And the brass ring goes to Kelvin Holdsworth. BINGO!

Susan Russell

I thought the Anglican Covenant business was finished?

At GC77 I urged people to keep their wooden stakes and mallets ready because monsters never die on the first killing. And here is Bp. Matthews trying to help it from the grave.

People all over the WWAC have read the Covenant closely and the most excited response has been "eh". That it has not sailed through is a sign that it does not reach Mr Hooker's "Right Reason" it does not even come close. Indeed it demeans Reason as. Source of Authority because it was promulgated by our fundagelicals.

Stake it again, friends, but be ready on the next full moon.

Bravo, Kelvin!

I grieve that we in the Episcopal Church did not stand with the Scottish Episcopal Church and vote a resounding NO to the odious Anglican Covenant at GC12. All that was accomplished with the wishy-washy "decline to take a position" was to offer supporters of the covenant the opportunity to spin our vote into a "partial decision" that means what? That TEC will vote to adopt in the future? That will never happen, so why didn't we have the backbone to say so?

Yes, I know, the deed is done and won't be undone, but the vote is the unwanted gift that keeps on giving.

June Butler

June, I take your question (a "partial decision" that means what?) to be rhetorical, but I actually think it's worth saying:

What I take from our stance is that it isn't antagonistic. I'm reminded of a seminary text that noted that a post-Civil-War convention of the Episcopal Church (a convention which did not at that time include the dioceses that had been part of the Confederacy) voted to change a resolution from "praising God for Union victory" to "praising God for a cessation of hostilities." The text credited this change with being conciliatory enough to allow the church to reunify (other denominations did not, hence, for example, Southern Baptists).

In the same way, declining to take a position on the Covenant allows us to move forward, not as "winners and losers" in the covenant debate, but as brother and sister churches still in complicated and unfinished relationship. That strikes me as being closer to "sacramental," in that it outwardly demonstrates what is inwardly true. And it's down that path, and not one of victory for any given "side" that might emerge, that I suspect we'll be met by Christ's will for our life together.

Benedict, my question is not rhetorical. What exactly does "partial decision" mean?

Sorry, I don't understand your analogy to the situation in the church during the Civil War. We are not, at present, engaged in a civil war. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion can move forward quite well without the covenant...witness the ACC meeting and the activities of IASCUFO. The Anglican Covenant is at worst, dead, and at best, irrelevant. Why carry on as though the document still has meaning for the Anglican Communion?

June Butler

+ Matthews told delegates, “I have often thought that the document people discuss and the actual Anglican Covenant are two different documents."

Actually, it is more the case of the covenant as written and the covenant described by it proponents
are two different documents.

Benedict, I don't think the Episcopal Church should be proud that during the Civil War whites in the North made conciliatory gestures toward whites in the South who were defending the institution of slavery. Such a pax romana was a prelude to decades of Jim Crow laws which would make freed slaves into second-class citizens. Unity at the price of justice is unacceptable.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Gary, if you'll pardon my saying so (and my brief description of the event might not have made this clear in the first place), the "price of justice" was no longer on the table; the war had ended when the convention I'm describing took place.

The question of language, then, had to do with what was to be celebrated. "Union victory" was too hard a term for some to hear. A "cessation of hostilities" was something everyone might soberly affirm. In a moment when deep personal pain was being felt by persons and families on all sides of the conflict, the church altered the language of its united voice to speak only what could be spoken together.

Certainly there are moments where a question of justice would be in tension with that principle, but again, that justice question had been settled (though certainly the descendants of racism still plague American life).

"Sportsmanship" is an impoverished analogy where human lives and deepest moral principles are concerned, but it rests on the same pragmatic psychological foundation: when a "side" has "won" in a conflict, those whose position has not are more likely to find a way to release anxiety and continue in relationship if they are given respect and space to grieve whatever they've lost. I'd offer that if the relationship breaks, there often are no "winners."

To June's question about how that connects to the Covenant debate, I'd say that while it seems, indeed, that the Covenant does not express the identity many Anglicans believe we hold in common, there are yet some who feel that it does, and those feelings are deeply held and worth according what respect we're able to. Part of what Anglican identity is for me is an insistence that everyone be accorded space within the church, even when we disagree.

What I'm suggesting is that one way we can interpret the action of General Convention is to say that we have chosen NOT to stand in a relationship of victory-over, but of a quieter acknowledgment that this question has been settling itself.

Is there a "price of justice" to this? I would offer that there is not. And furthermore, it's possible that part of how we as TEC within the Anglican Communion can continue to offer relationship to our brothers and sisters in other churches is to be as gentle as possible, having acted in ways that they find harsh. (to Gary's point: "the price of justice" might certainly be a line we'd consider declaring not "possible" to cross.)

Certainly we could ignore our own opportunities to offer space and compassion into dialogue, insisting that the other side hasn't. We could shout that nobody has altered their demands to allow us the space to seek what we believe to be our true calling as Christ's Body the Church. We could exercise our loudest voices and greatest powers -- be they theological, political, or even economic -- to insist that our voice and experience be left un-challenged by the other member churches of the communion, who we believe to be wrong on any number of topics. We could make "absolute victory" the standard of relationship by which we assent to continue belonging to one another. But could any of us defend that as the Gospel of Christ?

So my (non-rhetorical) question is: Does it cost us something to still our voice for a time? To lower the energy in the room so that other voices might do the same? Can we allow that we have, indeed, helped lead the Anglican Communion to a place where the church is experiencing conflict, and that it may take other voices in the communion to lead us where we need to go next together? To me, the GC resolution at the least makes a space where that could happen. It offers us space and time to pause and consider how we respond to one another, and I call those great gifts in this time.

It falls to all the baptized to decide how we'll use those gifts. Which, to me, is one more good reason to pray for the church.

Benedict, I pray for the church and the communion without benefit of the Anglican Covenant.

June Butler

Benedict, After the Civil War, whites came back together again and supported Jim Crow laws which kept African-Americans down for another seven decades. How lovely that the Episcopal Church was so concerned to kiss up to Southern whites!

This is the same denomination which accepted racial segregation in parishes for decades.

I don't want to have anything to do with such a theology of apartheid. The denomination still has not come to grips with its complicity in the oppression of African Americans.

Breaking off the relationship with the oppressor makes more sense, as the Reformation tradition taught. The sale of indulgences was reason enough back then to break the visible body of the church.

To sign on to a document which tends to promote creeping centralization and an Anglican Pope is totally unacceptable.

I think, as Luther said, sin boldly.

Lukewarm will not do.

Gary Paul Gilbert