Primates To Decide Fate of TEC After Sept. 30, Says Williams

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
4/8/2007

The Archbishop of Canterbury told a small group of liberal and revisionist Episcopal bishops, meeting in South Africa recently, that the future of The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the Anglican Communion lies with the primates and not himself.

At the Boksburg conference on Millennium Development Goals and AIDS, Pennsylvania Bishop Charles E. Bennison, along with eight liberal TEC bishops, asked Dr. Williams; "When after September 30 will a decision about our place in the Communion be made, and will you be the one to make it?" Williams replied that he would leave the decision to the Primates - the same group that had authored the Communique.

"This left me fearful for our future in the Communion," wrote Bennison in a letter to his diocese. "On the other hand, his statement that he did not know when a decision would be made reassured me that no one is rushing to judgment or desirous to dismiss us."

Bennison said these demands were hanging in the air when the Boksburg conference convened, and seemed to hang over everything that went on at the conference.

"While the public agenda of that conference focused on how Anglicans worldwide can implement United Nations Millennium Development Goals such as gender equality, environmental sustainability, poverty eradication, maternal health, and child mortality reduction, the hidden agenda of the more than 400 Anglicans, gathered at Boksburg from around the world, concerned how our House of Bishops would respond by the September 30 deadline set in the February 19 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Communique of the Anglican Communion's Primates," said Bennison.

"Concerned that the Episcopal Church is practicing a standard of teaching on human sexuality different from that advised by the Communion's Bishops at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the Primates requested that: (1) We commit to the design process for an Anglican Covenant (defining 'authentic Anglicanism') that will be discussed at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, later perfected by the Anglican Consultative Council, and then sent to each of the Communion's thirty-eight provinces for ratification - in our case, by the 2009 General Convention in Anaheim; (2) We not authorize same-sex blessings or ordain partnered or non-celibate homosexual persons; (3) We neither pursue property dispute litigation where rectors, wardens, and vestries have sought to wrest their land and buildings from the Episcopal Church, nor alienate properties from the Episcopal Church; and (4) We establish a Pastoral Council to negotiate structures for the pastoral care of parishes dissenting from recent General Convention decisions and appoint a Primatial Vicar to whom the Presiding Bishop would delegate specific powers and duties in places where her ministry is deemed unacceptable.

"Confirmation of my assessment came a few days later when two dozen bishops from elsewhere joined seven of us from the Episcopal Church for a heart-felt sharing of our expectations for the proposed 2008 Lambeth Conference, and whether it should be about mission or sexual ethics, or both.

An hour into the conversation Nathaniel Makoto Uematsu, the Primate of Japan, confessed with deep emotion how grieved he was when 'at the recent Primates' Meeting some said that if others holding some views on some things came to Lambeth, they would neither attend nor permit their bishops to do so.'

"There ensued what I can only call a 'holy silence' that lasted a seemingly endless time as thirty-one human souls and shepherds of Christ's church contemplated the seriousness of what had just been said and the lengths each may go to maintain communion with the others. But it was also an 'awkward silence' in the face of what is still for most an unmentionable a subject - sexuality - because it is considered so sacred."

Bennison went on to opine that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communions' thirty-eight provinces also differ significantly over baptism. He said most of the provinces do not have in their Prayer Books the Baptismal Covenant "as we do."

"Amidst tensions between the Episcopal Church and the majority of the thirty-eight autonomous churches of the Anglican Communion it is important to recognize that the major difference between most of the others in the Communion and us is that they do not have in their Prayer Books the Baptismal Covenant," he said.

Bennison said that the wider Communion's difficulty with TEC's Baptismal Covenant came out during lengthy plenary sessions on the last full day of the Boksburg conference when he went to the microphone and argued that we should include the words, "We advocate opening the Lord's table to all, including infants and children, at baptism."

Bennison said Archbishop Ndungane, seated near him, "grimaced visibly. Someone went to a mike to challenge me about what I could possibly mean." Bennison said his suggestion was the most controversial of the day and the only one not included in the final document that came out of Boksburg.

At the final Eucharist of the conference, for which the Episcopal Church was responsible, "we included the words of our Baptismal Covenant, but called it a '"Baptismal Commitment,'" so as not to offend," he said.

Bennison said that while The Episcopal Church was singing "a new song" about human sexuality, he opined, "It is a song many in the Communion still find difficult to sing, largely because 'family' is still at the heart of their socially constructed relational lives. With its hierarchical organization, its patriarchal episcopate, and its bishops' wives presiding over each diocese' Mothers' Union, the church in many places of the Anglican Communion is still more of an extension of the 'family' than a diverse, inclusive community."

"By the end of our time in Boksburg, members of the Episcopal Church who were present felt that as a Communion we are in fact bound together indissolubly in Baptism and nothing we can do now or in the future can change that indissoluble reality."

He also said that others around the Communion would be profoundly grieved were the TEC to be dismissed from the Communion or have "our membership in it in any way downgraded. We are today the church that we are, informed by the Baptismal Covenant, and standing on the positions we have taken, including that on homosexual persons, and to be other than who we are is to fail the Communion by holding back from it the gift of who we are."

Bennison also said that if Presiding Bishop Schori were to be dismissed from the Primates' Meetings, or its representatives from the Anglican Consultative Council, or from the 2008 Lambeth Conference, "we would still continue to give our time, energy, and the 36% of the Communion's budget that we presently fund in order to see the mission of the Communion go forward."

Bennison, the ultra-liberal Bishop of Pennsylvania, faces presentment charges and will stand before a panel of his peers over allegations that he is financially mismanaging the diocese. He also faces civil charges of fraud and emotional distress, filed against him by Fr. David L. Moyer, a priest who was fraudulently and illegally "deposed" by Bennison. Moyer remains in his parish, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, PA, despite efforts by Bennison to toss him out.

END