"Absent Without Leaving"

Andrew Gerns writes of the direction that certain bishops in TEC seem to be heading at the Daily Episcopalian. Both Bishops Love and Lawrence were amongst the seven bishops who recently visited Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

In the first of seven meetings around the Diocese of Albany, the Times-Union reports a statement by Bishop William Love that is very telling. He said that the militantly conservative stance of the diocesan leadership is justified because parishes that might have broken away from the Diocese (and the Episcopal Church) have not. Albany, he says, is in contact with "all of the Anglican Communion."
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Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina says that he is considering a position of withdrawal from participation in the Episcopal Church but not from the Church itself.
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Instead of attempting to remove the diocese from the Episcopal Church, Lawrence proposes non-participation as a “protest” using language that combines civil disobedience (we will do this until the Episcopal Church repents) and psychology (we are creating boundaries). What it really means is a decision to isolate.

As the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana moves forward to elect a bishop, I hope and pray that we do not elect a bishop who will encourage the members of the diocese and the diocesan leadership to exit from the Episcopal Church. However, I believe that is not very likely to happen, because the dioceses who withdrew from TEC and hoped to take the property with them are losing court cases one by one. Now the bishops realize that if they go, they will likely go empty-handed, without the property, and that changes the picture a bit.

My concern now is that we may elect a bishop who will isolate our diocese from the Episcopal Church. And to whom will we relate? In the quote above, Bishop Love says that his diocese will relate to "all of the Anglican Communion". Who is this "all"? My concern is that the connection with TEC may be quite tenuous, which would not be at all to my liking and not at all what I signed on to when I became a part of the Episcopal Church community.

As Gerns says:

But as long as the Bishops shows up where they are (minimally) supposed to, and as long as their Standing Committees do the barest canonical essentials of their jobs, as long as the Diocese send deputies to General Convention, and as long as no Bishop, diocesan convention or parish says "I am no longer Episcopalian", then there is no reason to consider the bishop or diocese as having left the Episcopal Church.

Thirteen years ago, I began to regularly attend my Episcopal Church. Twelve years ago, I was formally received into my Episcopal Church community. I joined the Episcopal Church, and I want to remain in the Episcopal Church. I wish my diocese to be relationship with other dioceses in TEC. My hope and my prayer is that we will elect a bishop who shares that desire to remain in the church into which he was consecrated bishop and who will not follow the path of Bishop Lawrence and suggest "...a resolution...that this diocese begin withdrawing from all bodies of governance of TEC that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture."

Each time I reread Bishop Lawrence's address to his clergy, I am shocked that a bishop in the Episcopal Church could speak those words.