Of all of the responses about the resolutions made at the Lambeth Conference, the most common seems to be that of "they're not binding." In a legal, canonically correct way, this statement is true. Theologically, however, the ease with which we say what is or isn't binding raises some significant questions ... especially in this church which, out of all the Christians in the world, has chosen to call itself the Episcopal Church.

"Episcopal" comes from the Greek word episcopos, which means "bishops." In 1789, the title "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A." made both our identity - that of the (only) protestant church in the United States with bishops, i.e. the Anglican Church - and our high theology of and respect for the episcopate perfectly clear. These things were reiterated roughly 100 years later in the fourth point of the 1888 Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, which affirmed the historic episcopate as a requirement for churches wishing to be in communion with our own.

Some 100 years after that, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission reiterated them again, stating that ordination was "a different realm of the gifts of the spirit." By voting to allow retired bishops to continue to have voice and vote in the House of Bishops, the 1997 General Convention agreed once more, saying essentially that unlike the Lutherans, for example, in the Episcopal Church the spiritual gifts related to ordination to the episcopate do not end upon retirement. One could argue that it is the unchanging Episcopal firmness on the special status of the historic episcopate that resulted in the rejection of full communion by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

All of which is to say that we Episcopalians have and have always had a high respect for the episcopate. We truly believe that in the sacrament of ordination the Holy Spirit of God works in very profound and wonderful ways. As our name and our actions proclaim, we think bishops are special. Whether they be male or female, black or white, active or retired, we proudly process them, overlooking human failings and proclaiming ex opere operato, ex opere operantis ... until their perspectives differ from our own.

A few years ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned students of the Virginia Theological Seminary about the problems of sexual sin. He began his talk with the words, "As your archbishop ..." to which a seminarian later responded "He's not my archbishop." While that response may also have been correct on legal and canonical grounds, it is profoundly disturbing on theological ones. The problem is that if we were consistent about our theology of the episcopate, we should pay lots of attention to what an archbishop - any archbishop - would have to say.

Thinking about Lambeth, that gathering of Anglican bishops of the entire world, one would think that people who call themselves Episcopalian would - if not immediately genuflect - take resolutions made therein very seriously, whether they be legally binding or not. After all, irrespective of cultural, economic or educational differences, all of those "other" bishops have had the same laying on of hands and share in the same "gift of the spirit," the same historic episcopate, and ministry of apostleship as our own. One would think, therefore, that each would be worthy of the same respect.

In reality, the Episcopal Church is acting more and more like a congregational church. Despite diocesan and General Conventions that make resolutions and truly struggle to lead us as a church, our congregations and ordained leaders do pretty much what they want, often leaving their parishioners with the idea that to be an Episcopalian means that "anything goes," rather than the idea that to be an Episcopalian means "living under the guidance of the conventions of the church and the apostolic teaching and leadership of the episcopoi." Lambeth is a wake-up call on issues not of sexual but rather of ecclesiastical identity and authority, a wake-up call which raises these questions: Who and what are we? Are we an episcopal or a congregational church? o

The Rev. Benjamin Shambaugh is the rector of St. John's Church, Olney, Md.