Bonnie Anderson promises support, tells Fort Worth Episcopalians to 'saddle up'
Episcopal News Service. September 10, 2007 [091007-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson assured Episcopalians in the Diocese of Fort Worth September 8 that they will be supported by the leadership of the wider church "so that you may answer God's call to mission."
"Above all else, I want you to know that faithful Episcopalians have made promises to God, asking for God's help to keep these promises each time we renew our baptismal covenant," she said. "Faithful Episcopalians will be supported by their church leadership so that you may answer God's call to mission with the full support of the Episcopal Church. The obstacles in front of you are no match for the power behind you. You are beloved."
Still, Anderson advised Episcopalians to "saddle your own horse" if they wanted to see changes in their diocese. She advised them to pay attention to the issue of governance, reminding them that parishes and dioceses remain a part of the Episcopal Church even if some members decide to leave.
Fort Worth Via Media invited Anderson to participate in the meeting titled "Episcopalians for the Future." The event was co-sponsored by Brite Divinity School and held at the Dee J. Kelly Center on the campus of Texas Christian University. Close to 250 people attended, most of them from the dioceses of Fort Worth and Dallas.
The Fort Worth group is a member of Via Media USA, an alliance of Episcopal laity and clergy formed in 2004 to offer a counterpoint to efforts to "realign" the Episcopal Church along more conservative lines.
In recent months, Anderson has visited a number of dioceses in which the leadership has expressed opposition to the Episcopal Church, including Pittsburgh, San Joaquin, and Rio Grande. She will visit the Diocese of South Carolina in early November.
Telling them that the issue at the root of tensions in the Anglican Communion is governance, Anderson said, "You have been in the trenches for a long time, so angst and strife and governance are not new to you."
Anderson thanked Fort Worth Episcopalians for their "perseverance and faithfulness," especially for advocating for the ordination of women in a diocese where the bishop refuses to do so. Fort Worth is one of the three remaining dioceses in the Episcopal Church that does not recognize the ordination of women.
She said a "small percentage of our church" has dominated the media and much of the larger church and the Anglican Communion focus for the past few years. While she said she wants them to "get on with mission, the clock is ticking," Anderson said she would welcome a debate about orthodoxy.
"Let's talk about the orthodoxy of loving our neighbors as ourselves," she said. "Let's have some real conversation and controversy about that."
Members of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion can disagree with each other, Anderson said. "We want to be a communion and community of differing opinions."
The Diocese of Fort Worth has long been at odds with the Episcopal Church and was the first of seven dioceses to ask Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for a relationship with an Anglican Communion primate other than Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker and a member of the diocesan deputation told the 75th General Convention on June 19, the day after Jefferts Schori was elected, that the diocese would seek such oversight. In the Episcopal Church, the Presiding Bishop is designated "chief pastor and primate," but does not exercise primatial oversight regarding dioceses or bishops.
The Episcopal Church's Executive Council and the House of Bishops have declined to participate in a plan put forward by the Primates of the Anglican Communion in February for dealing with the small number of disaffected Episcopal Church dioceses.
In a recent letter to the diocese, Iker wrote that Fort Worth is participating in a "realignment" of the Anglican Communion and predicted that the diocese would soon have to "choose in favor of the Anglican Communion majority at the expense of our historic relationship with the General Convention Church."
On September 8, Iker, who had been invited to the Via Media meeting and declined, issued a statement describing Anderson's visit as "political manipulation" which "exacerbates an already tense, adversarial relationship that has developed between national leaders and diocesan officials." He accused her of advocating a "rather one-sided view of the controversies that have overtaken the Episcopal Church in recent decades."
He said that Anderson, "rather than working with me and other diocesan officials," had "chosen to go around us in a blatant attempt to work with the revisionist opposition known as the Via Media."
On September 9, the Rev. J.D. Godwin, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in the neighboring Diocese of Dallas where Anderson preached at two services, told the congregation not to believe Iker's characterization. Godwin described Anderson's message in Fort Worth as one of "encouragement, hope and assurance."
Saying Anderson simply had presented the facts of the Episcopal Church's canons and polity, Godwin added, "She did not raise any rabble."
Fort Worth Via Media said September 10 that it regrets Iker's response but is not surprised by it because "this has been the pattern of response of our diocesan leadership to any move by the laity to get organized and informed ever since [Bishop] Iker became bishop coadjutor and then diocesan bishop."
Iker, whom Via Media said sees disagreement as disobedience and disrespect, did not object to the September 8 gathering when he was invited in mid-July, the group's executive committee said.
"Our diocesan leadership always moves quickly to try to suppress any sign of dissent with intimidation, public shaming, and misinformation," the statement said.
Iker accused Anderson of seeking to "further divide the people of this diocese rather than to promote reconciliation."
Via Media countered that "it is the unyielding demands of our leadership that everyone in the diocese conform to ‘the stated theological positions of this diocese' and their complete refusal to allow a loyal opposition to function that has led to the divisions here."
"What they want is capitulation," the statement concluded. "We are working for reconciliation."
The complete statement is available here.
As Anderson fielded questions from participants in the September 8 gathering, many addressed issues of strategy and possible outcomes in the face of such predictions. "A lot of this is difficult because we're not there yet," Anderson said. "A lot of this is conjecture."
She urged participants to get to know each other and those with whom they disagree, to form relationships with them and to regularly pray for each other.
The Via Media gathering also included presentations by other Episcopalians. Fort Worth Episcopalian Katie Sherrod said during her discussion of the context of tensions in the Anglican Communion, that communion is "God's gift to give, not ours to hand out only to those of which we approve or with which we agree."
Sherrod said that being brothers and sisters in Christ doesn't mean that people have to agree with each other or like each other, "but we are commanded to love one another."
Houston attorneys Muffie Moroney and Philip Masquelette spoke to the meeting about the church's Constitution and Canons and related the rules governing the church's life to the Baptismal Covenant's vows to seek justice for all people. Moroney urged the participants to become familiar with the canonical part of the church's life and not to fear the changes ahead.
"Fear can be so unnerving, so undermining of what we're supposed to be," she said.
The Rev. Fred Barker, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Fort Worth, and Dr. Catherine Wehlberg, a Trinity parishioner, led the meeting in a discussion of how participants could become involved in decision-making in their congregations and achieve balance in the Episcopal Church's model of lay and clergy participation in governance and ministry.
After the end of the meeting, another Trinity parishioner, Debbie Clark, said the Diocese of Fort Worth is "such a difficult place to live as an Episcopalian."
She accused Iker of working to silence people who disagree with him, calling those efforts "really destructive of the very fabric of who we are."
Sharon Nelson, her partner, said "we're not full members of the body of Christ" in the diocese.
Clark said the wider church should "hold people accountable to the vows they took" at their ordinations to uphold the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church.
John and Priscilla Promise, 30-year members of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Arlington, Texas, said that they now drive 80 miles round-trip to attend services at Transfiguration in Dallas because they could no longer be Episcopalians in the Diocese of Fort Worth.
"I increasingly found myself feeling angry in church," Priscilla Promise said. "Any attempt I made to express by Episcopal heritage and connections was met with suspicion."
While they maintain friendships at St. Alban's and she plays in the parish's hand-bell choir, she said the couple could no longer pledge in the diocese because they "did no want our finances supporting the tearing apart of the Episcopal Church."
On September 9, Anderson based her sermon at Transfiguration on the day's Gospel (Luke 14:25-33). She also spoke to a forum attended by about 150 people between the 9 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. service.
In her sermon, Anderson said that Jesus calls his followers to seek change in their lives and in the world. "The true cost of discipleship is change," she said.
"It is the invitation to embrace new beginnings and new ways of looking at things, get rid of the ruts, all the while following Jesus and asking him to lead us on the path that brings us closer and closer to him," Anderson said. "Turn away from our own life and be a disciple. Turn away from what is known to us, what is comfortable. Look in our hearts and seek change, and, by the way, pick up the cross."
Anderson asked the congregants to consider "what kind of Church would we be if we accepted the invitation to climb out of the ditches we sometimes dig ourselves into."
"What kind of Church would we be if we refused angst and embraced new beginnings, new ways of loving our neighbors as ourselves and new ways of looking at things, all the while following Jesus and asking him to lead us on the path that brings us closer and closer to him?" she asked.
"We resist. We kick and scream, but Jesus shakes us up and gets our attention. And when I think about it, what I really want is the kind of God who will shake me up and get my attention -- a God inviting me into new things, into new configurations, into new ways to think about things. Even though sometimes we go kicking and screaming, our hearts long to be changed."