Anglican Mainstream

From Kendall Harmon (Hat Tip: Barbara Gauthier)

Dr. Ephraim Radner responds to criticism leveled at him by the Chicago Consultation in thier response to the Communion Partners Statement:

“We are especially dismayed that this attempt to undermine the Church’s governance involves leaders who have held positions on the Communion-wide body that produced the proposed Anglican Covenant. The various drafts of the Covenant have each created impediments to the full inclusion of all baptized Christians in the Communion and thereby undermine God’s gift of unity. Regrettably, we must now question the full intent of these documents.”

Since I am the only person indicated by this statement (despite the use of the plural “leader(s)”, let me respond briefly, in hopes that someone from the Consultation is reading. The Consultation’s statement is, taken as a whole, completely disingenuous. Since I have been long and publicly committed to the view that partenered homosexuals should not, on Scriptural, traditional, and moral reasons, be ordained or have their partnerships affirmed by the Christian Church, my commitments have always been, in the Consultation’s view, “sinful”. This is not news to the Consultation members, and brings no revelatory instruments to bear in their reading of the CP Bishops’ statement. But it really has nothing to do with the Anglican Covenant. This is logical hooey, and at best an indirect form of ad hominem diversion. The various drafts of the Covenant have had nothing to do with the issues of sexuality (much to the chagrin of some), and the Consultors know it.  If the “full intent of the documents” is based not on their content, however, but on the people involved in drafting them, then the the Consultors are rather slow in figuring out what is going on.  After all, about half of the Covenant Design Group shares my “sinful” perspective and has shared it long before the Covenant was even a gleam in Canterbury’s eye.

If that were to disqualify them from membership on the Design Group or taint the product of their work by definition, of course, that would mean that more than half of the Communion would not or should not be representated in the drafting of the Covenant.  I assume that is simply what the Consultors would prefer.  But they should just say so, and stop claiming “dismay” at having to articulate their condemnation of most of their Anglican “brothers and sisters”, let alone adopting the aura of being the great “reconcilers” in comparison to whom everybody with a strong, though different, theological and ecclesial commitment they are willing to argue is automatically deemed divisive. This is not persuasive in the least.

There is a legitimate context in which to debate whether ACI’s views regarding the Constitution of TEC are accurate, historically or legally, let alone whether their theological implications are valuable. The Consultation does not, by a long shot, even begin to enter that context. I wish they would, however; it would elevate a discussion that, until this point, remains mired in bigotry.

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