anglican power broker. I know that sounds harsh, but I find I am still am cranky about his attempts to shepherd the Episcopal Church.

In your consulting the older relatives around the Thanksgiving table, I hope you won't forget to check in with Uncle Richard, since Volume VII of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Piety addresses the episcopacy. I find that, regrettably, I'm not wise enough to tell you what Hooker says - but, thanks be to God, you could call up Steve McGrade, whose volumes on Uncle Richard are benchmarks for our generation, and ask him. McGrade even has an article on Hooker and the episcopacy, but it's behind a steep paywall I decided not to climb.

Thanks for the thinking and writing you are doing -

Pamela Grenfell Smith
Bloomington, Indiana

Pamela,

I welcome your suggest I invite Steve McGrade to deepen my acquaintance with Uncle Richard Hooker, whom, I will confess, I don't know nearly as well as I should. I'd might even climb the steep paywall if you'll send me a link.

And I appreciate your hunch and discernment that inviting global Anglicans to comment on who we'd like to have as the next Archbishop requires a bit of an ironic response - someone who's not too invested in being "our" Archbishop, as though we lacked proper episcopacy on this side of the Atlantic.

I got two interesting responses from retired bishops. I'm waiting permission to repost one, but now can pass on (with his permission) this from Joe Doss -

"I often think that the singular, vital, role of the bishop can be grasped in breaking down the Greek term for the office this way: "epi-scoper". The episcopal office is for "epi-scoping", looking over the whole all the way back through time and space to make that whole present and employed in the here and now.

The two parts of the term are ordinarily put together in English as "overseer". But for us this is a term that has already been taken and used in other contexts. That common usage leads us to hear the term in a way that is unfortunately narrowed and focused, something having to do with authority and the responsibility for getting things done by getting others to do their part, sort of like "big boss" or "institutional leader of the member parts". In the era of American slavery it even was the term used for the boss "over-seeing" the work of the slaves.

I like to think "epi-scoper" should carry more the sense of the one who is to look over the whole to make sure everyone is given a vision of, remains faithful to, and participates in the whole of a diocese and in the whole that goes back to the apostles and moves over and around the globe.

If the bishops fulfill this role in council, they will be valuable indeed. The question is how to fulfill it best, as a house or together in one chamber with representatives of laity, presbyters, and deacons -- or a combination to be used at different times for different purposes. What is not helpful is the role of trying to be the authoritative arbiter of what should be decided."

Joe (Doss)
(re-posted with permission)