Think Tank Releases Study Critical of Episcopal Renewal Movement
Episcopal News Service. December 13, 2001 [2001-351]
Jan Nunley
(ENS) A New York think tank has released an in-depth study of the conservative "renewal movement" within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, calling it "part of a broad right-wing movement within mainline Protestant denominations nationwide."
The report by the Institute for Democracy Studies (IDS) entitled A Church at Risk: The Episcopal 'Renewal Movement' appears in the December 2001 issue of IDS Insights, and is available online at http://www.idsonline.org/publications.html.
The study is the latest in a series prepared by the IDS Religion and Democracy program, and follows a monograph entitled A Moment to Decide: The Crisis in Mainstream Presbyterianism, released last year. IDS describes itself as "a not-for-profit research and education center that focuses on anti-democratic religious and social movements."
In an editor's note, IDS president Alfred Ross quotes Ronald Haines, retired bishop of Washington (DC), as saying of the report, "Aided by IDS's unique capacity and social commitment, the [Episcopal] Church can assess the ground it has already lost to the radical right as well as the ominous political landscape that lies ahead."
ECUSA 'under attack'
The article's author, Lewis C. Daly, declares that the Episcopal Church is "under attack" by a conservative movement that "is seeking to uproot [it] from its historic role in American public life." Daly identifies key institutions and individuals leading the movement, as well as their sources of funding, with particular attention to the Fellowship of Witness (now the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion-USA), Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Episcopal Renewal Ministries, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the American Anglican Council.
Daly writes that the involvement of primates from other parts of the Anglican Communion in such activities as the consecration of bishops for the Anglican Mission in America "has political implications that go well beyond the church, and it is important to understand how Anglican evangelical networks overlap with political and social policy objectives in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere."
"The American Anglican right wing is essentially perverting the church's global communion in order to reformulate the ecclesial status of ECUSA and thereby inflict serious damage on the social progress that was its public legacy in the last century," Daly concluded. "These developments must be carefully monitored and firmly challenged."
Heated reactions
Reaction via email from some of the individuals and groups named in the IDS report was heated.
"The IDS report is yet another paranoid attempt to invent a 'vast right wing conspiracy' in the Episcopal Church," said the Very Rev. Canon David Anderson, president and chief executive officer of the American Anglican Council. "If as much effort was put into constructive and grace-filled conversation with conservative Episcopalians as has been expended in attempts to demonize them, our Church would be in a very different place."
"In their attempts to unearth yet another 'vast right wing conspiracy' I fear that the authors have not only over-reached but seriously misrepresented the work of many faithful Episcopalians," commented the Rev. Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, a parish identified in the study as influential in the renewal movement.
"As far as that the claim that the Episcopal Church is 'under attack' by a conservative movement...it is unsupported by the facts--particularly as to the interpretation of canon and the use of courts against conservative-orthodox folk," remarked Charles Nalls, director of the Canon Law Institute and attorney for the vestry of Christ Church in Accokeek, Maryland, which is currently involved in a dispute with Washington bishop Jane Dixon over the hiring of a rector.
"It's always encouraging to be considered influential and effective by those with whom you disagree," said Diane Knippers, president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy. "Indeed, if Mr. Daly had simply substituted 'mainstream Anglican' for his frequent use of the 'religious right,' I would have been largely satisfied with the piece."