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Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
The meeting of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council (hereafter the Standing Committee) has just finished its deliberations. It was reported in The Standing Committee Daily Bulletin that Dato’ Stanley Isaacs had proposed, “The Episcopal Church (hereafter TEC) be separated from the Communion.” This proposal was rejected because it was believed, “Separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues among Communion Provinces.”
This brief notice is yet another signal that the Anglican Communion stands in unparalleled danger. The way in which TEC does business poses a serious threat to the evangelical and catholic identity of our Communion. I write to point out the nature of that threat and to call upon those responsible for its future health to take vigorous steps to halt an increasingly obvious attempt by TEC to remake the Anglican Communion over in its own image.
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August 03 2010 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
In the brief time since first it appeared, the recent pastoral letter to the Episcopal Church by its Presiding Bishop has brought forth a voluminous and heated response. If, however, this letter is to be assessed adequately, it is not enough to celebrate its boldness or decry its inaccuracies and half-truths. Before assessing the moral and spiritual worth of the letter or picking apart its various claims, it is necessary to ask just what purpose this letter is meant to serve. Once an examination of this sort is complete, it will become clear that the argument put forward by the Presiding Bishop is a stark example of the tail wagging the dog.
Clearly the Presiding Bishop’s Pastoral was written in response to the Pentecost letter of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In that letter the Archbishop made it clear that the recent actions of TEC raise questions about the suitability of members of our church to represent the Anglican Communion in conversations with the Communion’s ecumenical partners. He also indicated that he, as Archbishop of Canterbury, has authority to determine the status of the Presiding Bishop in respect to the meeting of the Primates. He said as well that he intends to consult with the Primates about the most prudent course for the exercise this authority.
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June 10 2010 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
I owe it to my readers to provide an explanation of a puzzling title. What does a discussion of “communion, order, and dissent” have to do with the well-known and well-loved children’s story of Puss and Boots? Remember, in the story, the hero can only reach his goal if he listens to a despised cat that he must take as his companion on the way. It would seem that the point of the story is that attention must be given to what we might otherwise despise if we are to succeed in our more “high flown” endeavors.
My point is that hierarchy, the subject of this conference, is an aspect of church order, and both have become something like the cat in Puss and Boots. We cannot reach our more noble goals without these unwelcome sources of help. Nevertheless, for some years we have neglected these despised companions, and as a result our church and our communion are in a terrible mess. Indeed, our seminaries do little or nothing to introduce future clergy to the importance of church polity. I remember when I was in seminary the arguments about church order that so engaged the Reformers were mentioned, but only in passing. Polity, we were told, is a subject we ought to “bone up on” because there would be polity questions on our General Ordination Exams. The message was clear. Hierarchy and order are not very important subjects. Yet, here we are at the beginning of the 21st Century faced with fiercely debated polity issues. The debate centers on the communion wide challenge of an Anglican Covenant and on a domestic legal battle over the meaning of the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church (TEC). The former challenge might produce a divided communion and/or result in TEC becoming a second track form of Anglicanism. The latter might produce a change in our constitution effected by a secular court rather than constitutionally mandated procedures.
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February 07 2010 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
In recent days, Fr. Mark Harris has published a comment on Bishop Stanton’s address to the Convention of the Diocese of Dallas (link) entitled “Bishop Stanton barks up the wrong tree so that we won’t notice the bite.” (link) The comment demands response because it shows so clearly the dubious nature of both the substance [...]
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November 10 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Monday, October 19th, 2009
As you know, my subject is the Anglican Covenant. Is it really Anglican? Is it really necessary? Is it theologically defensible? Is it an effective way to address our present difficulties? I will get to these questions and others in due course, but first, to make sure we know what it is that we are talking about, I must take you on a little trip down memory lane. The first book I published was a collection of essays entitled “Crossroads Are For Meeting.” The date was 1986, and the particular cross in the road faced at that time by the Anglican Communion was the nature of its mission, and in particular its mission as a world-wide communion of autonomous churches. Previously, in 1963, The Anglican Congress had defined the inter-relation of these churches as being one of “mutual responsibility and interdependence in the body of Christ.” At this gathering, the assembled delegates took a dramatic step in defining the nature of Anglicanism as a communion rather than, say, a federation; but there were divisions over the Communion’s calling. If Anglicans are to understand themselves as bound by mutual responsibility and interdependence in the body of Christ, just what is the purpose of this communion under God?
The collection of essays I helped assemble revealed a profound division over this matter, one that is with us to this day. Is the mission of the Anglican Communion to join other Christian bodies in spreading the Gospel of reconciliation and redemption through Christ’s victory on the cross, or is it, with other churches, to join Christ in a sacrificial struggle to include the oppressed and marginalized and so to establish justice on the earth? Despite very articulate pleas that these two views need not be in conflict, they were in conflict then and remain so to this day. This conflict over the mission of the church has returned in our own time with such ferocity that it threatens any possibility of meaningful communion.
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October 19 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
When I was much younger, I lived in Africa; and I lived there at a time when the British Empire was folding up. I was surrounded by people who had spent their lives in the colonies. These people were faced with a terribly painful and frightening question. What were they to do next? Where were [...]
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August 11 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
My colleague Prof. Radner traces a significant history—one that locates the authority of Bishops as prior to that of the administrative structures into which they were later folded. The prior authority of the Episcopal Office, in the tradition of the church, rests not in its structural position within a hierarchical order but in self-expenditure on behalf of the church on the part of those who hold office. The self-expenditure of Bishops has through the ages assumed three forms. First and foremost is a pattern of holy life that reflects that of Christ; second, guardianship of the truth about God revealed in Christ; and third responsibility for the peace and good order of the church. Each of the forms of self-expenditure rests first of all in a form of personal agency rather than occupancy of a structural position.
It is to the priority of personal agency over political and administrative structure that Archbishop Rowan refers in his now well known and frequently quoted letter to Bishop John Howe of Central Florida. The Archbishop wrote, “The organic union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such.” Prof Radner’s research makes it clear that the Archbishop has history on his side.
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July 09 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Chief among the claims now made by The Episcopal Church (TEC) is that it is an inclusive church that is open to a variety of opinions and practices. This self-definition is an updated version of the traditional claim that Anglicanism represents a via media between extremes of one sort or another—Catholic/Protestant, liberal/conservative, modern/traditional, etc. The simple fact is, however, that the policies and actions of the progressive leadership of The Episcopal Church have exposed the false nature of these claims, at least as in so far as they are applied to TEC.
The false nature of the claim is easy to see. The logic used by progressive Episcopalians to explain and justify TEC’s “inclusive” agenda is in point of fact necessarily “exclusive” of contrary opinion. How so? The standard justification for the inclusive agenda is almost without exception stated in terms of justice. That is, behind efforts to change church practice in respect of the blessing of unions between persons of the same gender and the ordination in persons in faithful and permanent same sex unions is a firm belief that the rights of these brothers and sisters in the Lord are being violated by antiquated church practice—a practice that rests upon misinformation, fear, and prejudice. “It’s a justice issue” is a statement made again and again, and it is made in a way that is meant to end all argument and cast aspersions on the moral state of anyone defending a contrary opinion.
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June 30 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
The posting of a stream of private emails that came from an unnamed source, including the correspondence of senior Bishops of this church and their lawyer, has added considerable heat to the debate that has followed publication on the ACI Website of the Bishops’ Statement on the Polity of The Episcopal Church.
To date, the discussion that has taken place on the Web has served more to cloud than clarify the significant issues now faced both by The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. If one reads carefully the comments of those who find themselves in disagreement with the Bishops’ statement a number of questions come to mind—each of which deserves a clear and unequivocal answer.
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April 28 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
In 2006 Ephraim Radner and I published a collection of essays entitled The Fate of Communion. In that collection we sought to address the threats that now hang over the Anglican Communion. We sought to indicate that the crisis in which Anglicans find themselves, though theological and moral at its root, in fact involves church order as well. We attempted, though too briefly I believe, to raise a question about the adequacy of our forms of governance and the way in which we understand and use them.
Much has happened since the appearance of The Fate of Communion, and a great deal of what has transpired concerns the way in which the Communion is ordered and governed. There is a need now to say more than we did then about the way our common life is to be ordered, and this need presents a real challenge. Polity is a much-neglected subject, particularly on the part of those who teach theology and theological ethics. It is thought to be unimportant—indeed, something of a nuisance that detracts from the really important stuff. As a result, it has been removed from theology and ethics and shoved to the periphery of the formation given our clergy. Few either understand or appreciate its importance. However, as is often the case when important matters are neglected, they come around to bite us on the backside.
If our seminaries were institutions for the teaching of political science or political philosophy a mistake like this would not be made. Questions of polity would lie near the center of their concerns. Indeed, polity is a major subject in moral philosophy. Just pick up a book by John Rawls, or Michael Sandel (not to mention Plato, Aristotle, John Locke or John Steward Mill.) You might even pick up the writings of Richard Hooker, Martin Luther, John Calvin or Menno Simons, and there you would find also that the question of governance plays a very important role in what they were thinking and writing about.
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February 22 2009 | Articles
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