INDIAN OCEAN: Primate suspends 'all communication' with Episcopal Church, Anglican Church of Canada
Episcopal News Service. April 13, 2010 [041310-05]
Matthew Davies
Archbishop Ian Ernest of the Province of the Indian Ocean is the third Anglican primate in as many months to write to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressing disquiet about recent developments in the Episcopal Church concerning issues of human sexuality.
In his April 12 letter, Ernest said that the Episcopal Church's "intention to proceed" with the consecration of the Rev. Mary Glasspool, a partnered lesbian, as a bishop suffragan in the Diocese of Los Angeles is "to disregard the mind of the rest of the [Anglican] Communion."
Ernest, chair of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa, said he felt "constrained by my conscience … to forthwith suspend all communication both verbal and sacramental" with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada "until such time as they reverse their theological innovations." The suspension, he added, "would not include those bishops and clergy who have distanced themselves from the direction of the [Episcopal Church]."
Ernest's letter comes just days after Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda also wrote Williams raising concerns that the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion has assumed "enhanced responsibility" and expressing his dismay that its membership includes representatives from the U.S.-based Episcopal Church -- Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Bishop-elect Ian Douglas of Connecticut.
"How can we expect the gross violators of biblical truth to sanction their own discipline when they believe they have done nothing wrong and further insist that their revisionist theology is actually the substance of Anglicanism?" Orombi wrote. "We have only to note the recent election and confirmation of an active lesbian as a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles to realize that [the Episcopal Church] has no interest in 'gracious restraint.'"
During its December meeting in London, the Standing Committee passed a resolution calling for "gracious restraint in respect of actions that endanger the unity of the Anglican Communion." Those actions included Glasspool's election and the then-pending consent process required before all bishops-elect may be consecrated and ordained, the decisions of some Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada bishops to allow same-gender blessings and what the resolution called "continuing cross-jurisdictional activity within the communion."
In late January, Middle East President Bishop Mouneer Anis tendered his resignation from the Standing Committee, saying that his presence has "no value whatsoever" and that his voice is "like a useless cry in the wilderness."
Anis wrote in a Jan. 30 letter to Williams that the committee "unfortunately was unable to respond firmly and effectively" to two resolutions passed by the Episcopal Church's General Convention last summer. Those resolutions are D025 that affirms "that God has called and may call" gay and lesbian people "to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church," and C056 that calls for the collection and development of theological resources for the blessing of same-gender unions and allows bishops to provide "a generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church."
Ernest wrote in his letter that Anis and Orombi "are to be admired for the way in which they have taken a stand and I am proud to associate myself fully with the sentiments they express."
Both Ernest and Orombi called on Williams to schedule a Primates Meeting but said they would attend only if the primates of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada are not present.
A group of conservative Anglican primates, meeting April 5-9 in Bermuda, also criticized the Episcopal Church, saying that Glasspool's election "makes clear to all that the American Episcopal Church leadership has formally committed itself to a pattern of life which is contrary to Scripture."
Jefferts Schori said in a letter to the communion's primates that the church's consent to Glasspool's consecration "is not the decision of one person, or a small group of people. It represents the mind of a majority of the elected leaders in the Episcopal Church, lay, clergy and bishops, who have carefully considered the opinions and feelings of other members of the Anglican Communion as well as the decades-long conversations within this church."
In the Episcopal Church, a bishop is elected by lay representatives and all the clergy of a diocese. Then a majority of the church's bishops exercising jurisdiction and diocesan standing committees must consent to his or her ordination within 120 days of receiving notice of the election, as required by the canons of the Episcopal Church (III.11.4).
In many other Anglican provinces, particularly those in Africa and England, bishops are appointed rather than elected, resulting in a much less democratic process than in the U.S.-based Episcopal Church.