Author Archive
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Over the past few weeks, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (TEC), Katharine Jefferts Schori, has responded pointedly to the removal of TEC’s members from Anglican Communion commissions dealing with ecumenical relations and matters of the Communion’s “faith and order”. The removal itself was announced at the end of May in a letter to the Communion by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It was later explicated by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon, during visits to the Canadian church’s General Synod, and TEC’s Executive Council. At issue, of course, is TEC’s decision earlier this year, to go forward with the consecration of a partnered lesbian, Mary Glasspool, as a bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles. And this decision, according to Achbishop Williams and Canon Kearon, is one that goes counter to a consistently articulated position by Communion councils. These councils have, over and over, insisted that church affirmations of same-sex partnerships are, on the basis of Scriptural teaching, contrary to the “mind of the Communion”, and therefore that e.g. the consecration of partnered homosexual bishops and church-administered same-sex blessings should cease among member churches.
Presiding Bishop Schori’s response has criticized Archbishop Williams’ decision on several grounds. Here, let me address just three of her objections: first, that the Archbishop’s actions represent a move towards “centralization” within the Communion, viewed especially in terms of the application of “sanctions” against member churches; second, that in removing TEC members from the Communion commissions in question, the Archbishop has somehow acted as if the proposed Anglican Covenant now before the Communion’s churches were already in effect when it is not; third, that a proper understanding of the Communion’s life would entail the maintenance of diversity among Anglican churches, rather than the (punitive) pursuit of “uniformity”.
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June 29 2010 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
It is ten years since Anglicanism’s current travails were formally inaugurated with the formation of an alternative “Communion” church in North America, the Anglican Mission in America. Not the cause, it was nonetheless the first major sign that “communion” was no longer a given in Anglicanism, but something to be variously asserted, antagonistically claimed, and built up or torn down as the case may be. And after ten years, I think it necessary to say that most of the work thus far has been one of tearing down. Tearing down, but also of exposing new things and clearer lines of calling, so that what had been emerging as a communion might now be seen as demanding deeper commitment for its flourishing than anybody had imagined. The work that many of us have been doing out of a commitment to the traditional Christian faith as Anglicans (and others) had received it has been worth the effort, and continues to be demanded. But what we are seeing, especially as Christian communion is being assaulted not only from within the Church, but more importantly by a rapidly dissolving Christian culture in the West, is that there are deeper roots to put down and nourish than we had perhaps first thought.
The tearing down, in any case, is what is most obvious, perhaps, to outsiders or onlookers from within. One by one, for instance, the so-called “Instruments of Unity” for Anglicans around the world have been eroded in their perceived integrity, and certainly in their effectiveness.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, over the past decade (from Lord Carey through Rowan Williams), has issued pleas, statements, constructive ideas, hopes. But when, last month, a schedule conflict, not to mention in any case the ash of an Icelandic volcano, kept him from the South to South Encounter of non-Western churches in Singapore, the transient and quivering video image of his unfocused greeting was symbolically all that was left of his presence to an increasingly estranged majority of world Anglicans. For whatever reasons – the constraint imposed on Lambeth’s voice by America’s money monopoly on Communion bureaucracy, loyalties divided between Britain and Communion, mixed convictions within his own mind, an under-appreciation of the demanded influence of his own witness? — ten years of people all going their own way has rendered the moral authority of his voice almost inaudible.
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May 25 2010 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
There is general agreement, I would guess, amongst more traditional Anglicans, that the current set-up for the implementation of the Covenant is flawed, and that especially the ordering of the ACC’s Standing Committee in this implementing process is so confused and liable now to engendering such further distrust amongst churches as to demand rethinking. That [...]
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February 02 2010 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
Advent now shifts into the manifestation of God’s good will in the Nativity feast. So too the church takes its self-scrutiny and penitence, and turns in hope to the gift of God’s own and new life among us.
The final text of the Anglican Covenant has now been sent out for adoption by the churches of the Communion. The slow process by which this text and its official dissemination for action has occurred has frustrated some, yet its persistent progress forward to this point at last puts the lie to the naysayers and early eulogists of the Covenant’s purpose. Joined to the restarting of the Anglican-Roman Catholic international dialogue, to be focused on substantive matters of ecclesiology and moral decision-making, what seemed merely slow now appears to be the visible sign of a tectonic shift in global Anglicanism and Christianity itself. It is one in which the Episcopal Church in the United States has placed itself on the far side of a widening channel separating the ballast of Christian witness, Catholic and Pentecostal, from marginal spin-offs of liberal Protestantism in decline.
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December 22 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
The proposed covenanting of Anglican churches that is embodied in the Covenant “process” now before the Anglican Communion has brought to the fore an important question: what is the appropriate “church” body to adopt the Covenant? Is it a province or a diocese? The question has already stirred acrimony in debate, because it is seen to touch at least two current sore spots in the Communion’s life: that is, the status of churches who a.) have left TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, gone “under” the temporary jurisdiction of non-North American provinces, and are now forming a “new” North American province (ACNA), and b.) those dioceses within TEC whose bishops would like, if necessary, to covenant directly with other Anglican churches around the world, independently of their province’s decision on the matter. The issue of ecclesial status within the Communion raised by these cases is potentially fraught with legal and property implications, and therefore the theological issues behind it have been only partially examined in their own right. Yet the theological aspects are wide-reaching, touching not only on local and Communion ecclesial ordering, but on the character and shape of ecumenical vocation.
It was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who personally pointed to the theological matter. In a letter of October 14, 2007 to Bishop John Howe of Central Florida, designed to be made public, the Archbishop made a more political point regarding the need for congregations to remain bound to their diocese. But he upheld this advice with an ecclesiological claim: “The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such…[there is a …] need to regard the Bishop and the Diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the ‘national church’.” Here the Archbishop makes several important assertions: first, ecclesial unity is given directly through a bishop and diocese, not a province; second, by consequence, provincial “structures” are not organs of unity “as such”; thirdly, “national churches” are somehow equivalent in this regard to “provinces”; and fourthly, the “abstraction” of a national church may even therefore apply, in its lack of ecclesiological concreteness, to provinces.
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July 09 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
In May, 2007 the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada issued a Pastoral Statement on same-sex blessings. At the end of the statement, the bishops made the following request:
“Looking ahead, we ask the Primate and General Synod for a report on:
1. The theological question whether the blessing of same-sex unions is a faithful, Spirit-led development of Christian doctrine (St. Michael Report)
2. The implications of the blessing of same-sex unions and /or marriage for our church and the Communion (The Windsor Report)
3. Scripture’s witness to the integrity of every human person and the question of the sanctity of human relationships.”
The reflections that follow are a contribution to the discussion that this requested report has engendered. Rather than look broadly at the question of same-sex blessings, my remarks concentrates on the Scriptural meaning of blessing as it has been taken up by the Church, and provides some preliminary evaluations of how this meaning applies to the question of same-sex blessings.
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June 18 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
A number of persons from around the Communion have asked me for my perspective on the recent ACC meeting’s treatment of the proposed Anglican Covenant. There are at least two reasons, I suppose, why my opinion might be solicited. First, I have been a member of the Covenant Design Group that, over the past two and half years has worked at the drafting of this document. Obviously, I have a particular stake in what happens to the work we have spent over 30 full days in prayer, study, and labor producing. But second, I have long argued that doctrinally traditional Anglicans like myself should both be engaged in the Covenant’s promise and articulation but also willing to maintain that engagement from a posture of continued communion within and among our divided member churches. There are many who now wonder whether the outcome to the ACC meeting undercuts that argument.
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May 13 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Monday, February 2nd, 2009
When Laurent Nkunda was captured leaving the eastern Congo on January 22, 2009, a tentative sense of relief was felt by many in and around the area. Nkunda has been the leader of a “rebel” army that has, since 2004 at least, roamed the north-eastern areas of Congo, killing, raping, and pillaging the populace in the name of defending Tutsi Congolese from the attacks of Hutu extremists who had infiltrated the area after their expulsion from Rwanda in the mid-1990′s. Most recently, his army staged an offensive that seemed bent on overcoming areas protected by the UN following an agreement in 2003. Hundreds of thousands of people fled, as Congolese and UN forces retreated, and Nkunda’s soldiers, raping and looting as they went, moved in. For the first time, a man who had been ravaging a depleted and war-weary populace for 5 years, made it onto the front pages of a few American newspapers. With news of his capture, and transport to Rwanda, the publicity chapter appears closed.
Closed once again. For the sense of relief is at best tentative, given that Nkunda’s perpetrated horrors are but one set among a string of ongoing violent assaults upon the well-being of the people of eastern Congo. It is a long episode of victimization and degradation that goes back to the mid 1990′s and before, and that has seen the deaths of upwards of 5 million Congolese – some put the figure higher. This includes large numbers of women and children, many from the disease and starvation that has followed war and displacement. Political and internationally-brokered resolutions to this tragedy have come and gone, and the closure of Nkunda’s role on this list may well mark but another temporary lull. Occasionally, the newspapers and television stations around the world have noted the passing aspects of this long suffering, but only briefly, only in passing. Meanwhile, groups like Human Rights Watch, the International Rescue Committee, and subcommittees of the UN, along with brave individuals – local leaders, exiled Congolese, reporters at a distance – have been compiling dossier after dossier of documentation on the atrocities that have left millions dead, even more displaced, and rendered the area a shifting ground of survival amid famine, disease, and violence. And what this documentation points to is the explicit involvement, collusion, and willful ignorance of governments, businesses, and yes, even of churches.
Even churches. It is a matter worth studying more carefully as to why some disasters garner public interest more than others. Darfur, for instance, has now for a long time been at the center of international and Christian concern. Zimbabwe also, although with much less Christian interest. But the eastern Congo? Only in the Fall of 2008 did an All-Africa Council of Churches decide to put together a team of representatives, led by the Anglican Archbishop of Burundi Bernard Ntahoturi, to act as church delegates to surrounding governments of the area seeking their help in bringing peace. In itself the visit was significant, and marked a major shift in Christian witness. For one thing that has been all-too evident in the travails of the eastern Congo is the way that church leaders themselves have been so entwined with the politics of the major players and supporters of the wars in Eastern Congo – Rwanda, Uganda, Congo itself, and various internal interests – that the notion of looking for a Christian witness for peace in the land has been all but pointless. Abp. Ntahoturi this past Fall listed some of the realities that have been the daily faire of the Congolese, not just this past year, but for almost 15 years: “The suffering of children fleeing into the bush with or without their parents, women atrociously raped, abused and sometimes buried alive, old people and innocent civilians cowardly killed, and the malicious destruction of property and community life.” He concluded with the obvious, if repeatedly ignored, observation that silence from churches during “such a serious humanitarian disaster” makes it impossible for clergy to preach the love of God. But fifteen years of silence will not be easily overcome, let alone explained to God.
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February 02 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
To the Members of the Covenant Design Group and the Windsor Continuation Group:
I write to you as a concerned member of the Covenant Design Group, as a committed member of the Episcopal Church (USA), and as one whose professional and spiritual life has been and continues to be devoted to the strengthening of our common witness as Anglican Christians. This is a simple plea for us to do our work better in the midst of continuing ecclesial disintegration.
What motivates this plea at this time? On the one hand, no more than the general evidence of ongoing divisions within North America and the Communion at large. The recent Lambeth Conference has done nothing to mitigate these, as far as I can see. On the other hand, particular evidences arise every day that demonstrate not only a lack of mitigation, but further retrenchment of polarization and division.
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January 11 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Monday, January 5th, 2009
Work in formulating and adopting an Anglican Covenant is proceeding, and with renewed focus. I judge this to be the case despite some vocal claims that the project is both pointless and perverse. Most of these limited and negative claims have come from Western Anglicans intent on maintaining their local autonomy in terms of non-accountability to other Anglican churches and the Communion at large; and among these voices, not surprisingly, is a preponderance of Americans. But there have also been conservative voices, associated with the primarily non-Western group known as GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference), that have labeled the Covenant process as “futile” and “irrelevant” because of its purported lack of theological and disciplinary substance.
I was deeply disappointed that almost 200 Anglican bishops associated with GAFCON did not come to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, and so failed to engage a discussion on the Covenant with their colleagues. One might be left with the impression, in fact, that they share the negative views of both liberals and GAFCON spokespeople, something that, although not fatal to the Covenant itself, at least presents major challenges. However, the recent publication of the provisional Constitution for the proposed province of the Anglican Church of North America, warmly supported by and supporting GAFCON, seems to provide a very different perspective. For this Constitution in fact embodies many of the very things the current Covenant draft articulates, and in some measures provides even more latitude to members. Whether consciously or not, the Constitution reflects important aspects, in its own proposed intra-provincial relations, that we have long argued are necessary, possible, and realistic elements of communion-oriented commitments. To this degree, the Constitution demonstrates, perhaps despite itself, a convergence of vision with the current Covenant direction.
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January 05 2009 | Articles
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