Episcopal Bishops Balk at Anglican Leaders' Demands

Today’s Top Five

1. “I would accept schism” For a century, the fight between liberals and conservatives in the mainline denominations has usually meant that conservatives have broken away to create new denominations while asserting that it’s the liberals who have truly departed from the church and its teachings. It has been difficult to convince the liberals that they’re the ones who are schismatic. But while that story looked to be happening again in the fight between orthodox Anglicans and liberal Episcopalians, it now appears that something different may indeed occur. Faced with a unanimous ultimatum from the world’s Anglican leaders to bar gay bishops and same-sex union blessings by September 30, Episcopalian liberals seem to be realizing that church unity is incompatible with their promotion of a new sexual ethic and rejection of biblical authority.

“I would accept schism,” Bishop Steven Charleston, president of the Episcopal Divinity School, told The Washington Post. “I would be willing to accept being told I’m not in communion with places like Nigeria if it meant I could continue to be in a position of justice and morality. If the price I pay is that I’m not considered to be part of a flawed communion, then so be it.”

Mark Sisk, the bishop of New York, is one of the most-quoted voices of rebellion this week. “Being part of the Anglican Communion is very important to me,” he told The New York Times. “But if the price of that is I have to turn my back on the gay and lesbian people who are part of this church and part of me, I won’t do that.”

Notably, the gay and lesbian people who are part of Sisk’s church say the choice is stark. Both the current and former heads of Integrity, the denomination’s main gay organization, say there’s no middle ground between approving homosexual behavior and staying in the Anglican Communion.

“The American church has been very skillfully and strategically painted into a corner where we really need to face a ‘Sophie’s Choice’ of staying true to our understanding of the inclusive gospel or staying true to our commitment to being a constituent member of the Anglican Communion,” Integrity president Susan Russell told the Post.

Even the debate is a problem, former Integrity president Michael Hopkins told The New York Times. Gays and lesbians are already leaving the Episcopal Church, he said. “People like me can only convince other people to hang in there for so long.”

Boy, does that sound familiar.

2. Bones discovered at Christian hospital in India In India, where gender-based abortion and infanticide are problems even in the Christian community, hundreds of bones and other human remains have been discovered on the grounds of Ratlam Christian Hospital, a mission hospital in Madhya Pradesh. The Church of North India’s Bhopal diocese runs the hospital, and Catholic officials say there’s a conspiracy at work. Diocesan spokesman Suresh Carleton says the hospital “was framed” and that the remains belong to stillborn babies.

“It seems to be conspiracy by some quarters like the Bajrang Dal to damage the reputation of the hospital and the Christians in the state,” Bhopal bishop Laxman Maida told the Indian Catholic newspaper. “It is a ploy to defame us. I was inside the hospital when the Bajrang Dal activists were on a rampage, shouting slogans against Christians, that we convert and alleging feticide. We don’t do abortions, and we don’t even have the machine.”

3. New Life Church issues report on Haggard Last week, overseers at New Life Church disclosed some of their findings from their investigation of Ted Haggard and the congregation’s current leadership. “Numerous individuals … reported to us firsthand knowledge of everything from sordid conversation to overt suggestions to improper activities to improper relationships,” Larry Stockstill, who pastors a church in Baton Rouge, told New Life during Sunday morning services. “These findings established a pattern of behavior that culminated in the final relationship in which Ted was, as a matter of grace, caught.”

The overseers also corrected widespread reports that Haggard had been “cured.”

“There should be no confusion that deliverance from habitual, life-controlling problems is a journey and not an event,” Stockstill said. “Ted will need years of accountability to demonstrate his victory over both actions and tendencies.”

Another overseer, Tim Ralph, earlier said Haggard was “completely heterosexual.” What he had meant to say, Ralph explained, was that Haggard “received a lot of good tools and wisdom to embrace completely the heterosexual man he is. We all know he has some problems. He’s on the road to recovery.”

As for the current church leadership, the overseers said, “We have found a few staff members struggling with unrelated sin issues. Each such person has been confronted and has submitted to discipline. To our relief, we are finding no culture of immorality among the staff here as we might have initially expected.”

If you haven’t read it, be sure to read Patton Dodd’s Beliefnet essay, “We Are Completely Sexual,” which rightly corrects a lot of the “reactionary and unfair” punditry regarding Haggard’s orientation.

4. What’s “surprising” about it? One of the worst headlines of the week appeared in The Washington Post: “Surprising Unity on Va. Hospital Visit Bill: Conservatives Support Right That Includes Gays.”

The bill lets hospital patients choose their visitors—even those of the same sex. And it’s surprising that conservatives would back this? Only for those who think that conservatives are heartless bigots. The Post writer assumes that support for Virginia’s marriage amendment would mean opposition to this bill. But religious conservatives have long supported hospital visitation rights (and bereavement leave) and have said that bills precisely like this are a much better solution than redefining marriage. Has anyone been paying attention?

5. “Darwinists” against Darwin “Was Darwin Wrong?” asked the cover of the November 2004 National Geographic. Inside, David Quammen’s article began with a word in massive type: “No.”

That word is omitted in the online version of the story, and with good reason. Darwin was wrong. And it’s evolutionists who say so. Among them: Ulrich Kutschera, one of Germany’s preeminent evolutionary biologists and a widely quoted critic of Intelligent Design. “It must be made clear that the modern theory of evolution is in part anti-Darwin,” he said in an American Association for the Advancement of Science speech earlier this month. “Darwin did not, for instance, take into account the principle of evolution by cooperation.”

Scientists, he said, should “no longer talk about Darwinism. You could say that Darwinism is one man’s outdated ideology of the 19th century. And Darwinism sounds like Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism. That’s a problem.”

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, agrees, telling MSNBC, “Geologists don’t refer to themselves as Lyellists. Physicists don’t refer to themselves as Kelvinists. We don’t refer to ourselves by our 19th-century representative. The science has grown up.”

Meanwhile, University of Pittsburgh’s Jeffrey H. Schwartz, another critic of Intelligent Design, says Darwin got it really wrong. Evolutionary change happens rapidly, not gradually, he says. But the scientific community too dogmatically defends Darwin, he told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which followed up on a paper he published in Biological Theory. “Really I’m just saying, ‘Look, nobody’s saying that evolution is not happening, is not real. I’m just trying to figure out how change happens,'” he says.

Quote of the day “What’s this we hear about the end of the world?” —Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in an uncharacteristically sarcastic response when asked, “What’s this we hear about you guys joining up with the Roman Catholic Church?” Williams went on to dismiss the widely circulated report of Catholic-Anglican union as overblown and garbled.

Anglican primates’ meeting (late news):

Anglican leaders demand U.S. church end gay unions | Leaders of the Anglican Church have demanded that the U.S. Episcopal Church stop blessing same-sex unions and consecrating gay bishops. Two American Anglican leaders review the decision and discuss how it impacts the Episcopal Church (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS)
Anglicans rebuke U.S. branch on same-sex unions | The Episcopal Church was told to ban blessings of same-sex unions or risk a reduced role in the denomination (The New York Times)
Anglican leaders rule on gay bishops | Anglican leaders demanded Monday that the U.S. Episcopal Church unequivocally bar official prayers for gay couples and the consecration of more gay bishops to undo the damage that North Americans have caused the Anglican family (Associated Press)
Anglican Communion wants U.S. action in gay row | The Anglican Communion gave the U.S. Episcopal Church a September deadline on Monday to stop blessing same sex unions, but did gave no clear indication of what action it would then take (Reuters)
Anglicans tense but not split after talks | Leaders meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, call on the U.S. church to bar the blessing of same-sex unions (Los Angeles Times)
Anglicans seek a middle way | Leaders of the 77-million-member Anglican Communion — deeply divided over the biblical view of homosexuality and other issues — ended a contentious six-day meeting in Tanzania Monday with the first steps toward a set of core principles spelling out who is truly Anglican and who is not (USA Today)
Gay ultimatum for Anglicans in US | Anglican leaders have issued an ultimatum to the US Church by demanding an end to the appointment of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex couples (BBC)
No schism for now: Williams gets tough on liberals to save the church | Episcopalians ordered to give up on gay blessings; Anglicans must wait on decision of US bishops (The Guardian, London)
Church deadline to curb gay rights | In an unexpectedly hard-hitting set of recommendations, primates of the Anglican Communion demanded an “unequivocal common covenant” under which dioceses in the Episcopal Church agree not to authorise same-sex blessings (The Times, London)
Episcopal leaders expect Anglican schism | American church’s support for gays draws international ultimatum (The Hartford Courant, Ct.)
Episcopalians under fire over gays | If the Episcopal Church in the U.S. was expecting a moderate message on homosexual equality from its Anglican counteparts at their annual meeting in Tanzania this week — or even some kind of benign stalling action — it was sorely mistaken (Time)
Anglican rift may hit Canada, archbishop says | Support of homosexuals not acceptable in world communion, meeting indicates (The Globe and Mail, Toronto)
A move to heal Anglican rift, but short of conservatives’ goal | The Episcopal Church has not compromised as much as conservative Anglican leaders have demanded, a report issued at a crucial meeting of the Anglican leadership said on Thursday (The New York Times)
Anglican Church leaders give ultimatum to liberals | In a strongly-worded unanimous communiqué, only agreed at the eleventh hour, the Anglican primates called on the Episcopal Church to state unequivocally that it will not consecrate more gay bishops or authorise same-sex blessings (The Telegraph, London)

Share

Sign up for The Daily Briefing

More articles

Related Elsewhere:

Share

Our Latest