wfn.org | Episcopal Bishops address GC's divisive issues

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

99-018
Bishops determined to help General Convention deal with divisive 
issues 

by James E. Solheim
(ENS) Bishops emerged from a six-day closed meeting at a 
diocesan retreat center in Texas expressing a determination to 
help the church deal more constructively with divisive issues 
that threaten to split the church.

"We are not backing off the issues-but we are exploring 
different ways to deal with the issues," said Bishop Catherine 
Roskam of New York in an open conversation with the press at the 
end of the March 4-9 meeting at Camp Allen near Houston. She said 
that the conversation among the 140 bishops had "deepened" enough 
so that they were able to deal with their differences "in an 
atmosphere of mutual trust."

Although last summer's Lambeth Conference of 750 bishops of 
the Anglican Communion was not on the agenda, the confrontation 
over the issue of homosexuality at the conference was clearly 
behind the effort to find a better way to deal with issues, 
according to several bishops.

"There are concerns that don't lend themselves to a vote," 
observed Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold. "We learned from 
Lambeth that passing resolutions  doesn't resolve the issue." 
Instead the "questions can remain and the divisions can be very 
deep. So I think we have been trying to find a way to live our 
lives and do this for the sake of the larger church."

Bishop Chilton Knudsen of Maine used the earthy analogy that 
dealing with some issues like sexuality was like picking at a 
sore, which "only makes it worse and can lead to systemic 
infection."

A better foundation
Calling it "the best meeting yet" of the spring retreats, 
established in the wake of a confrontation in the House of Bishops 
at the 1991 General Convention, Bishop Chester Talton of Los 
Angeles credited Griswold with "showing us the way forward and 
helping us deal with more substantial issues." 

Bishop Don Wimberly of Lexington added, "We are looking at 
different ways of doing our work-totally different." He said 
that Griswold had used his teaching skills to "bring us into a 
spiritual realm-and it's paying tremendous benefits by giving us 
a better foundation," he said.

The challenge now, according to several bishops, is to take 
the new spirit of cooperation back into the dioceses. "We seem to 
be on track but can we carry this spirit back to our dioceses and 
into General Convention?" asked Bishop Chris Epting of Iowa. He 
pointed out that a significant number of bishops were not at the 
Texas meeting. Yet he expressed guarded optimism that the bishops 
could influence the decision-making process of the church in a way 
that would curb the threat of further polarization.

Others suggested that there were those on both sides of the 
issues who seemed equally determined to push their agendas at 
General Convention. Pointing out that the Texas retreat was not a 
legislative session, Bishop Claude Payne of Texas said, "Even 
though we did not vote on it here, the sense was that we will not 
vote up or down on the hot button sexuality issues at the General 
Convention in 2000."

Reactions to plan vary
Pamela P. Chinnis, president of the House of Deputies, 
endorsed the hopes of the bishops for a less confrontational 
General Convention but pointed out that it is a legislative 
meeting, the highest authority in the Episcopal Church-and 
difficult to predict. "The House of Deputies has always been open 
and willing to work in partnership with the House of Bishops," 
she said in an interview. "When the houses work together, as they 
seemed to do at the Philadelphia General Convention in 1997, it 
benefits the whole church."

Chinnis underscored the right of deputies to introduce 
resolutions and said that resolutions emerge from many levels of 
the church-including diocesan and provincial conventions, as well 
as boards and agencies of the church. "We must take them all 
seriously because of our democratic polity," she said.

Griswold emphasized the partnership between the two houses 
during sessions with the bishops, reminding them that there are 
two dynamics at work at General Convention. Reporting to his staff 
after the meeting, he said, "There are the deputies who are 
focused on legislation because they have been elected for that 
purpose. And there are the bishops who can look at the community 
from a different perspective."

Citing the fact that about half of the deputies will be 
attending their first General Convention next year, Griswold said 
that the bishops have an on going life together and usually serve 
in positions of leadership longer than deputies. Yet collaboration 
is important. "There is a sense of urgency created when deputies 
need to drive things to closure. There is need for bishops to 
invite the House of Deputies to search for alternatives to voting 
something up or down."

Yet both houses must be careful not to avoid issues by not 
dealing with them. "We need careful listening," Griswold said. 
"We need a time for growing into an answer without forcing an 
answer before its time." He also announced that the September 
meeting of the House of Bishops in San Diego would provide 
"sustained conversation" about sexuality issues, including an 
invitation for gay and lesbian members of the church to tell their 
stories. 

In a letter to his diocese, Bishop Richard Shimpfky of El 
Camino Real said that the bishops represented "only half of this 
church's leadership" and that "the General Convention is the 
single magisterium in our most democratic polity." Using the 
struggle over the ordination of women as an example, he said that 
it may not be possible to avoid some issues because "justice is 
justice, be it women's place or the place of homosexual persons in 
the large room God has called Anglicans to uphold." 

Integrity, Beyond Inclusion and the Oasis, organizations 
which describe themselves as "committed to realizing the full 
inclusion of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the life of the 
Episcopal Church, issued a statement reacting "with alarm and 
objection" to reports the bishops would seek "to avoid 
legislative action on issues of human sexuality at General 
Convention." They said that "the bishops appear to have forgotten 
that the church is more than the episcopal order, but a 
collaborative endeavor of laity and clergy" and that "they are 
only one house of General Convention." The statement concluded, 
"Our vision of General Convention includes conversation, but not 
to the exclusion of taking stands on the many issues of justice 
that are before us."

Conservatives press their case
In the weeks before the Texas meeting, the Association of 
Anglican Congregations on Mission (AACOM) launched an appeal to 
the world's Anglican bishops for "protection of orthodox 
Anglicans in the United States until the Episcopal Church in the 
United States of America is reformed or replaced as a province of 
the Communion." A separate petition to the primates of the 
Anglican Communion asked for "emergency intervention" to protect 
orthodox believers, citing a  Lambeth resolution that strengthens 
the role of primates in the Communion. Attached to the petition 
was a 145-page, detailed appendix that sought to illustrate 

"ECUSA's continued violation of Lambeth resolutions and open 
rejection of them." If the Episcopal Church doesn't comply with 
the Lambeth resolutions, "the Primates Meeting should take such 
action as may be appropriate to separate ECUSA from the Anglican 
Communion and replace it with an alternative province composed of 
a continuing Episcopal Church of orthodox believing Christians."
The petitions were endorsed by First Promise, a coalition of 

conservative clergy and  laity, who nominated the Rev. John 
Rodgers, Jr., former dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry 
in Pennsylvania, as a potential bishop of a new province at a 
special meeting in Atlanta.

Bishops of the American Anglican Council (AAC) responded in 
a statement that said the AACOM petitions "signal some troubling 
realities" and "may well represent the
leading edge of an impending realignment in the Anglican 
Communion."

Griswold responds to concern of primates
At the same time, six active primates and an archbishop, 
joined by one retired primate, issued an open letter to Griswold 
February 26, saying that they were obliged to say that "the 
continuance of action at variance with the Lambeth resolutions, 
within your own or any other province, would be a grievous wrong 
and a matter over which we could not be indifferent." It asked 
the presiding  bishop to "examine the directions apparently 
proposed by some in your province and take  whatever steps may be 
necessary to uphold the moral teaching and Christian faith the 
Anglican Communion has received."

When the press asked Griswold how he intended to respond, he 
said he would try to "engage dissident voices to see if common 
ground can be established." He said that he would respond to the 
primates in a way that "will deepen bonds and what it means to be 
Anglican and in communion with one another."

On March 10 Griswold, joined by nine bishops who form his 
Council of Advice, wrote to the church leaders, "The bonds of 
communion which we enjoy with other provinces are precious to us, 
and the mutual sharing of the gifts between us is both a privilege 
and a blessing."

The letter emphasized the "divergent opinions on the 
question of homosexuality" in many provinces of the Anglican 
Communion. It quoted from the four understandings that emerged 
from the Lambeth Conference sub-section report on human sexuality, 
ranging from those who believe homosexual orientation is "a 
disorder" that might be changed to "those who believe that the 
church should accept and support or bless monogamous covenant 
relationships between homosexual people and that they may be 
ordained."

New kind of conversation
Griswold said that the Episcopal Church is in a process of 
discernment, "testing the spirits," and he quoted from a letter 
of Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey to another primate. In 
the letter Carey pointed out that the issue was discussed at 
Lambeth for "the very first time" and the resolution stating that 
homosexual activity is contrary to Scripture "indicates where 
bishops stand now on the issue; it does not indicate that we shall 
ever rest there."

Carey said in the letter that the debate at Lambeth "showed 
me more powerfully than I had ever seen before that argument and 
controversy solves nothing." He called for a new kind of 
conversation, "one that begins with respect for the integrity of 
another and a willingness to study the scriptures together, to 
reflect on our experience-including the experience of 
homosexuals-and to share in a process" of moral discourse.

Griswold ended the letter by inviting the church leaders 
"to visit those parts of our church which cause you concern so 
that you may inquire and learn directly what has animated certain 
responses" to the Lambeth resolutions. "Such visits will afford 
you the opportunity not only to query some of our bishops and 
representatives of their dioceses but also to listen to the 
experience of homosexual persons, which is mandated by the Lambeth 
resolution on human sexuality."

--James Solheim is director of the Episcopal Church's Office of 
News and Information.