Global South Challenges Canterbury's Headship QUOTES OF THE WEEK   "For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God [Gen. 3:1-7], while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man [2 Cor. 5:21]. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be." — John Stott   "I will write this until I'm blue in the face: education is positively related to religious attendance in the United States." — Ryan Burge   "I would rather die than surrender my faith in Christ, and be forced to bow to a foreign nation demanding I forsake the Truth. Christ is King!" — Carrie Prejean Boller   "The earliest Christians did not invent entirely new forms of worship; they adapted synagogue patterns while centering everything on Christ." — Rev. Dr. Ronald H. Moore   "American evangelicalism is very good at producing faith that feels personal. It is far less good at producing faith that lasts." — Adam Finkney   "A church can become large without becoming deep. It can become influential without becoming attentive. It can succeed in ways that quietly leave people unseen." — Sandip Chauhan     Dear Brothers and Sisters, www.virtueonline.org February 13, 2026   A forgotten 1930s study observed what Scripture has always warned: sexual disorder does not liberate a people—it dissolves them.   In the 1930s, an English anthropologist studied dozens of civilizations across thousands of years. He wasn't writing as a Christian or attempting to defend biblical morality. He simply tracked what happened when cultures disciplined sexual desire and what happened when they didn't.   His findings were revealing. Societies that restrained sexual behavior tended to flourish culturally. Societies that loosened those restraints did not collapse overnight, but they gradually weakened over time. Energy faded. Cohesion weakened. Purpose blurred. The decline surfaced a generation or two later, when habits formed in private finally reshaped life in public.   The 1960s marked a cultural turning point in America, as the sexual revolution began framing American society for decades to come.   Today, the culture has come full circle with the abandonment of nearly all sexual boundaries and norms. Homosexuality is one of many behaviors outside biblical teaching that now includes transgenderism, bisexuality, sex change operations, mutilation of bodily parts, and various other expressions. "If it feels good, do it" has become a contemporary standard.   The Roman Empire experienced multiple factors leading to its decline: economic mismanagement, military overextension, administrative issues, and political instability.   Does any of this sound familiar? The American empire may not be far behind. Technology alone won't save us. Short of repentance, nothing will stop America's decline. Cries of freedom often mean only freedom from constraints, not freedom to build and obey.   *****   CAN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH BE SAVED?   One orthodox Episcopal priest believes it's possible. The Rev. Kevin E. Martin has put forth a nine-point plan to help the Episcopal Church recover its soul. You can read his full proposal here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/can-the-episcopal-church-be-saved   These are noble aspirations. However, there are significant problems, chief among them being that it may be too little, too late. The damage has been done—from John Shelby Spong to Gene Robinson, the consecration of six openly gay bishops, and much more. There appears to be no going back. The long slide into theological error has continued unabated. To this day, many bishops still believe Spong was right, and most believe Robinson's consecration had God's approval. "Apostolic ministry" disappeared decades ago. Same-sex marriage is now fully enshrined in the life of The Episcopal Church—a non-starter for 90 percent of the Anglican Communion.   You can read my full critique here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/can-the-episcopal-church-be-saved   One commenter noted that "glaringly absent from Kevin Martin's proposals are any reference to correctness of belief and any reference to correctness of morals."   *****   EPISCOPAL BISHOP CALLS ON TRUMP TO APOLOGIZE OR RESIGN   Pennsylvania Episcopal Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez called on President Trump to "apologize or resign" over a racist video depicting the Obamas as apes. The Episcopal News Service reported that Bishop Gutiérrez released a statement after Trump shared a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle.   "As you know, I am not one who issues statements based on every news item that crosses the wire. However, as a bishop and, more importantly, a follower of Jesus Christ, I was repulsed and sickened by the meme that was on the president's [social media] feed depicting two children of God, who served this nation, as apes," Gutiérrez said.   The likelihood of Trump resigning appears minimal at best.   *****   CHURCH OF ENGLAND ENDS LLF PROCESS   The Church of England at its General Synod finally brought to a close the Living in Love and Faith Report that would have established same-sex blessings. General Synod agreed to end the controversial Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process by 252 votes to 132, with 21 abstentions.   LLF, which began in 2017, aimed to respond to "changing views in our society towards identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage." The process caused enormous division in the church, with many evangelicals viewing the push for prayers, blessings, and even "weddings" for same-sex couples as an abandonment of Scripture.   Despite this vote, Synod agreed to form working groups to further explore the possibility of implementing same-sex civil marriages for clergy and standalone church services for blessing those in same-sex relationships.   Based on what happened in The Episcopal Church, advocates for changing traditional teaching are unlikely to abandon their efforts. Archbishop Stephen Cottrell acknowledged: "These have not been easy or straightforward things to make decisions on. There are still many areas where we have not reached agreement." He leaves the door slightly open for future developments.   General Synod member Rev. Dr. Ian Paul warned the Church of England has "squandered time and goodwill on divisive and damaging debates."   "In some dioceses, we are seeing young people come to faith, and new churches being planted and grafted—real signs of growth. But elsewhere there is serious decline."   Where do we go from here? Interestingly, both The Guardian ("issue is put in deep freeze") and the BBC ("abandons proposals for same-sex blessing ceremonies") were clear: the Church of England has halted the debate and abandoned the possibility of blessing same-sex relationships. By contrast, "Together" (the revisionist group) has declared that progress continues, and though it has been slow, change will come.   The newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, said the discussions had left the church wounded as individuals and as a body. She described the bishops' proposals as a sensible way forward that will lead to the next steps.   You can read Anglican theologian Ian Paul's analysis here:  https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/the-discussion-at-the-end-of-the-llf-process/   You can read The Guardian story here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/church-of-england-general-synod-halts-work-on-lgbtq-equality   *****   ARCHBISHOP MULLALLY'S DISAPPOINTING MAIDEN SPEECH   Archbishop Sarah Mullally gave her maiden speech this week, and it fell short of expectations.   The Archbishop used her presidential address to recommit to better safeguarding standards, with no mention of God, Jesus, sin, or salvation.   By any measure, her address to Synod was a disappointing failure to articulate the church's mission.   The address was delivered to members of General Synod—the Church's parliamentary body—meeting in London this week. She lamented the Church of England's past failings on safeguarding, an issue on which she herself has faced criticism. She said she planned to raise standards substantially. However, her own safeguarding record and that of the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, have come under scrutiny.   God was not mentioned, nor was Jesus. There was no articulation of why the Church of England exists or how it might address its irrelevance to 98% of the British public. There was no mention of the gospel that liberates people from their sins—only extensive discussion of safeguarding and anecdotal hope that people have been returning to church over the last four years.   You can read my full analysis here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/mullally-s-failed-presidential-address   There can be little doubt that the Church of England faces serious challenges. With 98% of the British public not attending church, it represents a sobering reality that neither GAFCON nor the GSFA bishops view with confidence.   *****   THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND'S SAFEGUARDING CRISIS   The Church of England's failed safeguarding practices have caught my attention, and I have written extensively about them. You can read my full piece here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/the-church-of-england-is-a-cesspool-of-failed-safeguarding   If you wonder why the Global South regards the Church of England with deep concern and accusations of heresy, one need look no further than its inadequate safeguarding practices.   These failures represent a serious breach of pastoral responsibility.   Dr. Ian Paul, an evangelical theologian in the Church of England, outlines the issues here:  https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/do-we-have-safeguarding-leadership-in-the-church-of-england/   The prevailing pattern combines deliberate stalling tactics, prolonged delays in implementing best practices, and the ignoring of facts about clergy who perpetuate harmful practices on children repeatedly without fear of permanent discipline.   The irony is striking. Archbishop Mullally was elected Archbishop of Canterbury despite a problematic safeguarding record, while her predecessor Justin Welby resigned over his failure in the John Smyth case, involving severe physical abuse. The situation would be almost comical if it weren't so serious.   *****   THE COLLAPSE OF PROTESTANT CHURCHES   The collapse of Protestant churches can teach us something, says scholar Carl R. Trueman. Reports of financial struggles and declining membership among large American denominations have become so commonplace that they often elicit little more than a shrug. But occasionally, a report warrants closer attention.   A recent Religion News Service article provides helpful insight into why "Protestant denominations are losing members, particularly the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist and other historic mainline groups," including the Southern Baptist Convention. The inclusion of the SBC is significant because, unlike the other denominations that "have suffered schisms as they moved in more progressive directions," the SBC remains theologically conservative. Conservative Christians should take note.   One reason for the decline of these churches is that God's truth was abandoned in many of them years ago. We are living at a time when the consequences are becoming evident.   You can read the full article here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/the-collapse-of-protestant-churches-can-teach-us-something   *****   MERE ANGLICANISM CONFERENCE   "Gospel Identity in an Age of Expressive Individualism" was the theme at this year's Mere Anglican conference in Charleston, SC. I was unable to attend due to COVID-19, but Jeff Walton of IRD covered the event.   Christians are contesting an alternative gospel in the present age—one that promises fulfillment through the longings of the self, according to speakers at the prominent Anglican conference.   Expressive individualism is an alternative gospel, insisted the Rev. Vaughan Roberts. "It is saying if you fulfill the longings of the self, if you look within and resist all the pressures of external authorities, then you'll find the fruit and fulfillment you long for. That's a gospel message, but it's a false gospel, it's a lie, and increasingly we're seeing the effects of it: dehumanization and loss of meaning."   You can read Jeff Walton's full report here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/mere-anglicanism-in-an-age-of-expressive-individualism   *****   ANGLICANISM AT A CROSSROADS   Anglicanism is at a crossroads, writes the Ven. Alex Uzor. The rise of the Global Anglican Communion and the future of Canterbury hang in the balance.   The formal confirmation of the new Archbishop of Canterbury occurs within a much larger global conversation about the identity, mission, and direction of Anglicanism in our time.   While some may celebrate her confirmation, the worldwide Anglican family is passing through deep transitions. The landscape that surrounds the office she now occupies is no longer simple or unified. Instead, it reflects a Communion wrestling with profound theological differences and searching for clarity about its future.   What once looked like a single global family gathered around Canterbury now appears more like two distinct expressions of Anglican identity. One is centered in the historic institutions of the West. The other is rising from the Global South with strong conviction, missionary zeal, and a firm commitment to Scripture.   This development did not appear suddenly. It has been building for more than twenty years. The debates around human identity and marriage only exposed what was already weakening. At the heart of the tension is a simple question: What does it mean to be truly Anglican in the twenty-first century?   What we see today is a Communion where Canterbury still has a historical place but no longer speaks for the majority of Anglicans. Most Anglicans now belong to churches that stand with GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship. These churches have made clear that authentic Anglican identity comes from faithfulness to Scripture, not from institutional loyalty.   You can read more here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/anglicanism-at-a-crossroads-the-rise-of-the-global-anglican-communion-and-the-future-of-canterbury   *****   TENSIONS AT THE MARCH FOR LIFE   President Donald Trump faced criticism at the recent March for Life over his "flexibility" on the Hyde Amendment. In the wake of Trump's comments about Hyde, the administration has faced backlash from the anti-abortion movement, which also believes the administration has taken insufficient action to restrict access to mifepristone, an oral medication used to end pregnancies.   The event's organizers praised Vice President JD Vance, who addressed the march, and the Trump administration in general. However, the tensions that have emerged in recent days over President Trump's commitment to fighting abortion were evident in the crowd.   "@therealdonaldtrump We are not 'flexible.' Abortion is Murder!" read one sign, referring to Trump's recent comments that House Republicans should be flexible on the Hyde Amendment.   "We're taught in Scripture that every human is made in the image of God. That gives us intrinsic value. The murdering of that life is wrong," one anti-abortion attendee said.   *****   ANGLICAN ORDINARIATE UPDATE   Anglicans who take up the Pope's offer of an Ordinariate may be allowed to continue worshipping in their Church of England buildings, it emerged this week.   Until now, commentators had assumed that groups wanting to join the new structure set up by the Pope would have to abandon their Anglican churches.   However, William Fittall, secretary general of the Church of England General Synod, said it would be "entirely possible" for these buildings to be shared between the new members of the Ordinariate and Anglicans.   You can read more here:  https://www.virtueonline.org/post/top-official-ex-anglicans-may-remain-in-parishes   *****   NOTABLE EVENTS   Two notable events took place this week.   Social critic and Anglican Dr. Os Guinness will be honored with the 2026 Wilberforce Award at the Colson Center National Conference in Knoxville, Tennessee. This award recognizes his significant contributions to addressing societal issues from a Christian worldview and his efforts to help the Church think wisely about life and culture in a post-Christian age. Dr. Guinness has been a dedicated advocate for truth and has authored or edited over thirty books, including "The Call," "The Magna Carta of Humanity," and "America Agonistes." His work continues to influence and inspire many in the Christian community and beyond.   The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D., will retire at the end of the 2027-28 academic year. His retirement marks the conclusion of 21 years of transformative leadership at Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) and The General Theological Seminary (GTS). During his tenure, he has been recognized for his commitment to excellence in theological education, the creation of a Reparations Program, and the long-term stewardship and renewal of the campuses.   *****   SUPPORT VOL   VOL has brought on board new writers in 2026 with clear insights into Scripture and culture. We have no mega-donors and no grants—just faithful readers like you who believe in what we do and write. Tens of thousands of enthusiastic VOL readers trust us to cover the most pressing issues facing Anglicanism today. Only a small percentage contribute. We have proven ourselves for over 30 years, and we remain committed to this mission.   Please consider a tax-deductible donation to keep the news coming.   How to Give:   Online: PayPal donation link at  https://www.virtueonline.org/donate   By check (tax-deductible): VIRTUEONLINE P.O. BOX 111 Shohola, PA 18458   Thank you for your support, David

Progressive Christians speak of pain and anger as issue is put in deep freeze after London meeting By Harriet Sherwood THE GUARDIAN 12 Feb 2026 The hopes of progressive Christians in the Church of England have suffered a big blow after years of bitter and divisive debate, with the C of E’s ruling body agreeing to halt work on LGBTQ+ equality. At a meeting in London on Thursday, the General Synod backed a document from bishops concluding that consensus between conservative and liberal camps within the church could not be reached. The issue will now be put in the deep freeze until a new synod is in place. Liberal and conservative factions are likely to campaign on the issue in elections later this year in the hope of breaking the deadlock in their favour. The archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, gives her first presidential address at the Church of England's General Synod Synod members backed a proposal by bishops on Thursday to halt all work on a process known as Living in Love and Faith (LLF) by 252 votes to 132, with 21 abstentions. The bishops’ motion acknowledged the “distress and pain many have suffered during the LLF process, especially LGBTQI+ people”. The decision means that three years of work on allowing clergy to conduct special services to bless same sex couples in a civil marriage will end. The prohibition on clergy being married in a civil ceremony to same sex partners will stay in place. Sarah Mullally, the archbishop of Canterbury, said that LLF had “left us wounded as individuals and a church” but that the bishops’ proposals were a “sensible way forward … that will take us to the next steps”. In a five-hour debate, many synod members spoke of their pain, anger and feelings of betrayal at the C of E’s failure to progress on the issues. Charlie Bączyk-Bell, a London priest who has campaigned for LGBTQ+ equality, said his heart was broken. Addressing bishops and fellow synod members, he said: “How dare you and how dare we come again to lament and recognise distress and pain while we continue to inflict it? … What kind of church is this? How has it come to this?” Claire Robson, a priest in Newcastle, said it was now unlikely she would be able to marry her same-sex partner because of her age. “The changes we long for will be too late for many of us,” she said. The cost of the LLF process had been £1.6m, she added, “but the cost to my life and ministry is incalculable … Hopes have been dashed and apologies rendered meaningless”. Proposing the motion, Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, said: “This is not where I want us to be and not where we hoped we would be three years ago … I know that many of you are feeling angry and disappointed. There is a lot of pain and that pain cuts across so called ‘party lines’ or theological convictions held.” But, he added, “knowing how divided we are on these issues, we haven’t been able to find further ways forward that honour the consciences of those who, faithfully led by their conscientious reading of scripture and their understanding of tradition and of lived human experience, arrive at different conclusions”. The bishops and the synod were “more deeply divided than I think we knew – or admitted”, he said. A new working group on “relationships, sexuality and gender” will be set up for “continuing work”, under the wording of the motion. This, said Vicky Brett, a lay member of the synod who spoke in the debate, fitted the definition of insanity: “do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”. The issue of sexuality and same-sex marriage has brought the Anglican church close to schism in recent years. After more than a decade of often rancorous debate, the synod finally concluded in early 2023 that it would not support weddings of same-sex couples in church, but would allow priests to bless gay couples within regular services. That decision prompted church leaders in some developing countries, including South Sudan, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to say they no longer recognised Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, as the head of the global church. In July 2024, the C of E evangelical council said it would start a parallel province because of the decision to allow gay marriages to be blessed. Such blessings were “contrary to the teaching of the Bible”, it said. Some clergy have defied the C of E hierarchy to offer stand-alone services of blessing to same-sex couples, seen by some as a de facto church wedding although without legal standing. Campaigners for equality have said there is anecdotal evidence suggesting that LGBTQ+ Christians are leaving the C of E, feeling they are unwelcome.

OKLAHOMA CITY: St. James Anglican Church sets sail from ECUSA By David W. Virtue OKLAHOMA CITY--Donald Gumm was the senior warden of St. James Episcopal Church in south Oklahoma City, when the church called time out and said enough was enough. Now he's the Senior Warden of St. James Anglican Church in the same area. The story is not unlike many where the congregation has come to a parting of the ways with their priest, bishop and the national church over Scriptural interpretation, sexuality issues and much more. "We have had a long history of disagreements with Bishop Robert Manning Moody. We have stood up to him over the authority of Holy Scripture time and again, but he had his own ideas about what scripture meant," said Gumm. The 74th General Convention at Minneapolis was the final straw for these godly folk. "Our congregation reached it's gag reflex. Over the years we have watched the Episcopal Church slowly turn in to something that we could no longer abide." So the vast majority of the 140 souls at St. James Episcopal decided to leave the Episcopal Church and the church home to remain faithful to Holy Scripture and to God. "We walked away from a church that was debt free and had plenty of money in the bank. We had had enough; enough of a tyrannical bishop and a priest that was a puppet of the bishop," said Gumm. Following General Convention they had a congregational meeting to discuss the outcome of the convention. "Almost all of our congregation was opposed to what happened at the Convention," said Gumm. "Our rector, Fr. Richard Ressler, was silent at first and said that he wanted to remain neutral in order that he could be a pastor to the entire congregation. We had more discussions at vestry meetings and at informal gatherings after church. A delegation which included one of our deacons was sent to Plano for the first meeting there. They returned and filled in the congregation about the results of that meeting. Members of our congregation began to help with local efforts and eventually they formed the Oklahoma Anglican Council. An opinion poll sent to our congregation showed that 97% were opposed to the actions of the 74th General Convention." It was further revealed that more than 60 percent were prepared to leave for the same reason. "Many did leave and we had to take rather drastic measures to stay solvent and remain a parish. We were determined to remain a parish and to keep Bishop Moody from firing our vestry." Then the rector sent a letter to the congregation saying that he agreed with the bishop on sexuality issues. "We had a meeting with the vestry and Bishop Moody at the home of our rector. After dinner we had a discussion regarding his position on the issues relevant to the 74th General Convention. Bishop Moody tried to convince us that his position was correct, but he failed to convince anyone of us. Moody said, in so many words, "Either start supporting the Episcopal or I'm going to lock the doors." He picked on the wrong bunch of folks, said Gumm. The senior warden resigned, the junior warden resigned, followed by the entire vestry, the altar guild, the choir and the acolytes, plus all but a handful of the members. "At that point we began researching the possibilities of securing our property, but we learned that in the State of Oklahoma that was impossible." At a vestry meeting in February, the rector announced that his "pastoral relationship" with the congregation was in peril. Truth is, said Gumm, his "pastoral relationship" with the congregation was in peril because he was an ineffective priest. "A meeting was scheduled with Bishop Moody, Richard Ressler, our Junior Warden and myself. I brought our former Senior Warden with me to the meeting since she had more knowledge about our rector that I did, being new at the office of Senior Warden. At that meeting our rector listed the things he was unhappy with and then stated that if he were to stay at St. James that he would have to insist that our deacon be removed." Our deacon was truly loved by our congregation, said Gumm. "He has been with us for eleven years and has loved and cared for us. This same deacon went to Plano, something the Bishop was very unhappy about. The bishop then announced that he had already decided to remove our deacon. I told him that if he did remove our deacon many of the congregation would leave, with the result that the church would not stay open as a mission. Bishop Moody said that if that were the case he would shut the church down and let is sit fallow for a few years and then restart it, he didn't care." Moody said that we were acting in an unhealthy manner because we didn't agree with him and that he was prepared to close our church if many left, said Gumm. "We convinced the Bishop to hold off on removing our deacon." Gumm then began to put together a group of people whose knowledge and talents would lend to the formation of a new church. "I realized that we were in the bishop's sights and that the end was near for us. Not too long after that meeting, our deacon came to me and told me that he wanted me to get him removed from the church. Our rector had made things so difficult for him that he could no longer take it, it was affecting his health. I asked the rector to contact the bishop to see about removing him." The bishop agreed to remove him. "Two days after the deacon left I held a meeting of the congregation to discuss our plans for a new church. I explained to the congregation about the meeting with the bishop and information regarding our rector. I also talked to them about what work had been done so far and how we were prepared to hold church in another location the following Sunday." Seventy eight people attended that meeting and seventy one signed on for the new church, said Gumm. "We had reached our limit, it was time to go. We made contact with the Network of Anglican Communion Diocese and Parishes. They went to work to help provide oversight from an off shore bishop." Gumm said arrangements were made to hold worship services in the chapel of a large Baptist church across the street and the following Sunday they held their first service as St. James Anglican Church. "We were stunned nearly 120 people attended our first Morning Prayer service. A week later we held our first Eucharistic service with a visiting priest officiating. We are working to build a new church to the honor and glory of God and being faithful to His word." Said another parishioner, "we are not looking back, we are looking to the future. At the close of the service someone spontaneously started singing "Amazing Grace" and there were tears of joy everywhere. Somewhere there is a young priest looking for a parish on fire for the Lord and when they get together we will see something miraculous. There have been answers to every problem we have come across and Gumm firmly believes that God is with them. Fr. Richard Ressler is still at St. James Episcopal with about forty people. They will continue on as a mission having given up parish status. END

Austin Congregation Affiliates with Evangelical Covenant Church Rector Renounces Orders by Carol E. Barnwell The Texas Episcopalian The congregation of St. Barnabas, Austin voted 192-2, June 20 to leave the Episcopal Church and with their former vicar, Jeffrey Black, temporarily associate with Evangelical Covenant Church. In a meeting with the Rt. Rev. Don Wimberly, June 15, Black renounced his orders in the Episcopal Church as of July 2. Diocesan officials participated in what both groups describe as a "courteous and respectful" transition for the congregation. "Our intention from the beginning of this was to provide an open door for those members of St. Barnabas who chose to, to remain in the Episcopal Church," said Bishop Wimberly. "Clearly Jeff and members of his congregation have decided to pursue their lives as Christians in a different way. We, as the Episcopal Church, still have a mission and ministry in the northwest area of Austin and will meet soon to discuss plans for new work in the same area," he added. The bishop granted Black's two requests upon acceptance of his renunciation: that it takes effect on July 2, the 29th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, and to provide four months of medical insurance. "This makes a big difference in my pension," Black said of the effective date. Diocesan staff members Joel Shannon and the Rev. Andrew Doyle attended a congregational meeting at St. Barnabas on June 18 where Black announced his decision to renounce his orders and at which he related details of his meeting with Bishop Wimberly. Doyle and Shannon remained for about an hour to listen to members of the congregation whom Doyle said explained their leaving the Episcopal Church as a "matter of conscience, not anger with the diocese." The vote to leave was taken the following Sunday morning. St. Barnabas was planted as an Episcopal mission in Northwest Austin in 1998 and moved to self-sufficiency in 2003. The congregation planned to build their new church on land purchased by the diocese. Black indicated that plans to build a permanent home for St. Barnabas were what precipitated the process of leaving the Episcopal Church. "Potential donors did not want to invest in something owned by the Episcopal Church [following actions of General Convention last summer]" he said. Black said he was leading St. Barnabas' members in a decision process about their status within ECUSA when the bishop requested a meeting with him. He said he believed ECUSA had changed so much that the congregation of St. Barnabas no longer fit. Black apologized to the bishop for not being more forthcoming about his actions. "I felt I had a moral obligation to get the people out," Black related in a phone interview following the vote. "I had invited them in. It became a different place and we needed to move on," he added. In the congregational meeting of June 18, a lay leader thanked diocesan representatives for the "help and graciousness" of the diocese over the years. He said their decisions were not about being angry at the diocese but expressed that they were radically uncomfortable with the Episcopal Church, Black said. The congregation voted to support a move to the Evangelical Covenant Church for one to two years and if the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDP) emerges, "We may rejoin that," Black said. The network, formed in January, 2004, was chartered to be "a true and legitimate expression of the world-wide Anglican Communion" for those opposed to two controversial actions by the 2003 General Convention in Minneapolis: the ratification of the election of an openly gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire, and the acknowledgment that same-sex blessings are part of the church's common life (C051) in some dioceses. Although the bishops of the Diocese of Texas and the elected deputies to General Convention voted against consenting to the consecration of Gene Robinson and against the blessing of same sex unions, the diocese is committed to mission and ministry to all persons. Black indicated that St. Barnabas had "a different relationship with the word of God," than did the rest of the Episcopal Church. "The Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Texas is energetically engaged in our mission and ministry to a hurting world. Our task is the transformation of lives as Christ directed us and that is what we will continue to be about," said Bishop Wimberly. END

Ohio comes together in Common Cause By Doc Loomis June 20, 2004 HUDSON, OH--Just one week prior to the announcement by several US orthodox Anglican bodies that they would unite in a "common cause", a meeting of representative rectors and church leaders of many of those same bodies met in Hudson, OH, about 20 minutes south of Cleveland. According to event coordinators, the "Church Plant Summit" was designed to offer practical information and spiritual encouragement to several new Ohio church plants as well as to members of neighboring ECUSA parishes who are wrestling with their places in the fragmenting Episcopal Church. Among the topics covered at the one-day Summit were: Stewardship models, Evangelism through multiplication, Case studies of new Ohio plants, A review of the worldwide Communion, Matters of canon law, and the formation of a new church planting organization called Great Lakes Anglican Renewal. www.hudsonanglican.com/glar/index.html The Rev. John Richardson of AMiA's St. Peter's, Birmingham was among the featured speakers at the event which included representatives from churches aligned with AMiA, ECUSA, ACN, The OEC, REC, and several non-aligned church plants. Rev. Richardson also celebrated at powerful mid-event Eucharist. "Feeling the unquenchable fire of the Holy Spirit in the lives of our various congregations, and seeing clearly that the renewal in this country will come in large part through evangelism in church planting, we felt led to bring these disparate groups together in this special way. And based on our mutual affirmations of what God accomplished on this day, we will be doing it again," said event coordinator Rev. Doc Loomis of the Hudson Anglican Fellowship, one of the new Ohio plants. Loomis also hopes to duplicate this type of event in other parts of the country in the very near future. "This day was not so much a 'Place to Stand', but a 'Way to Stand' event. Learning to weild the 'sword of the Spirit' is a powerful and necessary teaching for us all at his critical time." "After reading the statement signed by the leaders of several of these same orthodox bodies last week, we are more encouraged than ever that we are on the right track," Loomis continued. "These kinds of unifying movements of the Holy Spirit may have their vision in the hearts of our leaders, but they take on the hands and feet of those of us at the grass roots level. It's up to us at the congregational level to yoke together with Christ and with each other to help this work." Great Lakes Anglican Renewal is an independent church planting network specializing in "transplanting" existing ECUSA churches and helping them grow as Anglican bodies preparing for realignment within the larger Communion. GLAR is currently working with churches in Ohio, and four additional states nationwide. Doc Loomis, is the rector of the Hudson Anglican Fellowship. He is also director of Great Lakes Anglican Renewal a consortium of orthodox parishes in northern Ohio. END

A Matter of Faith By DAVID BROOKS June 22, 2004 When Bill Clinton was 8, he started taking himself to church. When he was 10, he publicly committed himself to Jesus. As a boy, he begged his Sunday school teacher to take him to see Billy Graham. And as anybody watching his book rollout knows, he still exudes religiosity. He gave Dan Rather a tour of his Little Rock church, and talked about praying in good times and bad. More than any other leading Democrat, Bill Clinton understands the role religion actually plays in modern politics. He knows Americans want to be able to see their leaders' faith. A recent Pew survey showed that for every American who thinks politicians should talk less about religion, there are two Americans who believe politicians should talk more. And Clinton seems to understand, as many Democrats do not, that a politician's faith isn't just about litmus test issues like abortion or gay marriage. Many people just want to know that their leader, like them, is in the fellowship of believers. Their president doesn't have to be a saint, but he does have to be a pilgrim. He does have to be engaged, as they are, in a personal voyage toward God. Clinton made this sort of faith-based connection, at least until he sullied himself with the Lewinsky affair. He won the evangelical vote in 1992, and won it again in 1996. He understood that if Democrats are not seen as religious, they will be seen as secular Ivy League liberals, and they will lose. John Kerry doesn't seem to get this. Many of the people running the Democratic Party don't get it either. A recent Time magazine survey revealed that only 7 percent of Americans feel that Kerry is a man of strong religious faith. That's a catastrophic number. That number should be the first thing Kerry strategists think about when they wake up in the morning and it should be the last thing on their lips when they go to sleep at night. They should be doing everything they can to change that perception, because unless more people get a sense of Kerry's faith, they will feel no bond with him and they will be loath to trust him with their vote. Yet his campaign does nothing. Kerry talks about jobs one week and the minimum wage the next, going about his wonky way, each day as secular as the last. It's mind-boggling. Can't the Democratic strategists read the data? Religious involvement is a much, much more powerful predictor of how someone will vote than income, education, gender or any other social and demographic category save race. Can't the Democratic strategists feel it in their bones how important this is? After all, when you go out among the Democratic rank and file, you find millions of Democrats who are just as religious as Republicans. It's mostly in the land of Democratic elites that you are likely to find yourself among religious illiterates. But of course this is the problem. Forests have been felled so people could publish articles and books on the religious right's influence on the Republican Party. But as the Baruch College political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio have suggested, the real political story of the past decade has been the growing size and cohesion of the secular left, and its growing influence on the Democratic Party. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has more than doubled since 1990. There is now a surging but unself-conscious power bloc within the Democratic Party. Like the religious right in the Republican Party, the members of the secular left are interested primarily in social issues. What unites them more than anything else is a strong antipathy to pro-lifers and fundamentalists. While 75 percent of Americans feel little or no hostility to fundamentalists, people in this group are far more hostile to them than to other traditional Democratic bête noires, the rich or big business. They don't like to see their politicians meddling with religion in any way. Just as Republicans have to appeal to religious conservatives but move beyond them, Democrats have to appeal to the secular left but also build a bridge to religious moderates. Bill Clinton did this. John Kerry hasn't. If you want to know why Kerry is still roughly even with Bush in the polls, even though Bush has had the worst year of any president since Nixon in 1973 or L.B.J. in 1968, this is one big reason. END

ECUSA: ANALYSIS OF THE PRESIDING BISHOP'S MEETING WITH THE LAMBETH COMMISSION PRESIDING BISHOP MEETS WITH THE LAMBETH COMMISSION News Analysis By David W. Virtue When the Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold met with the Lambeth Commission in Kanuga this week this is what he said: "We sought to give a full and accurate picture of the present state of our church, and to dispel a number of misapprehensions. As Presiding Bishop of the whole church it was important for me to make sure that I, along with my colleagues, sought honestly to represent the breadth of views and the depth of feeling that exists in different parts of our household. At the same time, we sought to make clear that the overwhelming reality of the Episcopal Church is the diverse center in which differing views are held in tension because of our common desire to live together in the communion of the Holy Spirit, and to manifest Christ's reconciling love to our divided and broken world." This is complete and total spin. It is also a lie. First of all Griswold no longer represents (if he ever did) the "whole church" as he puts it. Far from it. He represents a smaller group of aging Episcopalians with each passing day. He does not represent the tens of thousands of members who belong to the American Anglican Council or the Anglican Communion Network, with nine active bishops and several retired bishops and about 200,000 Episcopalians under its pastoral care, nor does he speak for anyone remotely associated with the Anglican Communion Institute or Forward in Faith, North America. He also does not represent the three Anglo-Catholic dioceses, Ft. Worth, Quincy and San Joaquin who do not ordain women, and he certainly doesn't speak for thousands of believing rectors and their parishes caught in revisionist dioceses. So who does Griswold speak for? He speaks for pray, pay and obey Episcopalians who are biblically illiterate, read Episcopal Life, don't read the Internet (and he hopes to God they never will), old fashioned liberals, many of who are horrified by the tactics of revisionist bishops. He also speaks for revisionist bishops who are busy destroying themselves and their dioceses like Orris Walker, Tom Shaw, John Chane, Robert Ihloff, and Charles Bennison. These bishops are also busy doing their best to eviscerate orthodox priests from their dioceses. He also speaks for the church's pansexualists who grow more strident, tyrannical and demanding with each passing day. That is who Frank Tracy Griswold speaks for. And they are on the left, not the "diverse middle." To say he speaks for the "diverse middle" is a flat out untruth, because he does not speak for any orthodox person in the Anglican Communion. For them he is an acute embarrassment and he has been shunned by 22 of the world's primates, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. In short Frank Griswold has become a pariah in the wider Anglican Communion because of his actions in consecrating a self-avowed homoerotic priest to the episcopacy. The Anglican Communion Primates have not forgotten and they won't forgive him. He lied at Lambeth about his intentions over what he would do with V. Gene Robinson, and now the Global South (CAPA bishops) don't want him ever to set foot on African soil again and he can keep his money as well. That is NOT the diverse center. Now Griswold took with him the Very Rev. George Werner, President of the House of Deputies; AKA "flash George" because he smiles a lot. But his chief "success" was to spend several millions of dollars on refurbishing the cathedral in Pittsburgh when he was Dean there. But the truth is the cathedral never became a magnet for people in the city under his watch and then when it was discovered the finances were going into a bottomless pit they had to get rid of the choir, some staff and re-evaluate their priorities. Like all incompetents in ECUSA, Werner rose like a phoenix and now heads the House of Deputies. Also accompanying Griswold was the Rt. Rev. Charles Jenkins, the President of Griswold's Council of Advice. Bishop Jenkins is in a writing contest with retired Bishop of South Carolina, the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison over what constitutes truth in the Episcopal Church. Is it the canons or Scripture? You get that one wrong and you go straight to hell and you don't collect $200.00. And then there is David Booth Beers Esq., Griswold's chancellor. Don't ask for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee, if thou, oh bishop, verily do not lay claim to parishes that attempt to flee your jurisdiction. For if you do cut them any slack, I, David Booth Beers will invoke the Dennis Canon and verily I shall have thee up before the courts and Frank, my friend, will deliver unto thee a presentment and have thee removed henceforth from thine bishopric. Just try me. And then there's Barbara Braver, a member of Frank's staff who sycophantically does exactly what she is told and never returns phone calls, because she is scared that if she said anything, say, like the truth, she would lose her job. Said Frank to the Commission: "I very much hope that our several voices were able to convey some of the ways in which we in this church are seeking to live honestly and respectfully with divergent views within our own province." All the "voices" Griswold brought with him said the same thing - that shows the lie of the "diverse" center. There was not one single orthodox voice in Griswold's entourage. "The work of the Commission is indeed difficult and therefore its members need the support of our prayers," quoth Frank. And when it is all over Frank will be toast, and there won't be enough prayers to save him. END

EPISCOPAL CHURCH IS ANYTHING BUT WHOLE By the Rev. David Roseberry Dear Dallas Morning News Editors: Your article entitled of June 19, 2004 entitled “Gay bishop hasn’t caused schism” seemed incomplete to me. I am thankful for the update, but I question the conclusion of the article that despite warnings and threats, the Episcopal Church remains whole. I contend that “whole” is in the eye of the beholder, and in this case, the beholder may not be able to see what is really happening. The Episcopal Church is anything but whole. It is hobbled and broken. There is serious fracture and waning morale in nearly every diocese and parish. The corporate betrayal of the biblical heritage of the Episcopal Church is being felt at every level. Earlier this month I submitted a strong plea to Archbishop Robin Eames appealing to his commission for some kind of censure, discipline and rebuke for the errant and divisive decisions of the General Convention. The letter was signed by 700 Episcopal clergy across the country. These clergy represent over 10% of the parish priests in the Episcopal Church and perhaps have much as 20% of the active membership. Twenty-one of the 36 Anglican provinces around the world (representing a vast majority of the 75 million Anglicans worldwide) have broken or impaired communion with the Episcopal Church. The Eames Commission will study and try to find ways we can stay together as a “Communion” across the world, but we are hardly whole. It may be that the national church doesn’t feel the pinch of dollars yet, but they will. It will take a year or so for shortfalls in the dioceses to find their way “up” the hierarchy. Remember also that the Episcopal Church has millions of dollars in trust funds to mask the pain of its shrinking budget, but real pain is being felt in parishes and missions all over. Finally, it needs to be said that Episcopal leaders have a way of overstating the irrelevant. When the World Trade Center fell in September 2001, the Presiding Bishop dispatched an emergency email to news outlets. We were told that “everything is fine” at Episcopal headquarters. The world was in chaos and the nation was at a standstill, but Episcopal headquarters were okay. The same is true today. The Episcopal Church is imploding and being torn from mainline Christianity, clergy and laity are leaving, churches are churning, but everything at headquarters is fine. It shows just how out of touch the leadership really is. The good news is that even though we are unwhole now, we could come out of this debacle whole. I have great hope in the power of God to teach His people through their errors and lead us into the ancient truths of the biblical witness. That is the story of the bible. God’s renewal of His people always begins with heartfelt repentance and sorrow for the sins of their generation. To that end, we pray and hope and wait. The Rev. Canon David H. Roseberry Rector Christ Church Episcopal Plano, Texas

By Rachel Zoll AP Religion Writer A year after the election of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, the church remains intact—splintered but not split. Most Episcopalians have stuck with their church and a dissident network of conservatives is growing more slowly than its founders hoped. And yet the fallout and tension continues, particularly overseas, with worldwide Anglican unity in doubt. “The church has reached a polarizing crossroads,” said the Rev. John Sorenson, a moderate in the conservative Diocese of Albany, N.Y. “Differences that those of us moderates used to think were a normal part of the church have reached a point where the conservative wing of the church is no longer willing to put up with the liberal wing—and the conservative wing is intent on winning.” The rift over homosexuality exploded last June 7, when the Diocese of New Hampshire elected V. Gene Robinson as bishop. Robinson, who lives openly with his longtime male partner, endured a tumultuous national confirmation process two months later and is now installed in his post. Conservatives warned of schism as protests poured in from evangelical leaders in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, a global association of churches that includes America’s Episcopal Church. But the U.S. denomination, with 2.3 million members, is far from breaking apart. Just seven of the 107 Episcopal dioceses, and less than 70 of the 6,800 congregations in other dioceses, have joined the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, which conservatives formed six months ago as a “church within a church” opposing denominational leaders. At least two more dioceses are expected to vote on affiliating this year, but several evangelical bishops are reluctant to join while their parishioners are divided on the issue, conservative leaders say. “It will continue to grow, it’s just going to grow more slowly,” said Canon David Anderson, head of the American Anglican Council, a conservative group which is helping build the network. “I think people are treating it as a very serious decision.” Robinson’s elevation strained Episcopal ties with Roman Catholics and the Russian Orthodox, but relations have improved since then, said the Rev. Robert Wright, the top Episcopal consultant on ecumenical outreach. Income overall to the national church will likely drop by a few million dollars, but some dioceses and parishes planned to give slightly more than expected to the denomination—easing the damage from those that withheld money in protest, church spokesman Dan England said. The financial outlook is worse in a dozen or so dioceses where opponents of ordaining gays held back substantial donations. “If that’s the apocalypse, we’ll take it,” said Jim Naughton, spokesman for the liberal Diocese of Washington. Still, the crisis is nowhere near resolved, as the international Anglican situation indicates. Leaders from 22 of the 38 Anglican provinces have denounced Episcopalians for consecrating Robinson, saying the Bible bans gay sex. The intensity of their complaints prompted the Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, to call an emergency summit and form a commission on how the communion can remain unified. The Anglican Church of Canada, where a diocese has authorized same-sex blessings, has also been a focus of their complaints. On Thursday, the Canadian church affirmed the “integrity and sanctity” of same-sex relationships, but stopped short of authorizing blessing ceremonies for gay couples. In April, some Anglican leaders from African provinces were so infuriated, they opted to refuse donations from the U.S. church. So far, Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria have declined their annual stipend from Episcopal national headquarters, England said. However, American money continues to flow to these provinces from other sources, such as dioceses. Episcopalians who support ordaining gays say these are largely symbolic protests that are ultimately harmless. Overseas Anglican leaders—called primates—have no collective authority and have no power to intervene in decisions by a sister church. But Sorenson contended the primates have been deeply influential, by rousing to protest those who otherwise would have been willing to tolerate a gay bishop. “The fact that the archbishop of Canterbury and the commission is even bothering to write a report means they’ve been successful,” said Sorenson, who is part of a national network called Via Media which is working to hold the church together. Support from overseas primates has also lent stature to the network, even as it struggles to build support at home. When the emergency commission holds a private meeting in the United States next week, the network’s leader, Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, and Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, the head of the church, will address the panel. “Effectively, we’ve been recognized to the extent we’re actually being given equal time,” Duncan said. But the Rev. Peter Moore, conservative president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pa., said international support could wane if the network doesn’t expand. He said the primates, “don’t want to back a flagging horse. They want a racehorse.” Conservatives hope that the commission report, due this fall, will recommend some action that will boost the network’s standing. But Wright and several church observers predict it will do little to change relations among Episcopalians, leaving them divided but one church.

By Barry Flynn Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer The Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, already facing financial challenges, has failed in a bid to recoup more than $1 million in damages from little-known stock-market losses. The diocese’s losses occurred in high-tech stocks and mutual funds starting nearly four years ago, during the bursting of Wall Street’s technology bubble. A securities industry arbitration panel last month rejected the diocese’s allegations against three individuals and two brokerage firms that handled its investment accounts, the diocese confirmed last week. However, Robert Dyer, an Orlando securities lawyer who represented the diocese, said the case was not over. He would not say what further steps, if any, he could take to recover the lost money. “It’s not over till it’s over,” Dyer said. In its appeal to the three arbitrators of the National Association of Securities Dealers, the diocese alleged breach of fiduciary duty, gross negligence and breach of contract. The diocese’s affected investments include its Slemaker fund, endowment fund, Mowery fund, and trust-and-agency fund, according to a case summary by the arbitration panel. Diocesan spokesman Joe Thoma would not disclose the extent of the diocese’s investments or characterize the effect of the setback on the diocese’s overall finances. “It’s always tough to lose money,” he said. The diocesan newspaper has not reported the securities losses, and no announcements have been made in any churches disclosing them, Thoma said, though in 2002 they were brought up during a diocesan convention. The losses had not resulted in layoffs or other apparent ill effects on church operations, Thoma said. The diocese’s annual operating budget is about $2 million, he said. The actual losses to the diocese were about $710,000 between Oct. 2, 2000, and October or November 2001, Dyer said. However, with interest included, the amount of losses would have amounted to about $1.1 million, he said. The arbitration panel’s summary of its decision said the diocese had sought more than $1.8 million in “compensatory damages, plus interest.” However, Dyer said the diocese had never actually claimed that much. “We originally calculated that amount and withdrew a claim for that,” he said. Among the other financial issues the diocese is dealing with is a major capital fund-raising campaign. Under way for about a year and a half, the campaign has brought in “about $2 million,” Thoma said. That money is being raised to fund future growth, he said. Also, the diocese is battling one of its churches, Episcopal Church of the New Covenant, in Winter Springs, whose governing board voted in January to leave the denomination and take its church building and other real estate with it. The parish board is splitting with the Episcopal Church over the confirmation of a gay man as the church’s bishop of New Hampshire. Included in the local diocese’s portfolio in 2000-01 were shares in JDS Uniphase, once the world’s biggest supplier of fiber-optic components. The company lost $51 billion in 2001 as the technology boom was deflating—a record corporate loss at the time. The diocese also held shares in two high-technology mutual funds: the Van Kampen Aggressive Growth Internet Fund and the Van Kampen Telecom Trust Series 9. One of the two brokerages named in the diocese’s claim was Continental Broker-Dealer Corp., a New York-based company. In an apparently unrelated action, the NASD expelled Continental from the securities industry on June 7 for a wide range of securities violations, including abusive sales practices and falsifying its books. The other brokerage named in the diocese’s complaint was Prudential Securities Inc. Both companies and the three individuals named in the complaint were found not culpable by the NASD arbitration panel.

By Michael L. Carreker It seems clear that with the ever-increasing demise of ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada, the inheritance of Christian Theology among Anglicans lies in the hands of the orthodox remnant. The reason why this is so is simple enough. There can be no Christian Theology apart from the supremacy of Holy Scripture. The historic Church has believed and shall always believe that in the Scripture God has spoken definitively for all times and places. The Church proclaims this confidently because at the center of Scripture is the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. He is the focal point, the true intersection of time and eternity, through whom we look backward to the promises of the Old Testament, and through whom we look forward to the Church, the Body of Christ, and her record of the New Testament. The Church has remembered her Lord, and the significance of him, and vouchsafed this sacred memory to us in texts written in the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is a first principle, therefore, that the Christian Church in general, and the Episcopal Church or the Canadian Church in particular, has no authority whatsoever apart from what is granted her in the teaching of the Bible. Now, however, within the institutions of ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada, a revisionist mind casts a shadow upon the authority of the Bible. Their purpose is to purge it of what they claim is patriarchal prejudice, or outdated sexual mores, or language deemed inappropriate for God. Most of our seminaries echo this ideology with specious scholarship and smug superiority. And so we have a glorious responsibility—and joy—set squarely before us. Thinking about God, growing in the knowledge and love of him, participation in his very life, the comfort of his love—these are steps in the journey Scripture sets before us. And more than this. Discovering what and who we are, how human life is to be lived, what is the dimension of our sinfulness, how the truth and mercy of God are found through faith in Jesus Christ, and how he has left us his own knowledge and the benefits of his sacramental grace. These, and more, are the treasures of the Bible. But given that this treasure of Holy Scripture lies in the hands of the orthodox within the Anglican Church, we must be careful how we approach the task of Theology. If we would understand the mysteries and the depths of God’s own revealed word, we must begin with humility. “God resisteth the proud but giveth grace unto the humble” (James 4:6). I emphasize the prerequisite of humility, because it is only by this most essential virtue that the soul submits to authority. He cannot expect to hear God speak who occupies his mind with the vanity of his own imagination. Human ideation is no substitute for God’s self-revelation. The paradigm for this humility is of course the Lord Jesus himself who said repeatedly that his teaching was not his own but the Father’s who sent him. And so the Christian’s vocation to humility is the first step in discovering the treasures of the Bible. But once that step, which is not easy, is made, then we must be prepared to listen to the historic teaching of the Church Catholic. Humility must be thoughtful. “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). The Christian Church is nothing other than the lives of believers filled more and more with the Word of God. And those who are filled most with the Word, the saints of the Church, become our teachers and examples. By grace we follow their wisdom in faith and their godly life. As I say this about the need for thoughtful humility, I am thinking especially, though not exclusively, of those who serve in Holy Orders and whose vocation it is to teach the faith. The laity depend on us to articulate the faith once delivered to the saints. Only by the clear articulation of Christian truth can they make sense of their everyday lives. For instance, the issue of marriage is not for laymen a matter of theological speculation but a primary form of human experience. And therefore the duty of the clergy is first of all to understand the biblical doctrine of marriage and then for the sake of the good health and salvation of souls to teach and defend it. This requires humility both on the part of the priest in understanding the doctrine of the Church, and then on the part of the layman, to learn the doctrine and to practice it with joy. In the end the experience of Christian truth is a matter of practice. Humility must be thoughtful and godly. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” (James 1:22). One may show me how to swim, describing methods of breathing and different techniques, but the joy and delight of the lake moving all about me is a matter of my actually swimming in it. To learn what the Church teaches about marriage, and then to live into the designs of marriage that God intends, is the final and definitive proof of its truth. Only by adhering with humility to the authority of Scripture, understood in the doctrines of the church, can we live as the saints have lived. Put in another form, the only way that the faithful remnant may truly approach Theology is to live a humble life of godliness. With this as our intention, the remnant can begin ever more carefully to respond to the questions of our day from the standpoint of an informed and experienced Christian theology. Some have warned rightly that we must be careful how we use the Bible to respond to our culture. We shall not respond effectively to questions of our day simply by resorting to proof texts from the Scripture, as if that were in and of itself a reasoned argument. On the other hand, neither shall we be free to offer a Christian theological perspective apart from the explicit testimony and authority of Scripture, as if the wisdom we share were of our own devising. And finally, both the relevant texts of the Bible and careful theological reasoning will prove futile in evangelism and in the defense of the gospel, if we have not tasted, at least in some small measure, the fruit of godliness. An abstract religion puts us right back in the position of our adversaries, ready to conjure up our own ideology. The glory of the Incarnation derives from the fact that the Word truly does become flesh. There is no other authentic witness. If the Anglican Communion is to flourish, and if it does not flourish it will die, it must demonstrate the authority of Scripture both in theological coherence and in the joy of lives made new. Both the mind and the heart must be saved. And so, as the Spirit moves to renew the Anglican Church, and we live into his leading, painful and difficult as that may be, the first responsibility is the thinking, teaching, and living of Christian Theology. We are no longer able to live off the ease of the former dispensation, relying on the opulent inheritance of what are now corrupt and worn out institutions. With our own repentance, faith, prayers, toil, joy, and love, we hand on to the next generation the good news of Jesus Christ, led by the Spirit in the Anglican Way of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The Rev. Dr. Michael L. Carreker is rector, Saint John’s, Savannah

By S. C. Gwynne Texas Monthly Last year, after the Episcopal Church installed its first openly homosexual bishop, a group of dissenters, led in part by conservative Texas clergymen, vowed to put up a fight. And did they ever. Will their new alliance destroy the 215-year-old denomination? IN THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, the Reverend Canon David H. Roseberry has long been considered something of a prodigy. In 1985 he founded Christ Church in a Plano home with a mere 13 people and quickly built it into a powerhouse with 4,400 members and a 500-student Sunday school. It has the largest average Episcopal church attendance in America and is the most successful start-up in the denomination’s history. It is also deeply conservative, heavily tilted toward Scripture, and determinedly evangelical. In its striking growth, its many successful outreach programs, and its broad community involvement, Christ Church is precisely what the national church, whose membership has been steadily declining for the past forty years, aspires to be. But on Sunday, August 10, 2003, Roseberry stood in the pulpit of his vaulted limestone sanctuary and delivered a rhetorical cruise missile directed at the heart of his denomination. Five days earlier, bishops from 107 dioceses at the church’s triennial General Convention, in Minneapolis, had voted to consecrate the ordination of a homosexual bishop named V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire and to approve the blessing of same-sex unions. To Roseberry, this meant that the church had ignored the Bible and thus, on this issue, had abandoned the Christian faith. “In two days, in two votes by less than six hundred people, 4,500 years of Biblical teaching and tradition were overturned,” he told the congregation. Then he explained why he had walked off the convention floor in protest. “I wanted to send the very clearest, least ambiguous signal to you that I will not be pushed or pulled into an apostate church. I can’t do it. These things are too important to me, and it’s too much of a violation of what I believe and hold sacred.” He received a standing ovation that lasted almost a full minute. In the weeks that followed, Roseberry became one of the main organizers of an unprecedented revolt against the national church. It began in conservative parishes like Christ Church and in dioceses like Dallas, Fort Worth, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and quickly spread through the global Anglican communion. (The Episcopal Church is the American name of the Anglican Church, which was created by Henry VIII after he split with the Roman Catholic Church, in 1534; Anglican churches now operate in 164 countries and have 73 million members.) Episcopalians suddenly found themselves in the middle of a bloody, media-fueled political fight. The church had long tolerated the presence of gay priests, and some bishops had been ordaining openly gay priests and deacons since the eighties. But to many members, a gay bishop was unthinkable. Conservative parishes announced that they were leaving the denomination and were promptly sued by their dioceses for their land and buildings. Some congregations just walked away, en masse, from their property. Whole dioceses and hundreds of parishes announced that they would no longer give money to the national church. In Texas, the home of some of the church’s most conservative clergy, the backlash was especially severe. All of its five bishops had voted against Robinson; four of them publicly condemned the vote. “As faithful Episcopalians, we grieve with other Christians who are shocked and offended by these decisions,” wrote Fort Worth bishop Jack Leo Iker in a furious pastoral letter that his 56 vicars and rectors were ordered to read aloud from the pulpit. At St. Michael’s Church in Richland Hills, in Iker’s diocese, the rector threw the flag of the national church on the ground and then walked on it in protest. In March six conservative retired bishops, led by former Diocese of Texas bishop Maurice Benitez, broke canon law by holding confirmations in Ohio without the permission of the bishop there; the confirmands had refused to be blessed by a bishop who voted for Robinson. (To a lesser extent, the same thing is happening in other protestant denominations, including the Presbyterian and Methodist churches; but they have had nothing like an official endorsement of a gay bishop.) The most telling event in the conflict was an October meeting of the Episcopal Church’s leading dissidents, called by Roseberry and organized by Christ Church. Roseberry was in a unique position: He led a congregation that was more uniformly conservative than perhaps any other in the nation, and he was ensconced in what was certifiably one of the most conservative dioceses in the country—Dallas. He had initially expected to draw 200 to 300 people. To his amazement, he got 2,800, including, stunningly, 40 bishops among 900 clergymen. The meeting was so large that it had to be moved from Christ Church to the Wyndham Anatole Hotel, in Dallas, and it quickly showed the rest of the world the depth and strength of the conservative protest. “It was an exclamation point in the life of the Episcopal Church,” says Roseberry. “We were saying, ‘Wow, this is the defining moment for all of us.’” That led to another meeting, in January, again organized by Roseberry’s church and this time held on its campus. There the simmering dissent of October turned to incipient schism. Thirteen bishops and representatives from twelve dioceses around the country (including Dallas and Fort Worth) and various conservative parishes formed an alliance representing some 10 percent of the church. They called it the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (known as the Network). Their purpose was to form a sort of church within the church, with its own “moderator” and a missionary focus. The Network would resist the ordination of gays and minister to the conservative congregations who now refused to take communion with presiding bishop Frank Griswold, the head of the church—or to even have him visit their churches. Such a deliberate challenge to Episcopal leadership was without precedent, and it convinced many in the clergy and the laity that sooner or later the church would shatter on a scale unseen in its 215-year history. The problem extends well beyond the borders of the United States. The larger, and starker, truth of the American rebellion is that while the bishops of Dallas and Fort Worth, whose dioceses have joined the Network, are in the minority of American Episcopal leaders opposed to having a gay bishop, they are in the overwhelming majority in the rest of the Anglican world. Of the Anglican Church’s 38 provinces around the globe, 21 have already declared themselves in “impaired” or “broken” communion with the American church. Archbishop Peter Akinola, of Nigeria, whose 17.5 million members dwarf the 2.3 million members of the Episcopal Church in America, roundly condemned the General Convention’s vote and called it “a Satanic attack.” And even in the relatively more liberal United States, 42 percent of the bishops voted against Robinson. If joining the Network means a falling out of communion with the Episcopal Church, it means a strengthening of ties with the rest of the world. It is difficult to see just where this revolt is headed or how far it will go. For conservatives, the vote means the end of what’s left of the old, scripturally driven church as they have known it. For liberals, it marks a triumph in a 28-year religious battle and the beginning of a new world of social and divine justice. What is inarguably true is that while the Anglican Church is booming in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the Episcopal Church in America is in serious decline. Some would say it is a fatal decline. It has lost nearly a third of its membership in the past 40 years, and as a percentage of the U.S. population, the number of Episcopal Church members has dropped from 1.8 percent, in 1960, to .75 percent today. The fight over how to address homosexuality in the church is also, rather obviously, a fight about how to save it. IN THE CITY OF DALLAS In the city of Dallas, fifteen miles south of David Roseberry’s airy $8 million sanctuary, is a much older and smaller Episcopal church called St. Thomas the Apostle. St. Thomas is also well known inside the national church, but for different reasons. In the eighties it began ministering to people with HIV and soon became known as the “AIDS church.” “We were serving the spiritual needs of sick people,” says the church’s rector, Father Stephen Waller. “A lot of people were dying. A lot of our members went to God. For fifteen years we were burying people hand over fist. Because of that, this once sleepy parish became a magnet for gay and lesbian people.” St. Thomas is by no means a typical Episcopal church. It is as liberal as Christ Church is conservative. But unlike Christ Church, St. Thomas is in the mainstream of the Episcopal Church in 2004. Gene Robinson’s consecration, after all, signaled a victory for liberals in a long war. Waller, who is gay, is nonetheless in the difficult position of leading a majority gay and lesbian church in one of the most conservative dioceses in the country, presided over by one of the nation’s most conservative bishops, the Right Reverend James M. Stanton. Waller’s congregation—their sexual preferences aside—are like church members anywhere: They sit on the vestry (the church’s governing board), sing in the choir, teach Sunday school, read the Bible, bring groceries to shut-ins, and perform as lay readers on Sunday. Because the liberal side of the Episcopal Church has long held that their sexual practices are not sinful, there is nothing, theologically speaking, special about them. Waller says that while most members of his parish were “delighted” by the vote of the General Convention, they were also horrified when their diocese joined the conservative Network five months later. The vestry of the church protested by writing a letter to Stanton saying that it “disassociates itself” from the decision to join the Network and that it would not give the Network money. In his church newsletter, Waller wrote, “I do not choose to be part of any group the purpose of which is to purify God’s church or any group whose function is to claim to be some sort of faithful remnant of ‘right’ believers in America.” Waller’s status as an outsider in his diocese is underscored by his willingness to bless same-sex unions, against both traditional church policy and the wishes of his bishop. “I have spoken to the bishop on several occasions about this issue,” says Waller. “Last year, after our diocesan convention, it was decided officially that we would not bless same-sex relationships. I had done some. I drove to his office and told him that I do them but that I would not do it if he did not want it done. I told him he is still my bishop. We agreed to disagree. He was graceful enough. I said I was deeply saddened.” (The General Convention last August gave local bishops the authority to approve same-sex unions for the first time; before that, it was against the rules of the church.) Though Robinson’s consecration brought such tensions into a new and sharper focus, they have long existed inside the church. Starting in the early seventies, variations of this theological debate about homosexuality kept breaking out at Episcopal diocesan and national conventions. As always, the subtext was how the church interpreted Scripture. Homosexuality was just one area in which conservatives thought the church increasingly weak and more reflective of American pop culture than the Bible. There were also growing numbers of liberals who challenged the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, and the Holy Trinity and who believed the Bible to be more of a loose metaphorical guideline than divinely inspired truth. Powerful conservative groups such as Episcopalians United and the American Anglican Communion sprang up to push back. The breaking point—and one of the most significant events in church history—came in the heresy trial of Bishop Walter Righter, in 1996. At issue was the 1990 ordination of a gay deacon in the diocese of Newark, New Jersey, home of the articulate, iconoclastic leader of the church’s liberal wing, the Right Reverend John S. Spong, who was then its bishop. Righter was Spong’s assistant. Spong had ordained a gay priest in late 1989 and had deliberately publicized it. The church’s bishops voted to censure him—but by a tepid majority of 80/76. Attitudes in the church were changing; liberals were gaining ground. Gay ordinations continued in the diocese of Newark, and in 1996 conservatives in the church decided to take a stand by trying Righter on two charges stemming from his 1990 ordination of an avowedly gay deacon, both of which involved a violation of ordination laws. The result was a decision by the bishops in the trial court that sent shock waves through the Anglican world. They ruled that the church had no “core doctrine” on sexuality that prohibited the ordination of a gay priest. Just how far to the left of the rest of the Anglican world this put the American church became clear in 1998, at the Anglican Church’s Lambeth Conference, a once-a-decade meeting of church leaders in England. Bishops voted 562/70 for a resolution declaring that while gays were “loved by God,” homosexual activity was “incompatible with Scripture” and advising against the ordination of non-celibate gays. Most of the 70 dissenters, of course, came from the increasingly isolated American church. Still, until last summer’s vote, the Episcopal Church had seemed to weather the controversy, just as it had previous disputes over the ordination of women (1976) and prayer book reform (1979)—both of which passed with relatively small net effect on church membership. Its factions were still deeply divided, but the church had not changed its official policy—disapproval—on homosexual clergy. The 2003 General Convention vote changed that irrevocably. In spite of his own ability to come to a somewhat wary accommodation with Bishop Stanton, Stephen Waller is among many priests who believe that the larger church is unlikely to remain whole. “For anyone in the Episcopal Church who has half a heart,” he says, “it is very difficult to watch as we chew each other up. I think the church is headed for a split, and that causes me enormous sadness. The question is how we keep the others aboard the ship.” THE CONSERVATIVE VIEW Considering the fact that many Episcopal churches have long made gays feel welcome, just what is it that conservatives can’t abide about homosexuals? And in a church that has knowingly ordained homosexual priests at least since the seventies, what was it about the consecration of a bishop in the tiny diocese of New Hampshire in 2003 that touched off such a global storm in the Anglican Church? The church’s conservative wing says that the dispute is about two, and only two, issues: the church’s adherence to Scripture and the church’s adherence to its own historical teachings. They argue, with little credible opposition, that the Bible consistently condemns gay sex. It is, as they like to say, “univocal” on the subject, from Genesis to Leviticus to Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. In all, the subject is mentioned only eight times and never by Jesus himself. “What we believe is based on Scripture and also on the unbroken practice of the Christian church and our Jewish forefathers for five millennia,” says Fort Worth’s Jack Iker, one of the most conservative bishops in the church and one of three who still refuse to ordain women to the priesthood. “The church has always been unanimous in its condemnation of the homosexual lifestyle. The cultures that the Christian church came into—Roman and Greek—were very firmly accepting of homosexuality, and men having sexual relationships with young boys was common and acceptable, especially for the upper classes. But the church, coming out of its Jewish heritage, was very much countercultural that way.” It is a common misconception that conservatives like Iker, Stanton, and Roseberry want to exclude gays from the church altogether. This is not what they say, and there is no evidence that it is true. (They are even agreeable to being part of a church that ordains homosexuals, as they have proven for more than two decades.) Their position is that Scripture holds homosexual acts to be unnatural, ungodly, and therefore sinful. The foundation of that belief—necessarily—is that homosexuality is a behavioral choice. Like any behavioral choice, it can be resisted. Like any temptation to sin, it needs to be resisted. And like other sinners, conservatives say, gays are welcomed into the church to worship and receive God’s love and forgiveness. “As an individual, you should know that if you are an active member of a gay lifestyle, that is outside of God’s will,” says Roseberry. “It is an unnatural, broken love, and it is not God’s best for you. It is God’s call in your life to bring every aspect of your life under his lordship. And so if there is divorce, repentance; if there is homosexual attraction, celibacy; if there is homosexual sin, repentance; if there is heterosexual sin or attraction to someone outside of your marriage, repentance.” Still, it was one thing to have gay priests, whom conservatives do not approve of but consider to be aberrations, products of ecclesiastical lawlessness, and quite another to have an avowedly gay bishop, which represented a doctrinal change. A gay bishop meant that the church no longer believed that homosexual behavior was sinful. Liberals make several basic counterarguments. The most basic is that the sexual preference of gays is not a “behavior” that they choose and therefore cannot be a sin like other chosen behaviors, such as adultery. (Both sides say that science upholds their claims.) Perhaps the most common argument is that committed, monogamous homosexual relationships did not exist in biblical times and therefore were never addressed. Most of the Bible’s depictions of homosexuality are indeed either predatory or exploitative in some way. “If you take what Paul’s letters and Leviticus and Genesis say about homosexuality, it is like comparing pornography or XXX video places to committed heterosexual relationships,” says Barbi Click, a lesbian church member who helped organize a group called Fort Worth Via Media, which believes there should be room in the church for gay bishops. “You just can’t compare them.” Liberals also point out that though Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, he did condemn divorce. They wonder why, since the church found a way to change its teaching on divorce, it can’t do the same with homosexuality. Conservatives counter that the Bible is far from univocal on divorce. Mark (10:5-12) and Luke (16:16-18) say no exceptions, but Matthew (19:1-9 and 5:31-32) and Paul (1 Corinthians 7:10-16) do allow for circumstances where divorce is permissible, leaving the church enough scriptural wiggle room to change its position. Liberals point to biblical condemnations of everything from a man speaking against his father to sex during menstruation, eating bloody meat, tattooing, and wearing clothes of blended fabric. Why arbitrarily insist on a literal interpretation of a handful of Scripture passages in a church that is proudly and conspicuously non-fundamentalist? Conservative Episcopalians answer that this line of reasoning confuses civil and ritual law with moral law. Such prohibitions represent Old Testament civil law and are therefore not in force, says the conservative side; the Ten Commandments are in force, as are other moral pronouncements, such as those on homosexuality. And many liberals simply contend that because Jesus was loving and inclusive and forgiving and taught his followers to love one another, singling out gays as a special class of sinners is contrary to that love. Conservatives would say that homosexuals are not a special class of sinners. They are sinners, period, like everyone else. Conservatives also point out that Jesus did not welcome everyone unconditionally; he upheld the moral law of the Old Testament and could be a tough, demanding master. He would have loved and forgiven gays, they say. He also would have insisted that they repent of their sin. THE MIDDLE WAY Perhaps the most pernicious effect of the General Convention’s votes was that they forced Episcopalians to take sides. The result was to tear congregations apart, sometimes pitting members against each other, sometimes pitting them against their own clergy. Even in an overwhelmingly conservative parish like Roseberry’s, the votes produced dissenting voices. A member of Christ Church’s congregation, J. K. Ivey, was so disturbed by Roseberry’s reaction to the General Convention that he wrote a letter of resignation. “Each time I open my mailbox,” he wrote, “there is another ‘hate-gram’ from my beloved church that I no longer recognize . . . You have posted several documents on line and by mail that call upon all members of Christ Church to ‘Reject any position or policy of lifestyle which is contrary to scripture.’ . . . Please let me know when you plan to advocate stoning, burning at the stake, and otherwise inflicting the death penalty, as required for some 37 different sins (homosexuality excluded).” Roseberry replied, “I must make a simple statement. The General Convention has erred in electing a man who cannot uphold the historical teaching of the Christian Church. Whether he is a homosexual or not is beside the point . . . Your letter characterizes me as arrogant, judgmental, intolerant, and condemning. This is the same spirit of hate that you accuse me of.” Ivey says he received “tons of hate mail” after his letter was posted on the Internet. “At first it ran 80-20 hate-to-good,” he says. “Then at some point it reversed.” That sort of polarity made it harder for Episcopalians to do what they have long been famous for: finding common ground between extremes. Church members even use the Latin term for it: “via media”—“the middle way.” It dates to Elizabeth I, who managed to hold Papists and Puritans together in the sixteenth century by insisting that they use a Book of Common Prayer while allowing wide latitude for personal beliefs. “A lot of people feel they are being forced to take a position they are not ready to take,” says Father Chuck Treadwell, the rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in McKinney, whose congregation is mostly conservative. “They feel they are being drawn into a battle they don’t necessarily want to fight.” Treadwell was a delegate to the convention and voted against Robinson but was unhappy that the church had forced the issue. He shared his feelings with his church. “When I spoke to the issue, I came out of the pulpit and said, ‘I do not know what the mind of God is.’ We were open; we talked about it. I did a lot of one-on-one counseling. Three families left because of it.” There were those like Father Fred Barber, of Trinity Church in Fort Worth, who took a stand of deliberate ambiguity on the issue. Barber is the fairly conservative rector of what, by Fort Worth standards, is a liberal parish. “I am ready to stay ambiguous here,” he says. “I told the congregation in a sermon that if I had been a delegate at General Convention, I would not have voted for Gene Robinson’s consecration. I got applause. Three days later a gay congregation member stood and said how she valued being here. She got applause too. That is ambiguity. I may have lost some parishioners because I said I would not perform same-sex blessings. But I have also said that I have gay people here, and they will continue to be welcome.” In Houston, conservative bishop Don A. Wimberly voted against consecrating Robinson’s ordination and then wrote a letter to everyone in the diocese saying so, which angered many liberals. He then did something that many of his conservative counterparts elsewhere found difficult or impossible: He said he was not going to make an issue out of it. There would be no gay ordinations in his diocese and no same-sex blessings. But there would be room for everyone in the church. “I am not throwing people out and showing them the door,” says Wimberly. “This is my understanding of Scripture, and it is the way I approach it. But that doesn’t keep me from loving you or welcoming you into the community.” When he visited liberal churches and was asked about his position, he explained it. At the annual diocesan council, in February, Wimberly’s approach was to defuse the issue by urging delegates not to vote on whether to condemn the national church. “If I had not learned anything else at General Convention,” he says, “I learned that when you vote, there are winners and losers. I said, ‘I don’t want the diocese to divide itself up like that.’” He says that he has received more than one thousand e-mails since Robinson’s election—both for and against the church’s position. But even with Wimberly’s conciliatory approach, there are casualties. A recent one was the Reverend Paul Fromberg, a gay priest who chose to leave as rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, in the Heights in Houston. Fromberg, who is heading to San Francisco, told the Houston Chronicle, “It is easier to be gay and a priest in the Diocese of California than it is in the Diocese of Texas.” A few miles away from Wimberly’s diocesan headquarters, at the 2,700-member Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, in Houston, Father Jim Nutter struggled to arrive at his own version of via media. As a convention delegate when the resolution was presented, Nutter had voted against Robinson, though he says he found the whole idea of the vote “political, arrogant, unilateral, and a huge disappointment.” He returned to Houston to a congregation that was deeply torn and addressed the subject from the pulpit on August 17. “The issue before us is not whether we are going to have gay priests and bishops,” he told them in his sermon. “You do know that, don’t you? . . . The issue is not whether we are going to accept them. We have. The issue is this . . . Are we going to move from tacit acceptance to explicit approval and support?” He then confessed his own mixed feelings, explaining that the priest who had sent him to seminary was gay, his two favorite professors at seminary were gay, and a priest who had been his spiritual mentor was gay. He also staked out a middle ground. “The conservatives, for the most part, are not pharisaical homophobes,” he said. “That language needs to stop! The liberals, for the most part, are not a bunch of New Age flakes, soft on Jesus, soft on Scripture. And that kind of language needs to stop.” Like Roseberry, but for entirely different reasons, he got a standing ovation that Sunday. He says it amazed him. But Nutter says that a “firestorm” broke after an October meeting where, for the first time, he told his congregation that he had voted no to Robinson but that, as he says, “after twenty years with this issue, I think I can get there from here—to support and ordain a practicing homosexual and to somehow bless same-sex marriages.” He points to a nearly foot-high stack of printouts of e-mail he received on the subject. “God, I had despair that week,” he says. “When I look back, I realize I was caught by surprise by the pain that people spilled out. All sorts of pain. There were liberals who said, ‘How could you vote no? You had an agenda. You lied. You’ve been duplicitous. You have betrayed us.’” In the end, he says that only 20 people out of 2,700 left Palmer Memorial. The church’s membership has actually increased, as have financial contributions. THE POWER OF BISHOPS In the loose confederation of dioceses that is the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, bishops wield enormous power. In Fort Worth, for example, Jack Iker is the chairman of the board of a corporation that owns all the lands, buildings, and financial resources of the diocese. He is elected by the clergy in his diocese. No matter how much presiding bishop Frank Griswold may dislike Iker’s theology, there is very little he can do about it. Iker does not serve at his pleasure. And if Iker, or his compatriot James Stanton, in Dallas, chooses to try to break away and form a separate linkage to the Anglican Church, there may be little the denomination can do to stop him, particularly if the Archbishop of Canterbury approves it. There would be lawsuits, to be sure. The national church might try to claim the lands of Fort Worth’s 56 congregations. Iker, of course, would likely have most of the world’s 73 million Anglicans behind him. For now, Iker and Stanton and their dioceses are part of the Network, seeking realignment within the church, but there is always the threat that the twelve dissident bishops could pick up their toys and go home. The more immediate problem is how to handle individual conservative churches who find themselves unhappily saddled with bishops who voted for Gene Robinson. Here the spiritual and temporal sides of the church are already colliding—again, because of the awesome power of bishops. In St. Louis, Missouri, when the Church of the Good Shepherd voted to break away and affiliate with the Anglican Mission in America, the diocese sued it for its land and buildings. A non-jury trial is scheduled for this month. Last winter in Florida, two congregations voted to leave the church; one abandoned its property and buildings, and the other one was sued. These are just a few examples, but they underscore the church’s main problem, which is how to keep dissident churches on board. In March, at a meeting in Navasota, Episcopal bishops tried to do just that. The plan they approved allowed for what is commonly known as “alternative oversight” for those conservative parishes that were no longer on speaking terms with their liberal bishops. The key issue for conservatives was whether bishops had ultimate veto power over a congregation in selecting a bishop from a different diocese. The bishops said yes, which caused conservatives in the Network and elsewhere to condemn the decision. If that system does not work—and from the dismal response of conservative church members it may not—then the church will have to put its hopes of avoiding a split on the so-called Eames Commission, appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the wake of the Robinson vote to figure out how the liberal American church can remain part of a generally conservative world communion. The commission, headed by the archbishop of Ireland, is expected to deliver its report this year. Regardless of what it says, the Archbishop of Canterbury has no actual authority over the American church. He can’t make American presiding bishop Griswold—or any bishop, for that matter—do anything. It is unlikely that he would take the extreme step of saying that the Episcopal Church was no longer the expression of Anglicanism in America, though that is precisely what some conservatives are hoping for. The effect of that would be a real split, isolating the liberal American church in a world of conservative evangelicals. Nor do conservatives show any signs of conciliation. In fact, the reverse is happening. The Network is still withholding money from the national church and seems more recalcitrant than ever. In impoverished Africa, Anglicans are so exercised about this issue that entire provinces are no longer accepting donations from some American churches. This is an astonishing and completely unexpected development. In March the newly consecrated bishop of New Hampshire could confidently state, “Some primates are declaring themselves in a state of impaired communion, but the fact of the matter is they’re not sending our missionaries home. They haven’t stopped cashing our checks.” On April 15, however, Anglican archbishops from Africa said they would reject donations from any diocese that recognizes gay clergy and recommended giving the Episcopal Church three months to repent. All of which leaves a global church with an apparently insoluble problem and millions of members holding their collective breath. “I have no idea what will happen,” says Roseberry. “And I say that if you are not concerned about this issue, then you don’t understand it.” KANUGA: ANGLICAN COMMUNION NETWORK MAKES PRESENTATION TO LAMBETH COMMISSION By Cynthia P. Brust June 22, 2004 The Lambeth Commission, meeting June 14-18, 2004 at Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, NC, heard strongly divergent viewpoints during their session on Tuesday, June 15. A team of five individuals representing the Anglican Communion Network and other mainstream Anglican voices within ECUSA offered testimony about chaos and disarray within the Episcopal Church and recommended specific action. The Rt. Rev. Robert M. Duncan, Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network; the Rev. Canon Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Parish, Fairfax, Virginia; Diane Knippers, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy; Mr. Hugo Blankingship, legal advisor to the American Anglican Council; and Dr. Michael Howell, alternate deputy to General Convention 2003, presented remarks and participated in a question and answer session. ECUSA made a similar presentation and was represented by the Most Rev. Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop; the Very Rev. George Werner, President of the House of Deputies; Mr. David Booth Beers, Chancellor of the Episcopal Church USA; Mrs. Barbara Braver, Assistant to the Presiding Bishop for Communications; the Rt. Rev. Arthur Williams, former Vice-President of the House of Bishops; and the Rt. Rev. Charles Jenkins, President of the Presiding Bishop’s Council of Advice. “I am grateful to the Lambeth Commission for their invitation to present our grave concerns and recommendations,” said Bishop Duncan, ACN Moderator. “We were given a fair hearing on a par with ECUSA. The Commission clearly understands that the actions of the Episcopal Church have created chaos within ECUSA as well as the Anglican Communion.” “Archbishop Eames made it clear that the principal issue the Commission was assigned to address was how the Anglican Communion could re-shape its life in light of a Province (the Episcopal Church in the United States) that has rejected the clear counsel and stated teaching of the Communion. The secondary issue the Commission struggles with—though not its stated assignment—is how deeply it is appropriate to enter into resolutions of the internal dispute within this Province,” he added. In addressing a way forward, Bishop Duncan outlined six specific recommendations for consideration by the Commission: Acknowledge that the schism ACN describes has occurred; observe that the minority in North America is at one with the majority of the Communion and with the undivided voice of evangelical and catholic Christianity; implore that the minority not be forced to submit to the aggressive and uncompromising innovators who insist, under plans like delegated episcopal pastoral oversight, that the endpoint is “reconciliation” [i.e., “submission”]; ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to give immediate protection and provide structural relief to that minority; recommend some form of discipline of ECUSA sufficient to return it to recognizable Anglicanism; and propose some core covenant or inter-Anglican code of canon law establishing broad limits to innovations against received Faith and Order, for consideration and adoption by any province desiring full membership in the Communion. Other presenters noted dissonance in the Episcopal Church including issues involving breach of trust on the part of ECUSA, a sense of betrayal on the parish level and negative ecumenical ramifications. In addition, speakers addressed the untenable argument that advocacy for homosexual behavior is comparable to civil rights issues. Speakers also shared their alarm over survey results showing that episcopal teens were less likely to believe in God than average American teens. In addition, they explained that the Church must counter, not accommodate, many North American cultural trends regarding sexuality and marriage. “The Commission emphasized that their primary focus is to look to the future of the Anglican Communion, and we pledged to do our part to help the Communion move forward,” Bishop Duncan continued. “We remain committed to the rebirth of orthodox Anglicanism in North America, will continue to faithfully pursue that goal and remain grateful for the Commission’s encouragement.” The Lambeth Commission is expected to issue its report by late September or early October this year. In deference to Lambeth Commission, the presentations will be released to them for posting on the official website and may be accessed at http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/lambeth.asp