ENGLAND: Women bishops debate postponed until July
Episcopal News Service. February 8, 2010 [020810-04]
Matthew Davies
A committee charged with revising a draft measure that would pave the way for women to be consecrated as bishops in the Church of England needs more time to consider the legislation, Bishop Nigel McCulloch of Manchester told General Synod members as they commenced their Feb. 8-12 meeting in London.
McCulloch said the committee, on which he serves, aims to release a comprehensive document with the revised legislation several weeks ahead of synod's July sessions.
General Synod is the main governing body of the Church of England and meets at least twice a year.
In February 2009, synod decided to send the draft measure to the revision committee so it could rework the legislation. Although no official timeframe was set for the committee to complete its work, the revised legislation was expected to be presented to synod's February sessions.
McCulloch said the committee, which received 114 submissions from synod members relating to the measure, had "not completed its detailed scrutiny" of the legislation.
The draft measure had two principal objectives: "to give the General Synod power to make provision by canon allowing women to be consecrated as bishops; and to set out the legal framework for the arrangements to be made for parishes which, on grounds of theological conviction, feel unable to receive the ministry of women."
The process involved in allowing women in the episcopate of the Church of England is complicated and ultimately will require endorsement by the U.K. Parliament before any measure can take full effect. It is generally estimated that -- assuming all stages of the legislative process proceed without delay -- canonically, women will not be able to become bishops until at least 2014.
"The work of the revision committee is just one of many stages in the process," said McCulloch.
Later in the week, synod members will wrestle with the question of whether to recognize a conservative breakaway entity known as the Anglican Church of North America.
On Feb. 10, synod will consider a one-sentence resolution that would have it "express the desire that the Church of England be in communion with the Anglican Church in North America." The ACNA is made up primarily of individuals and groups that have left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.
Submitted by Lorna Ashworth of Chichester, the resolution comes with a background paper that has drawn fire for apparent misrepresentations of facts about property litigation and the number of bishops and clergy that have been deposed in the U.S. and Canada.
Synod will also discuss a proposed amendment from Bishop Michael Hill of Bristol that would remove any language about being in communion with ACNA and instead "recognize and affirm the desire of those who have formed" the entity "to remain within the Anglican family." Hill's amendment also acknowledges that such an aspiration by ACNA would require further exploration by the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.
Simon Sarmiento, a Church of England lay member and founder of the Thinking Anglicans blog, compiled a paper rebutting some of Ashworth's assertions, among which is the implication that 12 bishops and 404 clergy now associated with ACNA were inhibited or deposed by the Episcopal Church.
"Only three bishops have been deposed recently and the total of ACNA-related clergy depositions to date is 170," said Sarmiento, noting that Ashworth's figures were derived from a document prepared by the American Anglican Council, a founding member of ACNA and a group he says has "campaigned relentlessly against the leadership of the Episcopal Church since at least February 2001."
A counter-rebuttal to Sarmiento's paper was issued by the Rev. Philip Ashey, chief operating and development officer of the AAC, who said the numbers of clergy deposed for abandonment of communion "is at least 237, not 170. The number of bishops so deposed is three. In addition, nine bishops and at least 152 clergy have been removed for 'renunciation of ordained ministry…'" Ashey is a former Episcopal Church priest who was accepted into the Church of Uganda in 2005.
AAC President David Anderson is expected to attend General Synod as an observer and to lobby on behalf of ACNA. Since leaving the Episcopal Church in 2007, Anderson has served as a suffragan bishop for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, an affiliate of ACNA and a breakaway group that was set up by the Anglican Church in Nigeria.
Alan Perry, a lecturer in ecclesiastical polity and former prolocutor of the Anglican Church of Canada, refuted similar claims that Ashworth made about the Canadian church.
Despite Ashworth's claim to the contrary, Perry said that "not a single Canadian priest has been deposed for joining ACNA. The term is almost entirely unheard of in Canada."
While Ashworth's paper states that six Anglican Church of Canada bishops have joined ACNA, Perry notes that three were already retired. The other three, he says, were former priests in the Canadian church who have recently been consecrated by ACNA.
Sarmiento's and Perry's papers were circulated last week to fellow synod members by the Rev. Brian Lewis of Chelmsford, who called on his colleagues to "give this debate the seriousness it deserves" noting that the resolution asks them "to intervene in the life of the Anglican Church in another province in a way that we never have before."
A set of "talking points" released Feb. 4 by the Episcopal Church's Office of Public Affairs said: "It is important to note that those who have remained in the Episcopal Church in those places where some have left include conservatives as well as liberals, persons on the political right as well as on the political left, and everything in between. It is an inaccurate and misleading image that pictures those who have broken away from the Episcopal Church as the persecuted faithful, when in reality those who have remained have felt deeply hurt, and now in some cases are exiled from their own church buildings by ACNA."
An article on the differences between the General Synod and the Episcopal Church's General Convention is available here.