Archive for the 'Articles' Category
Written by: Robert W. Prichard
Monday, February 15th, 2010
In order to current arguments about the structure of The Episcopal Church and its relationship to the other members of the Anglican Communion, it may be may be useful to reflect on earlier periods in which the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church have changed significantly. It could be argued that the three most important such periods in the history of The Episcopal Church in which such change took place were: the American Revolution, the early 20th century, and the 1960s. The first of these three periods was perhaps the most radical, an attempt to revise English canon law in light of American democratic ideals. The second of these periods of reform was perhaps the most sweeping; Episcopalians of the early 20th century attempted to replace a set of individual provisions with a comprehensive code of canon law. The third period of revision—during the 1960s—is an important realignment made in recognition of the increasing complexity of the Anglican Communion.
Constitution and Canons for a new Democracy
Later in this volume other authors will write about the precise details of the Constitution and Canons that were adopted by the Episcopal Church in the period from 1785 to 1789. At this point I do not want to enter into that very important conversation. What I would like to do is to step back and simply consider the importance of the fact that a set of constitutions and canons were adopted at all.
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February 15 2010 | Articles
Written by: Mr. Mark McCall
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
Several years ago I was in a meeting at a large London law firm. We were working on a very complex matter, and this was one of a series of meetings that went on for several years. This particular one was quite large with 30 or so lawyers from several London and New York law firms, as well as representatives of Her Majesty’s Government. During the morning, one of the junior partners of the host firm was asked to address a difficult legal question. He spoke for a considerable time, over an hour, without notes, and then lunch arrived and we went off to a different conference room to eat. But as we were filing back into the meeting room after lunch we could see what this lawyer had done over the break because piled up on his chair and the table in front of his seat was an enormous stack of law books with little handwritten notes and yellow post-its stuck in here and there. As we walked in and saw the pile of books, one of his senior partners turned to this lawyer and said “what happened, David? Did you lose your nerve?”
Today I want to talk about what the courts would see if they lost their nerve and went back to the books and took a fresh look at the law and the facts concerning TEC polity. But I want to state one thing very clearly at the outset: there is no guarantee the courts will ever do this. They may simply assume that TEC has a central hierarchy like the other churches, the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox churches, and the Church of England, and never seriously engage the issues I am going to address. But what if they do engage? What if they undertake a serious examination of this issue? What would they see?
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February 07 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: The Rev. Charles D. Alley, Ph.D.
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
The question I repeatedly get from those who are interested in the Communion Partner Plan is, “What is it that the Plan will enable us to do?” This is a question of purpose, of vision and of strategy. Since our emphasis in Communion Partners has not been on developing alternative Episcopal structures and we have intentionally avoided defining ourselves over-and-against others, some have interpreted our approach as a passive waiting game. This misperception has only been exacerbated by our chosen strategy which is to be a witness to traditional Anglicanism and biblical Christianity within the Episcopal Church. Again, the idea of witness appears far too passive for many 21th century American Christians. We are a people of action and it is difficult for us to see the value in presenting an alternative way of being the Episcopal Church in the midst of the current church.
I think, when we approach the articulation of the vision of the Communion Partner Plan we really need to start with our understanding of the identity of the Church. One of the best and certainly most succinct descriptions of the Church I have read is that of the Gospel in Our Culture Network, which was developed under the influence of the Church of Scotland missionary, Lesslie Newbigin. From their missional perspective, the church is the community whose purpose is to announce and demonstrate the purpose and direction of God in the world through Jesus Christ. Thus the doing is built in. We witness by announcing and demonstrating the Gospel. Such actions cannot leave the world, or the church, unchanged. It is here that we might begin to see that the radical transformation we are seeking has more to do with spiritual renewal than institutional re-formation.
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February 06 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: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
We have learned today from Bishop Mouneer Anis that he has submitted his resignation from the former joint standing committee. Following so closely the release in December of the final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant, this resignation underscores the extent to which the Anglican Communion is at a major crossroads. At this decisive moment, however, substantial doubts have been expressed both publicly by Bishop Mouneer and privately by others as to whether this committee, now the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, is the appropriate body to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant. These concerns point to the steps that we believe are necessary to restore the Communion so badly damaged by actions in North America over the last decade. In what follows, we seek first to outline the current structural challenges to the Covenant’s initial implementation. This will involve some important, if technical, analysis. Only then, however, can we make clear what, in our mind, these necessary steps for implementation are.
In summary, and on the basis of our continued conviction that the Covenant itself as currently formulated is a positive, faithful, and necessary basis for the renewal of the Anglican Communion and its member churches, we argue that:
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January 31 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: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
1. Now that the final text of the Anglican Covenant has been sent to the member churches of the Communion, it is useful to outline the procedures by which member churches and other churches enter into the Covenant. In reviewing these procedures, it is important to be mindful of the distinction between committing to the Covenant, which churches may do at any time through affirmation or adoption, and formal recognition of that fact by the other Covenant churches or the Communion Instruments.
2. Section 4 of the Covenant specifies two procedures by which churches may enter the Covenant. Paragraph 4.1.4 deals with churches that already are recognized as members of the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the four Instruments of Communion. Paragraph 4.1.5 deals with “other churches.”
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December 22 2009 | 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: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Monday, October 26th, 2009
The Diocese of South Carolina received a letter from Bonnie Anderson, the elected President of the House of Deputies. It was followed by a second statement saying that it was her practice to send such letters to each Diocese before their conventions.
In what follows we pay attention to sections of the first letter, where the President of the House of Deputies spoke at some length of her interpretation of the resolutions to be voted on at the South Carolina Diocesan Convention. These remarks seek to be substantive in character; presumably they represent her own considerations as well as those of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. For that reason they deserve comment and evaluation of their own.
At the outset, we note that it is the duty of the President of the House of Deputies to preside over that body. Neither she nor the Executive Council is the constitutionally-designated Ecclesiastical Authority in the Diocese of South Carolina. It is not her role to instruct or interfere with the lawful diocesan Authority.
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October 26 2009 | Articles
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