Ross TenEyck (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ross_teneyck) wrote,@ 2008-06-17 11:13:00 |
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Of matters Anglican
I've promised a post on Anglican goings-on for a while now, butlaziness the press of circumstances has kept me from getting around to it. Here it is.
We're coming up on two important conferences in the next couple of months. The second of them is the Lambeth Conference, which is a gathering of every bishop in the Anglican Communion and meets once every ten years; it's scheduled for July 16th through August 4th. More on Lambeth in a moment.
The first of the important conferences is "GAFCON," which is the "Global Anglican Future Conference," and is being held in Jerusalem from June 22nd through 29th. GAFCON is being organized by provinces of what is known as the "Global South" (Africa, South America, Southeast Asia... in Anglican circles, African churches are the predominant voices in the Global South.) GAFCON is an invitation-only conference for Anglican leaders who are dissatisfied with the current direction of the Anglican Communion, and most specifically with the acceptance of homosexuality by the American and Canadian churches. The organizers of GAFCON were explicit that they were not creating the conference to be an "alternative Lambeth," but it appears that a number of people are thinking of it that way.
Interesting things are bound to happen at both conferences. But let's step back for a moment and look at what's been happening in the run-up to Lambeth/GAFCON.
The big news in the Episcopal Church (the officially preferred acronym is TEC) lately is the Diocese of San Joaquin, which covers large parts of central California. The diocese is heavily conservative, and its bishop, John-David Schofield has been an outspoken opponent of gay marriage and gay clergy.
Back in December, the diocese voted at its annual meeting to disassociate from TEC and affiliate instead with the Province of the Southern Cone (an Anglican province encompassing most of the southern half of South America.) Most Episcopal dioceses require constitutional amendments, which this was, to be approved at two successive annual meetings; this was the second vote, so the amendment passed and the Diocese of San Joaquin declared itself free at last, free at last.
This has raised an interesting question, namely, can they do that? For one thing, Anglicanism has traditionally been a geographical franchise: if you want to be an Anglican in the United States, you go to TEC; if you want to be Anglican in Canada, you go to the Anglican Church of Canada, and so on. Provinces do not generally play in each others' back yards, except in rare cases where permission is granted. For another thing, it's not clear that a diocese of TEC can unilaterally secede from TEC; certainly the national church is of the opinion that it cannot. The seceding diocese makes, essentially, the Confederate argument: nowhere is it explicitly written down that they can't secede, so therefore they can.
Where this comes to a point, of course, is property. When it was a diocese of TEC, San Joaquin owned various properties, buildings, accounts, etc. The diocese believes that the property went with it when it re-affiliated. The national church believes that the property belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, and that what the diocesan leadership has actually done is to abandon their positions in the old entity and create a brand-new entity, while trying to claim that the property owned by the old entity belongs to the new one. The court proceedings are already in progress to determine who believes correctly. So far as I can tell, neither side has a slam-dunk case by California law; but I suspect the odds favor the seceding diocese.
Meanwhile, those Episcopalians living in the diocese who wish to remain in the Episcopal church have organized replacement diocesan leadership, and the Presiding Bishop has appointed an interim bishop for them. This group is a fairly small minority of an already smallish diocese, so they have their work cut out for them in keeping things going.
The Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, responded to this by "inhibiting" Bishop Schofield. This is the first step in disciplinary proceedings for a clergy person, and it amounts to a temporary injunction against acting as clergy while the matter is investigated. Bishop Schofield answered, predictably, by saying that since he and his diocese had left TEC, the Presiding Bishop had no authority to inhibit him.
The Presiding Bishop, nothing daunted, proceeded to the next step in the disciplinary process, which was to ask the House of Bishops to depose Bishop Schofield. Deposing a bishop means they are "deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority of God's word and sacraments conferred at ordination." The canons of the Episcopal Church provide several grounds upon which a bishop can be deposed; Jefferts Schori chose to charge Schofield with "abandonment of communion." This canon was originally intended for bishops who had moved over to the Roman Catholic Church without bothering with the formality of resigning their position in the Episcopal Church. It also happens to be the only disciplinary canon for a bishop that does not require an ecclesial trial, only a vote of the House of Bishops.
In March, the HOB duly voted to depose Bishop Schofield on the grounds of having abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church. Schofield, of course, reiterated his position that since he had left TEC, the House of Bishops had no authority over him. Matters became interesting, however, when some conservatives alleged that the vote for deposition had not been properly done according to the canons.
Here's the background: the House of Bishops consists of bishops "having jurisdiction" (i.e., currently leading dioceses), as well as bishops coadjutor, suffragan bishops, assistant bishops, and retired bishops. For the purposes of normal business, the House needs a majority of all bishops entitled to vote (all of the above) not counting retired bishops, to constitute a quorum. There are a lot of retired bishops, and most of them don't bother to come to the meetings. However, the canon for abandonment of communion says that "If the House, by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote, shall give its consent, the Presiding Bishop shall depose the Bishop from the Ministry..." On the face of it, this seems to mean that the vote needs to pass by a majority of all the bishops who have a vote in the House, including retired bishops. Now, the vote on the deposition of Bishop Schofield was a voice vote, so no numbers were recorded... but if you count all the retired bishops, then the number of people entitled to a vote in the HOB is about three hundred, and only around a hundred thirty bishops were present at this meeting; so the vote could not possibly have passed by a majority of all bishops entitled to vote.
The Presiding Bishop and the Chancellor of the national church responded by saying that "bishops entitled to vote" in this canon means "bishops who are actually present at the meeting," and does not include those who didn't show up. There appears to be historical precedent for this interpretation, in that the canon has been so applied before and nobody blinked then. The conservatives countered that the canons are pretty explicit in other places when they mean "a majority of all bishops present and voting," so if the canon uses different language here it must mean what it says.
In the end, the canonical wrangling is all a bit moot; Schofield doesn't believe that the HOB has the authority to depose him in the first place, canons or no, and the national church considers the matter closed and done with. It does highlight the rather disturbing fact that, given the way our structures are set up, the only body that can rule on whether the House of Bishops is following the canons is... the House of Bishops. We have no independent judiciary.
So much for the Diocese of San Joaquin, at least so far. Elsewhere, the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, and Quincy (west central Illinois) are poised to take similar actions; I think all of them have had disaffiliation amendments pass the first reading, and are now just waiting for their next annual meetings to pass the second reading. Presumably we can expect a similar round of depositions, ignoring of depositions, organization of replacement diocesan leadership, and lawsuits over property in each of these dioceses.
Meanwhile, over across the pond, the news this week is that two gay Anglican clergy were married in a large ceremony in a prominent London church. Strictly speaking, they were married in a civil union and then had a church service blessing the union, but the liturgy was closely modeled on the wedding service. This has caused shock and outrage amongst the usual people who are shocked and outraged by this sort of thing; but coming as it does almost on the eve of the Lambeth conference even some of the liberals are viewing it as unhelpfully provocative.
Which brings us back to Lambeth. Ten years ago, Lambeth 98 passed (contentiously) a resolution on human sexuality, which included the infamous clause "1.10," stating that homosexuality was incompatible with Scripture. The conservatives have been beating on the Lambeth 1.10 drum ever since, saying that it represented the consensus of the Anglican Communion and therefore churches like TEC that have taken action contrary to that consensus have, in effect, taken themselves out of the club. The liberals point out that the Lambeth conference does not actually have any authority over individual provinces, so any resolutions it passes are just that, resolutions. After the Windsor report, and the TEC response to the Windsor report at General Convention '06, and the response to the response from the Primates Meeting at Dar es Salaam, and the clarification of the response from the House of Bishops last year, and on and on and on, many people have been looking to this coming Lambeth conference to put a cap on the situation one way or another.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, is doing his level best to avoid schism in the Anglican Communion; and he seems to be operating on the theory that schism delayed is schism at least temporarily averted. His office has announced that the format of this Lambeth is going to be more discussion and small group work, and much less legislative work, than in previous years. He appears to be hoping to prevent the assembled bishops from doing anything precipitous.
Speaking of the ABC, by the way, one of the few distinct powers he has in the Anglican Communion is that invitations to Lambeth are issued solely by him. He sent out the invitations last year, and he did not invite Bishop Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire whose election started this whole mess back in 2003. Neither did he invite those bishops who had been consecrated by Global South provinces in the U.S. to minister to formerly-Episcopal breakaway parishes. This was typical Anglican via media in that is pissed off both liberals and conservatives. There was talk earlier this year that he might be withdrawing invitations from some of the more flagrantly Windsor-defying bishops in the U.S. -- meaning, most people thought, those bishops who most visibly permit same-sex blessing liturgies in their dioceses despite the official stance of the HOB that such liturgies are not authorized -- but so far as anyone can tell nothing has come of that and nobody who was originally invited has been de-invited.
Both Bishop Schofield, of the South American Diocese of San Joaquin, and Bishop Lamb, the bishop appointed to lead the re-organized Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, seem to have invitations to Lambeth, incidentally. Schofield's was sent before his diocese seceded, but there seems to be no move to rescind it. Some people were looking at that to get a read on whether the Archbishop of Canterbury would endorse dioceses re-affiliating with different provinces, but so far he's sidestepped having to take a definite (and divisive) stand on the issue.
All of this has caused the more vocal conservatives to be extremely unhappy with the Lambeth conference, which is what led some of the GS leaders to organize GAFCON. Some people are planning on going to both conferences, but many -- including the bishops of the largest African provinces -- are boycotting Lambeth and going only to GAFCON. Since the big African provinces between them make up the great majority of the world's Anglicans, that puts a pretty significant dent in the representation of Lambeth.
So where does all this leave us?
This is mostly subjective and based largely on reading Anglican blogs, but I get a strong sense that the lines are hardening on all sides. As recently as a couple of years ago, I saw a fair amount of conversation going on between liberals and conservatives -- angry, contentious conversation, granted, but they were talking. That seems to have largely ceased; I think most everyone has gotten tired of rehearsing the same lines of argument over and over again to no effect. I'm starting to see more internal arguments on both sides -- especially between those (on either side) who would prefer to work through the existing Instruments of Communion, and those who would prefer to just kick over the apple cart and make something new. I also see that the fracture lines on the conservative side over matters like ordaining women seem to be getting deeper; now that they've more or less consigned the liberals to perdition and are looking at new ecclesial structures, they can't ignore that issue any more.
At this point, I think it would literally take a miracle to avoid some kind of formal, major schism in the Anglican Communion. Exactly what form that schism will take I'm not sure. It's possible that GAFCON, or some other conference featuring most of the same players, will announce that they're shaking the dust of the old Communion from their sandals and forming a new global communion. That seems more likely now than the scenario where the conservatives take over the agenda of Lambeth and expel the U.S. and Canadian churches. The scenario that I believe Rowan Williams (the ABC) dreads is not a split but a splintering; the current Anglican Communion fracturing into a dozen or more different bodies, most of which hate each other. I can't say I'm fond of that idea myself.
In any event, that's pretty much where matters now stand. I'll try to post updates after GAFCON and Lambeth.
I've promised a post on Anglican goings-on for a while now, but
We're coming up on two important conferences in the next couple of months. The second of them is the Lambeth Conference, which is a gathering of every bishop in the Anglican Communion and meets once every ten years; it's scheduled for July 16th through August 4th. More on Lambeth in a moment.
The first of the important conferences is "GAFCON," which is the "Global Anglican Future Conference," and is being held in Jerusalem from June 22nd through 29th. GAFCON is being organized by provinces of what is known as the "Global South" (Africa, South America, Southeast Asia... in Anglican circles, African churches are the predominant voices in the Global South.) GAFCON is an invitation-only conference for Anglican leaders who are dissatisfied with the current direction of the Anglican Communion, and most specifically with the acceptance of homosexuality by the American and Canadian churches. The organizers of GAFCON were explicit that they were not creating the conference to be an "alternative Lambeth," but it appears that a number of people are thinking of it that way.
Interesting things are bound to happen at both conferences. But let's step back for a moment and look at what's been happening in the run-up to Lambeth/GAFCON.
The big news in the Episcopal Church (the officially preferred acronym is TEC) lately is the Diocese of San Joaquin, which covers large parts of central California. The diocese is heavily conservative, and its bishop, John-David Schofield has been an outspoken opponent of gay marriage and gay clergy.
Back in December, the diocese voted at its annual meeting to disassociate from TEC and affiliate instead with the Province of the Southern Cone (an Anglican province encompassing most of the southern half of South America.) Most Episcopal dioceses require constitutional amendments, which this was, to be approved at two successive annual meetings; this was the second vote, so the amendment passed and the Diocese of San Joaquin declared itself free at last, free at last.
This has raised an interesting question, namely, can they do that? For one thing, Anglicanism has traditionally been a geographical franchise: if you want to be an Anglican in the United States, you go to TEC; if you want to be Anglican in Canada, you go to the Anglican Church of Canada, and so on. Provinces do not generally play in each others' back yards, except in rare cases where permission is granted. For another thing, it's not clear that a diocese of TEC can unilaterally secede from TEC; certainly the national church is of the opinion that it cannot. The seceding diocese makes, essentially, the Confederate argument: nowhere is it explicitly written down that they can't secede, so therefore they can.
Where this comes to a point, of course, is property. When it was a diocese of TEC, San Joaquin owned various properties, buildings, accounts, etc. The diocese believes that the property went with it when it re-affiliated. The national church believes that the property belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, and that what the diocesan leadership has actually done is to abandon their positions in the old entity and create a brand-new entity, while trying to claim that the property owned by the old entity belongs to the new one. The court proceedings are already in progress to determine who believes correctly. So far as I can tell, neither side has a slam-dunk case by California law; but I suspect the odds favor the seceding diocese.
Meanwhile, those Episcopalians living in the diocese who wish to remain in the Episcopal church have organized replacement diocesan leadership, and the Presiding Bishop has appointed an interim bishop for them. This group is a fairly small minority of an already smallish diocese, so they have their work cut out for them in keeping things going.
The Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, responded to this by "inhibiting" Bishop Schofield. This is the first step in disciplinary proceedings for a clergy person, and it amounts to a temporary injunction against acting as clergy while the matter is investigated. Bishop Schofield answered, predictably, by saying that since he and his diocese had left TEC, the Presiding Bishop had no authority to inhibit him.
The Presiding Bishop, nothing daunted, proceeded to the next step in the disciplinary process, which was to ask the House of Bishops to depose Bishop Schofield. Deposing a bishop means they are "deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority of God's word and sacraments conferred at ordination." The canons of the Episcopal Church provide several grounds upon which a bishop can be deposed; Jefferts Schori chose to charge Schofield with "abandonment of communion." This canon was originally intended for bishops who had moved over to the Roman Catholic Church without bothering with the formality of resigning their position in the Episcopal Church. It also happens to be the only disciplinary canon for a bishop that does not require an ecclesial trial, only a vote of the House of Bishops.
In March, the HOB duly voted to depose Bishop Schofield on the grounds of having abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church. Schofield, of course, reiterated his position that since he had left TEC, the House of Bishops had no authority over him. Matters became interesting, however, when some conservatives alleged that the vote for deposition had not been properly done according to the canons.
Here's the background: the House of Bishops consists of bishops "having jurisdiction" (i.e., currently leading dioceses), as well as bishops coadjutor, suffragan bishops, assistant bishops, and retired bishops. For the purposes of normal business, the House needs a majority of all bishops entitled to vote (all of the above) not counting retired bishops, to constitute a quorum. There are a lot of retired bishops, and most of them don't bother to come to the meetings. However, the canon for abandonment of communion says that "If the House, by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote, shall give its consent, the Presiding Bishop shall depose the Bishop from the Ministry..." On the face of it, this seems to mean that the vote needs to pass by a majority of all the bishops who have a vote in the House, including retired bishops. Now, the vote on the deposition of Bishop Schofield was a voice vote, so no numbers were recorded... but if you count all the retired bishops, then the number of people entitled to a vote in the HOB is about three hundred, and only around a hundred thirty bishops were present at this meeting; so the vote could not possibly have passed by a majority of all bishops entitled to vote.
The Presiding Bishop and the Chancellor of the national church responded by saying that "bishops entitled to vote" in this canon means "bishops who are actually present at the meeting," and does not include those who didn't show up. There appears to be historical precedent for this interpretation, in that the canon has been so applied before and nobody blinked then. The conservatives countered that the canons are pretty explicit in other places when they mean "a majority of all bishops present and voting," so if the canon uses different language here it must mean what it says.
In the end, the canonical wrangling is all a bit moot; Schofield doesn't believe that the HOB has the authority to depose him in the first place, canons or no, and the national church considers the matter closed and done with. It does highlight the rather disturbing fact that, given the way our structures are set up, the only body that can rule on whether the House of Bishops is following the canons is... the House of Bishops. We have no independent judiciary.
So much for the Diocese of San Joaquin, at least so far. Elsewhere, the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, and Quincy (west central Illinois) are poised to take similar actions; I think all of them have had disaffiliation amendments pass the first reading, and are now just waiting for their next annual meetings to pass the second reading. Presumably we can expect a similar round of depositions, ignoring of depositions, organization of replacement diocesan leadership, and lawsuits over property in each of these dioceses.
Meanwhile, over across the pond, the news this week is that two gay Anglican clergy were married in a large ceremony in a prominent London church. Strictly speaking, they were married in a civil union and then had a church service blessing the union, but the liturgy was closely modeled on the wedding service. This has caused shock and outrage amongst the usual people who are shocked and outraged by this sort of thing; but coming as it does almost on the eve of the Lambeth conference even some of the liberals are viewing it as unhelpfully provocative.
Which brings us back to Lambeth. Ten years ago, Lambeth 98 passed (contentiously) a resolution on human sexuality, which included the infamous clause "1.10," stating that homosexuality was incompatible with Scripture. The conservatives have been beating on the Lambeth 1.10 drum ever since, saying that it represented the consensus of the Anglican Communion and therefore churches like TEC that have taken action contrary to that consensus have, in effect, taken themselves out of the club. The liberals point out that the Lambeth conference does not actually have any authority over individual provinces, so any resolutions it passes are just that, resolutions. After the Windsor report, and the TEC response to the Windsor report at General Convention '06, and the response to the response from the Primates Meeting at Dar es Salaam, and the clarification of the response from the House of Bishops last year, and on and on and on, many people have been looking to this coming Lambeth conference to put a cap on the situation one way or another.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, is doing his level best to avoid schism in the Anglican Communion; and he seems to be operating on the theory that schism delayed is schism at least temporarily averted. His office has announced that the format of this Lambeth is going to be more discussion and small group work, and much less legislative work, than in previous years. He appears to be hoping to prevent the assembled bishops from doing anything precipitous.
Speaking of the ABC, by the way, one of the few distinct powers he has in the Anglican Communion is that invitations to Lambeth are issued solely by him. He sent out the invitations last year, and he did not invite Bishop Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire whose election started this whole mess back in 2003. Neither did he invite those bishops who had been consecrated by Global South provinces in the U.S. to minister to formerly-Episcopal breakaway parishes. This was typical Anglican via media in that is pissed off both liberals and conservatives. There was talk earlier this year that he might be withdrawing invitations from some of the more flagrantly Windsor-defying bishops in the U.S. -- meaning, most people thought, those bishops who most visibly permit same-sex blessing liturgies in their dioceses despite the official stance of the HOB that such liturgies are not authorized -- but so far as anyone can tell nothing has come of that and nobody who was originally invited has been de-invited.
Both Bishop Schofield, of the South American Diocese of San Joaquin, and Bishop Lamb, the bishop appointed to lead the re-organized Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, seem to have invitations to Lambeth, incidentally. Schofield's was sent before his diocese seceded, but there seems to be no move to rescind it. Some people were looking at that to get a read on whether the Archbishop of Canterbury would endorse dioceses re-affiliating with different provinces, but so far he's sidestepped having to take a definite (and divisive) stand on the issue.
All of this has caused the more vocal conservatives to be extremely unhappy with the Lambeth conference, which is what led some of the GS leaders to organize GAFCON. Some people are planning on going to both conferences, but many -- including the bishops of the largest African provinces -- are boycotting Lambeth and going only to GAFCON. Since the big African provinces between them make up the great majority of the world's Anglicans, that puts a pretty significant dent in the representation of Lambeth.
So where does all this leave us?
This is mostly subjective and based largely on reading Anglican blogs, but I get a strong sense that the lines are hardening on all sides. As recently as a couple of years ago, I saw a fair amount of conversation going on between liberals and conservatives -- angry, contentious conversation, granted, but they were talking. That seems to have largely ceased; I think most everyone has gotten tired of rehearsing the same lines of argument over and over again to no effect. I'm starting to see more internal arguments on both sides -- especially between those (on either side) who would prefer to work through the existing Instruments of Communion, and those who would prefer to just kick over the apple cart and make something new. I also see that the fracture lines on the conservative side over matters like ordaining women seem to be getting deeper; now that they've more or less consigned the liberals to perdition and are looking at new ecclesial structures, they can't ignore that issue any more.
At this point, I think it would literally take a miracle to avoid some kind of formal, major schism in the Anglican Communion. Exactly what form that schism will take I'm not sure. It's possible that GAFCON, or some other conference featuring most of the same players, will announce that they're shaking the dust of the old Communion from their sandals and forming a new global communion. That seems more likely now than the scenario where the conservatives take over the agenda of Lambeth and expel the U.S. and Canadian churches. The scenario that I believe Rowan Williams (the ABC) dreads is not a split but a splintering; the current Anglican Communion fracturing into a dozen or more different bodies, most of which hate each other. I can't say I'm fond of that idea myself.
In any event, that's pretty much where matters now stand. I'll try to post updates after GAFCON and Lambeth.
