The Task Force on Property: Criminalizing Dissent

“Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me.”

During Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin two witnesses came forward who charged Jesus with plotting to destroy the Temple and raise it in three days:

“…two came forward and declared, "This fellow said, 'I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.' " (Matthew 26:60-61)

The interesting thing about these charges is that they are true in one way and false in another.

It is true that Jesus said:

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." (John 2:19)

It is also true that those who heard him believed he was referring to the real Temple:

“It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” (John 2:20)

But in fact, he was not:

“But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said.” (John 2:21-22)

But we should give the witnesses their due. In his discussion with the woman at the well, we see that Jesus clearly intended to “replace” the Temple.

“Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:21-24)

Jesus anticipated and, in fact, sought to usher in an age in which he, rather than the Temple, would stand as the focal point of worship.

Despite the fact that Jesus said these things publicly both to a wider Temple audience and to smaller more “private” groups like the woman at the well and his disciples and despite the fact that Jesus never, in fact, planned a violent overthrow of the Temple hierarchy nor the destruction of the Temple by popular revolt, what he said regarding the Temple, together with his cleansing of the same, was exploited by his enemies as evidence of a “sinister” Temple plot.

Jesus himself, they charged, was scheming to destroy the Temple.

Recasting an opponent’s public words of dissent and their legitimate opposition plans as “conspiracy” is an old game, a sophisticated form of ad-homineim, which allows one party to shift the focus of debate away from the content of the issues at hand to integrity of the opposition.

We see it in politics all the time. Republicans, who really do believe that government is too bulky, formulate legislative plans to reduce its size and they’re charged with “plotting” to destroy this or that social program. Democrats, who really do believe that the war in Iraq is unjust, plan legislative strategies to end the war and they’re accused of “plotting” to undermine national security.

Re-labeling or re-imaging determined legitimate opposition as “foul conspiracy” lends an air of criminality to dissent. Your enemies are not only wrong they are evil.

The “secret” Network memos and public documents presented to the House of Bishops along with the six page summary by the Task Force on Property appointed by the Executive Committee is a fine example of this maneuver.

The report comprises a six page summary and 10 supporting documents. The documents themselves show that:

1. At least since October 2003 Bishop Duncan and other Network leaders have sought to reverse the decisions of the 74th General Convention.

2. At least since October 2003 Bishop Duncan and other Network leaders have sought communion discipline (up to and including expulsion) for those leaders who took part in the consecration of Gene Robinson to the office of bishop.

3. The Network together with the Anglican American Council sought to establish a province-like framework made up of congregations and dioceses both within and outside of the jurisdictional boundaries of the Episcopal Church complete with diocese-like regional districts and hierarchical structures.

4. The Network and AAC leaders sought alternative jurisdictional oversight for this provincial structure through the active intervention of Canterbury and/or the Primates.

6. Network and AAC leaders sought the Primates recognition of the Network provincial structure as “the” Episcopal Church in United States and/or as the legitimate Anglican body in North America. At least some Network leaders planned to ask the Global South Primates to put pressure on the Archbishop of Canterbury to do the same.

7. Network and AAC leaders developed strategies to help Network and/or other orthodox leaders and parishes in non-Network dioceses to transfer jurisdictional oversight from the Episcopal Church while retaining their property.

8. These strategies involved both negotiated settlements with diocesan officials and legal action. They also called for Network leaders to be willing to risk “faithful disobedience” to the canons of the church by crossing diocesan boundaries to provide pastoral care.

9. The leaders of the Network and other orthodox bodies expressed a willingness to sacrifice both ecclesial office and title in order to see these goals realized.

I know. It’s all very shocking.

Reviewing the documents last night I was struck by the fact that so much of what is presented as conspiratorial plotting has been part of the publicly articulated Network strategy for years.

Was there ever any doubt that the Network has sought Communion discipline of the current leadership of the Episcopal Church and Communion recognition as the legitimate Anglican entity in North America?

The original slogans of the Network, “We are not leaving the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church has left us” and “The Network is working for Reform and Realignment within the Episcopal Church” are completely consistent with these ends.

And since 2003, over and over again, the publicly stated goals and purposes of the Network have been the same.

Take this section of Bishop Duncan’s speech to the Network Conference in 2005

“If Canterbury can find a way to recognize the spiritual legitimacy of the claim of the Network Dioceses (and of the Network Parishes in Non-Network Dioceses) – together, one would hope, with the wider fellowship of emerging “Windsor dioceses” — to be that part of ECUSA that has “not walked apart” from the Communion – that has sacrificially and faithfully stood for what is the Communion’s articulated teaching and for what are the accepted boundaries of its order – then Canterbury sustains and renews his claim to be “gatherer” and “moral voice” of the Communion…To do this [recognize the Communion legitimacy of Windsor compliant dioceses and parishes over and against that of ‘innovating ECUSA’], he must bring along a strong majority of the primates and of his own House of Bishops, for he is no pope. But do this he must. If he fails, any hope for a Communion-unifying solution slips away, and so does the shape and leadership of the Anglican Communion as we have known them. Our prayers are with Rowan Williams now more than ever. It is a kairos moment, a crossroads of Church history.”

This is not a “secret” memo. It is a speech that was published on the Network website the day after it was given and spread abroad on countless websites including Stand Firm.


Was there ever any doubt that the Network wanted to help orthodox parishes in non-orthodox dioceses escape the jurisdictional oversight of the Episcopal Church while retaining their property?

Here is a section from the same speech:

“The settlement arrived at between the Vestry of Christ Church Overland Park and the Diocese of Kansas, more than a year ago, was a pre-cursor of this direction. Such negotiations are now underway in many places across the country. Just days ago the vestries of St Stephen’s Anglican Church, St. Charles Anglican Church and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, finalized an agreement with the Diocese of Olympia, an agreement that I believe all would hail as “based on fairness, equity and Christian principles.” In the Diocese of Virginia, a group of parishes and missions, led by the venerable (they date to the period of the American colonies) parishes of Falls Church and Truro Church – a group of congregations larger in number than the number of congregations of at least a dozen American Dioceses – has begun a season of “forty days of discernment” to pray about their future. We applaud these developments. We encourage those Dioceses engaged in lawsuits with their parishes, and vice versa, to embrace this “more excellent” way…In the short-run these negotiated settlements, as in the case of the Washington State congregations, may lead to rescue and oversight by a Province of the Global South. In the longer run, there is no question that these congregations will form the nucleus of new missionary dioceses in union with the Network Dioceses (“enduring ECUSA”) and in partnership with the jurisdictions of Common Cause, as the vision of a biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America – in God’s time – becomes a reality, and as “innovating ECUSA” fades away.”

Interestingly, 4 of the 10 documents presented to the House of Bishops by the Task Force, Appendices A, F, H, and J, are public widely circulated documents.

Appendix A is an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review that quotes Bishop Duncan saying:

“We believe that these decisions made are beyond the limits of Anglican 'diversity…We are asking the leaders of the church to rule that those who continue to uphold the historic faith represent the legitimate; bona fide expression of Episcopalianism in the United States."

That was back in October of 2003, before the establishment Windsor Commission when a “ruling” from the primates was still considered possible.

Appendix F is a Living Church interview with Bishop Duncan from March of 2005. Here is the response highlighted by the Task Force:

“Bishop Duncan: Well, of course we claim to be, constitutionally, the Episcopal Church. And there’s every evidence, both from what the Windsor Report says and what the primates said in accepting it, in their communiqué in Northern Ireland, that we are the Anglicans. If the Episcopal Church’s constitution says that we’ll be constituent members of the Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Communion now says, Episcopal Church, you’re in time out. In fact, you’re not only in time out, but it appears you’re making a decision to walk apart. If in General Convention 2006 the Episcopal Church determines to walk apart, then the question we ask is, who is the Episcopal Church? And our legal basis will be to say, we are, of course, because they have broken the constitution.

Appendix H is Bishop Schofield’s speech at the San Joachin Diocesan Convention in which he mentions the “secret” meeting between Network and Windsor Bishops and the Global South Steering Committee in Virginia and notes that the Steering Committee sought unity among the various orthodox entities and patient submission to their authority while Communion battles are being fought. .

Finally, Appendix J represents Bishop Duncan’s pastoral letter to Network parishes following the release of the Tanzania Communique in which he suggests that the primates have recognized a Windsor structure that exists both within but not under the authority of the present leadership of the Episcopal Church.

It’s difficult to imagine that leaders bent on secret conspiracies and sinister plots would speak so boldly and publicly.

The remaining documents: Appendices B, C, D, E, G, and I are all private or “secret” documents.

Appendix B is a typed document, probably notes, from a strategy meeting of “Mainstream” leaders in November of 2003. The document includes plans to ask the Global South Primates to recognize the Network and push the Archbishop of Canterbury to do the same. They also seek primatial support for the dissolution of jurisdictional boundaries and a commitment to sacrifice on the part of domestic bishops.

Appendix C is a December 2003 email correspondence between Mr. Hugo Blankenship, Chancellor of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and Bishop Duncan regarding a meeting between Mr. Blankenship and Mr. John Rees from Lambeth Palace. Mr. Blankenship reports that the current mood at Lambeth is not particularly supportive of Network goals.

Appendix D is the famous Chapman memo. Comparing the two, there is very little difference between what is contained in the memo and the vision cast by Bishop Duncan in his 2005 speech excerpted above. It does not detail a “plot” but it describes a strategy and a hoped for outcome.

Appendix E is being called the Barfoot Memo. It is a detailed description of a two phased strategy to help clergy and parishes escape hostile dioceses with their orders and property intact. First clergy and/or parishes must seek jurisdictional recognition within an “offshore” province while, at the same time remaining within the Episcopal Church to avoid canonical or legal proceedings. Second, when circumstances are right, the move beyond the jurisdictional boundaries Episcopal Church can be made without a lapse in Anglican jurisdictional cover.

Appendix G is the written request from the Diocese of Pittsburgh to the leaders of the Global South for Alternative Primatial Oversight. The document describes the need for oversight and articulates the hoped-for shape of that oversight.

Finally, Appendix I is the “Private and Confidential Westfield’s Response”. The document appears to be an agreement of some sort between orthodox bodies within North America meeting in Chantilly, Virginia November 16th, 2007. This was the date of the infamous meeting between various orthodox dioceses and the Global South Steering Committee referred too in Bishop Schofield’s speech. Whoever the signatories, the document pledges submission to Bishop Duncan as Moderator and full commitment to the cause of Anglican orthodoxy in North America.

These private documents are wholly consistent with the public ones. There is little hidden here that has not been revealed, purposefully, by Network leaders elsewhere.

In all, Appendices A-I reveal a detailed strategy to accomplish the very purposes and goals Network leaders have publicly advocated since the fall of 2003: to replace the current leadership of the Episcopal Church with a recognized Anglican Communion provincial structure while protecting the orders and property of Network clerics and parishes.

The question is not whether these were the goals and intentions of Network leaders. Obviously they were and, hopefully, they still are. The question is whether Network Leaders employed nefarious or illegal means in order to accomplish them.

And the answer is: of course not.

This is no palace coup.

The Network sought both discipline of the current leadership of the Episcopal Church and some form of Communion recognition for the Network as a provincial-type body, not apart from the legitimate levers and leaders of the Communion but by and through winning the support of the primates and, ultimately, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Network sought to protect the legitimate orders of Network clerics not apart from legitimate ecclesial transfers, but through them.

The Network sought to retain Network parish property not by stealing it but through settlement and negotiation and, if need be, litigation.

The only mention of non-canonical activity in the documents is a call to “faithful disobedience” on the part of orthodox bishops in order to come to the aid of orthodox parishes in hostile dioceses.

But this has all the “sinister” implications of a college sit-in or burning draft cards or an Episcopal Bishop being arrested for protesting the war…hardly the stuff of armed revolution. It is a call to be willing to break the rules and pay the consequences.

There is no “plot” in these documents. Rather we find a well thought out strategy to use the legitimate levers of the Anglican Communion to return the Episcopal Church to orthodoxy while employing legal and canonical means to protect the careers and property of faithful priests and parishes in the process.

The Task Force on Property, made up of some of the most committed revisionist and institutionalist leaders in the Episcopal Church charges that Network leaders have hatched a deceitful plot “remove” the homes of loyal Episcopalians and the legacy of countless generations

“As a concluding note, it has occurred to many in the Task Force that it may have been misnamed. In truth, the matters that the Task Force has found it necessary to address are much larger than mere property disputes. Experience has shown that, at the root of every property issue, there is an issue of identity and integrity, and not merely an issue of polity…In reality, it is the church “homes” of countless loyal Episcopalians, the legacy of countless Episcopalians, past and present, and the spiritual well-being of those who always have found immeasurable comfort in their church homes, that are at issue as well as the nature of TEC and Anglicanism. The strategy at play must be revealed and understood if we are to protect the faithful from having their places of worship, and the assets accumulated by generations of Episcopalians, removed from them and removed from their use in the mission of TEC.”

Of course this conclusion raises two essential questions: exactly whose property is it? and; do those currently occupying 815 legitimately claim to be the Episcopal Church?

The tactic of the Task Force is to criminalize the questions themselves; to suggest that even posing them, not to mention working within the Communion to advocate that they be answered in a particular way, represents a betrayal of the Episcopal Church.

The Network is not only wrong with regard to the content of the issues at hand, according to the Task Force, but the very act of dissent reveals a lack of integrity.

Make no mistake. The charges put forward by the Task Force will not die in the House of Bishops. These documents are building blocks leading up to a presentment and, eventually, ecclesial trials.

Don’t be surprised, be ready. The days of “dialogue” and “conversation” and “loving the questions” are long over. Bishop Duncan and the Network have, for three years, publicly proclaimed the coming destruction of the Temple. They will be made to pay.

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