From Nigeria, New Zealand: Voices on Windsor Report Heard in U.S. Forum
Episcopal News Service. June 15, 2005 [061505-1]
Pat McCaughan
The Most Rev. Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Archbishop of Kaduna, told about 200 clergy and laity attending a Synod gathering of the Episcopal Church's Province IV, held here June 8-10, that he is hopeful about the future unity of the Anglican Communion if Windsor Report recommendations are unchallenged.
Fearon, of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, was a guest speaker along with Dr. Jenny Plane Te Paa, who is the "ahorangi" or dean of Te Rau Kahikatea, indigenous constituent of the College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland, New Zealand, and the first indigenous lay woman to serve as a seminary dean in the Anglican Communion.
Fearon and Te Paa, as members of the Lambeth Commission on Communion, were asked to share their personal spiritual challenges while helping to author the Windsor Report. The widely publicized report was released in October 2004 with specific recommendations for maintaining unity within the Anglican Communion.
"The Windsor Report is the only realistic and realizable solution to the current crisis in the communion," said Fearon as he cautioned that unity will be preserved only if the Episcopal Church in the United States accepts it without qualifying conditions. "We can live with it, but be patient with us," he said.
Te Paa called the commission's work "a micro-exercise in effecting reconciliation, through intentionally engaged, sheer human witness" and expressed hopefulness for future unity. She praised the Episcopal Church for its willingness to attend the upcoming Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting in Nottingham, England, later this month as observers only.
"The voluntary, temporary withdrawal of ECUSA [the Episcopal Church] from the ACC is symbolic of repentance, of the willingness to enable the processes of healing to begin," she said.
"I bring a message of extreme sympathy to you," she told the gathering, noting that the New Zealand church is poised to assist because of its own successful struggle to remain in communion while achieving conflict-resolution and reconciliation.
"Your decision to be present as observers is one of magnanimous proportion and extraordinary grace and we acknowledge that with enormous pride and gratitude."
Province IV Administrator Gene Willard, who coordinated the gathering, said Fearon and Te Paa were invited as a way to help fulfill one of the Windsor Report recommendations.
"We wanted to give everybody the opportunity to have their say if they haven't had it in their diocese, about how they think the church should respond to the Windsor Report," Willard said. "The report asked for us, the church, to talk about it so we're doing just that, we're giving people a forum."
Fearon, who describes himself as an evangelical charismatic, recalled preaching at the General Convention 2003, which affirmed the consecration of the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson is the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion.
"It is hoped that efforts made and contained in the Windsor Report will bear fruit and bring wholeness and healing to our communion," Fearon said. "We plead with the ECUSA [Episcopal Church] to act in such a way as not to increase our pains to the point we are numb and walk away, to the point we give up."
He called for the Episcopal Church to exercise humility and "be with the rest of the members of the communion," adding that the commission's mandate was to "find out what needs to be done to keep the family together."
Te Paa, the first Maori person to complete an academic degree in theology from the University of Auckland, noted that the understanding of family in indigenous culture implies deeper, more intimate relationships and connections through blood ties which can never be removed.
Te Paa said that she and Fearon, though disagreeing with each other, became close friends while serving on the 17-member Lambeth Commission, chaired by the Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Robin Eames.
The commission, established at the request of the primates of the Anglican Communion, was specifically asked to examine and report on ways in which the 38 Anglican and Episcopal provinces can "relate to one another in situations where the ecclesiastical authorities of one province feel unable to maintain the fullness of communion with another part of the Anglican Communion."
The Windsor Report, named after the site southwest of London where the Lambeth Commission has twice met, is published in four sections, dealing with: the purposes and benefits of Communion; principles underlying how the communion lives its life and the importance of communion as a principle of church life. (The complete report is posted online at: www.anglicancommunion.org.)
Remarks precede ACC meeting
The ACC, the Anglican Communion's chief consultative body, will receive the report later this month. The ACC is made up of bishops, clergy and lay representatives -- numbering some 75 in all -- and is the only body with legislative authority to act on the report recommendations.
Two of the Episcopal Church's three elected ACC members, Josephine Hicks, and The Rev. Bob Sessum, were also at Kanuga for the synod meeting and said they plan to attend the meeting to observe and to listen. The third elected U.S. member is Bishop Suffragan Catherine Roskam of New York.
"I feel it is very important to be there," said Hicks, an attorney from Charlotte, N.C. "A lot of what's happening has to do with issues other than sexuality, with the very important mission and ministries happening throughout the world."
New Zealand's Te Paa said that commission members concluded that the Episcopal Church did nothing wrong in terms of its own canons in electing and consecrating Gene Robinson. "What was regrettable was that they did so knowing many people in the Anglican Communion would be distressed by it and would not accept it," she said.
She criticized elements of the Windsor Report, including the failure to assign a time frame or accountability to the moratorium on future consecrations.
She also commented on the "underside to the commission's work, the invisible agenda that caused deep and abiding hurt and affects us all." Specifically, she cited politicization of the issue at the expense of ministry and mission, abuses of power, and bishops who interfered in dioceses beyond their jurisdictions.
"I want to record my absolute outrage at the appalling examples of brutish, unkind, petulant, manipulative, dishonest and aggressively threatening male church leadership I have both been ashamed to bear witness to or have had recounted to me as a member of the Lambeth Commission," Te Paa said.
She said examples of the behavior, in her opinion, included the "indecent haste" with which some provincial leaders declared themselves to be in "impaired communion" with others. She also cited content of submissions, for commission review, which employed the language of vitriol, intolerance and condemnation, and misrepresentation of the facts concerning the role of the commission and of the Archbishop.
Te Paa also cited her own "very serious concern" about "much loose talk of the transfer of large amounts of money and other resources usually from wealthy and U.S.-based sources -- both individuals and foundations -- to conservative African and erroneously grouped 'global south' church leaders to facilitate their meeting and organizing against the so-called liberal agenda."
Te Paa added: "I am committed to working with anyone and everyone toward the vision of a restored Anglican Communion family, to a family whose neighborhood is the whole world, a family whose mission is that of God, to do justice, to act kindly and to be reconciled to all that God created so perfectly for the benefit of us all."
Listeners offer responses
Province IV, the Episcopal Church's largest province, has 20 dioceses in nine Southeastern states including: Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and part of Louisiana.
"Province IV has the largest number of clergy, baptized members, communicants, church school and day school pupils and is the largest contributor to the General Convention budget of any church province," coordinator Willard said. He said the gathering is one of two regularly scheduled meetings the province hosts yearly.
Last December, Province IV issued a statement saying that the Windsor Report recommendations were, among other things, "well-considered and appropriate."
The Rt. Rev. John Howard, bishop of the Jacksonville-based Diocese of Florida, said he agreed with the report and was encouraged by Fearon's remarks.
"I came away from this morning's meeting very encouraged," Howard said. "Archbishop Fearon states a theological position and a position regarding the unity of the church I am in agreement with." He said the diocese has lost several clergy and churchgoers but retains the same number of parishes and missions it always had. "We are ready to move forward in mission and ministry."
But Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina, said that, while he was "impressed with Jenny Te Paa's honesty" he had concerns about future unity.
"I wondered if it was enough given the size of the challenge before them," he said, referring to the commission's efforts. "It's a grievous situation, the way people have conducted themselves on both sides of the issue, both the actions of individual dioceses and bishops," he said, stating his belief that the report's recommendations have not been honored.
While the Synod also took up discussion of the Windsor Report as the topic of a legislative resolution, delegates voted to table that local measure.
Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina said the provincial meeting served the important purposes of allowing everyone's voice to be heard, and providing a model -- through Fearon and Te Paa -- "of what we're all called to be."
"By following Jesus we will overcome our issues with each other. The most important thing they did was to model a way of being a faith community with profound differences," said Curry, who voted to consent to Robinson's consecration.
"There are struggles and issues to be dealt with, sure, but the work of bringing people to Jesus and going and serving in his name is happening," Curry said. "The overwhelming majority of people are in church committed to worship God and do the work of the church. I'm convinced of it because I'm seeing it."
Fearon, who has been instrumental in reconciliation ministry with Muslims in Nigeria, said his commission experience revealed that "there are about 20 percent of the 70 million Anglicans worldwide who are vehemently opposed to what happened. And there are about 20 percent from the same family who are fully committed to what happened and in between are 60 percent who just want to worship our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. "We must address this middle ground."