Network Council: Moderator’s Address (note: Much more than just another speech…very important)

Network Council: Moderator’s Address

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Having said this, I can risk talking about plans for the days ahead.

The structures of the Network have evolved with changing needs. One of the structures that emerged early in the life of the Network was the Moderator’s Cabinet. Members of the Cabinet have been: David Anderson (Secretary of the Network), John Guernsey (For the Deans), Ed Salmon (For the Bishops), Martyn Minns (International Concerns), Kendall Harmon (Strategic Initiatives), and Rose Marie Edwards (Intercessors). Larry Crowell, Wick Stephens and Daryl Fenton have each, in turn, shared in the Cabinet work. Bill Atwood of Ekklesia has shared in Cabinet discussions regularly. This key advisory panel has worked with me weekly for two and a half years now. Right after General Convention it was clear to the Cabinet that the work immediately ahead of us lay in three areas of endeavor. I want to speak to each of these matters now.

First, there is the matter of the appeal of seven Network Dioceses for an extra-ordinary pastoral relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury, a relationship that most have described as “alternative primatial oversight.” After the Bishops and Standing Committees of the seven Dioceses lodged the request, the Bishops of the seven Dioceses worked together on a submission to Lambeth Palace which unified and developed the original requests.. This fourteen page submission, including appendices, was transmitted in the week of July 16th. The purpose of the appeal was:

•disassociation from “innovating” ECUSA

•spiritual cover through re-assignment of the tasks normally assigned to the Presiding Bishop

•recognition of Communion standing from Canterbury as required in the ECUSA constitution

•commitment to accountability under the Constitution and Canons as an “enduring” ECUSA, and;

•the creation of a practical “cease-fire” in the American Church such that the Communion Covenant process might run its course.

Needless to say, we are hopeful about the Appeal, if not necessarily optimistic. This is a kairos moment in the life of the Anglican Communion, especially as regards the evolving role of its leadership by the Archbishop of Canterbury. 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, 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.

Many Network priests and deacons have – during the last three years – been charged with “abandonment of the Communion of this Church,” and – without trial – “deposed.” Happily, the rest of the Anglican world has not judged them deposed and they have found themselves warmly received and enfolded by leaders of the Global South, leaders who have had no difficulty determining which were the faithful Anglicans. With the conclusion of the 75th General Convention, a new chapter opens. Now, four California bishops have asked an “investigation” of a bishop, one here among us, our own John-David Schofield, also for “abandonment of Communion.” Bishop Bill Cox, functioning for bishops of Uganda and of the Southern Cone, has found himself “charged” of late by the Bishops of Oklahoma and Kansas. Canadian Network Moderator, Bp. Don Harvey, has been informed in recent days that he is will face charges of “invasion,” charges brought by none-other than Michael Ingham, the bishop who can be credited with the actual “launch” of the Canadian prologue to the full-blown Anglican crisis brought about by the consecration of the Bishop of New Hampshire. We are at a crossroads of Church history. What is Anglicanism? What is essential to the proclamation of the Christian Faith? Who will lead in the Communion? Will our whole Communion divide? Who can claim the patrimony? The Archbishop of Canterbury has but a brief window of opportunity – at least for a moral judgment — before the situation in the United States and Canada collapses into the anarchy of high profile ecclesiastical presentments and civil lawsuits, a collapse that may come in any case, but the depth of which may be greatly lessened if he, within the limitations of a conciliar church, can find a way to speak. Part of the kairos nature of this moment is that the Global South Primates meet in mid-September – those who have stood with the Network again and again — and we can be sure that they will not be voiceless on our behalf or on behalf of “the Faith once delivered to the Saints.”

Whatever Canterbury does or does not do – believes he can or cannot do — in response to the Appeal, the Network Dioceses will endure. We are “enduring ECUSA.” That is our claim and that is our legal ground. Consider this: “Innovating ECUSA” went so far as to embrace a symbolic change of name at this most recent General Convention. That part of ECUSA has now asked to be known as TEC (The Episcopal Church). Did not anyone notice? We did…

The second post-General Convention initiative articulated by the Network Cabinet has to do with Network Parishes in Non-Network (particularly Non-Windsor) Dioceses. The Network has always had to operate and plan in two very distinct arenas, the Network Dioceses and the Network Parishes in Non-Network Dioceses. In light of the results of General Convention it seemed clear to the Cabinet that the best path forward in innovating or hostile dioceses is to enable negotiated settlements between “the two churches under one roof” based on fairness, equity and Christian principles. 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.

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