Seven Bishops To Meet With The Episcopal Institute

This announcement was posted by Tom Woodward to the House of Bishops/Deputies listserv on behalf of The Episcopal Institute, and as you can see below he has given permission for it to be published offlist, under the conditions he specifies. I wonder whether any of you might be interested in reposting it on your blogs.

I attach a clean plaintext copy.

Regards,

Paul (A.)

The Episcopal Institute has announced its plan to meet with seven moderately progressive bishops of the Episcopal Church to respond to the current meeting between the Archbishop of Canterbury and seven American bishops who have publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the democratic process in the Episcopal Church.

The two sites under active consideration for the upcoming meeting are the recently dedicated Athanasius Room at the recently reclaimed Diocesan House in Fort Worth and the Starbucks located across the street from the Trinity School for Ministry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The agenda for the consultation is to consider several alternatives to the rumored Canterbury proposal of a "two-tiered" Anglican community. A spokesperson for the Episcopal Institute noted that "The problem here is three-fold. First, the notion of 'two tiers' is more appropriate to a football stadium than an international worshiping community. Second, if the concept of tiers is really accepted, it will not be long before we have between thirty-five and forty-seven different tiers given the nuances of the multiplicity of issues such as human sexuality, social justice, the authority of the laity, and differing styles of ecclesiastical vesture that are before the Church. Third, the notion of a multi-tiered Christian group has been tried before -- with women, racial minorities and others -- and has always proven inadequate to maintaining status quos."

A different and more subdued spokesperson for TEI revealed that two different orderings of the Anglican Communion will be proposed at the upcoming meetings. The first is to divide the Anglican Communion into three different groups: PLATINUM, GOLD and BRONZE. PLATINUM membership would be for those who agree with The Episcopal Institute's goals, including the full inclusion of all Baptized members in all ministries of the church. GOLD members would include those who embrace most of TEI's goals while respecting their differences with TEI as part of Anglican Comprehensiveness. BRONZE membership will be reserved for those who insist on a single interpretation (their own) of key parts of the Bible and who regard all Tradition as Absolutely Binding, except the parts they don't like. There will also be an additional SILVER category for the lay people throughout the Communion who wonder what the problem is when the core doctrine of the historic creeds is not at issue. SILVER members will possess all the rights, responsibilities and regard as Gold or Platinum members.

The second proposed ordering of the Anglican Communion, favored by older members of the Institute, is the radical notion of Comprehensiveness, with differing provinces respecting the differing experience of other provinces while considering the unity of the Communion inhering in a common belief in Jesus Christ and the decision to share with one another in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

The Episcopal Institute has requested that attending bishops be accompanied by several clergy and lay people from their dioceses in recognition of the importance of the full ministry of the Episcopal Church and the uncommon wisdom of the laity.

Does this count as a "press release" for offlist distribution purposes?
Possibly Jake and certainly MadPriest might be interested in promulgating.

Cordially,

Paul (A.)


Yes, this is a document you can use any way you wish. I will try to get it onto Rowan's desk early next week. I'm sure he will be regretting that he hadn't read this before agreeing to meet with the Dissenting 7. You can attribute it to The Episcopal Institute. Let me know who you send it to - the other members of TEI would like to see the responses.

Tom

Thank you, Paul (A.) for forwarding this very important announcement from TEI. I forgive you for not specifically mentioning my name to Tom Woodward, because you were kind enough to forward the press release anyway, after you left my name out.