Anglican Mainstream

The House of Bishops theology committee has released its study document aimed at helping the bishops respond to the requests made to them by the Primates of the Anglican Communion.

The 15-page “Communion Matters: A Study Document for the Episcopal Church” contains three chapters followed by a series of eight questions for reflection with some background on each question. A page of online resources are included for background information.

The Rt. Rev. Henry Parsely, Bishop of Alabama, is chair of the theology committee. Others members are: the Rt. Rev. David Alvarez, Bishop of Puerto Rico; the Rt. Rev. Joe Burnett, Bishop of Nebraska; the Rt. Rev. Robert W. Ihloff, retired Bishop of Maryland; the Rt. Rev. Carolyn T. Irish, Bishop of Utah; the Rt. Rev. Paul V. Marshall, Bishop of Bethlehem; the Rt. Steven A. Miller, Bishop of Milwaukee; and the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey Steenson, Bishop of The Rio Grande.

The Rev. Ian Douglas, an Executive Council member and professor at Episcopal Divinity School, is the committee’s consulting theologian. He also worked as a liaison between the theology committee and a subcommittee of the Executive Council’s International Concerns Committee, which released a six-page study guide to the draft version of the proposed Anglican Covenant.

The study guide is available online in both color PDF and black-and-white PDF document formats.

[Read and download from here->http://www.livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=3418]

The document rehearses a history of how matters have got to this point in the first 9 pages. It then discusses the Tanzania Communique.

It first describes the “intervention” of primates is an “innovation” which has not found universal acceptance throughout the communion. “In 1998 the Lambeth Conference commended to the primates a further responsibility of ‘intervention in cases of exceptional emergency which are incapable of internal resolution within provinces, and giving of guidelines on the limits of Anglican diversity in submission to the sovereign authority of Holy Scripture and in loyalty to our Anglican tradition and formularies.’ However, this innovation has not found universal acceptance around the Communion, especially within the governing bodies of the Episcopal Church, who believe that its established polity does not allow for such intervention from outside. It should be noted that the Windsor Report urges that the role of the respective instruments of unity be clarified by the churches.”

The document raises three questions:

“Are such requests (as those made by the primates from Tanzania) appropriately addressed by the bishops as chief pastors and teachers, or more representatively by the General Convention?

How best may theological and mission development take place in churches which are ‘autonomous in communion’?

How can the Communion appropriately consult about important matters such as these without a centralization of authority that is unknown to Anglicanism?”

The document then poses eight questions, focused in two which point to a particular set of answers:

“Are we called to live in mutual forbearance in the midst of similar differences long enough for the faith community to discern God’s will?

Some suggest we have reached an impasse, with seemingly ‘irreconcilable differences’ If so, how then might we live together confident of Jesus’ promise that the Church will endure for eternity?”

AM website notes that the nine members of the committee who produced the report include Bishop Henry Parsley as chair, who has deposed and removed clerical orders from orthodox clergy in his diocese who failed to affirm that they would not join the Anglican Communion Network, and Professor Ian Douglas who is also on the Lambeth Conference Design Group.

The provision for the intervention of primates made at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 arose particularly in response to the grave problems in the Province of Rwanda following the genocide. Clearly an approach approved by the whole Lambeth Conference for addressing problems in Africa is not regarded as acceptable for addressing problems in North America.

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