P-G: No Supreme Court Appeal

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette finally got around to reporting on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s refusal to hear an appeal from Bob Duncan, et al., in the Calvary Church litigation. (See “Pa. High Court Rejects Duncan Appeal.”) Ann Rodgers’ story “Property litigation involving Episcopal Diocese is over” appeared in today’s edition.

There was not much that is new in the Post-Gazette article, but there was this:

After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week denied an appeal from the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, which had argued that it owned the property, the Anglican decided diocese it will not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, spokesman David Trautman said.

“This whole string of litigation is ended, is done,” he said.

Appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court seemed foolhardy, since the issue adjudicated by the courts in the Calvary litigation was the plain meaning of the stipulation agreed to be all parties in 2005, not the interpretation of church canons or trust law. Prudence has not always characterized the legal moves of church dissidents elsewhere, however, so it was a relief to know that litigation, at least over the diocesan property in Pittsburgh, is at an end.

“We remain committed to reaching a negotiated settlement [of outstanding issues] with the Episcopal Church diocese,” Archbishop Duncan has declared. (See “Duncan Responds to Supreme Court  Order.”) Although Duncan and the people of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh have no right to occupy the properties that were part of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh before the October 2008 “realignment,” it may eventually take lawsuits and sheriff’s deputies to evict the squatters from Episcopal churches, particularly in the case of large and valuable churches such as Church of the Ascension.

Just the Facts

Like many Episcopalians, I was very upset by a recent story in The Wall Street Journal by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway. The October 7, 2011, story was titled “Twenty-First Century Excommunication,” and it was all about how The Episcopal Church has mistreated its dissidents who wanted to leave the church. Much of the story is true, as far as it goes. The problem with the story is that the other side was not represented. The dissidents have been at least as nasty to The Episcopal Church as the church is accused of being to them in the Hemingway story. Moreover, the church has had its reasons for engaging in litigation for parish property. Even if one does not agree with those reasons, failure to acknowledge them suggests that the leadership of The Episcopal Church is just mean and vindictive. That is unfair.

Here is what I wrote as a comment on the WSJ Web site (I have taken the liberty of correcting a typographical error and adding italics):

I am not a regular reader of the WSJ. I can see that I haven’t been missing much. This is the most biased piece of journalism I have seen in a long time in what claims to be a mainstream publication. I cannot believe that Ms. Hemingway’s story would have gotten past the editorial desk of The New York Times or The Washington Post. Did it occur to your reporter that there might be another side to this story? Apparently not. Trust me, there is, and some of us are unimpressed with your reporter’s sources.

Apparently, the story has caused quite a stir, and not just here in Pittsburgh. George Conger wrote about the WSJ story on the GetReligion Web site. His story is titled—this is too cute for words—“Mollie and the Spin Doctors.” The Conger piece includes a video interview with Hemingway and is largely about the question of how factual the original story was.

When I read “Twenty-First Century Excommunication,” I thought the story was basically factual. I thought one could quibble with some of the details, but the writer was not simply making things up. My problem was that the story was not balanced; it made no real attempt to tell the story from the point of view of The Episcopal Church. Katharine Jefferts Schori was quoted in the story but, apparently, not interviewed for it.

The Conger analysis has not changed my mind about how one-sided the WSJ story was, but it did raise questions about how The Episcopal Church deals with negative publicity. The church issued talking points in an attempt to refute what Hemingway wrote. (The talking points appeared on the church’s Perspectives page on October 13, 2011, along with previous statements from the church. The talking points alone can be read here.) The church offered some facts that advanced its side of the story. For example:

It is inaccurate and misleading to suggest that those who have broken away from the Episcopal Church are the persecuted faithful, when in reality those who have remained have felt deeply hurt, and now in some cases are exiled from their own church buildings by the Anglican Church of North America.

As a Pittsburgh Episcopalian, I thought that that particularly needed to be said.

The Perspectives piece did less well in other areas. One of the statements in the WSJ story whose truth Conger explored in “Mollie and the Spin Doctors” was this: “Of the 38 provinces in the global Anglican Communion, 22 have declared themselves in ‘broken’ or ‘impaired’ fellowship with the more liberal American church.” The church’s response was the following:

The author of the article stated that, “Of the 38 provinces in the global Anglican Communion, 22 have declared themselves in “broken” or “impaired” fellowship with the more liberal American church.” As recently as Monday, October 10, Lambeth Palace confirmed that there is no basis for this claim by the author.

Apparently, neither the Church Center nor Lambeth Palace was helpful in clarifying the matter further.

I don’t know if 22 is the right number, but it is certainly true that many churches in the Anglican Communion (or their primates) have declared that they are in impaired or broken communion with The Episcopal Church, and there is no shame in admitting it. In fact, even before the election of Gene Robinson, some Communion churches were not on good terms with The Episcopal Church over the ordination of women. Moreover, there is little enough agreement on what being in communion means and certainly no generally accepted definitions of impaired or broken communion. So some churches are mad at ours. We should wear that as a badge of honor, not try to pretend the situation is not what it is.

Conger dealt at some length with two errors of fact The Episcopal Church alleged in the Hemingway story. In addition to the matter of broken or impaired communion, the talking points contained this item:

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori did not make any of the statements that the author claims she made in the article.

The Hemingway article included the following paragraph:

“We can’t sell to an organization that wants to put us out of business,” said Bishop Jefferts Schori, who added that her job is to ensure that “no competing branch of the Anglican Communion impose on the mission strategy” of the Episcopal Church. Indeed she has no complaint with Muslims, Baptists or barkeepers buying Episcopal properties—only fellow Anglicans.

I was surprised to find myself quoted as a source for at least part of this paragraph. “We can’t sell to an organization that wants to put us out of business” is a quotation from my blog post of August 24, 2011. The presiding bishop did in fact say this at a public gathering in Pittsburgh’s Trinity Cathedral on the evening of April 19, 2011.The following quotation seems to have come from a different source, so that the phrase “who added” may be a bit misleading.

It seems to me that the talking point about Jefferts Schori’s not making any of the statements attributed to her is, in its essence, false. If there is an argument from the church that would make the assertion true, it would have to be a highly technical one, for example, that the juxtaposition of the two statements made the quotation false because the statements, thought legitimate quotations on their own, were not actually made sequentially.

I do not believe the presiding bishop’s views were misrepresented in the WSJ story, and the church has not helped its cause by quibbling about the quotations.

The Episcopal Church, in answering its critics, should admit its true positions and, above all, stick to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

And yes, the Hemingway story was a hatchet job.

Pittsburgh Property Update

Bishop of Pittsburgh Ken Price and the diocesan chancellor Andy Roman wrote a letter on property negotiations to rectors, wardens, and vestries on October 6, 2011. For some reason, the letter has not yet been posted on the diocese’s Web site.

Included with the letter was a copy of a letter from Bishop Price dated May 11, 2011, on the same subject. Both documents can be read here. The text of the new letter is reproduced below.

October 6, 2011

Rector, Wardens and Vestry

Dear Friends in Christ:

We write this letter to provide you and all members of your parish with current information on the property litigation and related negotiations involving the Diocese. It is meant to update the Bishop's letter of May 11, 2011,another copy of which is enclosed for your convenience.

As you will recall, earlier this year, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania issued their opinion affirming in all respects the rulings of Judge Joseph James of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas that under the terms of the 2005 settlement of the Calvary suit, our Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh was the proper entity to hold and administer the endowments and other permanent funds of the Diocese. These court rulings also applied to the buildings being used by over 20 congregations of former Episcopalians who look to the Most Rev. Robert W. Duncan to be their Bishop as part of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh and their Archbishop as part of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

After the Commonwealth Court decision, we openly invited these ACNA congregations to enter into a conversation with us in the hope that we could amicably resolve all lingering issues between us regarding the use of the real and personal property of the parish. Sadly, since then, the process for having such a dialogue on property issues has suffered from a variety of ills ranging from counterproductive rumors to outright mischaracterizations of proposals made during confidential negotiations. We write now to clear up certain mistruths that have circulated and to avert speculation over our future intentions regarding these property matters.

First, please know and share with others that the Episcopal Diocese has asked no ACNA congregation to leave the buildings they are presently occupying. Two ACNA congregations (St. James, Penn Hills and All Saints, Rosedale) voluntarily, and on their own timetable, chose to leave the buildings they were using, and another ACNA congregation (St. Christopher's, Warrendale) voluntarily chose a year ago to cease use of the building on Sundays, and has held no services in the building since February 2011.

Second, we want to communicate clearly that the Episcopal Diocese has no present intention to ask any ACNA congregation to leave the buildings they are occupying, and to dispel all rumors that we are forcing them to leave. Even if that was our desire, which it is not, we could not do that without the agreement of the congregation or the approval of Judge James. In addition, the ACNA Diocese has, on behalf of its congregations, asked the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to allow a further appeal of the court rulings in favor of our Diocese, and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has not yet ruled on this request. Although our Diocese has opposed this request for a further appeal, the ACNA Diocese and its congregations are entitled to see their challenge to the court rulings through to conclusion.

It is also important for all to understand that the media coverage early in September of the ACNA congregation's decision to leave All Saints, Rosedale came as both a shock and a deep disappointment to us. Our negotiating team, comprised of numerous Diocesan leaders, had worked hard to develop proposals that would have provided fair and positive solutions for both sides, and was prepared to bargain even further, but the ACNA congregation called an early end to the negotiations. Just the opposite impression was conveyed by two unorthodox press releases issued by the ACNA Diocese and used as the basis for the news coverage. Because we see no future in negotiating through the media, however, we reluctantly declined to correct the serious flaws in the story as reported or the mischaracterizations in the ACNA press releases.

So where does this leave us? We continue to see no future in negotiations conducted with an eye toward media coverage the moment one side declares an impasse. Time will be needed to restore lost trust, and to see whether both sides can agree to a common set of ground rules for future discussions. But even as we take time to recreate an atmosphere more conducive to success, we want all to hear and know the remaining points in this letter.

First, the Episcopal Diocese will continue to invite all former Episcopalians to return to active participation in the Episcopal Church, and will continue to reassure all ACNA congregations who may be receptive to this message of reconciliation that if they did choose this path there would be no repercussions. In particular, the congregation would not be obligated to pay any assessments or similar fees to the Episcopal Diocese for the period that the parish was inactive.

Second, there is no reason for any of the ACNA congregations still using the buildings covered by the court orders to leave the buildings they are using at the present time, unless they choose to do so completely on their own. They can remain where they are simply by being good stewards, paying the bills, protecting the property, and showing the care and respect due to any place of worship, irrespective of who owns it.

Eventually, of course, we will have to address the longer term issues of use of these properties, but as long as they show they are being good stewards, time is not of the essence.

Finally, we need to explain that, in addition to the buildings described above that are covered by the existing court orders, there are approximately 15 other situations involving ACNA congregations where the parish property was not listed in the court orders issued in the Calvary suit. This occurred because at that time, the property was titled in the name of the parish and not the Diocese, and the court rulings only listed the propertIes titled in the name of the Diocese. It is our legal position that these additional properties are held in trust for our Diocese and the Episcopal Church and are canonically owned by our Diocese. The ACNA congregations do not agree with that, however, and these property issues, too, must eventually be resolved.

We remain hopeful that in due time, property negotiations can resume and that solutions to all of these issues can emerge from those negotiations. But even if litigation becomes necessary, you should not assume that we have given up hope in reaching a settlement. Negotiation will always be our preferred means for resolving these matters as long as there is any chance of success.

Each of the numerous Diocesan leaders who have been devoting their time and energy to these property matters is eager to put this challenge behind us, but all realize much work lies ahead, and patience is needed. We ask for your continued support and prayers for all those affected by these issues.

Faithfully,
[signed]
The Rt. Rev. Kenneth L. Price, Jr.
Bishop

[signed]
Andrew M. Roman
Chancellor

This letter has been analyzed (and attacked) by David Ball, who is, I assume, a member of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. David Wilson has posted part of Ball’s analysis on his blog, and the full analysis is available on Scribd. (Note that the last paragraph and the signatures are omitted in the Scribd document. Perhaps Ball did not have access to the final page.)

I would like to make a few remarks about the state of property negotiations in the diocese in light of the above letter and the comments by Mr. Ball. First, however, I want to make an editorial observation. It was not immediately obvious to me why “Calvary” is twice underlined in the letter. On reflection, I assume that the reference is to the title of the lawsuit, not to the church. (Others surely were wondering the same thing I was.)

Note also that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected Archbishop Duncan’s request for an appeal, which it had not at the time the letter was written.

The press releases concerning All Saints, Rosedale, were apparently very upsetting to the negotiators from the Episcopal diocese. Negotiations had been understood to be confidential, and the details released by the other parties were deemed a serious breach of trust. This is a lawyer thing I do not completely appreciate personally. Apparently, however, it is an expectation that counsel even for miscreants—property has been misappropriated, remember—are expected to behave honorably and see to it that the client does also.

Negotiators for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh have been frustratingly uncommunicative about both their approach to negotiations or the details of particular negotiations. I do not know for a fact, and I don’t believe the other side knows for a fact, just what terms are negotiable and what terms are not.

Ball bemoans, “It is disappointing that TEC cannot even acknowledge that the ACNA and the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh exist.” I have no idea where this sentiment comes from. There is no evidence that the Episcopal diocese or The Episcopal Church itself is pretending that the Anglican Church in North America or its Pittsburgh diocese are not real. That the Episcopal diocese refuses to negotiate with the Anglican diocese is not the same as saying that the Anglican diocese isn’t real.

The understanding of The Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh is straightforward but easily misunderstood or misrepresented. The canon law of The Episcopal Church (including that of the Pittsburgh diocese) allows neither a parish nor a diocese to withdraw from the church. The withdrawals of October 2008 were improper and, therefore, null and void. A new entity was created in 2008 by former Episcopalians, and that entity came eventually to be called the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. It was created largely with assets appropriated (or misappropriated) from the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. Parishes that claim to have left The Episcopal Church for what became the Anglican diocese are still parishes of the Episcopal diocese, even if their parishioners and priests are not.

In other words, the parishes the Episcopal diocese says are not “participating” in the diocese and which claim to be in the Anglican diocese are still in the Episcopal diocese and subject to its bishop. There is no reason to negotiate with the Anglican diocese itself, since that entity is irrelevant to the dispute the Episcopal diocese has with its parishes. Additionally, the 2005 stipulation agreed to by Calvary Church and then Bishop Duncan does not even mention the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, which did not exist at the time.

There are, of course, two classes of parishes with which agreements need eventually to be made—those whose property titles are held by the Episcopal diocese’s Board of Trustees and those who hold title to the parish property. Parishes in the first class can expect that, eventually, the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh will gain complete control over their personal and real property. The only question is when. By virtue of the Dennis Canon, of course, the diocese claims a trust interest in the property of the parishes in the second category as well. As much as Mr. Ball would have it otherwise, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has already upheld the validity of the Dennis Canon in a case involving the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. This should be disconcerting to those parishes in the second category.

I believe that our diocese is indeed proceeding fairly, though it is indeed in its interest not to move too fast. As Ball notes, if all the parish property in dispute were suddenly given over to the Episcopal diocese without congregations, that property would, at least in the short term, become a financial burden. But, churches can be sold, repopulated, rented, or razed, allowing the real estate to be used for other purposes. The diocese need not negotiate the return of property with a negative asset value.

In principle, Bishop Price could do what has been done in the Canadian diocese of New Westminster—replace the existing priests in dissident parishes and announce that the congregation can stay. In Pittsburgh, many parishioners would leave, but some might stay. I suspect that Bishop Price would find such an approach heavy-handed and would want to leave any such drastic action to be considered by the next Bishop of Pittsburgh.

Postscript: I had to smile at the use of “mistruths” in the letter. I have never seen this word used before. (Merriam-Webster lists the word along with others with a “mis” prefix.) Clearly it is meant as a polite synonym for “lies.”

Winemaking at Adams County Winery

My son, Geoffrey August Deimel, is now the winemaker at Adams County Winery, just outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This sounds like a rather romantic job, but a good deal of organic chemistry and biology are required. Moreover, making wine in quantity is an industrial enterprise, and doing so at a modest sized winery requires a certain amount of mechanical engineering and the ability to improvise from time to time.

Adams County Winery has made a number of videos about making wine, and August, who became winemaker only last January, after getting his graduate degree from Cornell, is beginning to appear in the winery’s video productions.

The first video in which August appeared is below:

May favorite video so far is the next one. August has some theater experience—he considered an acting career at one point—and I think it shows in this short.

 

I understand that another Adams County Winery production is now being edited. I can’t wait to see it.

Duncan Responds to Supreme Court Order

Archbishop Robert Duncan has posted a letter on the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh Web site addressed “to all clergy and lay leaders of the Anglican diocese.” (I guess laypeople who are not diocesan “leaders” needn’t bother their little heads with litigation that their bishop brought upon his see.)

Here is the text of the letter:

18th October, A.D. 2011
Feast of St. Luke

TO ALL CLERGY AND LAY LEADERS OF THE ANGLICAN DIOCESE:

Dearest Brothers & Sisters in Christ,

I write to you today to inform you that our appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has been rejected. We accept that the courts have not found in our favor and will, of course, comply with all court orders.

We remain committed to reaching a negotiated settlement with the Episcopal Church diocese. In light of this judgment by the courts, we will redouble that commitment to reaching a final resolution of all issues between the Episcopal Church diocese and the Anglican diocese through negotiation.

We intend to persevere in our mission, which is to be Anglican Christians transforming our world with Jesus Christ. We do this chiefly by planting congregations. As at every annual Convention since realignment, congregations are being added to our diocese both locally and across the country, for which we give thanks to God. We pray God’s continued favor on our mission, his grace towards those who remain within the Episcopal Church, and his help for our beloved Communion as we move into the challenges and opportunities of this new millennium.  May the Gospel of our Lord Christ find a fresh hearing all across his Church and his world!

Faithfully your Bishop and Archbishop,

The Most Rev. Robert Duncan
Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh
Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America

Duncan, of course, is reacting to the decision I wrote about in “Pa. High Court Rejects Duncan Appeal.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision was no surprise to Episcopalians who have been following the trajectory of the Calvary lawsuit. Whether Duncan’s supporters were prepared for the defeat, I do not know. They should have known that the Duncan appeal’s having twice been rejected by the appeals court made a request to the highest state court in the Commonwealth unpromising.

Having lost definitively in the courts, Duncan now focuses on “reaching a negotiated settlement” respecting “all issues between the Episcopal Church diocese and the Anglican diocese.” All the issues that remain are parish property issues, and the stipulation signed in 2005 gives “the Anglican diocese” no standing in reaching negotiated settlements involving parish property. (An overarching settlement with the departed congregations seems unlikely.)

At some point, if the Anglican Church in North America survives, I believe that the Episcopal and Anglican dioceses in Pittsburgh will be able to peacefully co-exist, blessing one another’s work, even. That cannot happen while parish property issues remain unresolved.

I find it curious that Duncan, insisting that the diocese will pursue its mission, asserts that that mission is primarily about “planting congregations.” The strategy, I would suggest, is more about poaching congregations than about winning souls for Christ. Despite the setbacks in Pennsylvania courts, the strategy is working well. Although Duncan had to surrender the conspicuous financial assets of the diocese to the Episcopalians, he kept office equipment, telephones, computers, and the like, as well as cash on hand, which allowed him, with buildings and people liberated from The Episcopal Church, to build his Anglican diocese.

The small parishes in the diocese were courted and manipulated by Duncan to gain their considerable votes in the diocesan convention leading up to the 2008 realignment vote. (Diocesan canons favored small congregations.) These parishes are now more liabilities than assets to Duncan. I suspect they will now be sacrificed, and Archbishop Duncan will use their adversity to heap more abuse on The Episcopal Church. Meanwhile, the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh continues to plant congregations, mostly outside Southwestern Pennsylvania, congregations whose convention deputies will outvote the Pennsylvania natives.

Such is politics in Christ’s Church.

Pa. High Court Rejects Duncan Appeal

Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied deposed bishop Robert Duncan (now Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America) the right to appeal to that court in the Calvary litigation. The court issued this order:

ORDER

PER CURIAM

     And now, this 17th day of October, 2011 the Petition for Allowance of Appeal is hereby DENIED.

The order means that the stipulation of 2005 agreed to by then Bishop Duncan (and other defendants) and Calvary Episcopal Church stands, and diocesan property belongs to the diocese in The Episcopal Church. Parishes wanting to leave—many now claim to be in Duncan’s Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh—are to negotiate with the Episcopal diocese for their property.

The order should end litigation over diocesan property and shift focus to parish property.

Interested readers can read the first newspaper story about the 2003 lawsuit by Calvary Church on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Web site.

Oklahoma Proposes a No Response to the Covenant

The Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma seems to have been particularly conscientious in developing a diocesan response to the Anglican Covenant. The procedure used by the diocese is described on its Web site as follows:

During the 2010 Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma, The Rt. Rev. Dr. Edward Konieczny asked every church to take time to study the Anglican Communion Covenant and provide responses.  In the spring of 2011 the bishop formed an “Anglican Covenant Response Group” that would develop a “listening process” and form a proposed diocesan response.  The Rev. Dr. Mark Story, The Rev. Mary Ann Hill, Dr. Donna Farrior and The Rev. Dr. T. Lee Stephens were asked to serve in this capacity.  Their work was to be independent of the Bishop’s Office, but would provide a report to the bishop and the diocese

The Anglican Covenant Response Group arranged for a regional meeting in each quadrant of the state and two meetings in bothTulsaandOklahoma Cityfor a total of eight gatherings.  Each two-hour session had designated facilitators and listeners.  A study guide was provided along with background information on the Anglican Communion and the Anglican Covenant.  The listeners were charged with taking notes of the discussions which were used in forming the response.

The regional meetings were well attended by clergy and laypersons in each area.  The discussions were open, thoughtful and considerate.  In addition, various churches and groups submitted written comments and formal statements for consideration by the Response Group.  In the gathering and comparing responses from each of the meetings a consensus became apparent to the Anglican Covenant Response Group.  The following is a proposed response to the Anglican Communion Covenant from the diocese. The proposed response will be discussed at the Diocesan Convention in November.

The proposed response can be found here.

The proposed response is very respectful, but, in the end, firm in its opposition to the proposed Covenant. The introductory section of the document ends with this paragraph:

We must report, however, that the consensus opinion of those who participated in the conversations focused on discerning the Spirit's guidance for our Diocese and its relationship within the Anglican Communion believe that the proposed Covenant does in fact change the nature and the character of the Anglican Communion as we have known it. Therefore, speaking the truth in love, we must express our desire to withhold our consent in this final consideration of the proposed Covenant. We encourage a renewed focus on our common worship and mission in the Anglican Communion as an expression of the Body of Christ in the world today.

After brief commentary on the sections of the Covenant, the proposed response ends with this:

While we appreciate the best intentions and efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Covenant Design Group as well as the conversations that have taken place around the world, we have found minimal support within our Diocese for the changes proposed in the Anglican Covenant. We are willing to wait and pray and trust in God that reconciliation will be achieved in due time.

Let us hope that the Oklahoma convention adopts this response next month.

I Told You So

My friend in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh David Wilson remarked on my lack of comment on the news that Bishop of South Carolina Mark Lawrence has had allegations of abandoning The Episcopal Church brought against him. (Details and relevant links can be found in the ENS story “South Carolina bishop investigated on charges he has abandoned the Episcopal Church” published three days ago.) I don’t like to disappoint David, so I will offer my initial take on the situation below.

First, I should say that no one should be surprised at the charges. Once the Diocese of South Carolina began qualifying its accession to the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church—with the encouragement of Bishop Lawrence, I might add—an attempt to depose the bishop became inevitable; it was only a matter of when charges would be brought forward.

Will the charges lead eventually to deposition? Who knows? To begin with, since Title IV, the disciplinary canons, has been completely revised, it is hard to predict how events will play out. The Lawrence case will necessarily be setting precedents.

The charges, of course, are much like those leveled against then Bishop of Pittsburgh Robert Duncan. Duncan had long been bad-mouthing the church and had been gradually making constitutional and canonical changes to isolate the diocese from the general church. Lawrence has done the same. What he has not done that Duncan did is actually to set in motion a process intended to remove the diocese from The Episcopal Church. Duncan was deposed only weeks before the final October 2008 vote to “realign.”

I believed that the case against Duncan was unassailable and his removal from office long overdue, but there were many—mostly those sympathetic to the realignment movement, I suspect—who asserted that a presentment was inappropriate until the realignment vote actually took place. Of course, had the church waited, Duncan would have claimed to be out of the church and beyond its disciplinary reach. Alas, his removal did not come early enough to prevent the tragedy that he brought upon the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

This, of course, raises the question of at what point one can, with confidence, be said to have “abandonment of the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of The Episcopal Church.” Have you abandoned the church when you have subverted its polity, secured future employment outside the church, and packed your bags; or do you have to walk out the door and brush the Episcopal Church dust off your shoes first?

I think a civil law analogy is instructive here. If law enforcement discovers that someone is planning to blow up the Capitol, and that person has begun accumulating materials for a bomb, do we have to wait until the plot is carried out to make an arrest? Clearly not. Likewise, if a bishop is clearly not committed to submitting to the “Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship” of the church, even if that person has not yet done anything to cause irreparable harm to the church, that potential for harm exists and needs to be guarded against.

Another comparison between Bob Duncan and Mark Lawrence is less favorable to the Bishop of South Carolina. When Duncan was elected Bishop of Pittsburgh, there was no special reason to think him a threat to the diocese as a unit of The Episcopal Church. Did he harbor schismatic thoughts? I have no idea. If he did, he kept them to himself (or within a circle of co-conspirators into which I had no visibility).

Mark Lawrence’s bid to become a bishop, on the other hand, was problematic at the outset. It was not a quirk that he failed to receive sufficient consents following his September 16, 2006, election. Only after he was nominated a second time—he was the only candidate considered by the South Carolina convention—was he finally allowed to become a bishop. Episcopal Church leaders just didn’t have the stomach to reject an episcopal candidate twice.

I will return to the topic of Lawrence’s rocky road to the episcopate in a moment. First, I want to comment on the paranoia about South Carolina that is rampant among conservatives. The standard narrative is that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is somehow out to get Mark Lawrence. This notion persists despite Bishop Dorsey Henderson’s memo—Henderson is the president of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops—that asserts that

• Information [i.e., charges] was presented from communicants within the Diocese of South Carolina.  
• The information was not brought forward by the Presiding Bishop’s office, or by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church. Therefore, the matter is not being handled by the Presiding Bishop’s office or anyone in the employ of the Episcopal Church Center.

In spite of this, the ever outrageous Bishop—not of the Episcopal Church—David Anderson had this to say in his weekly message from the American Anglican Council:

In May and June, the American Anglican Council warned that with the implementation of the new American Episcopal Church (TEC) Title IV Canons, the Presiding Bishop would receive unprecedented power to directly intervene in a diocese or discipline a bishop. Our anticipation was that Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori would move quickly to punish South Carolina TEC Bishop Lawrence by inhibiting/suspending him and the Standing Committee of South Carolina and replace everyone at the top with her hand-picked “loyalists.” Although such a “Blitzkrieg” approach would have drawn international alarm and censure from many quarters, it was the approach that we considered most likely, based on previous actions

Apparently, the Presiding Bishop has decided to be more careful about how she drives Bishop Lawrence to the guillotine, and so an elaborate story has been concocted about how loyalists in South Carolina compiled the list of particulars on a grievance letter and sent the complaint to the the President of the Disciplinary Board for Bishops. Former Bishop of Upper South Carolina Dorsey Henderson is the President of this board, and so he was the one to communicate with Bishop Lawrence on the “serious charges,” including “Abandonment of the communion of this Church.”

In other words, Bishop Anderson is accusing Bishop Henderson of lying, probably at the behest of the presiding bishop.

Even if one chooses to ignore Anderson’s penchant for wild exaggeration, there is no reason to believe that there was any need for anyone to concoct a story about South Carolina loyalists drawing up a list of grievances against their bishop.

As I noted more than a year ago (see “S.C. Via Media Group Calls for Investigation”), The Episcopal Forum of South Carolina (EFSC), which is composed of “loyalists in South Carolina” and which has been growing by leaps and bounds of late, appealed to Executive Council to investigate the goings on in the diocese. Executive Council is not really in the investigating business, but the appeal likely got the attention of church leaders. Anyway, it is a reasonable inference that EFSC members were at least involved in delivering the charges to the committee. EFSC was around long before Mark Lawrence, and it may have needed some advice from New York, but it didn’t need any encouragement.

I return now to the matter of collecting consents for Mark Lawrence to be consecrated a bishop following his first election. When I heard of his election, I was upset because I remembered an essay Lawrence had published in The Living Church only a few months earlier.

In “A Prognosis for this Body Episcopal,” Lawrence described The Episcopal Church as “a comatose patient on life support” in need of “a surgery that frees us from the ‘heresy’ of a national church or, more accurately stated, from an ecclesiastical nationalism and the provincialism that has led to the deepening fracture within our Church.” The medicine he recommended was turning over the governance of The Episcopal Church to the Anglican primates. “Our very survival, let alone our growth,” he boldly asserted, “necessitates the surrender of our autonomy to the governance of the larger church—that is, the Anglican Communion.”

I was alarmed that the author of “A Prognosis for this Body Episcopal” might become a member of the House of Bishops. I became even more alarmed after looking into Lawrence’s representations to the Diocese of South Carolina. On a questionnaire, for example, he answered strongly disagree to the statement “The church should not divide over this issue [homosexuality].” In Lawrence’s answers to walkabout questions from the diocese, the bishop-elect took the opportunity to criticize further The Episcopal Church and to defend alternative primatial oversight.

This led me to write “No Consents: A Crucial Test for The Episcopal Church,” in which I urged bishops with jurisdiction and standing committees to withhold consent to Mark Lawrence’s consecration. Via Media USA sent copies of my essay with a cover letter to the bishops and standing committees that were being asked for consents. A couple of months later, assailed with questions about his loyalty, Lawrence released a set of questions—his own, apparently—and answers. I found these unconvincing and analyzed them on my Web site. (See “The Annotated Mark Lawrence.”)

Mark Lawrence did not receive the required number of consents from standing committees, and his election was declared null and void by the presiding bishop. There was a good deal of confusion about what really happened, but the reality is that Katharine Jefferts Schori bent over backwards—violating the canons, I believe—to give Lawrence his best chance to be approved for consecration. Had standing committees felt comfortable approving him, he would have received the necessary consents long before the allotted 120 days for response had expired. (I have written a number of blog posts about Lawrence. The two most important on his failure to receive the necessary consents are “Lawrence Bid Fails” and “Reflections on the Mark Lawrence Affair.”)

Mark Lawrence should never have been made a bishop. Given his public statements, I have every reason to believe that he was insincere when he took the oath to “engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church” (BCP, p. 513).

The recent charges against Bishop Mark Lawrence have only confirmed what I believed five years ago.  All I can say to my church is “I told you so.”

Object Lesson

I watched the first installment of the new Ken Burns movie, Prohibition, on PBS tonight. I have always thought that prohibition was one of the most disastrous mistakes America ever made (prior to the “election” of George W. Bush, at any rate). I could never quite understand how the Eighteenth Amendment came to be. The first installment of Prohibition clarified the matter.

Source: Anti-Saloon League Museum

Assuming that the latest Ken Burns documentary is fairly representing history, prohibition was all about the naïve hope that an extreme measure would solve some very real and serious problems of society. At the same time the dry lobby was viewing prohibition as a panacea, the rest of the citizenry was assuming that prohibition would not be all that bad. Both sides, of course, were tragically wrong.

Isn’t this the same dynamic we see vis-à-vis the Anglican Covenant? The divisions we see in the Anglican Communion are indeed both real and serious, and many believe, naïvely, I think, that the Covenant will magically resolve those divisions. Others, who are not true believers in the power of the Covenant, are willing to give it a try. How bad could it be, after all?

Too few people thought through, in a level-headed fashion, what the effect of the extreme measure that was prohibition was likely to be. Likewise, proponents of the Anglican Covenant have not made a realistic evaluation of the probable fruits of its widespread adoption.

The effects of prohibition were largely predictable, but it was adopted because hardly anyone made either the civil-liberties argument for the right to drink or the argument that banning alcohol was unlikely to extinguish the demand for it. Likewise, the argument that Anglican churches should be self-governing seems to have become politically incorrect, and a surprising number of people seem to hold to the magical thinking that the adoption of the Covenant will somehow—we never get a clear explanation of how—resolve the differences among Communion churches.

Hardly anyone today argues that prohibition was anything other than a colossal mistake. There is an object lesson for the Anglican Communion here.

Postscript: According to Prohibition nearly all Protestant churches supported prohibition, particularly the Methodists and the Baptists. Notable exceptions were the Episcopalians and the Lutherans.

Connecticut Supreme Court Rules against Groton Church

The Associated Press reported today that the Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and against the breakaway congregation of Bishop Seabury Church in Groton. The defendant congregation is currently part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America and the Anglican Church in North America. AP explains, in part,

Justices rejected an appeal of a lower court ruling by the Bishop Seabury Church in Groton, which like dozens of parishes nationwide split from the national Episcopal Church after the 2003 appointment of Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Bishop Seabury Church's governing board voted in 2007 to join the more conservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America.

Bishop Seabury Church was one of the “Connecticut Six” that attempted to leave the Episcopal Church diocese in 2004. The 6-0 decision cited the Dennis Canon as creating an explicit trust in favor of The Episcopal Church.

Parishioners, on the other hand, complained that ownership of the property should allow them to do as they wish with it. Apparently, the congregation has not ruled out pursuing the case in the federal courts.

Actually, two related decisions were handed down by the Connecticut Supreme Court today, which, admittedly, I have not yet had time to read. They can be found here and here. (Warning: there are more than 50 pages of opinion to read.) A statement from the diocese is available here.

One has to wonder when dissidents trying to leave The Episcopal Church with parish property will learn that the law is not on their side. One would also like to know where all the funds to support this fruitless litigation is coming from. One also has to wonder if the point of the litigation is to win or simply to wound The Episcopal Church.

A Revised Proposal for General Convention 2012

I recently proposed, for consideration by the 77th General Convention next year, an omnibus resolution on the Anglican Communion, the primary purpose of which was to decline to adopt the Anglican Covenant. (See “A Proposed Resolution for General Convention 2012.) Based on the feedback I received both on the form and substance of the resolution, I offer below a revised proposal in, as I understand it, the proper form for consideration by the General Convention.

As was the case with my original proposal, this resolution is stronger than anything the General Convention is likely to pass. I believe in the wisdom and pragmatism of every provision of my draft, however. Further, I must point out something that the President of the United States apparently does not know, namely, that successful negotiation is not facilitated by putting forth a proposal at the outset that incorporates all the compromises you are willing to make. As before, I encourage comments. I acknowledge that many will think my proposal too broad, and that the General Convention should simply and politely say that it chooses not to adopt the Covenant.

Title: Relation to the Anglican Communion

Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 77th General Convention desire and intend that The Episcopal Church continue its membership in the Anglican Communion, understood as a fellowship of autonomous, autocephalous churches having historical ties to an independent Church of England; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention believe that The Episcopal Church, is properly described as “Anglican” by virtue of its history, theology, and polity, irrespective of its status with respect to the Anglican Communion, and that neither its existence nor the performance of its Gospel mission in the world is contingent on Communion membership; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention declare that no person, committee, commission, church, or ecclesiastical body associated with the Anglican Communion and not part of The Episcopal Church has any authority over The Episcopal Church, its dioceses, its clergy, its parishes, its missions, or its members, except insofar as such authority has been granted by the General Convention in accordance with its Constitution and Canons; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention, believing the so-called Anglican Communion Covenant to be contrary to Anglican theology and tradition, as well as not required for Anglican Communion membership, decline to adopt said Covenant and urge other churches of the Anglican Communion to do the same; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention consider the admission to the Anglican Communion of any church claiming jurisdiction over any area within the geographic boundaries of a diocese of The Episcopal Church to be incompatible with Episcopal Church membership in the Communion; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention provide no more than 4% of the administrative expenses required for the maintenance of the Anglican Communion, which limitation does not include funds required to support travel of Episcopal Church members for participation in Anglican Communion meetings; funds directly supporting evangelism, relief, and development; or other expenditures as may be authorized by the General Convention; and be it further

Resolved, That nothing in this resolution is intended to modify or to abrogate any bilateral agreements made by The Episcopal Church, its dioceses, or its parishes insofar as such agreements are consistent with the Constitution and Canons of the General Convention.

Explanation

Although The Episcopal Church, over most of its history, has experienced the Anglican Communion as a useful vehicle for consultation and coöperation, it has, in recent years, been subjected to injustices and indignities at the hands of Anglican Communion churches and bishops. Among the abuses our church has suffered have been declarations of impaired or broken communion, jurisdictional incursions by foreign bishops, the attempted alienation of church property and criticism for opposing same, the making of improper demands affecting both the internal governance of our church and its relations with the Anglican Communion, and the encouragement and recognition of a church whose claimed jurisdiction overlaps that of The Episcopal Church. Communion churches have failed to support Episcopal Church against the perpetrators of these various insults, have failed to recognize properly adjudicated depositions of Episcopal clergy, and have advocated the removal of The Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion and its replacement by a church whose physical assets and membership have largely been obtained at the expense of The Episcopal Church. Additionally, the Presiding Bishop has not been properly acknowledged as a bishop and has been ostracized by certain Anglican primates. Not all of our bishops have been invited to participate in the Lambeth Conference, and members of our church have been removed, without consultation or recourse, from Anglican Communion bodies to which they had been duly appointed. Despite these many injuries, The Episcopal Church has continued to pay substantially more than its fair share of the administrative expenses of the Anglican Communion bureaucracy.

The effort to establish an Anglican Communion Covenant is largely intended to punish or ostracize The Episcopal Church for its “innovations.” Given that those “innovations” led to the injuries and indignities enumerated above, it is clear that adoption of the Covenant by The Episcopal Church will only sanction additional interference in the internal affairs of our church and severely curtail its traditional autonomy.

Victoria Matthews on the Covenant

Since September 1, 2011, when I announced the page on my Web site listing essays favoring the Anglican Covenant published by The Living Church, I have added  two additional essays to the list. The latest contributions published by the American magazine are “The Anglican Communion: A Brief History Lesson,” by the Rev. Dr. Robert Prichard, and “Greeting the Saints,” by the Rt. Rev. Victoria Matthews.

 Whereas I don’t intend to offer rebuttal to all the points made in the essays published by The Living Church, I reserve the right to comment now and then. (Alan Perry has offered an evaluation of the series as a whole and promises future commentary on particular essays. See his blog post here.)

Today, I want to exercise my right to discuss the Victoria Matthews piece.

 “Greeting the Saints” particularly caught my attention, as Bishop Matthews has a rather interesting history. She is now Bishop of Christchurch, in New Zealand, and was the first female bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada. More information about Victoria Matthews’ career can be found on Wikipedia.

Of course, I was intrigued that, being a woman, Bishop Matthews would be writing on behalf of the Covenant. That document, after all, is designed to inhibit theological and ecclesiastical change, of which she is an obvious beneficiary. Recognizing the potential for cognitive dissonance, she begins, rather defensively, with this paragraph:

People are sometimes surprised that I support the proposed Anglican Covenant because there is a widespread belief that the crafters of the Covenant intend to stop new developments in the Communion. Similarly, many Anglicans believe that if there had been a Covenant 25 years ago, we would not have both sexes elected and consecrated to the episcopate. (“We would not have women bishops,” they say, without speaking of “men bishops.” Bishop is not a gender-exclusive noun, and women is not an adjective.)

I’m not sure what the snarky parenthetical remark is all about. For about two thousand years, Bishop was indeed a gender-exclusive noun, and women can most definitely be an adjective. The bishop’s linguistic credentials are not really what I want to talk about, but her opening gambit is not reassuring.

The Bishop of Christchurch is concerned about “inter-Anglican communication,” which she views as dysfunctional. Communion churches, she suggests, must be committed “to being in relationship one with another, no matter what.” She asserts—or perhaps only hopes—that the Anglican Covenant will “ensure the kind of listening, communication, and relationship that is presently missing in the Anglican Communion.”

It is widely acknowledged that modern communication technologies, and especially the Internet, have complicated the life of the Anglican Communion. Almost immediately, an archbishop across the globe can know about—and object to—the goings-on in another Anglican church. And he—invariably he—can easily mount a worldwide campaign against it. Bloggers and parachurch organizations readily line up on one side or another. Church documents are quickly distributed and deconstructed.

Clearly, Bishop Matthews thinks this is terrible. I don’t. The problem she has with all this communication, I suspect, is that it makes life difficult for bishops. The church was not established for bishops, however, but for all of humanity. Democracy—the priesthood of all believers, actually—is not a bad thing, though it is admittedly a royal pain for those who consider themselves princes (or princesses) of the Church. That ordinary clergy and laypeople are showing themselves to be passionate about their churches is not a gift to be despised.

In fact, Bishop Matthews goes rather off the deep end in her discussion, arguing that some people suggest avoiding meetings because you will learn more by staying home, as if maximum enlightenment will occur if no one at all attends Anglican meetings! How this rather foolish idea is supposed to contribute to her argument I have no idea.

“What would happen if the provinces of the Communion were equally dedicated [as was the Apostle Paul] to being in relationship one with another, no matter what?” the bishop asks rhetorically. What, indeed, if primates did not declare their churches out of communion with one another, did not create alternative gatherings to which only like-thinking Anglicans are invited, and did not boycott Anglican meetings and complain that their concerns were not discussed at those meetings?

So, what does Bishop Matthews think is going to create a commitment to bring “listening, communication, and relationship” back to the Communion? Her answer, improbably, is Section 4 of the Covenant. She appears to be under the impression that the Covenant will enforce “listening and being in relationship.”

Bishop Matthews cites no provision of Section 4, or of any part of the Covenant, for that matter. Has she actually read it, or is she relying on magical thinking? In fact, the only “listening” Section 4 encourages is the monitoring of the behavior of sister churches for incompatibility of their actions with the Covenant. Further, rather than “being in relationship one with another, no matter what,” Section 4 of the Covenant specifies how the Communion can mete out “relational consequences” for alleged infractions of Covenant provisions without requiring any listening to the accused church at all!

In short, the Covenant is in no way the proper medicine for the Communion ailment that Bishop Matthews sees. She concludes her essay

It is my prayer that the Anglican Covenant will act as a midwife for the delivery of a new Anglican Communion, a Communion that has its gestation in relationship and deep listening.

I’m afraid that the bishop will have to find another prayer. This one is not going to come true

Update, 9/26/2011: When I wrote the above post, my main objective was to point out  that, however much Bishop Matthews would like it to be so, the Covenant simply creates no machinery to do what she believes needs to be done.

When I first read “Greeting the Saints,” my impression was that it was distressingly incoherent, but I did not want to make too big an issue of that. Upon rereading it today, however, I do feel compelled to write about the strangeness of its first paragraph.

As I pointed out yesterday, Bishop Matthews begins by acknowledging that, as a woman bishop, many would think it strange that she would be a Covenant supporter. Logically, what should follow this admission is an explanation of why such a supposition is, in her case, unfounded. Instead of explaining away the apparent anomaly, however, she goes on to complain about the use of the term “women bishops,” a complete non sequitur.

Why, I would like to know, does the bishop think that, had the Covenant been in place some number of years ago—the 25 years cited in her first paragraph is not enough—we would have women bishops today? Perhaps had the Covenant been adopted 40 years or so ago, there would be women bishops in The Episcopal Church, The Episcopal Church would be out of the Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Communion would have no women bishops.

Episcopal Church Style Guide

The Office of Communication of The Episcopal Church has published what is being called a style guide, “Brand Guidelines for the Episcopal Church.” It is intended to facilitate the creation of more uniform documents. The introduction to “Brand Guidelines” declares that

One of the goals of these guidelines is to enable the development of consistent but flexible communications for use by dioceses, parishes, networks, provinces and other entities of the Church. Guidelines allow us to model unity while allowing for a wide range of expressions.

The document is interesting and helpful, though perhaps not as helpful as it could be. It is about consistent branding, but it says little about document design or conventions to use in writing about things Episcopalian.

“Brand Guidelines” is  a mere 27 pages long, and its landscape orientation makes it look more like a slide presentation than a booklet. This is something of a virtue, as it is easily read on a typical computer screen. Like a slide show, however, “Brand Guidelines” is a bit light on content. It is, however, attractive.

I was particularly struck by the “Brand Strategy Statement” on page 6:

 For those looking for more meaning and deepened spirituality, The Episcopal Church offers honest and unconditional acceptance, which removes barriers to Jesus Christ and permits belonging to an authentic church community.

Whereas this may not be the definitive statement of what our church is about, it is a well-crafted and appropriate declaration. In a very small font at the bottom of page 6, however, we find this disclaimer:

This statement is a reminder of our strengths. It is meant to help guide communication work, rather than be used as an external piece of communication.

Pity.

More than a third of “Brand Guidelines” is concerned with the proper ways of displaying the church logo. There is probably more here than most people want to know, though certain dimensions are left to the imagination.

Spacial relationships in church logo from page 9

The font of the church logotype is Chronicle, and sans serif font Knockout-HTF29-JuniorLiteweight is suggested as an accent font. Whereas these are attractive fonts, they are expensive ones. They both come from the New York type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones, which has some very high-profile clients, including The New York Times, Tiffany & Company, Nike, Inc., and Hewlett Packard. The complete set of Chronicle fonts, for example, licensed for a single computer, costs $499.00. A more modest package, again for a single computer, can be had for $199.00. I rather doubt that most “dioceses, parishes, networks, provinces and other entities of the Church” are likely to rush out to buy the suggested Hoefler & Frere-Jones fonts.

“Brand Guidelines” defines, at least in a general way, the format for PowerPoint slides. It fails to provide a source for the “stained glass background” it recommends using for title slides, however. Likewise, the guidelines do not indicate where one can find images of the Episcopal Church shield as used in “Brand Guidelines.” It is not available among the Official Graphics and Logos on the church’s Web site.

The document does sort of answer two significant questions faced by Episcopal Church communicators. First, what is one to call the general church, as opposed to the local parish or diocese? Everyone wants to call it the “national church,” but readers are warned against this on page 24:

Do not use the term “the national church.” The Episcopal Church is in 16 countries and 110 dioceses. The correct term is simply The Episcopal Church. In referencing the Church Center in New York City and its activities, the correct term is “denominational office of The Episcopal Church.”

Several things are interesting about these instructions. First, on page 3, the church is characterized as having 109 dioceses and three regional areas in 16 countries. Somehow, by page 24, the church gained a diocese and lost three regional areas. Go figure. Additionally, the cited instructions seem to admit that our church is a “denomination.” I have no problem with this—I consider the Roman Catholic Church to be a denomination—but I know that many seem to make a point that our being part of the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church” (BCP, p. 359) somehow means that The Episcopal Church is not a denomination.

The other issue resolved on page 24 is the name of our church. “Brand Guidelines” advises

In copy, use an upper case “t” for The Episcopal Church.

This advice is curious, given the title of the style guide, rendered as “BRAND GUIDELINES for the EPISCOPAL CHURCH” on the cover of the booklet. This recommendation derives, ultimately, from the Preamble to the Constitution of the General Convention, which begins

The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, otherwise known as The Episcopal Church (which name is hereby recognized as also designating the Church) …

Episcopal News Service began insisting on the use of “The” in the name of the church just before the 2006 General Convention, but the practice was eventually abandoned. As recently as today, Episcopal News Service was still referring to “the Episcopal Church.” I suppose not everyone at the denominational office of The Episcopal Church has gotten the memo.

Postscript. The announcement of the availability of  “Brand Guidelines for the Episcopal Church” sparked a good deal of discussion on The Houses of Bishops and Deputies email list regarding the relative readability of serif versus sans serif fonts. The discussion uncovered a good, though inconclusive, discussion of the issue here.

On Being “Anglican”

In my last post, “A Proposed Resolution for General Convention 2012,” I suggested, among other things, that The Episcopal Church declare that “membership in the Anglican Communion is not essential to [The Episcopal Church’s] existence, its Anglicanism, or its Gospel mission in the world.”

Alan Perry, in a comment, suggested that it was a stretch to suggest that a church could withdraw from the Anglican Communion and remain “Anglican.” He suggested that my attitude was uncomfortably close to that of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which claims to be “Anglican” but only aspires to join the Anglican Communion.

I wrote a brief comment to Alan, which I will expand a bit here.

“Anglican,” I suggest, is commonly used in at least three ways. (A fourth, less common usage is “Anglican Church” as a synonym for “Church of England.”) “Anglican,” referring to a church, can mean, as Alan suggests, being in the Anglican Communion. The word can also refer to a church that is descended historically from an autonomous Church of England. ACNA certainly qualifies as Anglican by this definition, as does the United Methodist Church in the U.S., though hardly anyone would apply the word to Methodists. Finally, there is the way I usually use the term, which I consider to be the most important, if not the most common. “Anglican” in this sense, refers to an approach to theology, ecclesiology, and possibly (though less importantly) polity (i.e., having bishops in apostolic succession). It refers to the Via Media idea of a church that is neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant, a church where a certain uniformity of worship is more important than uniformity of belief. (See my paper, “Saving Anglicanism,” which is decidedly not about preserving the Anglican Communion.) Anglicanism’s most important theologian is, of course, Richard Hooker.

One can characterize churches in terms of how well they can be described by the three kinds of Anglicanism. To do so, I offer the diagram below. (Click on graphic for a larger view.)

The Episcopal Church, and many other churches of the Anglican Communion, sit at the intersection of the three classes of “Anglicanism.”  ACNA, on the other hand,is not in the Communion, and, I would argue, not philosophically Anglican. From all I can tell, the Church of Nigeria (Anglican) is not philosophically Anglican at all, though it is in the Anglican Communion. I know of no philosophically Anglican churches not derived from the Church of England. Correct me if I am wrong. Moreover, I think all churches in the Communion are derived from the Church of England, which explains the two “NULL” labels in my diagram.

Comments?

A Proposed Resolution for General Convention 2012

The 2012 General Convention of The Episcopal Church will need to deal with the Anglican Covenant. It can accept it, reject it, or do something else. As most readers of this blog know, I believe that our church should decline categorically to adopt the Covenant.

What, exactly, the General Convention says will matter, however. Moreover, the need to deal with the Covenant provides an opportunity for the church to take a stand against the injuries and indignities it has suffered in recent years at the hands of the people and churches of the Anglican Communion.

No doubt, many resolutions will be proposed to deal with the Covenant, but I know of no resolution that has yet been offered publicly. Below, I suggest such a resolution. The likelihood that it will be adopted, or even make its way to the legislative floor, is essentially zero. It may, however, get people thinking more deliberately about what sort of resolution might be appropriate and why. I believe it is important for us (and for the Communion) to understand our current situation and what has happened to our church along the way..

I will not attempt an explanation of all the provisions of this rather long resolution, but I should explain the 4% figure that occurs in the fifth resolved clause. The number is a generous calculation of the percentage of Episcopalians among the world’s Anglicans (3 million / 80 million, rounded up). The Episcopal Church has been bankrolling the Anglican Communion at a much higher level than this and has mainly been repaid with grief and abuse. Stewardship of our very limited resources demands an adjustment, whether the one I have proposed or one more or less drastic..

I invite your comments and discussions here and elsewhere. Figuring out how The Episcopal Church responds to the challenge of the Anglican Covenant should not be left exclusively to a committee, perhaps not even to convention deputies.

Proposed Resolution for General Convention 2012
Relation to the Anglican Communion
 

Whereas this Church, over most of its history, has experienced the Anglican Communion as a useful vehicle for consultation and coöperation; and

Whereas churches, bishops, and bodies of the Anglican Communion have, in recent years, shown unjustified hostility to this Church by various actions, including, but not limited to

• Declaring impaired or broken communion with this Church;
   
• Declaring episcopal oversight of individual parishes of this Church by foreign bishops without consultation with the local ordinary;
   
• Attempting the appropriation of financial, real property, and other assets of this Church while, at the same time, condemning this Church for availing itself of its only available recourse, namely, the civil courts;
   
• Establishing competing ecclesiastical jurisdictions within the geographic boundaries of dioceses of this Church;
   
• Encouraging the development of a church intended to compete with or replace this Church in the Anglican Communion;
   
• Repeatedly making demands of this Church affecting its internal governance without warrant;
   
• Failing to respect properly adjudicated depositions of clergy of this Church;
   
• Removing, without consultation or recourse, members of this Church from Anglican Communion bodies to which they had been duly appointed;
   
• Failing to accord the Presiding Bishop of this Church appropriate and unambiguous acknowledgment of her episcopal status;
   
• Refusing to take communion with the Presiding Bishop of this Church;
   
• Mistreating other ministers of this Church in discriminatory ways based on their gender or sexual orientation;
   
• Requesting that representatives of this Church “voluntarily” absent themselves from meetings of Anglican Communion bodies;
   
• Failing to acknowledge or demand redress for the aforementioned indignities, insults, and lapses of Christian charity against this Church and its members; and
   
• Proposing a Covenant whose effect would be to limit the autonomy of this Church and to sanction interference in its internal affairs by the Anglican Communion;

Therefore, be it

Resolved, that it is the understanding of this Church that membership in the Anglican Communion is not essential to its existence, its Anglicanism, or its Gospel mission in the world; and be it further

Resolved, that it is nonetheless the desire of this Church to continue its participation in the Anglican Communion, understood as a fellowship of autonomous, autocephalous churches whose history can be traced to the Church of England; and be it further

Resolved, that it is the understanding of this Church that its continued membership in the Anglican Communion is incompatible with the concurrent membership of other churches that claim jurisdiction over any area within the geographic boundaries of any diocese of this Church; and be it further

Resolved, that it is the understanding of this Church that no person, committee, commission, church, or ecclesiastical body not part of this Church has any authority over this Church, its dioceses, its clergy, its parishes, its missions, or its members, except insofar as such authority has been granted by this Church in accordance with its Constitution and Canons; and be it further

Resolved, that this Church provide no more than 4% of the administrative expenses required for the maintenance of the Anglican Communion, which limitation does not include funds required to support travel of members of this Church for participation in Anglican Communion meetings; funds directly supporting evangelism, relief, and development; or other expenditures as may be authorized by the General Convention of this Church; and be it further

Resolved, that because this Church believes the so-called Anglican Communion Covenant to be contrary to Anglican theology and tradition, it declines to adopt the Covenant and urges other churches of the Communion to do the same; and be it further

Resolved, that it is the understanding of this Church that its membership in the Anglican Communion is unaffected by its failure to adopt the Anglican Covenant; and be it further

Resolved, that nothing in this resolution is intended to modify or to abrogate any bilateral agreements made by this Church, its dioceses, or its parishes insofar as such agreements are consistent with the Constitution and Canons of this Church




Update, 9/28/2011: I have now posted a revised (and, I think, properly formatted) resolution here.

Looking Back to 9/11, Part 11

This is the eleventh and final installment looking back at commentary and poetry I wrote following the events of September 11, 2001. The tenth installment can be found here.

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The events of 9/11 led to the development of the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System, a device that was little understood and much maligned. I wrote about the Advisory System in 2005. The original post can be found here.

From Yellow to Orange

by Lionel E. Deimel

July 7, 2005

In response to the bombings in the city of London, today, Homeland Security informed the world on its Web site as follows: “The United States government is raising the threat level from Code Yellow--or Elevated-- to Code Orange--or High--for the mass transportation portion of the transportation sector.” The CNN link to the story about the change read “US raises alert level after blasts.”

Homeland Security has consistently refered to its color-coded advisory system as specifying a “threat level,” but I had not noticed until today that this terminology represents either fuzzy thinking or deliberate manipulation by the Department of Homeland Security. I hope that, in fact, Homeland Security is raising the perceived threat level; if it is raising the actual threat level, we have a serious need to re-evaluate what this organization thinks it is supposed to be doing! No doubt, the Department would like citizens to believe that the declared “threat level” corresponds to an actual statistically meaningful measure of the current threat from terrorism. Without more information than the government will ever have, however, the “threat level” is simply a best guess of that hypothetical statistic. Homeland Security should call its colored levels “perceived threat levels” or, more reassuringly, “estimated threat levels.”

The CNN use of “alert level” seems to be a headline-writer’s mistake, at least insofar as it does not capture directly the sense of what Homeland Security said it was doing. Because each “threat level” corresponds to a detailed specification of steps to be taken by public safety organizations, however, a change, like this one from yellow to orange, does indeed (and unambiguously) elevate what could reasonably be called the “alert level.” Perhaps Homeland Security should use this term, which emphasizes something the Department does know, rather than something it doesn’t.

Don’t Know, Don’t Care

Today, the military’s (or should I say Congress’s?) policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has come to an end. It’s high time that happened, though news reports say that many in Congress are troubled by the policy’s demise. Could this become a campaign issue, at least in the search for a Republican presidential candidate? Who knows?

From the beginning, the only words appropriate to describing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell have been “morally bankrupt.” It’s appropriate to take a short time-out for celebration of its demise.

Next target: the misleadingly named Defense of Marriage Act.

Looking Back to 9/11, Part 10

This is the tenth installment looking back at commentary and poetry I wrote following the events of September 11, 2001. The ninth installment can be found here.

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This 9/11 retrospective has nearly run its course. The post below, which originally appeared here, probably qualifies as comic relief, or, perhaps dark comic relief.

Lower Manhattan

by Lionel E. Deimel

September 15, 2004

Recently, I saw a news segment on television about a Dick Cheney campaign event at the Statue of Liberty. The correspondent said something about the changed view of Lower Manhattan from Liberty Island since the destruction of the Twin Towers. For the first time, it struck me that "Lower Manhattan" has taken on a somewhat different meaning since the events of September 11, 2001.

Trash Disposal

Despite being urged to boycott Chick-fil-A—see “But Is it Oatmeal?—I had breakfast at my local Chick-fil-A restaurant today. When it was time to return my tray and discard the paper and other trash left on it, I found myself dumping the trash into an oval opening in a horizontal surface over the trash container. This is probably a better disposal system than one sees at McDonald’s and elsewhere, where one is required to push one’s tray through a vertical door hinged at the top that seems designed to resist trash deposition and to sweep it off the tray and onto the floor.

Here’s a suggestion for Chick-fil-A, however: Make the opening, oval or otherwise, wider than the trays, so that one can tip a tray and be assured that everything will fall through the hole.

I suspect that Chick-fil-A’s oval opening is intended to keep patrons from depositing trays into the trash. That the design used at McDonald’s does not prevent this eventuality leads me to suspect that it does not represent a serious threat.

Looking Back to 9/11, Part 9

This is the ninth installment looking back at commentary and poetry I wrote following the events of September 11, 2001. The eighth installment can be found here.

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Soon after the World Trade Center towers were destroyed, there was discussion of construction of an appropriate memorial at Ground Zero. On September 12, 2011, the National September 11 Memorial, essentially two square pools in a forest, opened to the public. An associated museum is to open next year.

What is being done to remember the events of September 11, 2001, seems to follow a trend in such memorials. The most public monument is abstract, emphasizing remembrance of the people involved, rather than the nature of the event itself. Ugly details are relegated to a museum. This is the way we memorialized the Oklahoma City bombing, for example.

Whereas I think it’s wonderful that lower Manhattan is getting a new park, we are, in a sense, romanticizing a tragic event that continues to to cast a malignant shadow on American life. Realism, rather than abstraction, is often a more powerful mechanism for communicating the essence of an event. One thinks of the evocative power of the Iwo Jima Memorial or even the USS Arizona Memorial, with its combined use of realism—in this case, the actual sunken battleship—and abstraction.

In December 2003, when design of the Ground Zero memorial was not yet determined, I suggested a very different sort of memorial in the essay below. It originally appeared here.

Disclaimer: No one I have talked to has liked my idea for a 9/11 memorial.

Ground Zero Memorial

by Lionel E. Deimel

December 15, 2003

In a recent essay, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd attacked the eight finalist designs for a Ground Zero memorial. The pretty designs, she suggested, fail to capture the horror of the event they mean to memorialize. “The designs,” she said, “are more concerned with the play of light on water than the play of darkness on life.” If a memorial is to capture our outrage over the 9/11 attacks and not merely our sadness over our loss, Dowd’s point cannot be dismissed.

Dowd’s column set me thinking about my own experience of September 11, 2001, and my sense of having witnessed acts of pure evil. The image seared into my mind that day was of the burning towers, particularly of the second airliner crashing into the South Tower. I imagined a memorial of an airplane crashing into a burning building, with another burning building next to it, a kind of perpetual flame with attitude. As a public memorial, this idea seemed a bit too literal, and one that would fail to comment or provide insight into the event. It would nonetheless communicate the horror and revulsion felt by Americans that day and would overcome Dowd’s objection to the sterility, if not the banality, of the designs currently being considered.

Realism is out of favor in public art, of course, and one has to admit that the world has seen too many bronze warriors on horseback. Who can be unmoved by a work such as the Iwo Jima Memorial, however? True, this statue is modeled directly on the photographic record, but the event itself was so suffused with broader significance that the sculpture is immediately recognized as signifying more than simply the raising of a flag. Perhaps a slight change in point-of-view could yield an equally powerful public statement at the World Trade Center site.

Thinking about the problem, I was reminded of the poem I wrote about the atrocity, “Falling from the Sky.” An image in the poem suggested another approach:

The second plane penetrated the wall like a heavy object dropped onto a cake.

Was anyone staring out the window as it became larger and larger?

Could he see into the cockpit?

Was the pilot smiling?

Was he serene?

Imagine the following scene in life-size bronze. In the foreground is an office with desks and other office furniture. Workers are at their desks, standing, and looking out the windows in panic. Others face the viewer, seemingly carrying on their normal office duties. Beyond the windows is an airliner, positioned as it was an instant before impact. In the cockpit are three Arabs—a pilot looking serene, a co-pilot smiling, and a standing figure in back cheering on his colleagues. That would capture our sadness about the event, as well as our revulsion and anger. Add a reflecting pool or pillars of light or whatever abstractions are demanded by architectural sensibilities, and you have an effective Ground Zero memorial for the ages.