Communion Partners push covenant actions
Episcopal News Service. April 29, 2009 [042909-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The spokesman for a group of Episcopal Church bishops and clergy who released an April 22 statement challenging the polity of the church pledged the group's commitment to remaining in the Episcopal Church, but said that his diocese would consider signing onto a proposed Anglican Covenant if General Convention did not agree to do so.
Meanwhile, an expert on Episcopal Church polity labeled as "bizarre" the idea that individual bishops or dioceses could take that step, and questioned what meaning it would have in the wider Episcopal Church or Anglican Communion.
Diocese of Western Louisiana Bishop D. Bruce MacPherson told ENS April 28 that "one common thing [the Communion Partners bishops and rectors who signed the statement] have, and this has been shared from the beginning with the Presiding Bishop, [is that] we are committed to remaining a part of the Episcopal Church as opposed to some of the other directions that have been taken by others."
MacPherson, who said he helped organize the crafting of the statement and is the group's spokesman, acknowledged that the Communion Partners and some clergy and lay people who left the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, San Joaquin and Quincy share "a concern for the constitution, the canons, the polity of the Episcopal Church being lived out in the manner they are designed to be by General Convention."
MacPherson said those concerns center on how the statement signers perceived the Episcopal Church's governance structure wielding power, including Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's effort to reorganize the four dioceses which lost many of their clergy and laity, and her actions in removing some of bishops involved.
Diocese of Fond du Lac (Wisconsin) Bishop Russell Jacobus, another of the 11 diocesan bishops who signed the statement, told ENS that in his 15 years as bishop the roles of Presiding Bishop, the President of the House of Deputies and the Executive Council "have changed and continue to be changing and part of my concern is about that and what that all means."
"I hope this [statement] is a catalyst to help us talk about these things," he added.
Two other signers, bishops William Love of the Diocese of Albany and John Howe of Central Florida, have issued statements expressing similar motivations.
"This document is not intended, nor should it be interpreted as, an attack on the Presiding Bishop, but rather an attempt to provide clarity at a time in which there seems to be great confusion as to the true governance and organizational nature and relationship between each of the dioceses that make up The Episcopal Church and each diocese's relationship with the wider Anglican Communion," Love said in a letter sent to the diocese.
Howe said in an email posted here that the signers "have not one iota of desire to promote schism" but "are not willing to have the structure of our church subverted either by fiat or by court action."
"Our desire is to protect our constituent membership in the Anglican Communion," he wrote. "The Executive Council has said that the only body that can act upon the Anglican Covenant is the General Convention. We do not believe that is accurate. We believe that dioceses and even parishes could decide to 'opt into' it."
The April 22 statement from some, but not all, of the Communion Partners bishops and rectors said they believed that "the ecclesiastical authorities in our dioceses are the Bishops and Standing Committees; no one else may act in or speak on behalf of the dioceses or of the Episcopal Church within the dioceses." The statement also said the signers believe that the Episcopal Church's constitution "lacks any language making General Convention the 'supreme' or 'highest' authority, making its decisions 'final' or making dioceses 'subordinate' to any other office or body."
In light of their conclusions about the church's governance, the group's statement also claims that individual dioceses are constitutionally entitled to sign onto the proposed Anglican covenant, a set of principles intended to bind the Anglican Communion provinces in light of recent disagreements over human sexuality issues and theological interpretation. "Any attempt to prevent willing dioceses from signing the covenant would be unconstitutional and thereby void," the signers say.
The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), which is the Anglican Communion's most representative legislative body and is composed of lay, clergy and episcopal representatives from the Communion's 38 provinces, is expected to consider the latest draft of the proposed covenant during its May 1-13 meeting in Kingston, Jamaica. The current agenda calls for a "decision-making" session on the covenant on May 8.
Should the ACC accept the draft during the Jamaica meeting and ask the communion's 38 province to consider accepting it, Jefferts Schori has said that she would "strongly discourage" any effort to bring such a request to the 76th General Convention in July. The Episcopal Church's Executive Council agreed in January, saying that such a decision would need the full three years between meetings of General Convention for study and discernment.
Commenting on the Communion Partners statement, the Rev. Christopher Webber, author of a number of books about the Episcopal Church, who is based in Sharon, Connecticut, told ENS April 28 that for some of the church's dioceses or bishops to adopt "an item of faith or a relationship to the wider church that other dioceses don't have … seems to me pretty bizarre."
"What you would be doing would be creating a new worldwide church made up of separate dioceses that have signed a covenant. And how would that be different from being, say, the Roman Catholic Church -- a worldwide church made up of dioceses who are obedient to the pope?" he said. "We would become something more like that: a worldwide church with a covenant instead of a pope and many, many bishops who had signed onto it."
Having Episcopal Church dioceses or bishops accepting an Anglican covenant "doesn't make any difference, absent a grand re-structuring of the Anglican Communion in which it reconstitutes itself as a communion of covenant-compliant bishops."
Webber also suggested that the church as the body of Christ "is composed of dioceses that are like the cells of the body" which don't exist apart from each other.
"What they're saying is that we can be related to the Archbishop of Canterbury even if the rest of you aren't. How would part of the body be related to the rest of the Anglican Communion if the whole of it wasn't?" he asked. "It's a weird idea."
In addition, Webber argued, "we don't relate to the other parts of the Anglican Communion via our bishops. They go off to Lambeth and that's very nice, but that's not a governing body of any kind; it's just a consultation of bishops."
"We're not governed by bishops," Webber said of the Episcopal Church. "Bishops can't make decisions for us and so the notion that a bishop can sign this? Well, OK, but what does that prove? It has no legislative standing."
Both Jacobus and MacPherson told ENS that a desire to remain connected to the worldwide Anglican Communion runs high in their dioceses and that they have worked hard to keep Episcopalians in their diocese from feeling the need to leave the church.
Signing on to an Anglican covenant would be "a means by which we can continue to hold each of our respective dioceses together and moving forward as a part of the Episcopal Church," MacPherson said of all the signers.
Cautioning that "I can't speak for everybody," MacPherson said, "I would imagine that it will be a situation of seeing how things move forward with General Convention, providing General Convention an opportunity to address it and deal with it. If General Convention passed it, great. If not, I could see those dioceses individually wanting to take action to sign."
He predicted that action in Western Louisiana would come in the form of a resolution at the diocesan convention in the fall.
Jacobus argued that if General Convention in July is asked to act on the covenant and does not, it "would be an offense to the covenant planning committee and to everybody who's been concerned and involved [including] the primates who seem to have asked several years ago that this may be a direction we want to go."
"We might consider signing the covenant as a diocese, but personally I would like to see the covenant to see what it had to say whether I would encourage the diocese to sign on or not," he added.
Webber called the idea of dioceses signing onto the covenant "a very political thing that really doesn't make any difference, but might sound good and help you negotiate or navigate that particular situation you are in because basically you would still be part of the Episcopal Church."
No matter what the ACC decides to do with the proposed Anglican covenant, General Convention could be called upon to commit the Episcopal Church to accepting a covenant.
Two convention deputies from the Diocese of Northern Indiana, whose bishop, Ed Little, signed the April 22 statement, and one from the Diocese of Pittsburgh, submitted April 24 a convention resolution that would have the church's governing body "make a provisional commitment to abide by the terms of the Anglican Covenant."
The most recent draft of the covenant, known as the Ridley-Cambridge Draft, is available here.
The resolution has not yet been posted on the convention's legislation-tracking site. However, one of the deputies has posted it here.
The proposed General Convention resolution on the covenant would ask dioceses to study the text of the proposed covenant and comment on it during the next triennium. The resolution would also have Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson appoint a task force "to determine what constitutional and/or canonical measures may be necessary in order to make a permanent commitment to the covenant" and report to the next convention, including draft legislation.
The required explanation attached to the resolution says that "it seems appropriate that we voluntarily and temporarily agree to order our life according to the terms of the Cambridge-Ridley Draft until such time as we can ascertain the level of its acceptance by other churches, and consider more fully the nature of our identity as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion of churches."
To be approved, the resolution must have a hearing by a convention legislative committee and then be approved by both houses.