Bishops Determined to Help General Convention Deal with Divisive Issues
Episcopal News Service. March 18, 1999 [99-018]
(ENS) Bishops emerged from a six-day closed meeting at a diocesan retreat center in Texas expressing a determination to help the church deal more constructively with divisive issues that threaten to split the church.
"We are not backing off the issues -- but we are exploring different ways to deal with the issues," said Bishop Catherine Roskam of New York in an open conversation with the press at the end of the March 4-9 meeting at Camp Allen near Houston. She said that the conversation among the 140 bishops had "deepened" enough so that they were able to deal with their differences "in an atmosphere of mutual trust."
Although last summer's Lambeth Conference of 750 bishops of the Anglican Communion was not on the agenda, the confrontation over the issue of homosexuality at the conference was clearly behind the effort to find a better way to deal with issues, according to several bishops.
"There are concerns that don't lend themselves to a vote," observed Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold. "We learned from Lambeth that passing resolutions doesn't resolve the issue." Instead the "questions can remain and the divisions can be very deep. So I think we have been trying to find a way to live our lives and do this for the sake of the larger church."
Bishop Chilton Knudsen of Maine used the earthy analogy that dealing with some issues like sexuality was like picking at a sore, which "only makes it worse and can lead to systemic infection."
Calling it "the best meeting yet" of the spring retreats, established in the wake of a confrontation in the House of Bishops at the 1991 General Convention, Bishop Chester Talton of Los Angeles credited Griswold with "showing us the way forward and helping us deal with more substantial issues."
Bishop Don Wimberly of Lexington added, "We are looking at different ways of doing our work -- totally different." He said that Griswold had used his teaching skills to "bring us into a spiritual realm -- and it's paying tremendous benefits by giving us a better foundation," he said.
The challenge now, according to several bishops, is to take the new spirit of cooperation back into the dioceses. "We seem to be on track but can we carry this spirit back to our dioceses and into General Convention?" asked Bishop Chris Epting of Iowa. He pointed out that a significant number of bishops were not at the Texas meeting. Yet he expressed guarded optimism that the bishops could influence the decision-making process of the church in a way that would curb the threat of further polarization.
Others suggested that there were those on both sides of the issues who seemed equally determined to push their agendas at General Convention. Pointing out that the Texas retreat was not a legislative session, Bishop Claude Payne of Texas said, "Even though we did not vote on it here, the sense was that we will not vote up or down on the hot button sexuality issues at the General Convention in 2000."
Pamela P. Chinnis, president of the House of Deputies, endorsed the hopes of the bishops for a less confrontational General Convention but pointed out that it is a legislative meeting, the highest authority in the Episcopal Church -- and difficult to predict. "The House of Deputies has always been open and willing to work in partnership with the House of Bishops," she said in an interview. "When the houses work together, as they seemed to do at the Philadelphia General Convention in 1997, it benefits the whole church."
Chinnis underscored the right of deputies to introduce resolutions and said that resolutions emerge from many levels of the church -- including diocesan and provincial conventions, as well as boards and agencies of the church. "We must take them all seriously because of our democratic polity," she said.
Griswold emphasized the partnership between the two houses during sessions with the bishops, reminding them that there are two dynamics at work at General Convention. Reporting to his staff after the meeting, he said, "There are the deputies who are focused on legislation because they have been elected for that purpose. And there are the bishops who can look at the community from a different perspective."
Citing the fact that about half of the deputies will be attending their first General Convention next year, Griswold said that the bishops have an on going life together and usually serve in positions of leadership longer than deputies. Yet collaboration is important. "There is a sense of urgency created when deputies need to drive things to closure. There is need for bishops to invite the House of Deputies to search for alternatives to voting something up or down."
Yet both houses must be careful not to avoid issues by not dealing with them. "We need careful listening," Griswold said. "We need a time for growing into an answer without forcing an answer before its time." He also announced that the September meeting of the House of Bishops in San Diego would provide "sustained conversation" about sexuality issues, including an invitation for gay and lesbian members of the church to tell their stories.
In a letter to his diocese, Bishop Richard Shimpfky of El Camino Real said that the bishops represented "only half of this church's leadership" and that "the General Convention is the single magisterium in our most democratic polity." Using the struggle over the ordination of women as an example, he said that it may not be possible to avoid some issues because "justice is justice, be it women's place or the place of homosexual persons in the large room God has called Anglicans to uphold."
Integrity, Beyond Inclusion and the Oasis, organizations which describe themselves as "committed to realizing the full inclusion of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the life of the Episcopal Church, issued a statement reacting "with alarm and objection" to reports the bishops would seek "to avoid legislative action on issues of human sexuality at General Convention." They said that "the bishops appear to have forgotten that the church is more than the episcopal order, but a collaborative endeavor of laity and clergy" and that "they are only one house of General Convention." The statement concluded, "Our vision of General Convention includes conversation, but not to the exclusion of taking stands on the many issues of justice that are before us."
In the weeks before the Texas meeting, the Association of Anglican Congregations on Mission (AACOM) launched an appeal to the world's Anglican bishops for "protection of orthodox Anglicans in the United States until the Episcopal Church in the United States of America is reformed or replaced as a province of the Communion." A separate petition to the primates of the Anglican Communion asked for "emergency intervention" to protect orthodox believers, citing a Lambeth resolution that strengthens the role of primates in the Communion. Attached to the petition was a 145-page, detailed appendix that sought to illustrate "ECUSA's continued violation of Lambeth resolutions and open rejection of them." If the Episcopal Church doesn't comply with the Lambeth resolutions, "the Primates Meeting should take such action as may be appropriate to separate ECUSA from the Anglican Communion and replace it with an alternative province composed of a continuing Episcopal Church of orthodox believing Christians."
The petitions were endorsed by First Promise, a coalition of conservative clergy and laity, who nominated the Rev. John Rodgers, Jr., former dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Pennsylvania, as a potential bishop of a new province at a special meeting in Atlanta.
Bishops of the American Anglican Council (AAC) responded in a statement that said the AACOM petitions "signal some troubling realities" and "may well represent the leading edge of an impending realignment in the Anglican Communion."
At the same time, six active primates and an archbishop, joined by one retired primate, issued an open letter to Griswold February 26, saying that they were obliged to say that "the continuance of action at variance with the Lambeth resolutions, within your own or any other province, would be a grievous wrong and a matter over which we could not be indifferent." It asked the presiding bishop to "examine the directions apparently proposed by some in your province and take whatever steps may be necessary to uphold the moral teaching and Christian faith the Anglican Communion has received."
When the press asked Griswold how he intended to respond, he said he would try to "engage dissident voices to see if common ground can be established." He said that he would respond to the primates in a way that "will deepen bonds and what it means to be Anglican and in communion with one another."
On March 10 Griswold, joined by nine bishops who form his Council of Advice, wrote to the church leaders, "The bonds of communion which we enjoy with other provinces are precious to us, and the mutual sharing of the gifts between us is both a privilege and a blessing."
The letter emphasized the "divergent opinions on the question of homosexuality" in many provinces of the Anglican Communion. It quoted from the four understandings that emerged from the Lambeth Conference sub-section report on human sexuality, ranging from those who believe homosexual orientation is "a disorder" that might be changed to "those who believe that the church should accept and support or bless monogamous covenant relationships between homosexual people and that they may be ordained."
Griswold said that the Episcopal Church is in a process of discernment, "testing the spirits," and he quoted from a letter of Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey to another primate. In the letter Carey pointed out that the issue was discussed at Lambeth for "the very first time" and the resolution stating that homosexual activity is contrary to Scripture "indicates where bishops stand now on the issue; it does not indicate that we shall ever rest there."
Carey said in the letter that the debate at Lambeth "showed me more powerfully than I had ever seen before that argument and controversy solves nothing." He called for a new kind of conversation, "one that begins with respect for the integrity of another and a willingness to study the scriptures together, to reflect on our experience -- including the experience of homosexuals -- and to share in a process" of moral discourse.
Griswold ended the letter by inviting the church leaders "to visit those parts of our church which cause you concern so that you may inquire and learn directly what has animated certain responses" to the Lambeth resolutions. "Such visits will afford you the opportunity not only to query some of our bishops and representatives of their dioceses but also to listen to the experience of homosexual persons, which is mandated by the Lambeth resolution on human sexuality."