There are several challenges of weblogs that are increasingly showing up in CC.

The most obvious is the small number of contributors to any particular discussion and the restricted number of contributors overall.

The second is the pattern of some people talking a lot, and others not talking enough.

A third pattern is that it seems the more often a person contributes, the more they reveal about their fixed positions, making ‘discussion’ less and less important and ‘negotiation’ impossible.

It is to be expected that the Anglican position in North America generates most discussion and more than a little disagreement. It is difficult to deal with contributions surrounding the resignation of Abp Mouneer. I have been, genuinely, astonished at the various contributions that in some way offer explanations for the Archbishop’s stated position. Few have taken into account his peculiar position in the Middle East which is neither old-Europe, North American nor, I hasten to add, in any way linked to the Global South. I am even more astounded at the way in which his letter has been used to sustain arguments totally unrelated to the content of his letter, notably what his attitude might be about GAFCON and the Global South.

It is not really difficult to simply accept his position that endless committee gabfesting gets on top of people and the inability to have one’s point of view acted upon inevitably raises the common-sense question of why bother? It is not necessary, may I suggest, to go beyond his words to find some elaborate construction. The Archbishop is not alone in finding the wordy Anglican debate thoroughly dreary and concluding that there are other issues worth pursuing.

II mentioned in an earlier post that it is increasingly difficult to understand the lack of Anglican grace that is becoming apparent. This website has a rich history of generating discussion from widely divergent contributors and has, on many occasions, given information and opinions of a most helpful nature. I would be, as a far distant reader and occasional participant, disappointed to see CC weakened by bitterness and disputation. Can we try to live with less negativity about the merits and ideas of others and considerably more patience and tolerance.

Ian Welch, Canberra

To Ian Welch,

  The nature of discourse is indeed sad here.  But to be honest, it is mostly because a few of us who write take note of and oppose the relentless thrashing and trashing to TEC on these pages.  It seems perfectly acceptable here to blame TEC for all the ills of the communion while excusing the behavior of the CC companions along the way.  The ACI party line is sacrosanct and it is more than ok to have a weblog where it is. 
  But there will not be genuine discourse as long as TEC is everyone’s whipping boy.  And as I have noted over and over we are at a series of impasses that just result in the sort of posturing of Ian M’s most recent postings.  And whether or not TEC grows numerically as a result of being honest and open in dealing with homosexual issues, we will at least hold true to a tradition in Anglicanism that has always sought the wider tent to meet in.  Conservatives may feel excluded from that tent, but that is only because their sole way of interacting is to tell us they know the truth, we must acknowledge that they do, and then we must do as they say.  That is never a prescription for community, just for dictatorship.
  I do think there is a broader battle brewing between the fundamentalist-evangelical wing of Anglicanism and the comprehensive broad tradition.  Since the fundy-evangelical-papists can only allow things to be there way, I expect a lot of separation to be in our future as Anglicanism seeks to be itself and not a captive to Geneva or Pat Robertson.

Michael, you certainly haven’t raised the level of discourse by your last post.  The reason that pecusa gets a thrashing here and elsewhere is because pecusa caused the present crisis in the Anglican Communion and by the totals I’ve seen seeks to widen the gap in the AC by consenting to the election of Glasspool.  If CC stands for Common Cause you’re a little behind the times.  The CC is now the ACNA, the new province.  pecusa in no way holds true to any genuine Anglican tradition - the tent either has boundaries or it is not a tent.  The stick figures that you use to represent those with whom you disagree don’t help the conversation either.  Geneva or Pat Robertson are not the choices of many if any Anglican Evangelicals that I know.  Perhaps you could raise the level of your discourse and others will follow. 

btw, I still don’t understand why you can’t support your viewpoint on Hooker with Hooker, or even reference to the scholars that you believe are correct on Hooker.

I am not at all sure that anyone knows who caused the present crisis. I do believe that all of us operate to some extent with ideas about the way things came to be in the past that need to be challenged. We would like to believe that decisions in the past were made with a great deal less conflict and messiness than they actually were and to set that idealized picture of the past against the picture of the messy way things are happening now.

An example of this is the way in which we might think of the history of the Anglican Communion as being fairly free of conflict up until the past twenty years or so. The first Lambeth Conference was not without conflict. Not only was it called in part to address the serious conlfict over the deposing of Bp Colenso, but it was boycotted ny the Arbp of York, the US Bishops were only invited at the insistence of Canadian Bishops, and discussion of refering to the Arbp of Canterbury as Patriarch nearly resulted in a revolt by the Americans. In the Windsor Report’s assessment of the history of women’s ordination we see a picture of an orderly and irenic process of consulation, a picture that downplays the actual messiness of unauthorized ordinations and the formation of “Continuing Churches.” The history of the Communion is full of messy conflicts and one can see, if one chooses to, villians in every corner. Or one can choose to see in this history men and women struggling to bein relationship across great distances and great differences in culture and context. That we have succeeded at all is a matter of sheer grace. Continuing to live in communion will require that discard our idealized pictures of the past and see that the present conflicts are not as different as we assume they are from the conflicts of the past.

Really?  No one knows who caused the present crisis - are you serious?  Might an emergency meeting of the Primates, the Windsor Report, and the Dar es Salaam statement provide some clues?  Might the words of the ABC at GC10 provide another clue?  Your historical analysis is subterfuge for not taking seriously the actions of pecusa that precipitated the current crisis.  Yes, women’s ordination was messy, particularly here in the States; that doesn’t change the facts on the ground about the current conflict which you seek to minimize.  w.o did not threaten to break apart the AC. w.o. did not cause entire dioceses to leave pecusa.  Are you in complete denial about what has happened over the past 6 and a half years?

Tony Seel - 08 February 2010 01:59 PM

Michael, you certainly haven’t raised the level of discourse by your last post.  The reason that pecusa gets a thrashing here and elsewhere is because pecusa caused the present crisis in the Anglican Communion and by the totals I’ve seen seeks to widen the gap in the AC by consenting to the election of Glasspool.  If CC stands for Common Cause you’re a little behind the times.  The CC is now the ACNA, the new province.  pecusa in no way holds true to any genuine Anglican tradition - the tent either has boundaries or it is not a tent.  The stick figures that you use to represent those with whom you disagree don’t help the conversation either.  Geneva or Pat Robertson are not the choices of many if any Anglican Evangelicals that I know.  Perhaps you could raise the level of your discourse and others will follow. 

btw, I still don’t understand why you can’t support your viewpoint on Hooker with Hooker, or even reference to the scholars that you believe are correct on Hooker.

CC=Covenant Communion.  Get the name right it is The Episcopal Church (TEC), since we now have 15-16 nations involved pecusa is no longer used.  In my estimation the present crisis was caused by the fringe right in the Church whose homophobia knows no bounds and whose use of scripture is one dimensional.  This has been a long brewing fight some of it over the ordination of women, some over prayer book revision, some over TEC refusing to discipline wayward scholars after the manner that the fringe right demands.

If you do not like the Pat Robertson reference stop using the Spong card, I’m tired of it.  And if I remember correctly you are an imagined part of the Nigerian church now.  as for Hooker, when you’ve demonstrated that you’ve actually read enough to be conversant, I’ll talk more.  It is easy enough to do a search on the web and find out the range of scholarship in the subject.  You are free to educate yourself more or not, it is of no matter to me.

But rest assured that we progressives will persist in proactively opposing the spread of Nigerian fundamentalism, or any other fundamentalism growing in Anglicanism.  TEC and other progressives real evangelical enterprise is to wrest the Christian “brand” from fundies, since y’all do little more than bring Christianity into disrepute.

Michael, please show where I have mentioned Spong here.  He is passe.  As I have explained elsewhere I use pecusa because pecusa continues to act like liberal protestants rather than a church that is part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.  When pecusa stops acting like liberal protestants playing dress up I will cease calling you all pecusa.  I am exercising restraint here, I don’t think I’ve called pecusa the Episcopal Fraud as I do on my blog.

Imagined part of Nigeria?  Have you run that by the Primate of Nigeria?

Still unwilling or unable to support your position on Hooker.  I’d think you’d want to do it to educate others and to shut me up.

Tony Seel - 08 February 2010 06:01 PM

Really?  No one knows who caused the present crisis - are you serious?  Might an emergency meeting of the Primates, the Windsor Report, and the Dar es Salaam statement provide some clues?  Might the words of the ABC at GC10 provide another clue?  Your historical analysis is subterfuge for not taking seriously the actions of pecusa that precipitated the current crisis.  Yes, women’s ordination was messy, particularly here in the States; that doesn’t change the facts on the ground about the current conflict which you seek to minimize.  w.o did not threaten to break apart the AC. w.o. did not cause entire dioceses to leave pecusa.  Are you in complete denial about what has happened over the past 6 and a half years?

Had I been one of those who left ECUSA, I might be mildly offended by the assertion that my departure was caused by ECUSA’s actions. As one who has chosen to stay, I acknowledge that those who have left have decided to do so as an act of conscience. It was their choice and there are some who share many of their convictions who have chosen to stay.

I acknowledge that this crisis is a serious one and that the actions of ECUSA do have consequences. I think, however, that the actions of lots of different people brought about this crisis. Even the Windsor Report acknowledges that the border-crossing made the crisis worse. But beyond the actors within the Anglican Communion there are other factors which have influenced the situation.I have a Canadian friend who is amazed that the reactions to the actions of his Church have been so much milder than the reactions to ECUSA’a actions. Might one of the reasons for the difference be the different ways in which people in the Global South view our two countries. I recall a comment from one African Anglican who saw little difference bewtween the ordination of Gene Robinson and the foreign policy of the Bush administation.

My attempt to demythologize our view of Anglican Communion history was not intended to absolve ECUSA - or anyone else -from responsibility for their actions. It was intended, though it did not succeed, to help us to see that the way ECUSA has made its decsions about same-sex relationships is not that at all that different from the messy way decisions have been made in the past. We need to view the present crisis not in the light of a romanticized idea of what the Communion was like in some golden age, but with the knowledge that each age has presented the Communion with threats to the bonds of affection and that all of us are responsible for how we meet those threats.

Just in passing, and avoiding polemics. I know the terminology “TEC” is widely used.

Is this intended as a legitimisation of the TEC as a distinct and separate ‘brand’ of episcopal cum Anglican Christianity possibly outside the Anglican Communion? Put another way, an additional brand of episcopal Christianity, alongside Rome, Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Anglicanism?

Is it or was it to distance the Episcopal Church from the use of “Protestant?”

Although the terminology may have validity in the General Convention context, I wonder where that leaves individual dioceses. I notice on a variety of websites that PECUSA still appears and I have the impression that it is the legal name in many instances. I sense an issue of canon law v civil law (I.e., corporate legal identity). I mention this because it required parliamentary legislation in Australia in each State to change our provincial and diocesan Anglican identities from the United Church of England and Ireland in Australia (usually just CofE) to Anglican Church of Australia.

Please understand that this is a simple enquiry and I have no personal views either way. In my academic work on 19C Episcopal Missions in China I tend to use PECUSA as the label then in use, but to refer more generally to the Episcopal Church in order to distinguish the American Anglican work in China from that of British and Australian Anglicans.

Ian Welch

Daniel:

You wrote:

I have a Canadian friend who is amazed that the reactions to the actions of his Church have been so much milder than the reactions to ECUSA’a actions.

Where is your Canadian friend recently?  I come out of the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster, and I see no major differences between what has happened there as against what has happened in TEC (I have friends and family back in Canada).  The only difference I would suggest between Canadians and Americans is that Canadians tend to be more deferential to authority figures and they tend to be more soft-spoken.  However, once the lid blew off the pot, it seems to me that proportionally as many Canadian parishes have departed from the Anglican Church of Canada as American parishes have left TEC.

Perhaps you mean international reactions to the Anglican Church of Canada vis a vis the Episcopal Church.  I would agree with you there, but I think that might be more that TEC is seen as the chief innovators with the Anglican Church of Canada being the followers.

James Wirrel - 08 February 2010 08:53 PM

Daniel:

You wrote:

I have a Canadian friend who is amazed that the reactions to the actions of his Church have been so much milder than the reactions to ECUSA’a actions.

Where is your Canadian friend recently?  I come out of the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster, and I see no major differences between what has happened there as against what has happened in TEC (I have friends and family back in Canada).  The only difference I would suggest between Canadians and Americans is that Canadians tend to be more deferential to authority figures and they tend to be more soft-spoken.  However, once the lid blew off the pot, it seems to me that proportionally as many Canadian parishes have departed from the Anglican Church of Canada as American parishes have left TEC.

Perhaps you mean international reactions to the Anglican Church of Canada vis a vis the Episcopal Church.  I would agree with you there, but I think that might be more that TEC is seen as the chief innovators with the Anglican Church of Canada being the followers.

My Canadian friend is a layman from Calgary and he might challenge the idea that Canadians are followers. You are right that he and I were both bemused by the international reactions to our Churches’ actions and think that the differences have less to do with the actionsand more to do with the different ways that the US and Canada are viewed. I wonder how Anglicans from the Global South view the CofE, where,in some dioceses,same-sex blessings are more common than in most dioceses in the US and Canada.

Ian Welch - 08 February 2010 08:49 PM

Just in passing, and avoiding polemics. I know the terminology “TEC” is widely used.

Is this intended as a legitimisation of the TEC as a distinct and separate ‘brand’ of episcopal cum Anglican Christianity possibly outside the Anglican Communion? Put another way, an additional brand of episcopal Christianity, alongside Rome, Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Anglicanism?

Is it or was it to distance the Episcopal Church from the use of “Protestant?”

Although the terminology may have validity in the General Convention context, I wonder where that leaves individual dioceses. I notice on a variety of websites that PECUSA still appears and I have the impression that it is the legal name in many instances. I sense an issue of canon law v civil law (I.e., corporate legal identity). I mention this because it required parliamentary legislation in Australia in each State to change our provincial and diocesan Anglican identities from the United Church of England and Ireland in Australia (usually just CofE) to Anglican Church of Australia.

Please understand that this is a simple enquiry and I have no personal views either way. In my academic work on 19C Episcopal Missions in China I tend to use PECUSA as the label then in use, but to refer more generally to the Episcopal Church in order to distinguish the American Anglican work in China from that of British and Australian Anglicans.

Ian Welch

Let me try to answer Ian and I do expect to be corrected as this is simply from my memory. 
The technical term for TEC (I will use the term in an effort to be polite and non-polemic) is still the “Domestic and foreign missionary society of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA.  This was usually shortened to PECUSA.  I believe that it was in the seventies that the word Protestant was dropped officially and it became ECUSA - this seems to have happened around the era of Prayer Book revision and the desire certainly that the 1979 BCP be a definitively more ‘Catholic” document, as well as whatever else it is.  The adaptation or adoption to TEC came during the current round of Anglican turmoil as the leaders of the TEC wanted to show their “international” connections at a time when from my perspective it was necessary to show that TEC was in fact some kind of mini communion.  This action was IMHO was presumptuous as other Provinces of the AC have also officially been called The Episcopal Church of, for example, Scotland or Rwanda.  None the less the US province has been able to use this title.  I am not sure if it is in fact a legal title at this point or simply a shorthand for the DFMS title that is above.

In terms of Australian law I am not in much of a position to comment.  However I surmise that there are very different legal constructs at work since in the US DMFS is a “Voluntary Association"and legal entity, and not part of any established church since the latter is expressly forbidden constitutionally.  Different countries had to handle legal status differently due to their relationship as parts of what used to be the Empire and is now a commonwealth of nations.

Your question goes on to ask what this means, particularly for dioceses.  This is a legal question to which there is not yet a constitutional answer - simply contrary claims.  I believe that Philip Turner has an excellent ACI presentation on this from this last weekend.  I personally believe that we are simply a voluntary association of dioceses.  That voluntary association has legal status now though it seems that it did not at its inception.  The PB and her lawyers claim that TEC is hierarchical now and that this is no longer a voluntary association of dioceses.  This is in part where we are within our very American way of pursuing things through the Law Courts since there is no statutory body that has any say in this.  So it depends on your diocese as to the use of PECUSA or TEC.  That again my depend on the legal documents of individual dioceses as these vary hugely.  Generally I would answer that TEC is not being used in a legal sense.  The legal term depends upon the different legal documents.

I shall not repeat my personal opinions as to what is right or wrong as I have done that elsewhere.
I remain doctrinally a 1662 BCP, 39 Article, Biblical Authority type of Anglican.

Ian Montgomery is close to being right about the legal title of the corporation. It is “in the United….” and not “of”. I think there is a minor theological point there. In addition to the inclusion of diocses outside the US, one reason for the change is that the Church is known in the US as the Episcopal Church and not by any of its longer names. Some conservatives have attacked the change as being disrespectful of the Churches in Scotland and elsewhere that are Episcopal Churches, but I have not heard any criticism coming from those Churches.

It has been my custom to refer to groups by the names they choose.  I have even claimed the title that some have placed on me and agree that I am a revisionist who believes that some of the conventional interpretations of Scripture need to be revised.

Thanks Dan for the correction.  I use TEC to be polite - I do, as you know disagree strongly with its use and believe that TEC is in error to the point of non-recognizably Christian, in spite of its continued use of Christian formularies.  The now well know denials and revisions of the PB are but examples of how TEC is de facto different from its de jure claims.  Sadly revisionism has become heterodoxy - in my opinion.  I take heart from the support from elsewhere in the Communion.  Meanwhile I fear that the use of the title TEC is yet another attempt to create facts on the ground prior, which is what it has done with gay ordination and blessings and which it attempted with WO internally but as there had been Communion agreement for Hong Kong previously the rest of the AC was not much affected.
I cannot revise that about which Scripture speaks plainly, especially when the Communion has spoken so strongly in support of that interpretation.  TEC is IMHO “beyond the pale.”

Tony Seel - 08 February 2010 06:58 PM

Michael, please show where I have mentioned Spong here.  He is passe.  As I have explained elsewhere I use pecusa because pecusa continues to act like liberal protestants rather than a church that is part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.  When pecusa stops acting like liberal protestants playing dress up I will cease calling you all pecusa.  I am exercising restraint here, I don’t think I’ve called pecusa the Episcopal Fraud as I do on my blog.

Imagined part of Nigeria?  Have you run that by the Primate of Nigeria?

Still unwilling or unable to support your position on Hooker.  I’d think you’d want to do it to educate others and to shut me up.

Well thank God you are exercising restraint, I am too, not having referred to y’all as talibanglicans for a goodly while! You have not mentioned Spong, by he is one oft held up as the valley of Doom into which TEC has slipped. Pecusa is simply not factual, but when have facts mattered?

And yes, you imagine you have been transferred to Nigeria, but unless you are on the ground working there, it is imaginary because the WWAC does not recognize such “transfers” since the violate the Moratoria of the Windsor Report.  In the end Mary Glasspool will be more recognizably a Bishop than say, David Anderson. None of the jursidictional violations “count” as far as I am concerned.  What has most amused me in this is how the dissident clergy cherry pick the Province to “transfer” too.  Those who are divorced and remarried had to find a Province that would accept them, so they shopped themselves around. One dissident group here, that went to Nigeria, had one of more of its clergy rejected for being remarried.  One has to love such ignorance in motion (with respect to clergy who go to join a church that will not have them).

As for Hooker, read his work, read the body of scholarship, then I will invest my time.  As for shutting you up, why in the world would I want to do that?