U.S. and Canadian Bishops Grapple With Common Issues in Joint Meeting
Episcopal News Service. March 17, 1993 [93043]
Episcopal Life staff
Canadian Anglican bishops and about 40 Episcopal Church bishops forged a new relationship at a recent meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, where they considered issues common to both of the churches.
Episcopal bishops whose diocesan boundaries touch on the U.S.- Canadian border joined a continuing-education event held each year by the Canadian House of Bishops. Representatives from each of the Episcopal Church's nine provinces also joined the group.
There were no legislative sessions at the meeting and no statement was issued at its conclusion. No future joint meetings are planned, although some bishops expressed the hope for North American or hemispheric meetings that would include bishops, clergy and lay people of the Anglican Communion.
"It was an opportunity for bishops to share views and learn more about one other," said Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning following the meeting.
Under the theme, "The Gospel in a Changing Church in a Changing Culture," panelists presented reports on the progress of each church in areas of clergy morale, sexuality, the environment and the future role of the episcopacy. They also discussed the differing origin and ethos of the churches.
In the conference's keynote address, Bennett J. Sims, bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Atlanta, said prevailing culture is a system of systems, and all systems are change-resistant.
Sims said that God acts through cultural realities and political power structures to work God's will. He described Moses as a political man in defiance of Babylonian-style political power. "Jesus deliberately identified himself with the disenfranchised in a social order dominated by alien armies of occupation," Sims added.
Movements throughout the Christian church historically have proven to be irresistible from its earliest days of the inclusion of Gentiles, to the inclusion of blacks, to the inclusion of women in holy orders, Sims said.
"My sense is that gay and lesbian ordination, painful and divisive though this be, will [also] prove irresistible," Sims said. "I take my stand with the long-suffering saints in the homosexual community who lead us toward that inclusion. The irresistibility of [this] will surely mount as evidence accumulates that we are not embracing biblically repudiated perverse behavior, but bestowed sexual identity -- and that the same sexual ethics of fidelity apply equally to gays and straights in the household of faith."
In a prepared response to Sims' document, Suffragan Bishop Barbara Harris of Massachusetts said that churches have been more focused on survival and charity than on justice. Charity, Harris said, is the giving from one's surplus that is usually painless and selective. "Justice is sacrificial giving. It rarely is painless and, in most instances, involves struggle for systemic change," she said.