LOS ANGELES: Communion needs 'more conversation, less rhetoric,' Peterson tells gathering
Episcopal News Service. March 27, 2007 [032707-03]
Pat McCaughan, Associate rector at St. Mary's Church in Laguna Beach and as senior correspondent for Episcopal News Service
The recent House of Bishops meeting offered what is needed to move the Anglican Communion forward -- "less rhetoric and more conversation" -- the Rev. Canon John Peterson, Canon for Global Justice and Reconciliation at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., told a gathering of about 350 people in North Hollywood, California, on March 24.
"We saw it happening here today, too. People willing to take seriously what the global community is saying, and to consider how to respond responsibly within our own polity of who we are as a church, including lay voices, clergy voices and in conversation with Episcopal voices," Peterson told the annual diocesan ministry gathering of clergy and laity at Campbell Hall, near Los Angeles.
"Many Primates are not in polarized positions, but are struggling with issues of globalization, poverty and are trying to make sense of the Gospel for their own people. I was quite happy to hear that the whole bishops' meeting was not spent talking about the issue of human sexuality, but about such critical issues as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), about poverty, economics, the ecology," said Peterson, former secretary general of the Anglican Communion.
One silver lining in the "tremendous mess we are in today is that perhaps for the first time people know there is such a thing as the Anglican Communion," which is made up of 80 million people and 38 provinces, including the Episcopal Church, in 163 countries worldwide, Peterson said during a presentation frequently interrupted by applause.
He praised the House of Bishops for affirming full and equal participation of all people in the church and reiterating a strong desire to remain within the Anglican Communion while rejecting a request from other Anglican leaders to allow dissident conservative congregations in the United States to be overseen by a separate body that could include leaders from outside the country.
The bishops also promised to continue to find a way to work together and to stay in relationship, but did not directly address other issues, including demands from Anglican leaders that by September they stop performing official blessings for same-gender couples and consecrating openly gay bishops.
Peterson warned that the conflict is more about power and the perception of the United States as arrogant than about human sexuality.
"One reason the Episcopal Church is in the mess we're in is because our nation, if we like it or not, is seen around the world as arrogant ... which goes part and parcel with being a superpower. Long before Gene Robinson entered the stage, I sat in meetings in which Primates lamented what American culture had done within their societies."
As a result, he said, "we just have to bite the bullet as Americans and say this is what it means to be part of this country and this church today. It's time we take a significant inventory of who we are and how we're going to respond and realize that the truth does not rest in one province of the Anglican Communion anymore than it rests fully in another.
"And what I heard the bishops of the Episcopal Church saying this week is we need each other, all of us. We do not have the final say in regards to human sexuality but let me assure you, the Archbishop of Nigeria does not have the final say either."
Even though Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressed disappointment at the House of Bishops' action, Peterson added: "It sees to me that the bishops have done the only thing the bishops of the Episcopal Church can do. They have taken our polity seriously, which includes laity, clergy and bishops. But if we cannot stay together we are going to be lessened as a church."
The bishops responded to a communique from a February meeting of Anglican leaders in Tanzania by sending a letter to members of the church in the United States. They will meet again in September to draft a formal response to the Anglican leaders.
The Rt. Rev. Jon Bruno, Bishop of Los Angeles, preaching at a noon Eucharist, said the bishops' action sent a message that "you can't just lop us off" from the rest of the Anglican Communion because of a disagreement.
"We need to swing open the door and to welcome everybody," Bruno said. "I wish some people in this communion would think about the importance of what it is to be in relationship even though you disagree. They would understand that we would never abandon them and that they best not abandon us."