Church Times-FOURTEEN conservative bishops in the United States have declared that the Episcopal Church consists of autonomous but interdependent dioceses, “not subject to any metro political power or hierarchical control”.
The national Church has no power to speak for them, says a statement expected to be published later this week. The document lays the ground for individual dioceses to sign the Anglican Covenant.
It is written largely by a retired lawyer, Mark McCall, and is endorsed by conservative theologians from the three-member Anglican Communion Institute (ACI). They include the Revd Dr Ephraim Radner, a member of the Covenant Design Group.
A flurry of emails among the instigators, seen by the Church Times, demonstrates how the bishops, most of whom are members of the Communion Partners net work, are planning a strategy to be used in the event of a bishop’s not signing up to the Covenant. The strategy will be tried out in a parish in Colorado, and its details are set out in the email exchanges, which began on Saturday 18 April, the day the statement is dated.
The statement argues that, in the “recent controversies surrounding the withdrawal of dioceses from the Episcopal Church”, the Presiding Bishop, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, did not have the constitutional authority to speak on its behalf in civil-litigation cases.
It argues, moreover, that there is no central hierarchy; that the part played by the General Convention is secondary; and that the use of the word “acceding” to describe the act of dioceses’ accepting the Constitution is “treaty language”, allowing them to retain their sovereignty, freedom, and independence.
It argues that the Episcopal Church lacks the structures and mechanisms of a central hierarchical council, and has no language that makes it the “supreme” authority. With reference to the Pittsburgh dispute last year, when the Presiding Bishop deposed the Bishop, the Rt Revd Bob Duncan, the statement calls Dr Jefferts Schori’s interpretation of the Church’s law “novel”. In the US, unlike the C of E, priests’ vows contain no pledge of obedience to a metropolitan or central hierarchy.
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