Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Essay: Concern for Progress


From The Living Church-

The bishops and Standing Committees of the Episcopal Church (USA) have consented to the election of Mary Glasspool as bishop suffragan in the diocese of Los Angeles. That consent sadly confirms that TEC is determined to ignore all the repeated appeals of the wider Communion and, in the closing words of The Windsor Report, “walk apart.”

Since that report in 2004, it has been clear that the moratorium on same-sex blessings was being ignored in a significant number of dioceses, despite assurances otherwise. It has, however, been possible to claim that TEC was strictly adhering to the Communion’s repeated requests for a moratorium on “the election and consent to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges.” Such a claim is now impossible. We are now indisputably in a radically new situation. TEC as a body has determinedly, perhaps irrevocably, chosen autonomy over “communion with autonomy and accountability” (Anglican Covenant 3.1.2, quoting the Primates’ Letter from Alexandria, March 2009).

This is not simply a matter of disagreement about biblical interpretation and sexual ethics, although these are central and important. It is now very clearly also a fundamental matter of truth-telling and trust. In September 2007, at the Primates’ request and after meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, TEC bishops confirmed they would “exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.” They made clear that “non-celibate gay and lesbian persons” were among such candidates.

More here-

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2010/3/29/concern-for-progress

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