Phew! I'm really pleased that Venerables down in the southern cone will still be able to represent us at ecumenical gatherings.

Phew! I'm really pleased that Venerables down in the southern cone will still be able to represent us at ecumenical gatherings.

This reminds me of the Eddie Izzard comedy bit "Cake or Death?" which was a joke on the politeness of the Church of England. So we are asked to step down and not be an integral part of the life of the Church - but we are "still in the Communion"? I choose cake.

I suppose that the Archbishop can do as he sees fit but find it odd that this same sort of rhetoric doesn't seem to make the news when the Africans or the Southern Cone set up churches or bishops in the United States. Did I miss that?

He must be hoping against hope we will accept the "disinvitation" (I wonder what Miss Manners would have to say about that concept). And if we don't--what will he do then? He doesn't really have any option that I can see besides wringing his hands and saying "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..."

I really am conflicted about this. I don't like removing ourselves and making it easier for him to continue ignoring the reality in his own province, but on the other hand one reaches a point where it seems unhealthy--for one's own sake--to remain.

Regardless of what we ultimately choose to do, I would like to see our leaders push back a little for a change--gently, but nonetheless firmly. I think we've been doormats long enough. We need not be the Communion's whipping boy, and the AC will fall apart no more slowly without us than with us.

Michael Morris

As we have asked ad nauseum, does that mean that those provinces engaged in boarder crossing will also be asked to step down or is it only those provinces who have the nerve to advocate full inclusion for all of God's children, that is, recognise that heterosexuals are not the only people who have a claim on God's grace. This is getting beyond tiresome and annoying.

Rod, it looks like they included the Southern Cone in the consultant status now.

Eric

Cake or death here

Fine. The ABC has politely made his request. Now TEC and ACofC should politely ignore it.

Kurt Hill
Brooklyn, NY

The Archbishop of Canterbury refuses to speak out in defense of the two men jailed in Malawi, yet he says in his Pentecost letter, "the
least Christian thing we can do is to think that this absolves us from
prayer and care for each other...." Does "each other" include the persecuted, or just our little Anglican "in crowd?" I'm sure that the persecuted would be at the top of Jesus' priority list, and I wonder whether the Archbishop realizes how his stance makes him look.

Secretly, as an American living in London and stuck with the Church of England, I hope for a split in the communion. Wouldn't that mean that the Episcopal Church could open vibrant, exciting parishes here? That would be glorious.

What difference do these actions by Canterbury really make? Formal ecumenical dialogues are just talk with no realistic hope of ever moving beyond polite conversation until the dialogue partners become willing to alter their positions on important issues, e.g., the ordination of women and the infallibility of Rome. Such change seems extremely unlikely. The Inter-Anglican Commission has no real power, so exclusion carries no real penalty. In time, the rest of the Anglican Communion will follow where TEC now leads.

I have to say, it’s high time the Episcopal Church planted its own tank on Lambeth’s front lawn. I think there is still some room left next to Benedict’s tank. It’s time the Convocation of Episcopal churches in Europe started to do a little property hunting.

Paul David

Fine. The ABC has politely made his request. Now TEC and ACofC should politely ignore it.

I'm with Kurt. No dice this time. "Been there, done that, got the tee shirt." All that withdrawal on our part does is give the conservatives a chance to stamp around in their purple cassocks and show everyone that they are "really" the church. No way! We might be in the minority, but since when does the minority party have to absent itself from the discussion? Coming from a country with parliamentary rule, I would think that Rowan would realize this. Are the losing party asked to vacate their seats so that the majority can have untrammeled free reign to do what they want? I think not.
The ABC can "ask" all he wants, but he does not have the power to exclude us, and we should not de facto give it to him by surrendering to his demands.
I would go beyond Kurt's polite ignoring. The answer is not only "No" but "Hell, no, Most Reverend Sir."

Eric wrote "Rod, it looks like they included the Southern Cone in the consultant status now". Thanks Eric, I missed that. I notice that Barnett-Cowan from Canada is not redlined. Which is interesting because three of our 30 dioceses have moved to allow same sex blessings. Can't wait to see how this plays out with our General Synod which is meeting next week. Looks like some folks are getting weak in the knees--hope we do the right thing and hold the line.

I agree with Dr. Shy et al. that we should not accept this dis-invitation as we have done in the past.

But I note that in the Q/A quoted above, while there seems to be some acknowledgement of the ABCs limited authority in part a ("will be asked"), part b states unequivocally that the naughty folk "will no longer have any decision-making powers" in IASCUFO.

I stopped keeping up with the proliferating acronyms a while back, so I'm not exactly clear who/what IASCUFO is, how the group is selected or governed, or what authority (real or imagined) it has.

So--to someone who knows--I ask: does +Rowan have any real authority over this IASCUFO? Can he do more than dis-invite in this case? He certainly seems to think so.

Bigger question--do we really care anymore? About the idea of a Communion? Sadly, I find that I don't, all that much. For a long time I was convinced that the real imperative was local ministry in context--in the United States, to minister effectively here, the church must welcome all into all orders of ministry. If that isn't the context in Africa--if in fact, there is no "gay" culture there, as there is here--maybe the context is different. Fine--we're not forcing this on you. But I've begun to see that there is an emerging gay culture in Africa, struggling to break free from church and state oppression. And suffering violence unimaginable in our context. And now I think our moral imperative is to not back down one inch, and to do whatever we can to help the voices of the LGBTQI in Africa be heard. And if that means sacrificing the Communion, well at least its something worth sacrificing it for.

Jason Cox

Interestingly, when the Windsor Report came out (back those hoary days of 2004), and TEC and the AngChCanada were asked to excuse themselves from "representative bodies of the AC", IASCUFO was exactly what many (myself included) thought that meant (i.e., it REPRESENTS the AC to the Wider Church/Christian World).

But the conservatives harped "No, you're wrong", and TEC/AngChCanada knuckled under to voluntarily withdrawing (full voice & vote) from the ACC (and we know the mischief that resulted then).

Whatever. I propose (for TEC's part---I ALWAYS let the Canadians speak for themselves!) we should say NOTHING to this, till we see if the border-crossers are going to withdraw...

...and then we say "We're still coming!" anyway. Because it's essential to OUR MISSION, to represent the, um, Christian (Christ-like) side of the AC, to benighted places like the Vatican and Moscow (not to mention Malawi!).

JC Fisher

"The Gospel is not the property of any one group, any one culture or history..." Would that the current Archbishop of Canterbury had read his own words! He seems to think the Gospel is whatever he says it is, without justice and equality for LGBTs. A secondary position for the Episcopal Church might free it to move on to living in a postmodern world. A secondary status could be more important than trying to hang on to an irrelevant primary position of privilege. Or no relation at all to Canterbury at all would also sound good to me.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Jason,

There is a polygamist culture in Africa. Should they accept polygamists into all orders of ministry? (Despite what the Scriptures say?)

When we look to culture in order to establish God's will rather than the Scriptures and the Great Tradition, we stumble into obscurity - mistaking Zeitgeist for Heilige Geist. We should be humble to speak with the church and contra mundum unless there is a compelling case from Scripture to be made to the contrary. Speaking against the Church using the world's values is the opposite of prophetic.

I'm saddened that he wasted an opportunity to preach the Gospel. That's what the apostles did on the first Pentecost.

I think everyone's comments are extremely thoughtful. I agree with Jason and also think that we should prayerfully approach and talk about the question of whether or not the Communion is the place for TEC to be any longer. I personally am struggling to see its relevance. I don't think this will ever be reconciled, not without dragging TEC, etc. down in the meantime.

I think rather than crash the party to which we are disinvited, TEC or ACoC should plan an alternative meeting of like-minded fellow provinces to discuss the future of the AC from our point of view and through the lens of our beliefs. We should seriously consider whether or not the AC is the place for us, and the time for that consideration is now.

Incidentally, the ABC's mediocrity and doddering never ceases to surprise me.

Joe Brewer

We should be humble to speak with the church and contra mundum unless there is a compelling case from Scripture to be made to the contrary. Speaking against the Church using the world's values is the opposite of prophetic.

I left a fundamentalist church to become an Episcopalian--and there is a reason I did not go to Rome.

We are not biblical literalists, which would make us idolaters. We do not worship tradition to the exclusion of reason. We do not grant absolute power to a Magisterium and expect the baptized sheep to follow blindly.

Instead, we worship the living Christ, who promised us that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth and teach us things that the disciples in 1st-century Palestine could not bear.

Jesus told us that we would know those who followed him by the fruits of their lives. We have seen the holy lives of LGBTs living in partnered relationships. So either Jesus was lying and isn't trustworthy, or we have to change the way we treat our LGBT brothers and sisters--regardless of whether the rest of the church has caught up.

So which is it?

Paige Baker

Chris wrote:
"There is a polygamist culture in Africa. Should they accept polygamists into all orders of ministry? (Despite what the Scriptures say?)"

I think there is a categorical distinction between polygamist culture and gay (or straight) culture.

Gay culture and straight culture are (I believe) built on an innate and unchosen kernel of personhood--that one is sexually attracted to the same, or the opposite, sex. On top of this incontrovertible fact of biology, different people in different times have constructed innumerable ways in which sexual lives are played out. Lifelong heterosexual monogamy, in which the primary motivation for choosing a partner is love, and the partners are (ideally) equal, is a relatively recent innovation in human history (see Stephanie Coontz's Marriage: A History, for an excellent take on this). It didn't exist prior to the mid-18th century (the equal part taking well into the 20th), and is certainly not what Paul or Jesus understood when they talked about "marriage" (which wasn't all that much, frankly--neither of them were too keen on it).

I think you can see the same culture-built-on-biology dynamic played out in the way, for example, biological females and males become "men" and "women." What is proper to a man or a woman--what it means to be a man or a woman, what roles men and women are expected to play in society--varies enormously across cultures and time. A similar distinction can be made between being black and being African-American. Black is the color of your skin, but African-American culture is time-and-place specific. (Of course, how much biology really plays into our notions of race is questionable.)

The same cannot be said of polygamist culture, however: I don't think there is an innate and unchosen kernel of identity that impels (some) males to need multiple female partners (a polygamy gene? a polygamy identity?). Instead, polygamy (or more properly, polygyny; polyandry is very rare) is one cultural variant built on top of opposite-sex attraction. Polygyny may develop in a culture along with other cultural realities, like economics; but nothing about polygyny, as far as I can see, emerges from the core being of its practitioners. (But I might be wrong! Polygynists, speak up for yourselves.)

I think there are objectionable things innate to polygyny that should rightly give us pause: it is almost always part of a greater oppressive patriarchal culture that disempowers and demeans women. And scripture is mostly clear that disempowering and demeaning women--or indeed, disempowering and demeaning any class of person--is wrong.

As far as relying too much on the "world's values" when reading scripture--that's really a matter of perspective, isn't it? The problem is, everyone reads and understands scripture and tradition from their own limited perspective and viewpoint, including the white straight men who claim to be the final, above the fray arbiters with no perspective who can speak Absolute Truth to everyone else. In Africa, the "world's values" are (mostly) that gay people should be stoned to death; or at the least, imprisoned. And many in the Church there work to uphold these values. We have different values about gay people in the United States. And much of TEC works to uphold similar values toward gay people in the church. So--whose values are right? Whose values are actually in tune with God's values? Its probably wise not to try to pretend to understand and speak for God like so many people do--after all, how can the finite speak for the infinite? But I will say, its fairly obvious to me which set of values toward gay people more closely embodies respecting the dignity of every human being, something most Episcopalians in the US promised to do when they were baptized.

Jason Cox