At the Archbishop of Canterbury's website, you will find Dr. Rowan Williams' reflections on the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Anaheim, California. Read it and parse it, if you like.
My quick and unofficial reflections (which I may come to regret) follow:
Dr. Williams' response is so very Dr. Williams. He suggests, once again, the two-track system that will reflect the differing paths that members of the Communion may choose with respect to signing on to the Covenant. Of those provinces which choose not to sign the Covenant:
If those who elect this model do not take official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the 'covenanted' body participates, this is simply because within these processes there has to be clarity about who has the authority to speak for whom.'
Translation: I wanna be the Anglican pope.
However, a realistic assessment of what Convention has resolved does not suggest that it will repair the broken bridges into the life of other Anglican provinces; very serious anxieties have already been expressed.
TEC needs to get out the tools to begin repairing the broken bridges. What a laugh!
“Whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions.” Therefore, he stated, they should not be ordained priests and especially not bishops.
To teh gays: The Church won't recognize same-sex unions.
Those who are not married to their partners are living in sin.
Those living in sin can't be in leadership positions in the church.
Mind-boggling! Then Dr. Williams should be consistent and defrock those priests in the Church of England living in "their chosen lifestyle".
He throws the word "church" around with such abandon that it's hard to know to which "church" he refers. There is no world-wide Anglican Church.
So much fodder, but how much effort should I devote to this reflection by Dr. Williams?
The Times news story seems to imply that Dr. Williams is a tad, just a tad, unrealistic about the state of the Anglican Communion.
The use of the word "lifestyle" says it all. And to call it 'chosen' only points to his disconnection from reality.
ReplyDeleteWhat is amazing is that he finds himself arguing against the bedrock foundation of Anglicanism: no rule from foreign prelates.
ReplyDeleteIt is his attempt to centralize authority that will be the undoing of his plans.
I hope that the Executive Council put out a decision that no diocese or parish is to sign on to any covenants, that we do it as one body or not at all.
You know, I used to love our connection to the Church of England and to all of that history. At this point I can no longer care about that past. It is time to let Rowan and his followers in England do what they want and stop trying to define ourselves in relationship to England. The Episcopal Church is a national church. Although it is nice to be friends with foreign prelates such as Canterbury and Rome, none of them should matter more to us than the heads of any other church or ecclesiastic body.
If we were no longer tied to the Church of England it would bother me little more than not being tied to the Patriarch of all Russia. A sad reflection of the brokenness of Christianity but not something to cause us to put on hold other efforts.
lifestyle sez it all. Perhaps there is something in the air at Lambeth Palace that rots the brain; this is the same man who wrote years agothat gay sexual relationships can “reflect the love of God” in a way that is comparable to marriage.
ReplyDeleteAs reported in the Times of London last year, he described his belief that biblical passages criticising homosexual sex were not aimed at people who were gay by nature.
He argued that scriptural prohibitions were addressed to heterosexuals looking for sexual variety. He wrote: “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.” Dr Williams described his view as his “definitive conclusion” reached after 20 years of study and prayer.
I wrote most of my "reflections" in an email to Lapin, who sent me the link to the letter. Then, it occurred to me that what was in the email was pretty much all I wanted to say. I don't see myself spending much more time and effort on the ABC's reflections. Such cluelessness (or feigned cluelessness?) seems not worth a whole lot of my time.
ReplyDeleteI once loved our association with the CofE, too, but I'm tiring of the "chosen leadership style "of Dr. Williams.
IT, it seems that he is not being true to his own convictions. Don't get me started!
I honestly think he's popped a clog. I vote we pray for him--and ignore him entirely.
ReplyDeleteAnd for anyone who wouldn't mind having a gay priest with an English accent, I suspect they may be flooding the U.S. job market soon...polish up your parish profiles and get ready for the New British Invasion.
Doxy
Act locally, ignore globally. I have a sensitive "Crap Filter" that turns on whenever most bureaucrats open their pie holes. This surely is one of them.f
ReplyDeletePrior Aelred posted on Thinking Anglicans that he was "told by an American bishop who asked [Williams] flat out, why, since there were more blessings of same sex unions in the Diocese of London than the rest of the WWAC put together, TEC was singled out & was told, 'Because you are open about it.'"
ReplyDeleteWhen it gets down to brass tacks, there will be a multi-track system in the Church of England (they already have a separate arrangement for the FiF Anglo Catholics, who now want what amounts to a separate church within a church). The Evos and their FOCA-buddies (there's a nice expression -must remember that one) will have a field day.
Over the past couple of years, Ruth Gledhill has learnt quite a bit about what's what with the separatists. With the bile that is vomited day in, day out, over at her blog, she could hardly do otherwise.
I am with Dennis. We need to just let the Church of England go.
ReplyDeleteIn Al-Anon they talk about "releasing with love." The idea is simply that sometimes some people are just so messed up that nothing you do will make it any better. At that point, you just let them move out of your life and wish them the best.
I think that we may have reached this point with parts of the Anglican Communion, including the Church of England. The institution is in serious trouble. It can barely meet its own current pension obligations, let alone future pension payments. It cannot afford to pay to place current and future theological school graduates. A considerable part of the Church - the hard-line Anglo-Catholics - has essentially seceded with its own network of parishes and bishops. It looks like the hard-line Evangelicals associated with Reform are about to do the same. As these groups leave, they may opt to refuse to pay their quota to the diocese plunging the Church into ever deeper fiscal problems. The Church of England is looking more and more like General Motors, and there is only so long that this kind of dysfunction can last.
If this is the inner circle, as Ruth Gledhill called it, then give me the outer one. I am sure that once we are set aside, the Canadian and Scottish Churches will not be far behind. And now that South Africa is experimenting with same-sex blessings and Ghana is ordaining women to the priesthood, we may find some company there as well.
Let the Church of England and its command and control mechanisms of the Covenant, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Lambeth Conference just go there own way. We wish them all the best, and we can send all the money we just to give them to some worthy projects which really advance the Kingdom of God.
Mimi --just before you arrived at GC, we got the "visitation" --I saw the +ABC a table away from me, couldn't resist, and walked up to shake his hand and welcome him Stateside. About three people moved to interpose themselves between us, but he turned and greeted me anyway.... but it was not a greeting of one human to another--it was as though he looked right through me. I thought then that he must look at all the "little" people in the world as an abstract, not a reality. So, I am not surprised that he can speak of 'homosexuality' in the abstract in one way, and deal with real persons in another....
ReplyDeleteI think the two-tier system he suggests is a disaster waiting to happen.... and is an affront to the Gospel. Feh!
Ah, but he doesn't want the whole thing to fall apart on his watch. Thus, he says things that he thinks will win him back the respect of ACNA, Akinola, Orombi et al (things that are, as others have said, 180 degrees out from prior writings) and the net result is...what? No respect from the conservatives, deeply and rightly hurt feelings from those whose rights he dismisses, and a sense that he is, in the end, irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteSad how a great mind can be so misused.
Sad, too, how folks forget how Jesus called us to serve "the least of these," except when they make a "lifestyle choice" that some do not understand.
I hope TEC keeps some steel in its spine.
"chosen lifestyle"
ReplyDeleteThose 2 words end all of ++Williams' credibility with me. He didn't listen, and he doesn't care.
Being gay is a "chosen lifestyle" just as much as being white is a "chosen lifestyle."
Maybe it's time to start seriously thinking about an Episcopal Communion with branch offices in London.
I'm with Doxy, this really is beginning to look as though he is losing the plot.
ReplyDeleteThis is neither intelligent, nor theologically nuanced, nor common sense, nor scientific, nor likely to further any kind of unity, nor will it appease the conservatives.
It's sad to see what's become of that once great man.
Ah, but the chosen part is the "openly gay" thing. The Abp believes that if all the gay people would just keep quiet about it, like they have for hundreds of years, everything would be fine.
ReplyDeleteNone of them can explain why honesty is, in this particular case alone, a bad thing.
Thanks for the preview... and commentary, Grandmere. I will have to wait until later this evening when I can have an "adult beverage" at my side before actually reading his entire post, and responding in my own way.
ReplyDeleteAs others have noted, his use of the term "chosen lifestyle" indicates that he is clueless. Naturally, people choose to face discrimination and derision and denials of promotion in their jobs! Doesn't everyone want that?
Well, when he becomes the Anglican pope I know that one of his first cardinals will be the bishop of my diocese who holds the same views on "human sexuality".
Sigh.
Since the Queen chooses the Archbishop of Canterbury, and same-gender marriage is legal in Britain.... is there any hope that the next one will reflect this reality?
ReplyDeleteRowan Williams exemplifies what I despise most about clergy who go through great intellectual machinations try to sell the bizarre notion that they "love" those against whom they promote discrimination.
ReplyDeleteHe's as useless as a Texas Post Turtle.
Hi my sweets. I had to take my grandson to the doctor, so I've been missing all the fun here. Yes to all of the above.
ReplyDeleteIf it's true that the ABC told a TEC bishop that he singled us out "because you are open about", then I assume that he thinks deception is a virtue. Understand that I'm not blaming the priests who are still in the closet in the CofE, but if he said that, then I am appalled that an archbishop in a Christian church defends his words by holding up deception as model of a way of life.
Mike, he's worse than a Texas Post Turtle, because he doesn't just sit there. He makes mischief.
Don't think there's a plot for him to loose, Erika. He can no more control this than King Cnut (watch the spelling!) could control the waves, or human intervention could deflect Katrina or lock the St Andreas fault. Whole bundle of factors, a few 400 years old or 200, most 19th & 20th century, coming together in the age of the Internet to create the Perfect Storm. It's still building and people like us, both sides of the fence, are stoking it and bringing it to a head.
ReplyDeleteEnough metaphors mixed for right now. If you think the progressives are PO'd, check the coals being heaped on Rowan's head over at Stand Firm. 150 comments - largely negative, some super hostile - and counting. They're a whole lot madder than we are, but ain't that always the case?
To paraphrase that great line in "Fiddler on the Roof": "Is there a blessing for the ABC? Why yes: God bless the ABC - and keep him far away from us!"
ReplyDeleteIt will greatly help the Episcopal Church to be less Anglocentric. I don't care whether we're in the inner circle or outer circle according to the archbishop of some two-bit town I've never seen.
ReplyDeleteThe average person in the street doesn't give a rat's patoot about Cranmer, Henry VIII and all that, but about real answers to real questions - and real friendship while we look for answers together.
Mission and evangelism start where the sidewalk to my house connects with the sidewalk down my street.
Here's Prior Aelred's quote from Thinking Anglicans:
ReplyDeleteI was told (confidentially, alas) by someone working for the ABC that he has (knowingly) ordained partnered gay men to the episcopate. Also told by an American bishop who asked him flat out, why, since there were more blessings of same sex unions in the Diocese of London than the rest of the WWAC put together, TEC was singled out & was told, "Because you are open about it."
Posted by: Prior Aelred on Monday, 27 July 2009 at 5:27pm BST
In that same thread, Tobias Haller says this:
It is not "incongruity." It is a "mystery" as marvelous as that of the Incarnation itself.
In the meantime, I find the document on the whole to be helpful. Read with care, you will see it is all about process and development of doctrine. While some are reading it as a "No" to same-sex marriage or ordination of bishops, it is rather a very well framed "Not Yet." There is a huge difference, and I think we all know the way the Wind is blowing -- where it wills, and not as we choose.
Posted by: Tobias Haller on Monday, 27 July 2009 at 11:07pm BST
Not yet, but when?
I so agree with you Mimi! I read his whole response on Episcopal Cafe and was furious! So, if the Bible says that "Gays and lesbians are wrong (sinful, if you will)," do we have to rescind having women as decision makers in the world,and the church, or how about slaves? What do we accept, and not accept as law according to the Bible!
ReplyDeleteTo say I am furious with his arrogance is putting it mildly!
I think I understand why my abolitionist ancestors in the 18th century were Unitarian (and some of my CoE ancestors were slave owners in Jamaica).
ReplyDeleteNote that Rowan Williams is limited by being in an established church. Cause too much trouble and the state might actually interfere (or at least be more careful in choosing the next archbishop).
I am cutting him no slack. He is dead to me.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how he feels when he writes words like these. Is he torn apart? Does he justify them to his own satisfaction? He is a mystery, and he pleases no one.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how he feels when he writes words like these. Is he torn apart? Does he justify them to his own satisfaction?
ReplyDeleteLots of Scotch, and late night prayers to an entity yet to be revealed!!
Do the majority of communicants in the C of E or TEC actually give a rat's bum about this? On his own terms and on the terms of many others, there's a strong case to be made that if his sitting on the fence keeps the ship on an even keel (back mixing the metaphors already), then he's doing his best job in the circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI don't see "Because you are open about it" as evidence of deception on his part - a deceitful person wouldn't have made that comment unguardedly in the first place - but think rather that he was making, a little incautiously, an honest statement of fact. Also demonstrative of a difference between the English and Americans - a "so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses" thing.
Maybe, to give us a base-line, Saintly Ramblings or some other simple country clergyman could tell us where on a 1 to 10 scale, 10 being, I gather, the rather un-English business of the Exchange of Peace, this would resonate with his parishioners?
I'm feeling very hurt by this, and need to ask myself why do I continue to give my time, talent and money to churches that continue to reject and abuse GLBT people?
ReplyDeleteIt's no wonder that so many GLBT people I know "choose" to sleep in on Sunday mornings.
Lapin, most of the people in the pews on both sides of the pond are, very likely, not paying attention to Rowan's words. Sometimes, I wonder what audience in the broader Communion the ABC has in mind when he gives his speeches and writes his letters. I'm sick to death of trying to parse his words and tease out the meaning. I must conclude he's not speaking to or writing for me.
ReplyDeleteTell me how a statement such as he allegedly made to the TEC bishop does not mean that he is suggesting that deception is the way to go.
Suzer, I don't blame you, and I don't blame the LGTB folks who "choose" to sleep in. We should pay much less attention to what the ABC says in the future. Now that the leadership in TEC has shown that it has spine, we can focus on doing what God calls us to do. Let him prattle on. We don't have to give great weight to what he says.
This, of course, is similar to what our RC brothers and sisters, busy doing what needs to be done, hear proclamations from the Vatican. (Hi, Fran!)
ReplyDeleteKJ, exactly. (Hi, Fran!) We can consider his proclamations background noise as we go about our business of doing what needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, I thought that after a period of further reflection I might consider my quick reflections overly harsh, but that's not the case at all. I'm unrepentant so far.
Oops! I missed a word or two. (I blame trying to make a living at the same time as I blog.)
ReplyDeleteThis, of course, is similar to what our RC brothers and sisters, busy doing what needs to be done, experience when they hear proclamations from the Vatican. (Hi, Fran!)
Mimi -- on your sidebar you have a quote by Tobias Haller:
ReplyDelete"He is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last — he is the cause of our seeking him as well as the goal whom we seek...."
It is time that we (and our bishops) realize for once and for all that "He" is NOT the ABC and that "He" does not dispense cucumber sandwiches on the grounds of Lambeth.
Susankay, excellent reminder.
ReplyDelete"Sometimes, I wonder what audience in the broader Communion the ABC has in mind when he gives his speeches and writes his letters."
ReplyDeleteI think that it is clear that he is writing primarily for the bishops that he knows, even if he is addressing the letter, say, to The Episcopal Church. We (the laity and the "lower" clergy) may think that he is speaking to us, but it's like the speeches of the king: He is addressing the nobles and is not concerned with the peasantry.
Tobias adverted briefly to the meeting with the Archbishop and the gay TEC contingent, but we have had no report (from either the TEC or CoE side). I wonder if we ever will?
Well, it's good to know that the ABC is talking to bishops. I'll know now that I don't need to pay attention.
ReplyDeleteTobias refers us to Pluralist's parody for the best take on the ABC.