LETTER FROM THE BISHOP OF GEORGIA TO THE MEMBERS OF THE DIOCESE

Bishop Scott Benhase sent a letter to the members of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia outlining his reasons for voting to give consent to the election of Canon Mary Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles.


21 April 2010

To the People of the Diocese of Georgia:

A few of our colleagues in the Diocese asked me if I gave my consent to the Reverend Canon Mary Glasspool's election as Bishop Suffragan of Los Angeles. I did. While it is not usual for bishops to report on individual consents, I realize that for some people this is different, so I will try to explain how I came to give my consent. I cannot do so in a sound bite or even in a few sentences. Thus, you might wish to read this when you are not in a hurry.

1. Prior to my election as the 10th Bishop of Georgia, my theology and practice on the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of the Church was well-known. I do not understand homosexuality to be a barrier to any of the four orders of ministry in the Church. I have been quite clear in that theology and practice. So, my consent to Canon Glasspool's election was consistent with what you had already known about me.

2. I would not have given my consent if I knew of any theology or practice of Canon Glasspool that was contrary to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Episcopal Church. Canon Glasspool has been a faithful priest of the Church for decades leading parishes to a renewed sense of their baptismal identity and purpose. More recently, she has served quite effectively as Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of Maryland. From my perspective, we need more bishops like Canon Glasspool who have had extensive experience in the leadership of parishes so they are better able to be strategic partners with congregational leaders for the growth and mission of our parishes.

3. I am aware of some concern about the so-called moratorium. The House of Bishops did agree to a moratorium a number of years ago. That moratorium, however, was not one-sided. It was accepted in the context that certain of our Anglican brothers would refrain from crossing diocesan boundaries. While the House of Bishops exercised the restraint of the moratorium for seven years, others did not practice such restraint even for a year. So, in my judgment, the moratorium was no longing a compelling consideration.

4. I, of course, recognize that some in the Diocese of Georgia disagree with my consent. I welcome that. Disagreement in the Church is hardly new. In some ways, Anglicanism was forged out of an unresolved disagreement in the Elizabethean Settlement. After Queen Elizabeth, Protestants and Catholics within Anglicanism did not somehow see their differences go away, but they were committed to living with one another and serving Jesus together in the church. They were willing to live with what they perceived as significant differences. In many ways, the challenge we face today is not new.

5. I believe that this current dilemma we face needs to be seen and understood in the larger context and truthfulness of Church history and tradition. The catholic faith has always lived with differences while holding fast to the Nicene faith. For example, the post-Constantinian Church has lived with difference in how we interpret the Sixth Commandment. Some have insisted that all killing is wrong all the time. This is the so-called pacifist position. Others have insisted that there are times when violating the Sixth Commandment is the lesser of two evils. From this came the Just War constructs of St Augustine that provided ethical boundaries for the violation of the Sixth Commandment. We have had both positions held faithfully in this Church (with many nuances in between) and neither has insisted that the other is not welcome or that the other is not orthodox.

6. More recently in my lifetime, we have had disagreement about violating Jesus' teaching on divorce. Jesus is clear: If one marries after divorce one commits adultery. That seems to be the plain sense of Scripture. Yet, many have recognized that while divorce is never a "good," sometimes it is the lesser of two evils for all parties. Others, however, still insist that Jesus' words must be interpreted plainly. There are still others in our Church that hold even more nuanced understandings about this that fit somewhere in between the two extremes. Yet, in all these, we remain together in the same Church and receiving God's gracious sacrament from the same
altar.

7. I understand our current dilemma in a similar historical context. Faithful people will disagree about this. I do not understand such disagreement as a problem to be solved, but a dilemma God is asking us to live with for the time being. There are faithful people in the Diocese of Georgia who are anxious for a definitive resolution. I do not believe that is possible right now and may not be in my lifetime on this earth. If that is true, how are we to live together with this dilemma? I think the answer to that question is this: We will live together just like the saints who have gone before us who heeded Blessed Paul's admonitions. We will love and honor one another. We will bear one another's burdens. We will not have a higher opinion of ourselves than we ought. We will not look only to our own concerns, but the concerns of others. We will forgive one another as we have been forgiven.

8. There is a prayer in the Marriage Rite that has always touched me deeply. When praying for the newly married couple, the Church hopes that "their life together" may be "a sign of Christ's love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, that forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair." I see this as an image of our relationship together. I have been Bishop of this Diocese for three months now. In that sense, we are newlyweds together. Like in any relationship that is not worked at and nurtured, we can fall into patterns that lead to estrangement, guilt, and despair. You and I will work hard not to let that happen. We will seek unity, forgiveness, and joy. We will seek to make our life together as bishop and people "a sign of Christ's love for this sinful and broken world." Of course, we will not always achieve such virtues, but I know we will constantly seek them and commit ourselves to practicing them.

As your Bishop, I am committed to leading this Diocese faithfully and effectively. I want those who have differences on the issue of human sexuality to know that I will not play favorites by rewarding those who agree with me or seeking to punish those who do not. All of us share in the mission of Jesus Christ together. All have an important role to play in that mission. I pray that we not allow whatever differences we have to distract us from taking the saving Gospel of Jesus to the world.

+Scott

Thanks to Ann.

"A CANTERBURY TALE"

Jane Kramer's long essay in the New Yorker, titled "A Canterbury Tale", on the Church of England and its internal battle over women bishops is now available online in its entirety. I read the piece earlier because, although I didn't yet have my copy of the magazine, as a subscriber, I have access to the full contents of the online version of the magazine. I still don't have my copy. The New Yorker takes forever to get to my house ever since Katrina, and I don't know if it's the magazine or the Postal Service that is responsible for the delay. Back to the article. It's worth a read.

Here's my comment at The Lead to its first post on the article when only the abstract was available:

Since I don't yet have my copy of the New Yorker, I read the entire article online, and I thought it was excellent. Kramer did her homework before writing. I now understand the Church of England much better than I ever did, and I see how the situation in England drives a good many of the statements of the ABC.

I also understand Rowan Williams a little better after reading Kramer's piece, which does not lead me to further agreement with him. You don't throw certain people under the bus for the sake of saving the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England.

Still, with all Kramer's good work, she doesn't get the difference between the adjective "Episcopal" and the noun "Episcopalian". Why is it so difficult to get that right? Sorry. The mistake grates.

The first words of Kramer's article drew me in like the invitation of a gracious host:

Remember the Church of England, that mythically placid community of Sunday Christians and beaming vicars whom you met in Austen and possibly came to loathe in Trollope?

Moving on, I'll highlight several quotes entice you to read the essay.

It took seventeen years of wrenching Synod debate for women to be ordained, and when they were, some five hundred male priests fled in protest—two-thirds of them, as the saying goes, “to Rome.” The prospect of women’s elevation to the House of Bishops has been even more divisive. This isn’t a question of High Church and Low Church differences. England’s church has always been (the common word) “inclusive.” It grew as an uneasy accommodation between the traditionalists of the Apostolic Creed and Catholic ritual and devotions now known as Anglo-Catholics and the brimstone-and-Bible Protestants born in the chapels of the Reformation, making common cause against the Church of Rome. Today, it covers a sliding scale of beliefs and practices, with the majority of England’s Anglican parishes somewhere in the middle. But the argument about women bishops cuts across all the old divisions. Thousands of conservative Anglicans—priests and laymen—on both sides of the High Church–Low Church divide still refuse to take Communion from a female priest, and would certainly refuse to take it from any priest ordained by a female bishop.

The wenches cause such distress to the advocates of patriarchy in the Church of England, forcing them to make wrenching decisions. How cruel of the wenches!

“How do you eat an elephant?” he [Rowan Williams] said, with something between a chuckle and a sigh, when I asked how he hoped to hold his church together, given that the demands of Anglican women were so completely at odds with the demands of Anglican men whose own inclusion specifically involved excluding those women from episcopal service. “I suppose it’s by using as best I can the existing consultative mechanisms to create a climate—and I think that’s often the best, to create a climate,” he told me. “There’s a phrase which has struck me very much: that you can actually ruin a good cause by pushing it at the wrong moment and not allowing the process of discernment and consent to go on, and that’s part of my view.” He thought that with time, patience, and enough discussion within the Church you could temper the opposition to female bishops—despite the fact that three synods since 1994 have tried to address the issue, and the opposition remains intractable. His friends call this “Rowan’s Obama syndrome”: the persistence of a commendable but not very realistic belief in the power of reason to turn your enemies into allies.

Perhaps if someone walked the ABC through a realistic appraisal of the climate he has created, he'd come to see that his climate plan is not working well, and following "the process of discernment and consent" as he envisages it, women could wait decades for their opportunity to become bishops.

With respect to "Rowan's Obama syndrome", Obama seems to have learned the lesson that his original plan to work with the opposition wasn't working, and he changed his plan. May we hope that the ABC will see that all is not sunny in the climate that he's created and consider a change of plan? I guess not.

The words of a member of the opposition to women bishops in the Church of England:

Geoffrey Kirk, an unabashedly misogynist London vicar who is the national secretary of Forward in Faith, told me that, for him, the tipping point was the Episcopalian bishops’ election of Jefferts Schori as their presiding bishop. He called it “a fundamental scandal” and added, “I think Mrs. Jefferts Schori is a layperson. It’s not my doing. They decided.” He said that a shoplifter was “more qualified, per se,” to be a bishop than a woman was, so long as the shoplifter didn’t say that shoplifting was good, or that he was a Marxist spreading the wealth around.

Does the ABC see any hope of creating an amicable climate between the members of the Church of England who favor the ordination of women as bishops, especially the women in the church, and the likes of Vicar Geoffrey Kirk with his insulting comments? I don't.

Conservative evangelicals—which is to say fundamentalist and, as often as not, charismatic—are one of the only expanding groups in England’s otherwise dwindling church. Vaughan Roberts, the rector of an evangelical church in Oxford called St. Ebbes, told me that his own congregation had spilled over into three other locations, outside the parish structure, in five years and now amounted to nine Sunday congregations, with a total of eleven hundred people.
....

He has been “encouraged” in his mission, he says, by the example of London’s Holy Trinity Brompton, the closest thing to a megachurch in the Church of England. Holy Trinity Brompton was once a tranquil and quite traditional church. Today, as often as not, it is in full charismatic swing. It serves four thousand people, many of them twenty-somethings, at staggered Sunday services, and is said to be the wealthiest parish church in England—even without taking into account the worldwide distribution of its “Alpha Program,” which, like Vaughan’s program, leads you up a smooth path to Jesus, truth, and a cheerful Christian life.

Therein lies a mega-problem for the Archbishop of Canterbury. If enough of the Anglo-Catholics accept Rome's offer to jump the Tiber, then the numbers in the Church of England will weigh heavily on the side of the conservative evangelical, fundamentalist, sometimes charismatic church communities.

There's much more that I'd like to quote, but I've probably gone beyond fair use already. Perhaps the powers at the New Yorker will not take note of my humble blog. I urge you to take the time to read the essay. I've admired Jane Kramer's previous writing, and my admiration increases with this example of her diligent research and her graceful prose style.

H/T to The Lead for the link to the entire piece.

GOOD-BYE ACADIA PLANTATION

Pictured above is Acadia Plantation just outside Thibodaux, Louisiana. Ormonde Plater, who took the picture, spent his boyhood at Acadia Plantation. A mega-developer, Jake Giardina, bought the property and, demolition of the old plantation house began yesterday. Read Ormonde's account of his visit yesterday and the history of the house at his blog Through the Dust.

UPDATE: From the comments to Ormonde at Through the Dust:

DeeDee DiBenedetto, the Baton Rouge genealogist and historian, asked me to post the following in her name:

"Owning historical property, especially a historic home in a community, makes the owner a part of the community. Note the root word commune. Just as your right to swing your fist ends when you threaten to swing it into my nose, a property owner’s right to do as he pleases with his historical property ends when it threatens the history of the community. Historical preservation areas preserve a look and feel of a community, and the owners in these areas should consider the entire community."

DeeDee is right.

THE LONELY BRAIN CELL

Once upon a time there was a female brain cell that, by mistake, happened to end up in a man's head.

She looked around nervously because it was all dark and empty and quiet.

"Hello?" she cried, but got no answer.

"Is there anyone here?" she cried a little louder, but still no answer.

Now the female brain cell started to feel alone and scared and so she yelled at the top of her voice, "HELLO, IS THERE ANYONE HERE?"

And then she heard a faint voice from far, far away . . . .




"We're down here."

Temptation lurks. Paul (A.) and Doug are my two worst sources of temptation.

For the above, don't blame me. Blame Paul (A.).

PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY

From the comments:

Josh Indiana said...

Just received an e-mail from Leonardo Ricardo, 7:40pm ET: "the surgery went well."

Thank you for your prayers but don't stop.

josh

Please pray that Leo continues to do well and that his eye will be fixed once and for all. Leo blogs at Eruptions at the Foot of the Volcano, if you want to leave a word there.

HELEN HAS ENOUGH!

From Margaret and Helen:

Margaret, please tell Howard that I love him because he loves you. But that is about all the reaching across the aisle that I can handle. A few years back, millions of people across this nation and across the globe marched for peace. George Bush ignored us and we had to endure his lazy ass being in the White House for eight years.

So now a black man named Barack Obama, elected by the will of the people, has decided to fight for the poor, and work for world peace… and a bunch of white guys who think Fox really is News just can’t stand it.

Well, they can kiss my ass because I am tired of their belly aching.

Go, Helen! Read the rest of Helen's post, "We survived Bush. You’ll survive Obama.."

Thanks to Wade.

THE REAL SIN OF SODOM

From the Rev. Patrick S. Cheng, at The Huffington Post:

To many anti-gay Christians, I'm nothing more than a "sodomite" who is damned for all eternity. It doesn't matter that I've spent the last decade immersed in the Bible, ancient biblical languages, and the Christian theological tradition. It doesn't matter that I've dedicated my life to preaching, teaching, and ministering to all people, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. The simple fact that I'm an openly gay man makes all of that irrelevant. To anti-gay Christians, God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in chapter 19 of the Book of Genesis is a warning to people like me.

Ironically, I believe that these anti-gay Christians actually have it backwards. The true sin of the Sodomites as described in the Bible has nothing to do with same-sex acts per se. Rather, the ancient Sodomites were punished by God for far greater sins: for attempted gang rape, for mob violence, and for turning their backs on strangers and the needy who were in their midst. In other words, the real sin of Sodom was radical inhospitality. And, ironically, it is often anti-gay Christians who are most guilty of this sin today.

That the sin of the ancient Sodomites was inhospitality was not news to me, but I expect that many who read the piece will not have known. In the desert environment, refusing hospitality to travelers could have meant death for them. Even today, people in the Middle East take hospitality far more seriously than folks in the West. Read the entire article, because it's quite good. I'm pleased to see this information at The Huffington Post.


H/T to Ann at Facebook for the link.

"JUST GOOD FRIENDS"

From the Telegraph:

Should we be sending congratulations to the happy couple? No, of course the Nigerian archbishop and leading voice of the Anglican communion’s anti-gay brigade is no more than just good friends with John Chew, the Primate of South East Asia.

Don't blame me. Blame Susan S.

SPEECH AND SERMON FATIGUE

I'm suffering from speech and sermon fatigue from attempting to read sermons and addresses by the bishops attending the Global South Gathering. I need a rest, however, I offer you these nuggets from the gathering.

The day started with Archbishop Robert Duncan presiding at Holy Communion. In his homily, he reminded us that we, who are “deeply, truly and permanently loved” are truly free. We do not “go our own way” to find freedom, but we come to Jesus, the bread of life.

From the list of attendees in Singapore:

The Episcopal Church – Communion Partners Representatives

the Rt. Rev. JOhn Howe, Central Florida

the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence, South Carolina

Church of England

all three stuck in London

The Lead at the Episcopal Café gives good coverage of the meeting.

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE EXAM

If you need a good laugh, try reading through these children's science exam answers...

Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.

Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.

Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.

Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
(Brilliant logic - love this!)
A: Keep it in the cow.

Q: What causes the tides in the oceans?
A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature hates a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.

Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.

Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.

Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.

NB. The kid got an A+ for this answer!

Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.
A: Premature death.

Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? ( e.g., abdomen)
A: The body is consisted into three parts -- the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain; the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels A, E, I, O, and U.

Q: What is the fibula?
A: A small lie.

Q: What does 'varicose' mean?
A: Nearby.

Q: Give the meaning of the term 'Caesarean Section.'
A: The Caesarean Section is a district in Rome.

Q: What does the word 'benign' mean?'
A: Benign is what you will be after you are eight.

Thanks to Erika.