On the last couple of threads, folks have asked how to contact the actual Episcopalians in South Carolina, rather than the Calvinists that have gained control of the diocese and are trying to drag it out of the Episcopal Church.
The Episcopal Forum of South Carolina is the group that is faithful to the Episcopal Church; Joan Gundersen has confirmed that's the coordinating group working in SC. Another blogger is working at South Carolina Episcopalians, linking to the Forum. I have a hunch they're in the spot that the San Joaquin Episcopalians were a couple of years ago; I don't see a clear way to offer support to them. But as Mark Lawrence and the other Calvinists turn up the heat, South Carolina Episcopalians may develop more connections to the rest of the church.
I like Harry T. Cook's words written in response to the Rome invitation: "if the Vatican wants the ecclesiastical crybabies of Anglicanism who have turned dissent and schism into a high art form, it is welcome to them."
Amen. Could not have put it better and more succinctly myself.
“The ecclesiastical crybabies of Anglicanism.” Doesn’t that just say it all?
Others have reported on the actions taken by the nominally “Episcopal” Diocese of South Carolina in their super-secret convention meeting this weekend. ENS ran a story here. In four resolutions, the Calvinists-in-Drag “Episcopalians” in South Carolina voted to have their cake and eat it, too, in measures designed to separate themselves from the cooties in the Episcopal Church.
No great surprise there. Mark Lawrence lied his way into the episcopate. [Yes, I have the PDF to prove he is a liar. I would not use that term lightly.] Unfortunately, a majority of bishops and Standing Committees were hoodwinked to believe his lies, so this “purer than thou” Pharisee is now leading the supposedly “Episcopal” Diocese of South Carolina.
Now Lawrence and his lackeys in South Carolina have passed resolutions declaring their purity. They are using the same duplicitous tactics that Lawrence used to slither in to the House of Bishops and stay just barely within the Episcopal Church. They won’t participate in TEC groups, won’t give money, won’t do anything to be Episcopalians … but will just barely stay within TEC until they can figure out a way to slither away with their property.
South Carolina adopted four resolutions to keep themselves pure from the Episcopal Church. But they couldn’t stomach the fifth resolution. That one had the gall to say "that this Diocese will not condone prejudice or deny the dignity of any person, including but not limited to, those who believe themselves to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Nevertheless, we will speak the truth in love as Holy Scripture commends for the amendment of life required of disciples of Christ.” They defeated it 182 to 117.
Pause and reflect on that for a moment. South Carolina voted overwhelmingly to separate itself from The Episcopal Church. It voted in equally overwhelming numbers against recognizing that lesbian/gay people are fully human. 182 to 117. The resolution they rejected was purportedly moderate but insulting to LGBTs. But the bigots in South Carolina couldn’t even manage to adopt that reserved, bigoted resolution. They defeated it, 182 to 117.
Mind you, there was much to despise in that resolution, including the incredibly condescending phrase about “those who believe themselves to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.” (Shall we refer to others as people who simply “believe” themselves to be heterosexual!?!) But they couldn’t even adopt that weak, insulting resolution. 182 to 117.
Even that watered-down, condescending resolution failed to pass. South Carolina delegates gagged at believing that LGBTs might be fully human. South Carolina voted 182-117 against realizing the humanity of gay/lesbian Christians.
182 to 117.
Fellow queers, the Diocese of South Carolina assents overwhelmingly to the 1801 Articles of Religion. But today, 182 against 117 say we are not children of God.
I was born and raised in the South. I love many aspects of my southern heritage. But this crap out of South Carolina is just hatred – hatred without even a veneer of tolerance. Their vote makes it clear to me that these are the people who still have issues with the “niggers” and “queers.”
182 to 117.
Bishop Mark Lawrence and the Diocese of South Carolina has voted on our humanity. They voted against it. 182 to 117.
Way to go, South Carolina! I am truly grateful that you told us who you hate. Thanks for this honesty. By a vote of 182 to 117, you declare you don’t consider LGBTs human.
In all the brouhaha following the release of the pitiful Around One Table video ... and while many are expressing a preference for the Episcopal Ninjas video ... a member of the HoBD listserv calls our attention to this simple, no-production-values clip of Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori answering one person's question: "Why should I become an Episcopalian?"
A real person answering a real question, with passion and wit.
It reminds me of the joy I felt when Bishop Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. God! How I wish that woman were directing our communication and outreach efforts to the world!
On the HoBD listserv yesterday, I learned about the video at “Around One Table,” purportedly from the Episcopal Church. There was much brouhaha about it. Some of my TEC friends were extremely distressed, because they believed the Around One Table video was produced by and/or for the Episcopal Church. You can see it here, on YouTube, or at a site called Around One Table.
After watching the video, I immediately discerned The Truth, and I assured my friends that they had surely been duped into believing that the Around One Table video was actually produced by or for the Episcopal Church. My comments were shared on the HoBD list, which I know many of you read. But in case any of you have also fallen for that hoax, I offer my comments here, elaborated a bit more than I posted on the HoBD listserv.
If you believe the Around One Table video was created by the Episcopal Church, you are entirely too trusting ... or maybe even gullible and naive! Obviously, you were taken in by the ruse. I can't believe you fell for this video, which is so obviously a hoax!
In the first place, it's obviously not produced by a Christian church. If a Church had produced it, they would have devoted at least 10% of the time to talking about spirituality and its meaningful place in our lives. They would have made some effort to connect what we do with what we believe. After posing dire statistics, a Church would surely have said what it was doing about them.... I mean, think about it. An actual church wouldn’t have spent all its focus on the doom-and-gloom newspaper headlines, ignoring the place of spirituality, faith, and Christ in our lives. Right? Heck! Even the Unitarian Universalists would have had a more spiritual and positive message than this video offers!
Second, it's obvious that the video was created by an 8th-grader, suffering from a serious case of ADD, who has no ability to focus, and who is probably fixated on the apocalypse. The child who created that video needs our prayers. I hope someone can find him/her and offer psychological counseling. No sane adult Episcopalian would have created something as weird and dismal as this video, and s/he certainly would not have pretended it represented the Episcopal Church. No healthy individual would have presented our message on this gloomy black background.
Third, this video was created by some amateur with no knowledge of research. The Around One Table site proudly claims it based its research on five years of study with 3,000 Episcopalians. There are about 2 million Episcopalians. This means the "study" included 0.15% of our Episcopalians. And the author of this "study" says it took 5 years to ferret out the substantive values of 0.15% of The Episcopal Church? ROTFLMAO! Surely no one beyond middle school would expect such claims to be taken seriously. (Actually, I expect today's 6th-graders would know better, but I am trying to be generous.)
Finally, if a group affiliated with the Episcopal Church had produced this video, they would have shown real people, real churches, real ministry. There would have been some color in it. There would have been some real, incarnational human beings in it. They would have included some production values. They would not have used the elementary-school graphics that this PowerPoint slideshow used. They would have had access to something more sophisticated than clip-art. And they would have actually spent money to create it. Even "Save the Children" wouldn't air such a hokey, amateur video on late-night television! So you know the Episcopal Church wouldn't produce such a corny piece of tripe. After all, under the able leadership of Linda Watt, the Episcopal Church is moving into a brave new magical world of communications without staff! She and Communications Director Ann Rudig are convinced that they'll create brilliant communications after shedding most of the actual journalists and communicators who used to serve our Church and after disregarding the advice of the Standing Commission on Communications. You just know in your heart that the communications geniuses at Church Center would not have allowed such a pitiful piece to be released as our message to the world. Nah! Would not happen!
Consider all the facts, my friends, and then relax. There's no way in the world that this video is actually a production of or by the Episcopal Church. I'm pretty sure it's something a middle-school student produced one night when s/he was facing a last-minute deadline on a school project to show s/he knew how to use PowerPoint and what the kids call "emo" music.
You know as well as I do that our beloved Episcopal Church wouldn't crank out something this gloomy and half-baked for a national (or international) audience.
Wouldn't happen. Couldn't happen. No way.
This must be a hoax from someone who hacked into the Episcopal Church website. It has to be!
Doesn't it?
So tell me: What do you think of the Around One Table video?
The continuing Episcopal Diocese of Quincy met in convention, after a bunch of others hied off to narrow-minded Anglican parts unknown. God bless those remaining Episcopalians!
The Peoria, Illinois-based continuing diocese of Quincy adopted a slightly reduced budget of about $140,000 at its 132nd annual synod gathering, Oct.17, according to Bishop John Buchanan. Bishop Christopher Epting served as keynote speaker at the gathering, held at St. Paul's Cathedral in Peoria. Quincy and other continuing dioceses are being aided in reorganizational efforts through a Church Pension Fund grant, Buchanan added. The current diocese includes seven congregations but, said, "There is a spirit of optimism and people are anxious to get on with the work of the church." [emphasis added]
Seven parishes?? I know the Diocese of Quincy was tiny even before Ackerman and his queens moved away. But does a "diocese" of 7 seven parishes stand any chance of surviving on its own? Does this make any sense? There are currently three dioceses in Illinois. The Diocese of Chicago has about 125 congregations, the Diocese of Springfield has 40 congregations, and the continuing Diocese of Quincy has seven.
I'm all for maintaining an Episcopal Church presence throughout the U.S., no matter what the dissidents do. But I must ask why anyone would maintain the overhead of a 7-parish diocese in western-central Illinois. With two other viable dioceses in Illinois, why try to maintain a separate diocese for Quincy?
The Diocese of Quincy abuts my Diocese of Missouri. I know several Episcopalians drove from their Illinois homes most Sunday mornings to attend church in the St. Louis area during the Ackerman Regime. I don't know them well enough to guess what they must be thinking.
But I'm thinking about the Episcopal Church in this day. And I have to ask why we would try to fund the overhead to maintain a diocesan office in Quincy, when it seems to me most of those seven parishes could find episcopal oversight from Chicago, Springfield, or Missouri.
Fight in court to argue that the assets of the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy rightfully belong to TEC? You bet! No question about that.
But in this new age, why not consider whether Quincy needs to be a separate diocese? Pittsburgh is considering whether it should reunite with the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania. Some are wondering about the various dioceses in Michigan. To me, it seems like a good time to consider which dioceses are viable and whether the old lines of demarcation make sense. After all, many of the diocesan boundaries were established when bishops had to ride on horseback over dirt lanes. Now that we have cars and interstate highways, do those old diocesan boundary lines make sense? I'm not sure. But I hope someone is asking those questions.
Mind you, I am merely asking the question. I hope some you in the affected dioceses will offer your comments here.
The news was all over the place Tuesday: The Roman Catholic Church has found a way to say “welcome home” to disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians. The Episcopal Café has a good story, full of helpful links, as does Simon Sarmiento at Thinking Anglicans. Go there. Cardinal William Joseph Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Roman Curia [formerly the office of the Inquisition] made the announcement for the Roman Catholic Church.
For a long time, there have been some in our midst who have been livid – first about the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, then about women in holy orders, and more recently about gay men and lesbians in holy orders and the blessing of same-sex relationships. Many of them have talked about or yearned to “swim the Tiber.”
This week, the Roman Catholic Church made it official: a systematic way to welcome Anglicans into Mother Church. Strangely, they will allow Anglican/Episcopal male priests to come into the church with their wives. [Apparently, you can be a married male priest if you’re an Anglican, just not if you’re a Roman. Go figure!] But they will draw the line at married male bishops. And, of course, no girl-cooties and no queers.
As Bishop Christopher Epting observes, this merely “formalizes what has already been happening informally ….” The media are having a feeding frenzy anyway.
I was grateful to find this statement from the Very Reverend Sam Candler, Dean of the Cathedral of St. Phillip, Atlanta. I commend it to you:
I welcome the news of Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican to make provision for the conversion of certain Anglican Christians to the Roman Catholic Church.
In the past ten years, I have noticed many of my disenchanted Episcopal and Anglican friends drifting toward Roman Catholic structures. They have been arguing for more ecclesiastical order and authority. It has long been my prediction that our current Anglican controversies will be cleared up, finally, with a choice between distinctly Anglican and distinctly Roman ecclesiologies. Much of our current controversy, having been precipitated by sexuality issues (ordination of women and homosexuality), is more accurately about authority, uniformity, and legal order.
The Roman Catholic tradition, certainly a long and esteemed tradition, is very good on these very issues: authority, uniformity, and legal order. The Anglican tradition (in my opinion having begun in the fourth century A.D., and thus almost as old as the Roman tradition) is very good on other matters. In particular, the Anglican tradition of Christianity is very good at allowing local authority and jurisdiction to exist in partnership with wider authority and jurisdiction.
Many disenchanted Anglicans and Episcopalians have actually been arguing in the last ten years for more centralized and universal jurisdiction, when the Anglican tradition of Christianity has always resisted such universal and centralized jurisdiction. Thus, it is gratifying that the best centralized and universal jurisdiction in the world-the Roman Catholic Church-has been able to make provisions to welcome such disenchanted Anglicans.
I note, too, the gracious words in the joint statement of the Archbishop of Winchester and the Archbishop of Canterbury. There is good relationship between these two branches of Christendom, the Roman and the Anglican. Fruitful ecumenical conversations have certainly enabled the Vatican to allow go forward with these provisions, and I salute all those who have beeninvolved.
I believe there is room in the kingdom of God for various ecclesiastical styles, and I pray that God will direct us all to a place where we can more freely preach the gospel and work toward the kingdom of God.
20 October 2009
I think Dean Candler has it exactly right: There has been a minority within the Episcopal Church who have yearned for a rule-based faith firmly ruled by a father figure. Now they have a formal way to enter into it. Godspeed to them.
You will remember that Bishop Jenkins is retiring early, reportedly because of the emotional and spiritual toll that Hurricane Katrina (and the huge recovery effort) has taken on him.
He writes passionately and gratefully about the support his diocese received – in tangible and intangible ways – from people throughout the Anglican Communion after the levees broke in New Orleans.
These snippets caught my attention:
When evil stands before me, I stand not alone, but this fractious, schismatic, heretical, wonderful, faithful, sacrificing, Christ-like Communion stands beside me, before me, behind me, and above me. As lonely as the past four years have been, even in dark nights of depression and doubt, I have not been alone.
And this:
Communion is not only about right believing and right acting. When our lives were in the ditch by the Jericho Road, when we had been robbed of life's dignity and much of the material of life, our Samaritan was the Anglican Communion. Rich and poor, orthodox or whatever, conservative and liberal, they came to us. They gave us of what they had and all prayed for us.
This Communion that I have experienced is the Church forced by circumstance to be what I think God has created His Church to be. I warn those who would break down and destroy this tender vessel that they are on the side of the enemy. Whether the iconoclasts be from the left, the right, or from the don't care side of things, let the warning be heard, Communion matters. Communion is not simply a matter of affiliation, or of like-minds; for some of us Communion is life or death. Communion is more than a man-made Covenant between us. We are called by God the Father into a greater Covenant that we dare not break. We are called to be here, together, one, broken, messy and yet strong, faithful, and rejoicing in the Lord.
The issues are many, the disagreements and disappointments many, and the opportunity to each do our own thing (which we suppose to be of God who blesses all our doings) is enticing. Such is not real religion.
I am awed and impressed by this essay. On many issues that are currently garnering headlines in the Episcopal Church, Bishop Jenkins and I would be in opposing corners. But I have been impressed by his faithfulness. And I am pleased to be in communion with him.
His essay also helps me as I think about my diocese’s relationship with the Episcopal Church of Sudan. ECS Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul is certainly no friend of LGBTs; in fact, you could say he is an active, vocal enemy. I have ranted about him plenty of times on this blog. And there are people and parishes in our diocese who want to walk away from our Companion Relationship with Lui, Sudan because of Archbishop Daniel’s words. But, at base, his words do not affect the relationship between my Diocese of Missouri and Sudan’s Diocese of Lui. We know their people. We spend time with them at least twice a year. When the rains are delayed, we worry and pray for their crops. We support their clergy and their school teachers. We send support to their hospital. We learn from them what simple faithfulness and fierce discipleship mean. We pray for each other. We bear one another’s burdens. We remain friends in Christ. No matter what venom Archbishop Daniel spews. Because – thanks to many trips back and forth and time spent together – we know each other and we care for each other.
If Archbishop Rowan Williams continues on his insane course to foist upon the Anglican Communion a juridical covenant that will divide supposed sheep from purported goats, I expect Sudan and the U.S. will wind up in different pastures. I hope and pray the Anglican Communion will not do that. It would be tragic to divide our churches that way.
Much more important are the close personal ties we have between the parishes in Missouri and Lui, which are mirrored among so many parishes and dioceses throughout the Anglican Communion.
True communion is this: People bearing one another's burdens, sharing each other's joys and sorrows and hopes. People sharing the Eucharist together as they visit friends who live thousands of miles apart. Missouri and Lui have it. So do many others. I pray Archbishop Williams and the Anglican Communion will not rip it from our hands and hearts.
I'm a progressive Episcopalian raised in the South and now (thanks to a job change) living in the conservative Midwest. I worship at Grace Episcopal Church in Jefferson City. I love the Episcopal Church, which rescued me from a life of wandering meaningless and gave me a way to explore my faith and belief in God.
On any given topic, I am prone to yammer-on way too long. Sometimes I ponder way more than I should.
A blog-friend said that I demonstrate a "muscled love for our Church." I hope I can live up to that.
And right now I'm pondering Blogger's challenge to define myself in 1200 characters.
