Bonnie Anderson encourages open conversation in Albany diocese
Episcopal News Service. January 22, 2008 [012208-03]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Close to 300 members of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany spent the afternoon January 19 talking about how the diocese might have more open communication and more dialogue on the subjects about which the members disagree.
Earlier in the afternoon, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson had challenged that group sitting in the nave of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Albany, New York, to "venture in your diocese toward creating a model of open conversation." Such a model, she said, could be a gift to the rest of the Episcopal Church.
The occasion for the discussion was a meeting titled "Can we talk? Faith and Diversity in the Episcopal Church," sponsored by Albany Via Media, which calls itself an organization of clergy and lay Episcopalians seeking to keep the diocese aligned with the Episcopal Church.
The diocese is a founding member of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDP), also known as the Anglican Communion Network. The organization began in January 2004. Nine other Episcopal Church dioceses are members, including Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and San Joaquin, where the bishop and leadership recently voted to join the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.
The decision to join NACDP was made while Love was still a priest in the Diocese of Albany. He was ordained and consecrated bishop in September 2006, and succeeded Bishop Daniel Herzog as diocesan bishop in February 2007.
In late September 2007 Love was one of 13 active or former Episcopal Church diocesan bishops who attended a four-day meeting of the Common Cause Council of Bishops in Pittsburgh. The purpose of the meeting was to establish the timeline and procedures for developing "an Anglican union" in North America outside of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. The organizers anticipate the union will be recognized by some Anglican Communion Primates and provinces.
Anderson noted in a local television interview January 19 that Love has not made any statements saying he intends to attempt to lead the diocese out of the Episcopal Church.
Before the Eucharist that began the January 19 gathering, the Rev. James Brooks-McDonald, rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Schenectady, looked out over the nave and called the gathering "historic."
"We’ve never had this kind of mix, open communication," he said, adding that he had "tremendous respect for Bishop Love" for agreeing to participate in the gathering.
"He's here. That takes guts," Anita Renault Ford, a member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Albany, said at the end of the afternoon. "I have to give him credit for coming...I hope he can be open to conversation."
Love changed the planned order of service for the Eucharist, opting to begin with the penitential order for Rite II thus, as he pointed out, placing the confession at the opening of the service. During his nearly 40-minute sermon in what was scheduled to be an hour Eucharist, Love preached that everyone is broken and in need of God's love and forgiveness.
The propers for the Eucharist were those for the unity of the church (Isaiah 35:1-10, Psalm 122, Ephesians 4:1-16, and John 17a, 15-23) and Love repeatedly returned to the gospel in which Jesus prays to God that all of his followers would be in him and in God "so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
How the Diocese of Albany and the Episcopal Church deals with its differences seems to show the world what the Christian life and Christian community is all about, Love said.
"Our disunity becomes a divisive force that cause people not to want to come to Christ," he said.
Love reminded the meeting that Jesus told his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.
"This is a message that the church desperately needs to hear because we have been tricked -- we have been deceived by Satan, and, yes, Satan is real," he said. "The power of evil is real. We have been deceived into believing that those who don't think the same way that we do are somehow our enemies and they should be vilified; they should be destroyed if at all possible. We have only to look around the church to see how that is being lived out. It is a brokenness that is taking place, hearts that are being hardened and turned away from one another and, more importantly, turned away from God."
Recalling that a promise to seeking justice is part of the Baptismal Covenant, Love said justice comes when people can call each other to account for their behavior and say "God loves you, but that's not what God wants for you." The promise to help each other live up to their baptismal vows does not mean "live your life however you choose, you have my blessing," he said. Rather it is a promise that "I'll nudge you back" on the right path when you stray.
During her keynote address, Anderson said she had accepted Albany Via Media's invitation in order to "help in the process of open conversation," adding that she thought Love was willing to participate.
Anderson echoed a comment from Love's sermon about division in the church not being unique to the present age. "We've always been working it out," she said. "We've always been trying to figure out how to live together. We will continue to do that unless we abandon this project of communion."
However, she said, "I don’t think it's enough to say we're seeking Christian unity without actually seeking Christian unity," adding that "the how is almost as important as the what."
Anderson was asked during the question-and-answer session about how she has seen other dioceses handle differences of opinion and theology.
"The primary ingredient is intentionality, supported by prayer and worship," she said. "It's not going to work if you just randomly come together...you really need to be intentional about goals, about how you're going to talk together, what are your rules about collegiality."
In her keynote address, Anderson had told the gathering "You cannot get on with God's work until you trust each other, until you see Christ in each other and pray for each other."
Brooks-MacDonald, the former Albany Via Media president, commented on Anderson's answer, admitting that "I haven't seen some of the people in this room in years,"
"That's my problem and I appreciate that...I need to be intentional about that," he added.
One participant, Harriet Warnock-Graham from St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Troy, New York, said that for such conversation she would like to see "a set of non-negotiables." A recent transplant from the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, Warnock-Graham told Love that she found it "offensive" that some people in Albany will not worship together because they disagree.
Although Love acknowledged that the members of the diocese have "very divergent and differing views" on human sexuality, he said he thinks that everyone wants the same thing. That common goal, he said is to determine "how best to minister to people who identify themselves as homosexuals and how best to minister to people who are heterosexual" but are living together outside the confines of marriage.
"When part of us believes that Holy Scripture is quite clear" about how to live out our sexuality and another part believes that there is room for interpretation and change, "that is where we struggle," Love said.
Holy Scripture, 2,000 years of church tradition and, until recently, much of society agreed that human sexuality ought only to be expressed in heterosexual marriage, Love said.
Scripture is not "static," Anderson said, adding that "I believe that new truths are revealed through our life in Christ."
"This isn't the first time we've come to new understandings of Scripture," she said. "We interpret [Scripture] through the living God who acts in our lives every day."
In answer to questions about a listening process in the diocese, Love said that the goal of such a process would have to be defined and accepted so that it is not assumed that the aim was to have a single viewpoint accepted by all.
"To think that I have not been listening or that other people in our diocese have not been listening is a misunderstanding," said Love, who had just completed a listening tour of the diocese, spending two days in each of the deaneries.
The calm tone of the discussion bubbled over when two men, one who described himself as gay and one who described himself as straight and married, objected to a link on the diocese's website to a blog called Virtueonline, which describes itself as "The Voice for Global Orthodoxy." The site's proprietor, David W. Virtue, routinely refers to homosexuals as "sodomites."
The Albany website lists Virtueonline as Virtuosity [sic], its previous name. It is one of six blog sites on a page of links labeled “Anglican News Sources.”
While the majority of the links on the page go to resources and organizations that could be labeled "conservative," a link to The Witness, an online magazine that is considered to be far apart from Virtueonline in its theology and opinions, is included in the page's Books and Periodical section. The page's News Wire section includes a link to Anglicans Online, which might be categorized as more "liberal" than Stand Firm, which is also linked to from the page.
At the first comment about the link, made by the gay man who objected to Virtue's language, Love said he would have to review the list of links, adding, "Let me suggest to you that if that [language] offends you, don't read it." His suggestion drew hoots and near-boos from the audience.
When the married man returned to the subject a few questions later, he told Love that "we're hurting our brothers and sisters" when such language is used. The bishop, noting that the diocesan leadership agrees with some but not all of what appears on Virtueonline, apologized for his earlier statement and said that "you will never hear those words come from me."
Some participants said that news of the January gathering was not posted in the calendar on the diocese's website and that other news from Albany Via Media is not allowed in the diocesan newspaper. Love placed his willingness to promote such gatherings within the context of his duty as a bishop to uphold the teaching, tradition and unity of the church.
"Communication is essential" in any relationship, Love acknowledged, but "the question is what are we going to talk about?"
"One of the dangers is that we lose our focus and we start focusing on that which divides us rather than that which unites us," he said.
"That which unites us is our Lord Jesus Christ," the bishop added, saying that Christ must be kept at the center of the conversation.
"There's a very fine line," he said, in determining whether an event "will be helpful in promoting the Gospel or will it only add to the division."
Love said he has not been "overly enthusiastic" about promoting activities "that I thought would only add to the problem" rather than be a "healing agent."
During the program, Albany Via Media President Robert Dodd announced that the collection taken during the Eucharist would be sent to Remain Episcopal, an organization of Episcopalians in the Diocese of San Joaquin who wanted to remain within the church. In addition, Mike Loesinger of St. Paul's in Albany told the gathering that the parish had taken up a special collection recently in support of Albany Via Media and gave Dodd a check for $1,000.