House of Deputies president Bonnie Anderson issues statement on Primates’ communiqué

Goes of the tracks in the very first line, and plunges into the abyss of “our special polity.”
It is funny to see these folks throwing in tradtional and Biblical allusions left and right…having presided over a house that rejected affirmation of Christ’s saving sacrifice on the cross, she now invokes “the way of the Cross” in saluting the Primates even as she rejects the Communique (or is “deeply troubled by its implications”). 
More and more, I get the down deep sense of why it was so very right for the GS Primates to not receive communion in Dar es Salaam.  It is a sham to share the sacrament when the divisions run this deep.  Time to separate - may God give us a gracious and merciful way so to do.

TEC acts as though it has an inalienable right to membership in the Anglican Communion.  It does not.  Membership in any organization is a privilege, granted and withdrawn, at the discretion of the governing body of that organization.  TEC can believe and preach anything it wants, it just cannot do so and remain part of the AC.

Nothing like letting the inmates run the asylum. 

Then, what else could one expect from such “leadership” examples as this letter from Anderson.  She’s more concerned about the “...time,  talent and treasure debating if we ought to deny some people a place at the table to which Jesus calls us all.”

This is clever, but nutty. Who’d be so callous, unfeeling and insensitive “.,. to deny some people a place at the table to which Jesus calls us all?”  I, for one. If these people refuse to repent their sinful conduct, why shouldn’t they be refused? Oh, yes, this sounds so judgmental.  So be it. In this case the sinner who makes no bones about it his sinful conduct, seeks to manipulate others into thinking it’s a “lifestyle” instead of sinful conduct, and comes expecting a “place at the table”—this person should not be allowed to such table unless he confesses his sin.  It’s that simple. Otherwise why bother having prayers asking for forgiveness during the Mass or any other time?  Why bother having confessions?

This is the aspect of justice the “social justice” crowd never seem to comprehend.

Letters such as this sure don’t give one an optimistic sense that the mob running the ECUSA have gotten the message, thus unlikely to make any amends with the rest of the Communion.  Ironically enough, the real schismatics will appear to be the ones who’re hollering the most against it.

She is right.  The response to the communique should come from a special GC2007.  (It _can_ come from the HOB, but it _should_ come from GC.)

The presumption behind the resolution in 1878 Lambeth Resolution is a far, far stronger consensus on doctrine, ethics and liturgical practice than now exists. Remember the Lambeth Conferences were quite prepared to offer direct instruction on new moral questions for the entire Communion (eg on polygamy, contraception, contraception…) and lay down strong conditions of mutual accountability. Thus resolution 19 from 1888:

That, as regards newly constituted Churches, especially in non-Christian lands, it should be a condition of the recognition of them as in complete intercommunion with us, and especially of their receiving from us episcopal succession, that we should first receive from them satisfactory evidence that they hold substantially the same doctrine as our own, and that their clergy subscribe articles in accordance with the express statements of our own standards of doctrine and worship; but that they should not necessarily be bound to accept in their entirety the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

When that kind of liturgical, ethical and doctrinal consensus has broken down, as it clearly has, then the Communion, if it is not to become totally nominal, needs to find other structures for expressing its mutuality. It has surely been doing that in the creation of the Instruments of Unity over the last decades and in the shared international ecumenical conversations. The Primates have confirmed that momentum towards mutuality by suggesting the creation of the Covenant.

Sadly, it seems, TEC may opt out of all of this and go its own way. Anglicanism would surely be impoversihed by the decision of TEC to ‘walk apart’. TEC surely too would be thrown back into continuing ecclesiastical chaos and be impoversihed by rejecting the Anglican family. Let’s pray it doesn’t happen.

Bonnie - I recommend you take up scuba diving

Bonnie just doesn’t get it. The sad prediction is that she speaks for the majority of the elected ‘officials’ of our Church. I’m sorry I let the church drop to this level. I repent. I promise to try to do better. Please forgive me.

Here we go again.  Really, Bonnie, make my day.  Don’t you think most orthodox Anglicans want you to do exactly what your logic suggests: call a special General Convention?  Yes, by all means, have your four orders of bishops, priests, deacons and left-wing political activists come together to respond to the Primates.  Then we know for sure ECUSA will blow its own head off and spend next year in communion with the unitarians.

Or, you can stop spewing your idiotic, broken-record pablum and let the HOB respond.  It might be the only chance for ECUSA to do anything responsible - if that’s what you actually want.

In 1878, it was assumed that all Anglicans were at least nominally Christian and not stealth Unitarians.

the NOW BANNED BY JAKE snarkster

She actually understands the polity of the situation quite well, and betrays that understanding:

Some are asking whether the primates can ask our House of Bishops to take certain actions and put a deadline on their request. Yes, they can ask. There are larger questions that need to be addressed, including: Is it a good idea for our House of Bishops to do what they have asked? Is the House of Bishops the right body within the Episcopal Church to respond to the primates’ requests?

Exactly right.  The primates were fully within their rights to make this request of the Episcopal Church, and it is up the the Episcopal Church to respond in the manner it sees fit. 

The problem for the Chairperson of our House of Deputies is that the answer given will provide tremendous clarity to the current situation.  Whatever that answer may be, there will be consequences.

Ms. Anderson’s press release seems to have a distinct Orwellian tone, chocked full of pseudo-scripturalisms.  Perhaps it would be better for +++Rowan and the Primates to act now and disassociate the TEC as this response has appeared to basically thumb its nose at the Dar es Salaam Communique.

Peace,
Andy

I have been an Episcopalian for well over 40 years, and I have gotten by all this time without ever hearing from the President of the House of Deputies; indeed, I am not sure before now that I ever knew the identity of the PHOD.  Is this a bully pulpit that we need to hear from?

Dick M, in the same manner that the PB presides over the House of Bishops, the PHOD, elected by the House of Deputies, presides over the House of Deputies.  The PHOD wields considerable influence.

Progressives/revisionists often quote the Bible while ignoring 2,000 years of tradiiton, teaching, and Holy Scripture when it suits their specialized pandering. To understand Anderson’s viewpoint, you have to accept that TEC has discovered/invented a new “religion” that is about making the here and now more comfortable for everyone—-an admirable goal, as far as it goes—-complete with cigar, good whisky, bishop’s retreat place, salary, and pension for the “inner circle.” (I thought the central Christian imperative is to follow Christ.)To a large extent, TEC is in danger of becoming a mostly one-issue social organization. In doing so, it runs risk of losing its Christianity. For more detail, read the works of the former Bishop of Newark, Jack Spong. Has TEC essentially become “Sponged”? Perhaps.

Phil:

Here we go again.  Really, Bonnie, make my day.  Don’t you think most orthodox Anglicans want you to do exactly what your logic suggests: call a special General Convention?

SHHH, Man!  <kicks Phil’s leg under table>

[kicks Phil’s leg under the table]

Nothing surprising here. Including Jake banning the Snarkster. Keep posting exactly as you do, Snarkster. I’ll meet you someday, even if we have to wait for heaven. And while I stop short of trying to do God’s judging for Him, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for Jake to join us.

I am wondering if the posting of Bonnie Anderson on ENS may be a prelude to civil litigation by “815” over the right of the Primates to ask what they’ve asked—the language somewhat describes a lay person’s intent to seek such a course

Bill

Three passages come to mind after reading this:
2 Corinthians 11:13-13 (New King James Version)
13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

And 2 Peter 2, which seems to be the state of the majority of ECUSA

Revelation 18: 2-8
And he cried mightily[a] with a loud voice, saying, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird! 3 For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury.”
4 And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. 5 For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. 6 Render to her just as she rendered to you,[c] and repay her double according to her works; in the cup which she has mixed, mix double for her. 7 In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow; for she says in her heart, ‘I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow.’ 8 Therefore her plagues will come in one day—death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges[d] her.

To honor all of the primates’ requests would change the way the Episcopal Church understands its role in the Communion and the way Episcopalians make decisions about our common life. Our church makes policy and interprets its resolutions and Canons through the General Convention and, to a lesser extent, the Executive Council. 

And to a much, MUCH lesser extent, Holy Scripture, the traditional docrtine and teaching of the Church, and Reason.  No, make that an infinitesimal extent.

Does anyone think Bonnie is really writing her own press releases? If not,  who?

It seems if TEC has any chance of remaining in the AC, it would have to come from a response through the HOB; whereas, if a special GenCon were held, it seems even less likely TEC would remain part of the AC.  Bishops are charged with protecting the unity of the church and protecting it from false doctrine (even tacit ones that may be denied).  These are the critical issues now. 

So why should there be a special GenCon as Kendall suggested on the News Hour interview?  It would just seem to legitimize a polity that is structured to ignore theological authority and Anglican teaching.  Even if it attained clarity by following TEC’s own dysfunctional methods, wouldn’t it taint the outcome?  Wouldn’t it be pursuing corrupted means to a probable corrupt end?  If TEC’s polity is as much part of the problem as bishops who shirk their particular theological and ecclesial responsibilities, why should a Gen Con be held?  So Ms. Anderson’s statement appears characteristically dysfunctional:  the HOB is asked something and she responds and indicates others should. 

Does anyone know the reasons why a special GEnCon would be advisable?  It seems it would almost certainly provide the HOB with another excuse to shirk its responsibilities.  What do others think about this?  I don’t understand why a GenCon would be better than allowing the HOB to respond without one.

The Episcopal Church has declared repeatedly that our understanding of the Baptismal Covenant

Oops
Having been Episcopalian for 62 years I am fortunate to have been baptised and confirmed from the 1928 BCP. I am not a part of this much mis-used covenant.

This is just another fudge.

SeenTM asks,

Does anyone know the reasons why a special GEnCon would be advisable? ...  I don’t understand why a GenCon would be better than allowing the HOB to respond without one.

Here’s my comment on this same article over on T19:

Of course Miss Anderson misses the point of the Communique.  Of course this response expresses the typical doublethink of 815 and its minions.  Of course Miss Anderson disingenuously ignores the actual powers of the Diocesan.  What did we expect?

But of course a special GC would be the best possible process for the orthodox in the Network, Common Cause, 7th Conv, and elsewhere in ECUSA.  The principal risk here is that the HoB will pass some weasel-worded fudge which the _Primates will then have to meet once again to consider, adding half a year or more to the September deadline.  A GenCon, replaying GC06 with its tight revisionist ideological control and the near-pathological self-absorbed melodrama of its rhetoric would inescapably provide sufficient clarity for the Communion to finally axe 815.
<font size=+1>Go, go, go GenCon07!!</font>  Yes!!!

[Quickly moving back from the table to avoid JamesM’s kick…]

James Manley - heh.  I see I am in the good company of Craig Goodrich.

Thanks to Ms. Anderson for reminding us that our polity makes a theological statement via the occupation of democracy frames which it incarnates.  We seek to know God’s will together, using democracy procedures which we pray will serve us just as well in discernment as any iteration of the divine rights of kings could serve us.  Since the divine rights of kings to rule continues apace in other parts of the world, not least via the special rights/privileges of bishops and archbishops, an implicit clash or at least juxtaposition of these two rather different enactments of authority for discernment is fairly unavoidable.  Calling a special GenCon would probably be unncessary, since representative delegates over several decades of succeeding GenCons have I think made their discernments clear.

What remains is for the HoB to put itself on record, and one hopes clearly.  In particular, to aid my own local-personal discernment processes, I would like to hear from the TEC HoB, and from Canterbury, and from the members of the requested Pastoral Council just what they have to say in support and guidance of Out, Partnered, and Parenting gay or lesbian families now in TEC.  I think we need clear directions from these new sources of authority to avoid any confusion about what is happening here.

One hopes they will not rashly counsel us to return our children to the local foster care authorities from whence they so often have already come to us.  Even if they counsel us to split from our Partners, I doubt that we can do it, because what sort of shallow people do they think we are that we should abandon those we love at the drop of a conservative Anglican hat?  Still, one wishes to hear clearly what support/guidance they can give.

This whole recurring business of TEC progressive believers being Unitarians is silly.  If we were Unitarians, we could just go be Unitarians - they still exist, and for the foreseeable future apparently will continue to exist.  So far as I have read the history, we are all better off for having benefitted from Rev. Starr King’s life and ministry in a past era.  I can rub shoulders quite peacefully with the Unitarians I have met, but at the same time it reconfirms to both of us that I do not quite belong in the Unitarian Fellowships because I am too much still a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.  This is salutary for me as far it goes, since I am often alleged to have no Jesus Freak flavors left by believers somewhat or much to the right of me, and I thank God for the reminder by contrasts.  I do value the consistent efforts that Unitarian believers - and others from world religions of various sorts - do tend to make, towards keeping things peaceful, towards not papering over our important yet provisional differences, and towards living out just that justice that reveals the living heart of God via the ways we treat our neighbors.

Everybody speaks up to help the process along, and Ms Anderson is hardly an exception.  Our global villages are functionally nearer one another than has ever been the case.  I do not see signs of that stopping.  If you think we are going crazy now, just wait until China really starts to ascend in the next twenty or so years - and watch her influences (including Chinese religion and philosophy) reappear on all our xenophobic radars.

Last week one of my African American patients was telling me how reading Taoism in prison invigorated positive changes in his life that continue to the present as he avoids going back to jail and staying in recovery from drugs/alcohol.  Imagine that, Taoism, suddenly speaking in a book to an African American prison inmate.  Not a moment many of us would have bothered to predict or anticipate. Shall I roundly diss him, then, and tell him just how foolish and shallow and evil his turn around is because he bases it partly on Taoist authorities?  Would I rather see him addicted and going back to jail where at least he could join the Christian jailhouse prisoners in conservative allegiances?  Is his earthly well-being a delusion if he draws upon Taoism?

Beyond China ascending, just wait until the next waves of data flood out from the New Physics and the New Biology.  We ain’t seen nothing yet. Policing and counting queer orgasms will seem but a pittance or a sideline cartwheel, indeed, compared to these impending larger shifts in our global village life.

DrDan, I know that many see you as a troll-like poster, but I will respond, though I’m not sure where to start. 

Your patient who received inspiration from Taoist readings - why would you ever think to “tell him just how foolish and shallow and evil his turn around is because he bases it partly on Taoist authorities”??  Couldn’t you just tell him that Taoist philosophy comes close, but Jesus clinches the deal?  Is his earthly well-being a delusion if he draws upon Taoism?  Sure, his “earthly well-being” might be better, for the moment, until the hollowness comes in - which can only be filled by Jesus.
Could you not use that as a missionary “open door”, instead of an opportunity for ridicule?  Of course you can, if you believe indeed that Jesus is the WAY.  If you believe, “whatever works is good”, then you are doing your patient a disservice and falling down in your job as Jesus commanded us.

DrDan—

As to pastoral advice, the canonical (in the geeky sense, meaning “usual”) policy of Christian missionaries towards polygamy might provide a useful model:  polygamists who convert are not counseled to abandon their wives, which would be uncharitable and leave them in an anomalous social and economic position, but although the polygamist may participate fully and freely as a layman in parish affairs, he may not take any further wives and may not under any circumstances receive Holy Orders.  (I know that this is currently the policy in the African churches and was the policy of Methodists converting the Navajo in the 19th century; I assume it has been independently applied by other denominations elsewhere.)

It would appear that if some such policy—which makes a purely pastoral concession to human fallenness without threatening any doctrine of the Church universal—had been adopted towards homosexuals, much of the current conflict would not have occurred.

As to Taoism, the Tao Te Ching contains a great deal of good advice, particularly for politicians, bureaucrats, and others in social leadership positions, but also applicable to one’s general approach to life.  It is not really metaphysical in any sort of concrete sense, and thus is by and large compatible with Christian teaching—which accounts for C.S. Lewis’ unself-conscious discussion of “the Tao of Christianity” —although at several points the book appears to reject some notions of morality.

Turning to the Tao would, at least, be an improvement over ascribing magical properties to crystals, pyramids, and copper bracelets…

Craig Goodrich, I need to ask you whether your last statement is your most earnest hope or more of your life-giving humor?  Do you most earnestly wish that TEC vote itself out of the AC in a special Gen Con or would you rather that it stay in the AC, provided it then conforms itself to Anglican teaching?

(CG we cross posted.  My last comment refers to your “go GenCon” remarks)

Here we go again with this strange interpretation of, and over-emphasis on “our baptismal covenant.”  Maybe we stop too short with this list of “persons” we should treat equally.  After all, people are basically animals and in some circumstances animals have more rights than people.  Could the baptismal covenant also be extended to how we treat chimps, and maybe even dogs? 

(Personally, I was sprinkled as an infant in the Roman Catholic tradition, and then as a young adult I was dunked in Lake Michigan.  Didn’t worry too much about the wording of any baptismal covenant at the time!)

OK, everybody take a deep breath and repeat after me: IT DOESN’T MAKE THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF DIFFERENCE WHETHER IT IS THE HOB OR THE HOD OR BOTH TOGETHER.[/B]

sorry, I meant to turn the bold off.

the NOW BANNED BY JAKE snarkster

SeenTM—as to ECUSA reliably conforming itself to Anglican teaching, my opinion of this possibility is expressed very well by John Richardson+ here.

It’s time finally to accept the fact that the Episcopal Church in which I was raised has finally passed completely and irrevocably into history, leaving small mementos in the form of isolated Continuing congregations here and there but institutionally completely dead.  Let it rest in peace, and let the Pop Marxists of GenCon07 (Yay!) write its epitaph.  North American Anglicanism needs to move on, and so does the rest of the Communion.

Face it friends: the GS & Co. have handed the Orthodox in TEC a tremendous victory, if we can handle it.  They acted—not just spoke but acted—as Christians, wise ones at that: “Give ‘em a hug and see if they can make peace.”  Those archbishops aren’t as concerned with peace between them and us as they are concerned about peace among us.  We are called to behave orthodox, not just think orthodox.  It means finding a viable response to writers like drdnfee above.  It means acknowledging that each of our sins ranks right up there with the gay sins, no perceptible difference.  It means we will have to find ways to forswear the belittling of those who disagree, because the belittling creates divisions, not communion.  In some ways what the Primates have done is like Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: it actually accomplished very little but that was mostly because the response was so negative and recidivist.  We should be struggling to find ways to embrace our former “ememies,” embracing the spirit of DES.  If we do not we shall lose the benefits of DES: swords into plowshares.

Well said, terebinth, well said.

I agree that Dar el Salaam’s fruit is a gift, though I expect time will reveal that its source is the Holy Spirit. To harden our hearts to the gift is to repeat the sloth of Meribah.  I have been reading Luther’s commentary on Galatians.  He speaks of those who turn a precious gift into poison: 

They are like spiders that suck venom out of sweet and fragrant flowers. The poison is not in the flowers, but it is the nature of the spider to turn what is good and wholesome into poison.

Craig and Michael:

I disagree that a Special GC should be called and I also disagree that there is no difference in results as a result of Michael’s 3 scenarios.  It all depends on what we want.  Do we want to restrict the new NA Anglicanism to a small group, or do we want to save as much as TEC as we can?  I would suggest that the ABC and primates would choose the latter, as should we.

So, let’s look at the various scenarios.  Clearly, the HoD would reject the Communique requests.  My guess is that a watered down compliance won’t be passed - it will be outright rejection phrased either nicely (i.e. a restatement of B033 and the nonsensical “the national church has never authorized SS rites) or nastily (see any one of several radical reappraiser offerings being circulated around).  I would fully expect that the extremist militant reappraisers in the HoD would turn their rage at being excluded from the Communion against any and all orthodox in TEC and would redouble their legal fight against us. Sure, the Primates and the ABC would likely toss TEC out of the Communion, but at what price?

No, I think that the better result for us would be for KJS to call the HOB to order, read them the riot act, and have them accept the Communique. This would surely cause a nasty internecine war between the reappraising extremists and the reappraising institutionalists.  The former would be incensed at the latter for “caving in” to the primatial bullies.  The latter would be incensed at the former for putting their Anglican status at risk for a small overpriviliged but whiney minority group. I would suggest to you, that in response to an Anglican victory in the HOB, the reappraising extremists would take the only action left open to them to resist - ramp up SSB’s in their dioceses.

I would predict that these would be really in-your-face sort of events, designed to show to everyone who will see that they are not backing down.  What result?  I would guess that they will be specifically excluded from Lambeth and the Anglican Communion.

So you will then have 3 groups within TEC, and 3 outside of TEC:
TEC group 1, the reappraising extremists, will not be Anglican.
TEC group 2, the reapprasing institutionalists, will be Anglican, will try to keep their heads down, but will have no sympathy for TEC group 1.
TEC group 3, the Windsor College. They will have TEC authority to oversee parishes in group 1 dioceses, thereby being the OFFICIAL ANGLICAN presence in those dioceses.

Non TEC groups, being CANA, AMIA, 7C-ACN. They have AC recognition and can also work in group 1 dioceses with impunity.

I would suggest to everyone, that if such a scenario would develop, you just might see the group 1 dioceses seek to band together as the “real TEC” and attempt to claim this legitimacy via the HoD (remember that they would know that the HoD would never have countenanced what the HoB did). At that point, you might just see the TEC divide between the reasserters/institutional reappraisers on the one side and the extremist reappraisers on the other side.  It would be a nasty fight.

In the end, the majority of TEC would remain Anglican, with a badly mauled group of institutionalists and a reasserter core of solid leadership.  The radical reappraisers would have left, taking with them their bully groups.  The reasserters would be in the driver’s seat of the Anglican group and would have most of TEC on board.

Now this is all speculation, but I would personally rather not see a Special General Convention trash the communique. I would rather see the HOB pass this, and then watch the two reappraisers group fight over the consequences.  I would also read commentaries like Bonnie Anderson’s as laying the groundwork for a later claim by the extreme revisionists to be the “real TEC” when the HOB makes the decision to comply with the communique.

It may well be as snarkster, CG and others say.  But IF some were to turn and choose the AC over separation, what would be more conducive to that happening, the HOB responding w/o a GenCon or with one?  I think the HOB responding w/o a GenCon would be more conducive to the HOB turning.  The absence of the GenCon circus might be more conducive to each and every bishop facing his or her conscience during Lent and weighing the long term consequences of his/her choice. 

There is the situation of Network and other dioceses that might want to remain in the AC.  If individual bishops were able to act to keep them in the AC wouldn’t that be easier than them having to go against GenCon to do so?  This is further complicated by parishes and clergy who could be trapped in dioceses that are wavering or confirm separation.  For these people, talking to their bishop and others in their diocese would be much easier than having to convince all of GEnCon, especially if a bishop could turn at any point, if the door were left open.

“We are victims of the ignorance of the Anglican Communion about our polity!” she said in shrill overtones that accentuated her victimhood.  “Even if we tried really, really hard, we just can’t do what they’re asking for reasons of process,” she stated glumly.

She paused, briefly, and then she continued to say it over and over, in as many ways as she could think of, to whomever would listen, until Sept. 29, when the flurry of lawsuits began against anyone who had showed up on the radar of the angry bureaucrats in the Death Star, aka 815.

Bring out the horizontally-challenged lady, and tell her to tune up….

The party is near being over.

Well, if all that came to pass, jamesw, you should be the renewed TEC’s general counsel.  I basically agree with you about the effect of the HOB rather than GenCon responding.

But Kendall has obviously thought a lot about this issue and he said there should be a GenCon to decide it.  I just wonder why.  Maybe we’re missing something.  Maybe he said it to put Russell in check, but even so, it seems better that the HOB respond by itself as much as I can understand it.

Sorry… the correct conjugation of the verb to show is “had shown.”
But a country boy can survive.

Craig U: I appreciate what you say but I believe deeply that we must start finding positive ways to express ourselves such that we deliver charity, not just talk about it.  The spiders’ venom from flowers doesn’t really do that: truth it tells, but the wisdom behind the truth it obscures.  These folks are locked in sin; so are we.  We have no option but to choose life, together.

terebinth,
That’s my point.

This whole recurring business of TEC progressive believers being Unitarians is silly.  If we were Unitarians, we could just go be Unitarians - they still exist, and for the foreseeable future apparently will continue to exist. 

drdanfee
The whole point is that TEC progressives don’t want to admit their Unitarianism. They want to be Unitarian with a fake Christian patenia.

To others I think that a emergency GC will be a waste of time unless there would be a major, conservative realignment in the HOB and HOD.

I don’t see that happning.

drdanfee: what nonsense to say you cannot be both progressive and Christian (re:Marlin).  And there is no such thing as a Christian patina—either you are or you’re not, and if you are it goes all the way to the core.  We tend to go astray when we ascribe mundane terms (i.e. progressive) to sacred issues (i.e. faith).  I regret I don’t have simple answers to your important questions.  The best I can say is use faith as a verb not a noun:  faith your life in the truth of the Gospel and leave the rest for God.  The church can be a very noisy room.

And there is no such thing as a Christian patina—either you are or you’re not, and if you are it goes all the way to the core.

terebinth: If you read my post again then you will see that is just point. TEC wants to appear Christian with out being Christian. A patina.

drdnfee: as I think about it, try http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus_online/show_article2.asp?id=9597 , it’s the Harvard Longitudinal Study now in year 60+.  It goes some ways in explaining “young” spirituality from “old.”

JamesW asks an important question:

Do we want to restrict the new NA Anglicanism to a small group, or do we want to save as much as TEC as we can?

Before we can answer that question, we have to make clear what precisely we mean by “TEC.”  Do we mean the 815 bureaucracy, its canons, the structure of the Domestic & Foreign Missions Society, etc.; or do we mean the clergy, the congregants, and their congregations, including their family traditions, parish heirlooms, apostolic heritage, and so on?

If the former, I for one see nothing worth saving.

If the latter, of course we want to include as much as we possibly can.  The question is not one of goals, but of strategy and tactics.  I see TEC as an obstacle to preserving and expanding Anglican Christianity in North America, not as an organ within which it is useful to work.

Bonnie’s post reminds me of that Far Side Cartoon:

What the comminique is saying the the Episcopal Church:

“Knock off the same sex blessings and electing practicing gay bishops if you want to be part of the Communion”

What the Episcopal Church hears:

“blah,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… you want to be part of the Communion.”

Eclipse: your summary of what the comminique says is not very admirable but acceptable.  The importance of what it says is mostly in how they say it.  We must respond to both the what and the how.

Dear Bonnie,

Has it ever occurred to you that the “polity” of TEC is flat-out wroing? If we are to be a part of the holy catholic and apostolic church it might be time to recognize the authority of the successors to the apostles, our bishops. I cannot find anything useful that has come out of the HOD in the past 40 years, so I am willing to see it go away.

why is Anderson’s bio buried on the net?

Thanks GillianC for agreeing that following Jesus doesn’t always begin with nothing but the automatic pilots of categorical religious condemnation. 

That opens us lots of room to pray, think, live, and witness, doesn’t it? 

Meanwhile, I could consider going even further beyond your point of view by being open to sooner or later discovering that whatever goods the patient had allowed to come to him via his study of the Tao is what Karl Rahner has discussed as blossoming into him walking towards being an anonymous Christian.  This is particularly open-ended if the Tao is more or less nature, pure and simple, as it deeply links to us contained inside nature.  I am not enough of an expert on Toaism to finalize that glimmer.

In any event, your more compassionate sort of conservative or evangelical or whatever JesusFreakiness reminds me of some of the members of my patient services teams; we have our differences, but we can agree on sufficient areas of common concern and common service that we do not have spend all the team time with war.  That agreeing to disagree is a blessing, even if it falls short of the uniformity which so many realignment Anglicans now seem to say they seek. 

Thanks for revealing that a spectrum of allegiance exists among people who would probably never call themselves liberal believers.  And, be sure to say howdy if/when we cross paths around the planet.  Soon we shall know whether or not we can say howdy, too, inside the newly realigned Anglican Communion churches of TEC.  Best wishes.

A great big HOWDY to you drdanfee. Just please don’t ask me to break bread with you.

I doubt that either one of us has to worry much, via orthodox.  But you never know, do you?  I could be dropping in on a mass some day far from my ordinary home, and you could accidentally be dropping in, too, and although probably neither one of us would recognize or know the other was there, we might each be accepting the Risen Jesus’ invitation to song and prayer and Eurcharist.  Gee, I am being silly aren’t I.  Forget I ever imagined it.  Probably would not happen in a million zillion years.  Why, conservative believer families could find out they had queer kids - another longshot no doubt.  But then, I guess that is partly where so many of the Out, Partnered, and Parenting queer believers have been arising - in the USA Bible Belt states.  The world’s largest gay-friendly church so far is the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas, of all unlikely places.  Truth is you just never know if the person next to you at mass is straight or not.  And so far the liturgy doesn’t usually ask them to stop to declare themselves one way or the other in a suitable pause with all eyes and ears turned to the declarant - who would then be asked not to participate?

Could be worse Dr. Dan,according to 1 Cor.11:27-30,some of those who took the sacrament unworthily,died.

Wow terebinth, what a great link.  Thanks loads.  I got a chance once to take a class under Fowler, and well, the rest is history.  Best wishes.

Ah paddy that is what I think we might call the innate risk of pledging any faith.  The letter kills but the spirit gives life.  Best wishes.

‘Innate risk of pledging’,Dr Dan,hmmmm,interesting,wonder what the answer might have been if we could have asked Ananias and Sapphira(Acts 5:1-11)if that might have been the same as ‘lying to the Holy Spirit’.

Dear Paddy, instead of darkly hinting that God may strike me dead at any minute, maybe you should just come right out and say it. 

At the risk of seeming superficial, I must confide that I have sort of been there and done that. 

In my early pioneer days of Christian therapy for changing/repenting of sexual orientation in the USA Bible Belt churches, I indeed fasted and prayed with the support of my entire extended family and church.  Of course as a fledgling I could not fast for more than about three weeks at a time, before people would be come alarmed a bit and let me slip back into eating something; but we really believed God would understand that as a modern youngster I was a bit removed from the forty days in the desert, desert-fathers, sort of regimen. 

After four or five days I would then be relieved and restored so that I could go back for another three weeks of intensive fasting/prayer. 

Everybody was more or less plugged right into it, and looking back I have some wonder that I still was able to make it to school and keep up with academics as well as country church life. 

After four or five years of this, it began to slowly sour without anybody wanting to admit what was happening as things went south, so to speak.  I do find that phrase, Global South, an ironic resonance with my own family and church of those days ... going south. 

Then, rather as darkly as you seem to be hinting, some family and church folks very reluctantly began to think that unfortunately I would be better off dead than queer and so God meant for me to go all the way to the mat, so to speak, really as a matter of young faith.  We took about a month to weigh and agonize over it, but it seemed like just about the only strategy we hadn’t tried to throw ourselves into the waiting arms of the hard and difficult holiness justly revealed as God. 

So there you have it. 

I will not recount all the difficult details, except to say that it went on for about fifty-three days of a very intentionally strict ascetic regimen, and that looking back on it all - about ten years of time in all - it seems a small miracle that I didn’t end up better dead than queer. 

I also suspect that some of my chronic health problems might have their early roots in some of those wry sincerities.  Now, honestly, my health problems are not all that bad, just ... chronic. I think the great guy who is my partner is maybe a tad too careful in mind of my nutrition; but it doesn’t hurt, either.  He’s a gifted cook in any case, regardless of my history.

In any case, a propos of your dark hints: By the latter days of the strictest period, we all were indeed praying that God would strike me dead or allow natural causes to take their course, anything really instead of leaving me to the awful queer fate that otherwise awaited me. 

I do think I/we gave it the sort of ten year go that may really have involved some serious and conscientious intentions, relative and in context.  Certainly I still carry away the good lesson of having my whole church and extended family do their utmost best, to the very best of their most careful biblical knowledge and holiness piety. 

So, no, I am not particularly worried that God might strike me dead - in fact, I have already asked God to do just that, wide open and facing the prayerful anticipations of just my own ascetic yet necessary death as I battled the Great Satan - All so that I would not have to live life as an Out, Partnered, Parenting queer person. 

There may be some truth to the old saw that God’s angels look after drunks, fools, and children.  Best wishes.

Dr Danfee,

That’s an interesting story.  However it fails to accomplish the thing you hoped it would.  Here’s another interesting story.

Some years ago I lived next door to a homosexual couple. I’ll call them John and Mike.  Mike told a story very similar to yours. He was an active member of a Protestant church.  When he came to realize he was gay, his whole family and church family prayed for him.  He said he prayed every night for five years straight to have God take this thing away from him.  It never happened.  So he gave up and embraced the gay lifestyle and eventually moved in with John.  John and Mike lived happily and quietly together for a number of years.

Then one day, years later, Mike suddenly and without any warning whatsoever announced that he was leaving John and the gay lifestyle altogether.  Mike went and found his high school sweetheart who had been waiting for him all those years.  She knew that someday God would deliver Mike from homosexuality.  Mike and his girlfriend got married.  No one who knew Mike could believe what was happening, but it’s true.

And then Mike died of AIDS.

So drdanfee, I remain unconvinced that it is impossible for people to leave the gay lifestyle.  It happens every day.  Mike was someone I knew for years.  John and Mike being gay didn’t prevent us from breaking bread together many times, of borrowing things from each other, of taking care of each other’s lawns when the other was away, and so on.  And Mike left the gay life. 

This is MY experience.  Talk about a “listening process”?

YOU listen to ME.

drdanfee: glad you appreciated the metanexus post.  They are clearly on to some important things, spiritual and medical.  I further recommend Being as Communion by JD Zizioulas.  Read it as a companion to the Fowler work.  We are using it in our small group (mercifully we have a Deacon Dr. theologian), and considering bringing it to our bigger group if we can get confident enough.  The Ziz is illuminating to us because it really documents what we are today watching unfold: TEC (at least in its current form) is a church mainly aimed at Justice.  Now Justice is not to be sniffed at.  But the Primates seem to have clearly acted as a church aimed primarily at communion resulting from objective truth.  Unfortunately they havent done a whole lot of groundwork in USA as to what they mean by that, and the USA general culture is beating the justice drum continuously.  This seems to me to explain why you get these reactions like Paddy’s: nobody has done sufficient groundwork for what communion based on objective truth looks like.  Ziz does it, enjoy.  And remember the most important part of your sentence: “...God meant for me to go all the way to the mat, so to speak, really as a matter of young faith…” is **young**.  Faith is organic, it grows as Fowler documents as and scripture teaches.  Paddy seems to be stuck somehow.

hello, T., I will take a look at the JD Zizioulis book.  I have to say already that I sit in other paradigms which ask any frame which asserts revelation or communion objectivity to deeply describe, account for, and bear witness of its life.  That said, I realize that for many believers the whole objectivity thing - which I as yet simply cannot find in the fundamental risk of faithing the verb - even the objects of faith are not real and present and speaking, as if my grandmother were telling me to carry out the trash from the next room - well that objectivity claim is important to other believers. 

It doesn’t make that much difference so far for me.  I am not following Jesus because I can prove anything, objectively, not even amongst the riches of scripture and/or tradition which do offer us quite an incredible storehouse.

I am open to following Jesus because against all empirical odds - well that is empirical in the old Newtonian sense, and post-Einstein we shall have to see what the New Physics opens up? - because against all empirical odds I still bet my paltry holdings on having encountered Jesus and having been asked to follow Jesus.  Funny thing about all that, which of course I probably cannot explain well to realignment folks, is that Jesus didn’t exhaustively investigate my doctrinal or biblical qualifications for being invited to meet and hear and follow - he just up and asked me to come along for the pilgrimage.

Now if I can just find time in the midst of everything else I have signed on, to get back to my reading lists.

PS. If you have connects with anybody in Central Florida, you might want to mention to them that there is a Florida crisis of runaway gay kids who usually have been kicked out or asked to leave their homes.  These young people are not going to be easily dissuaded from knowing who they are; but there is plenty of room for practical ministries of the old-fashioned Martha sort, food, housing, physical safety, help getting off drugs, and help leaving survival sex behind and the like.

See: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-cgayhomelessfeb25,0,2587440.story?track=rss

PS. But my dears, I am an old troll (curmudgeon?) from any number of points of view.  Just ask the Hip-Hop Generations who ride our local transit systems. I have met Old Cracker in the mirrors, and he is me.

And the general stand firm message, Just Say No, comes through loud and clear.  Alas, a bit late, since I have already said yes to being Out, Partnered, and Parenting; and you do not reverse those Yes pledges by making an opposite turn-around on a realignment dime, even if you believed that better over the long run, which I still do not quite agree.

The personal story of just how my No became Yes is the summary of who I am and am becoming.  In that sense a statistically common story of Coming Out, since many folks have to deal with all the No’s. 

And contrary to all expectations and legacy definitions, it has been surprisingly viable and growthful to date. I guess that so far as I know I will continue, inside or outside of the TEC that is supposed to be realigned. 

I could easily have turned out to be yet another Reverend Ted Haggard, married and doing meth and partying with rent boys on the side, then getting my lovely and God-given heterosexuality all washed squeaky clean again in a three-week intensive of reparative therapy (in Florida?). 

The unstable house of cards in my case proved rather slowly to be the whole ex-gay healing thing; not the whole Out gay thing.  Meeting and following Jesus, which of course I do not claim to prove and demonstrate as if it were a Maytag dishwasher of faith, happily delivered me from trying to take shelter, long-term, in that house of cards. The biblical clobber verses do not change that in the least. Nor what Tertullian or Saint Anselm thought in C.E. 220, or 1098, respectively. Nor, indeed, what the Vatican says it thnks, still, today.

I fondly read the NT story of the leper healed by the Jesus of which the Jerusalem Temple priests knew nothing, at least as judged by their reported surprise and Jewishly faithful doubts.  How amazing, to be healed of being ex-gay, and yet the realignment says it knows nothing of such a life, or such a Risen Lord.  I am content for passing time, and God in the last instance, to judge.

If it comes out against me in those ends, I had still rather be part of a well-designed experiment that fails to demonstrate the tested hypothesis, than to be part of a poorly designed pseudo-experiment that does nothing except superficially confirm what everybody already thinks we know, anomalous Copernican calculations to the contrary, controversial and pretty much untested.

Drdanfee: C FL is a long ways from me and like you can’t be spread any thinner.  Try the Ziz I think you might profit from that concept of communion, and it is a sobering jolt.

Hi DaveW, at least you read through my post.  But my point was not what you read it to be.  I am not claiming that nobody ever walks any of the various available ex-gay paths, nor am I asserting that under no circumstances can anybody who happens to walk one of those paths ever turn out for the better, so far as we know. 

I am reminded of a clinical intake I did once, way back when as an intern, while training at a community mental health center in Boston.  A fellow showed up one day because he had heard that we were more non-judgmental about sexual orientation than many neighborhood or state centers were at that time, and he wanted to talk about sexual orientation.  He had been discovered in the navy, as it turns out, having a sexual fling with another corpman; and since the navy had discharged him as queer, he had travelled all the way to the big city to find out what leading life as a queer man was going to be like.  Odd thing was, when taking his history, I could hear him talk about all sorts of heterosexual attractions and involvements that he had had growing up.  Clearly, he did not sound gay but straight.  If I had been putting patients through a guaranteed cure program, he would have made a dandy subject.  I could have first tagged him as gay, then put him through my program, then reported - probably quite honestly - that his sexual orientation measured as exclusively heterosexual.  Then I could have credited my model for being the intervention that cured him.

Your anecdote is a story about whoever Mike really was, and assuming your account is honest and accurate, I have no qualms accepting it.  Mine, too, as a matter of fact. Equally, then, Ditto.

What you have glossed over or omitted from my story is at minimum two things which are as true for me as any part of Mike’s story was true for him. 

Firstly, my efforts to change involved everything that I, my extended family, and my country church family could put into the deal.  Of course we prayed, but there was more than that - and here we get to the point.  Perhaps because so much was involved or loaded on the ex-gay situation, passing through it was a sort of unwitting change at deep levels.  I cannot quite explain what sort of change it all was.  Coming so close to death by starvation and complications probably had something to do with it.  Having things intended to go consciously one way, the ex-gay way, and having things definitively not go that way under the most intense loading, was another part of it.  Having the extended family and the church family all on board was yet another part of it.  I have no need to discount Mike’s story any more than I have a need to take mine back or conform it to Mike’s.

More to the point that Paddy seemed to be hinting, I faced death while turning towards God.  I guess that changed me irrevocably without any of us consciously intending that as such; but not in having the gay life fall apart as a house of cards, but in having the ex-gay deal fall apart as a house of cards.

Even so, who can say what the future would hold?  If just the right combination of ingredients somehow happened, I suppose I could theoretically start finding myself attracted to a woman with depth and fervor. We so little understand the brain and sexual orientation, yet.  But the triggers for gay or straight or in-between are probably part of a coherent biopsychosocial system of adaptation potentials, and will probably turn out to be built into the species if the sociobiologists are anywhere near right.

Even in that case, I still would be under no logical or emotional compulsion to disown the goods that I had already lived in my exclusively gay life.  I guess then I would have to admit that I had discovered I was functionally bisexual, and just go on from there.  That is quite a long shot, however.  Probably as much of a long shot, realistically speaking, as for any of the actively straight realignment posters here to wake up one day without warning and discover himself attracted to a man with depth and fervor.

You may not agree with that point, and nobody says you have to, but in fact that is one of my points.

Secondly, I believe what I am saying is that I got to being Out, Partnered, and Parenting via a lived process of growth and development on many different good levels.  The process itself was generally good and positive for me, even as I faced this or that set of Coming Out difficulties.  I am where I am, as a consequence of many good things, and although the outcomes were also good, the deep and equal point is that the process of Coming Out was a healthy and vital process for me.

You can disagree with that if you like, no problem.  Your disagreement doesn’t change where I am, where my embodiment positively is, and what good capacities remain for my living honestly and productively as I am now embodied.  What does seem to be changing, and I cannot readily rescue you from this dilemma, is that people who damn not being straight have new burdens of fairness and good to newly demonstrate, both as to the goods that their damning people needs to show that it does without doubt in their own lives, as well as the good it is supposed to do in the lives of the people whom they damn.

I guess if you want proofs and evidences, you need to turn from anecdotes as such, and review the considerable bodies of research which more carefully and objectively demonstrate or test both of my claims, i.e., that Coming Out can be a positive and healthy developmental process for people who are not straight, and that the way stations of adult life that are partly outcomes of the process can also be viable. Just as viable for those of us who are not straight, as being straight is for straight people.

Glad to hear that you would mow my lawn while we were away on vacation.  Now if only I could get the damn thing to grow some decent green grass,  Just kidding, just kidding. 

Of course, we must allow the realignment process to run its full course, so we shouldn’t conclude too prematurely that I will be breaking bread with you in that other sense of coming to the Lord’s Table in a realigned TEC parish. I long ago stopped defining my sexual orientation as innately sinful, and pretending to repent of it would only be the silliest deal. And, as it happens, I live in a large metro area where I can easily count four other gay-friendly churches in my neighborhood within a ten block radius.  I am even welcome to meditate and pray as a follower of Jesus with some of my Buddhist friends, backed up by the Dalai Lama recently saying he thought Jesus Freaks should just be Jesus Freaks.  Imagine, getting encouragement to keep following Jesus from the Dalai Lama when so many realignment folks get a catch in their throats.  God works in mysterious ways, even when the chips seem to be down and you think you are going to black out for the full count.  I guess that is part of the ex-gay house of cards falling apart, too.

I am about the last person to linger where I am not welcome as I really am, including all the gay parts that have been part of my slow, deep turn for the better in life.  And, of course, I care about my partner and the kids, so I am not likely to linger too long among those whose conscience requires them to say awful things about us, not even because scripture contains those lovely and vicious clobber passages.

drdanfree and others: I think the profound part of this is that the Primates have unambiguously come down on the side of “Communion trumps justice.”  No accident that many of them have experienced post-colonial justice and have learned first hand how empty it can be. They leave the hard work of welcoming, upholding and truly being in communion with strangers up to us rather than falling back onto “anything goes” or some other empty formula.  Faith rules.

Hmm, T., then maybe your view lends thought experiment credence to the notion that nothing that is truly good can really be institutionalized, since it only lives for real in the real hearts and minds of individual humans?  I could hear that as a sociological companion, as it were, to the traditional reform claims of utter human depravity.  Thus, not even the human heart or mind can be trusted when push comes to shove as it always must.  Thus, a Calvin-led Geneva is one of our legacy images for what life might be among those predestined for glory by God before the founding of our cosmos.

I think going in another typical Anglican direction makes more sense.  Discerning the good but fallible possibilities of both human institutions, and the individual human heart and mind (and body?), all via grounding in our legacy theologies of Jesus incarnation and doctrines that give us windows or lenses like the Imago Dei.

That would then render the African Primates suspicions an important cultural matter, to be resolved not by universalizing our utter distrust of completely bad social institutions and their failures to do justly; but instead calling us to renewed efforts to do justly in individual life and in our institutions, precisely because the moment we stop trying, we are sure to fail.

So far as the welcome offered by individuals, it is great.  Queer folks have often survived on just that forbidden sustenance, secretly given in the face of institutional damnations, inside and outside of the religious communities.  At its best, I suppose, that is what the closet was provisionally meant to be.  Sadly, it turned out pretty badly, as a sort of imprisonment that diminished and killed the spirit and body and heart and minds of the closeted people with behind the scenes welcome who were supposed to be supported.

Not too many of the Out queer folks I personally know of any color are much interested in going back to, say, the USA in the 1940’s.