Given the penchant of the Bishop of Durham to step out on a limb and make wild remarks in sensitive moments, I hope someone will be able to respond to his spin.

Do English bishops really think that we "appoint" our bishops, or are they being irritating on purpose?

Tom Wright is being predictable, that's for sure.

I certainly don't believe that D025 is where TEC and the Anglican Communion part ways.

Please Ormonde, have a closer read. Bishop Wright refers to "the appointment, to all orders of ministry". Like D025 he is referring to all ordained ministry.

John Sandeman

Obadiah, no one is "appointed" to any order of ministry. One is baptized into the laity and ordained into the other three orders.

And who in the US is in communion with the wider Anglican Communion? Whoever the ABC says. That's how this whole thing has worked up until now.

And what does he have to say about the Porvoo Agreement, and the Swedish Lutherans? We are not alone in the Christian world, or in the Anglican Communion.

When honesty produces hostility that points to an unhealthy relationship. Windsor and other revisionist efforts to make us be something we are not are failing. One hopes that other Anglicans will also resist, for the sake of the Communion not despite it.

Kit,
it's news to me that TEC "ordains" bishops. I thought you "consecrated" them.
But I am happy to be corrected.
I think Ormonde's point was that you elect bishops so he/she was referring to the whole process of assigning somebody to be bishop.

But please carry on, don't lets get distracted

John Sandeman

It all smacks of an "attitude" toward the "colonials." "Mother knows best." When will the rest of the Communion . . . who are what they are because the American church took a "revolutionary" step in 1789 and became an independent Anglican church . . . recognize the vast difference in the mindset of American Episcopalians from "Anglican" just as our Nation has a different mindset from the former Empire?

Canon K F King

Bishop Wright certainly is being predictable. However, I still find myself puzzled that a man of such intellectual power doesn't understand what "schism" is. Schism involves breaking away from and renouncing a group to which one has belonged. ACNA has engaged in schism, and the FoCAers will very likely soon engage in schism from the C of E (and +Wright's chickens will come home to roost). TEC has not now renounced, nor did it six years ago, its membership in the Anglican Communion. It simply refused to be dictated to and bullied by other provinces and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I hold out hope that +Wright will finally "get" this.

On his use of "practicing homosexual"... I'll quote someone's comment on another site: practice makes perfect! ;-)

I'm sorry, but I'm getting tired of Tom Wright, even more tired than I am of +Rowan. Wright is a brilliant New Testament scholar who has written a number of books that I have found very helpful, including the "Great Trilogy." (I think this was originally supposed to be a Tetralogy or a Pentalogy. But probably not a Sextology. Surely not.) I am looking forward to reading his recent book on Justification. (Having annoyed the progressive catholic wing of the church, I think he is now annoying the evangelical protestants.) But my own opinion is that Wright is homophobic. I'm sure he would say that's not true, but I would say he is either in denial or is lying. (I prefer "in denial.") As long as he stays off the subject of same-sex relationships, he's generally quite good, or at least quite interesting.

At the risk of being called names, is this not indicative of a general American predisposition to unilateralism/isolationism or 'the American exception' ? It seems to me that other global churches will soon be wrestling with these sexuality issues soon enough too (Lutherans, Methodists) and that the ECUSA are being too headstrong rather than just slowdown and allow the rest of the world to catch up. Give it 50-100 years and no doubt people will look back and by then the sexuality issue will be thought of as in the past and there will be the odd gay bishop in churches all over the place.
Does it help advance the agenda for the ECUSA to force the pace ? I doubt it. Framing the question as one of black-or-white 'right or wrong' might be OK if the implications are only within the mature society that is the USA, but there is a significant global implication.

(Editor's note: Thanks, JRL, we need your name next time.)

+Wright writes: "Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace."

Just so. And what does D025 do but say that the role of the church is to help discern who is receiving God's grace in ministry, not to limit it?

(Editor's note: we need your full name next time, Brendan.)

Bishops were consecrated in my youth OS/J Sandeman, but in recent years they generally seem to be "ordained". This goes for the RC church as well.

Some in the Durham diocese appear to think that T Wright might usefully devote more time to residing in his diocese.

Roger Mortimer

Contrary to some who have recently adopted the phrase, there is already a “fellowship of confessing Anglicans”. It is called the Anglican Communion.
This statement completely ignores the meaning of the word "confessing." Since Tom Wright is not stupid, I can only assume he is being disingenuous.

Allen Mellen

In reading comments to this post, my concern becomes not that Bishop Wright is a blowhard up to his usual antics, but that people seem more concerned with expressing their dislike of him than pointing to the real travesty:

Once again gay and lesbian people are being scapegoated and blamed for rending things apart. We are constantly accused of the breakdown of the family, society, morals and the church. In this instance, B. Wright chose the last.

The contention that gay and lesbian people working for full inclusion in the church are creating schism should always cause outrage, no matter whom it comes from.

JRL,
I don't see why you expect to be called names....

In any case, Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" speaks to your call for TEC to "slowdown". Here's a relevant quote (I recommend reading the whole letter; link below):
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/dos/mlk/letter.html

Elsewhere in the letter Dr. King quotes the dictum, "Justice delayed is justice denied."

If TEC's move to make all the sacraments available to all the baptized is the right thing to do, then NOW is the right time to do it.

As for Bishop Wright, it is clear that he is not talking about "eventually" for full inclusion of LGBT Christians; he's talking "never."

Yep. N.T. Wright is right. "Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing."

Unlike +Rowan and the Church of England, we were telling the truth about where we are and what we believe.

This is is stark contrast with +Rowan and his friend Jeffrey Johns.

And it's in stark contrast to all those boys in their man-lace at Walshingham.

In his sermon and lecture at GC, Rowan urged TEC to speak the truth. Well ... we did. Perhaps the CoE might begin to do the same in the next century.

Let Tom Wright have his tantrum today, filled with his own mistakes of logic and misuse of rhetoric. For reality, see the leading article in yesterday's Times (London), not known as a particularly liberal paper, which may be summarized in its title: 'Honest to God: The consecration of homosexual bishops is a matter of justice'. (Apologies for not knowing how to post the text in full.)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6702905.ece

Scott Gunn rebuts NT here

Check out a great response to Bishop Wright's arguments by Scott Gunn at

Seven Whole Days

Ah, Ann beat me to it! :)

I think that the earlier commentator got it right. Tom Wright really does have a personal problem with gay people. On everything else he is a reasonable evangelical - but in this topic, he moved to the extremes. Its something noticed by many here in the UK

It is important to remember that sometimes anti-gay feelings are about something far more visceral than theology

(Editor's note: Thanks, Mike. We need your full name next time.)

i am always amused when people take such great offense over those involved in "active same-sex relationships."

we have ALWAYS had bishops, priests, and deacons involved in "active same-sex relationships."

the problem, when one gets right down to it, is that they are suddenly willing to tell you about it.

george baum (who is trying to play by the rules of listing his name)