” … in Communion with the U.S. rebel alliance and not the empire based in the denominational headquarters in New York City?”

In the end it makes this non-Christian think that Christians are far more concerned with who wants to have sex with who than the far more pressing issues going on in the world today. Isn’t there a verse in the Bible about taking the plank out of your own eye? Hey in fact that could be a great title for a series of talks… “Taking the plank out of your own eye for the straight guy”

Posted by: Jason Pitzl-Waters | September 30, 2004 09:38 AM

Ah, you know where Terry Mattingly stands on what issue?

I don’t think many readers of this blog (or The Revealer or several other online forums) would be shocked to know that I am a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy and a highly Orthodox guy, in the traditional, creedal sense of the word. That question was answered a long time ago. And if anyone is interested in knowing some of my personal views on trends in the Episcopal Church, they are welcome to read a lengthy essay I wrote more than a decade ago (for an editor named Doug LeBlanc) entitled “Liturgical Dances With Wolves.”

That essay opens with a “Missa Gaia (Earth Mass)” at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, complete with chants by timber wolves, a humpback whale (taped, not live) singing the Sanctus, a sermon by Carl Sagan and a liturgical procession featuring an elephant, a camel, a vulture, a swarm of bees in a glass frame, a bowl of blue-green algae and an elegantly decorated banana. Before the bread and wine were brought to the altar, the musicians chanted:

OBA ye Oba yo Yemanja
Oba ye Oba yo O Yemanja
Oby ye Oba yo O O Ausar
Oba ye Oba yo O Ra Ausar

Right, those are prayers to Ra and the pagan gods of Egypt and several other ancient zip codes.

Many of my views on Episcopal Church issues are right there in that piece. Feel free to read and cheer or jeer. However, none of this directly relates to the subject of the post being criticized. My point was to say that journalists covering the ongoing sex wars in the Anglican Communion must strive to cover this as both an American story about a split in the liberal Episcopal Church and as a global story about a split in the much, much larger (and statistically rather conservative) Anglican Communion.

I know a few J.I. Packer-hugging journalists in the mainstream press (I will decline to out any of them) who have sustained long careers covering both sides of this dispute with great accuracy and fairness. I can say precisely the same thing of some mainstream religion-beat professionals who embrace the Gaia School of Liturgy. There are skilled, committed journalists with a wide range of beliefs who do admirable work on this complex and difficult beat. May their tribe increase.

The goal is more voices in newsrooms, more diversity and more intellectual resources.

And, yes, reporters who dare to hang out with traditional Episcopalians will find that they tend to see their lives in terms of a “Star Wars” dynamic. Not that they are pantheists, or anything. Of course, at the global level its the traditionalists who are the new empire and the progressive clergy are the rebels. That’s the whole point.

Before we move on to some serious news articles about the conflict in the worldwide Anglican Communion, let us first pay a brief visit to the community announcement columns of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral, 421 S. Second St., will begin a two-week discussion series on “Queer Eye for the Church Guy (and Gal)” during its adult forum following the 10 a.m. Eucharist tomorrow. A mediator from Just Solutions will facilitate and record members’ responses to controversies involving church actions concerning homosexuality locally and nationally, to be forwarded to a diocesan task force.

No, this is not a satire taken from the pages of a rebellious cyber-list for traditional Episcopalians. The topic of these sessions is actually very mainstream, these days, in mainline Protestantism. What still zings the reader is the name of the program.

On the serious side, this little newspaper item also contains a reference to a journalistic issue that I have underlined many times here at GetReligion. Note that this progressive parish is planning this educational series to deal with “controversies involving church actions concerning homosexuality locally and nationally.” Note the absence of the word “globally.”

In other words, this item assumes that the conflict over the ordination of gays and same-sex unions is essentially an Episcopal Church story, rather than a global Anglican Communion story. Here at GetReligion, we have tried to praise religion-beat reporters who have worked hard to cover both angles of this complex story. However, many reporters continue to see this as the story of a small number of fundamentalist Episcopalians attempting to split the national church. If seen from the global angle, it is a story about the national Episcopal Church openly splitting off, on issues of sexual morality and the sacraments, from the global Anglican Communion.

In other words, many reporters use the same lens as the “Queer Eye for the Church Guy (and Gal)” program planners.

However, some journalists are trying to be fair to people on both sides. Note this fact paragraph from Time’s “The Tale of Two Churches: Strife over Episcopal policy on gay clergy split one congregation. How many other schisms will follow?” This piece was written by Marguerite Michaels and David Van Biema.

No two breakups are alike, and Beach’s split with St. Alban’s has its singular aspects. (There was no squabble over common assets, for one thing.) But it may also be predictive. In electing the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an actively gay man, as a bishop in 2003, the Episcopal Church U.S.A. placed itself at the excruciating center of American mainline Christianity’s struggles over homosexuality and at odds with much of the international Anglican Communion to which it belongs. In mid-October the communion will publish a task-force report expected to address the effect of Robinson’s election on the American church’s Anglican status; a task-force news release promised “radical changes.” Conservatives hope that at a minimum, the findings will act as a lever to force the establishment of some sort of alternative U.S. hierarchy for traditionalists. If not, they warn, there will be thousands of defections like Beach’s. Thus far, the Anglican Communion Network, a kind of conservative hierarchy in waiting, claims affiliation with more than 500 Episcopal parishes. (An Episcopal spokesman says the number is lower.)

The story is full of solid human details, if a bit thin on some of the legal complexities and unresolved questions. For example, what happens to local church properties if the Archbishop of Canterbury went so far as to actually break Communion with the progressive U.S. church establishment? Who gets the parish keys if Canterbury is in Communion with the U.S. rebel alliance and not the empire based in the denominational headquarters in New York City? (The photo with this piece is from Queer Qlub at Episcopal Divinity School.)

Here is the top of another example of a global-picture story, written by Larry B. Stammer of the Los Angeles Times. Perhaps we have hit the point where the action has moved to the global structures of the church and reporters are simply following the logical flow of the events.

SPOKANE, Wash. — The nation’s Episcopal bishops concluded a five-day meeting here Tuesday, saying they were anxious but hopeful that their church would remain part of the worldwide Anglican Communion despite the Americans’ liberal stands on homosexuality.

The meeting here came just three weeks before an international church panel appointed by the archbishop of Canterbury was scheduled to make public recommendations on the future relationship between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. That panel was formed after the Episcopal Church, which is the American arm of Anglicanism, consecrated an openly gay priest last year as bishop of New Hampshire and allowed local bishops the option of permitting same-sex blessings in their dioceses.

Some conservatives around the world reportedly are pushing for a strong rebuke of the American church, possibly forcing it out of active membership into some kind of observer status or even outright expulsion.

The last line of the piece was especially sobering: “Despite an official theme of reconciliation, several conservative bishops boycotted the event.”

Richard Major has filed a report for The Tablet on Archbishop George Carey’s visit to Truro Episcopal Church (beret tip: Simon Sarmiento). It’s a basic but flawed narrative of what has transpired in the broader Anglican Communion since the consecration of Gene Robinson as the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop.

The problems begin in the lead:

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, last week flew to the United States to confirm 300 Episcopalians who have refused to recognise their own bishop. The parishioners at Truro Church in Fairfax, a wealthy suburb of Washington D.C, believe that Peter Lee, the Bishop of Virginia, has lost his authority because of his support for the consecration of Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, by the Episcopal Church of the USA (Ecusa). The consecration in November last year has effectively split the Anglican Communion.

So they’ve refused to recognize Bishop Lee’s authority and they met in a wealthy suburb of Washington? They must be obscurantists.

The deepening division within Anglicanism over homosexuality took a critical turn last summer when a Canadian diocese authorised the blessing of same-sex unions. Soon afterwards, Robinson was confirmed as bishop by Ecusa’s general convention despite the pleas of the Anglican Primates, as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to refrain from doing so.

Mainstream Anglicans, in America and elsewhere, regarded these acts as a formal repudiation by Ecusa and the Canadians of received Christian teaching on sexuality, and the agreed position of the Communion.

So they’re not obscurantists, but mainstream Anglicans. As Terry is fond of reminding us, even if conservatives are outnumbered in most U.S. dioceses, they do stand with the majority of the Anglican Communion.

[The Anglican Communion's 38 primates] also insisted on intervention in the affairs of such provinces, calling on them to make provision for ‘episcopal oversight of dissenting minorities . . . in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury’. Dr Williams then set up a Commission, chaired by Archbishop Robin Eames of Armagh, to resolve how such oversight might work.

In the meantime, he has appealed for a period of restraint. This has largely been honoured, although some American Episcopal parishes have tried to secede to African provinces, risking legal action by their bishops.

Here is the worst problem in Major’s report. Notice that only conservatives stand accused of disregarding Robin Eames’ plea for a period of restraint, though Eames has explained that he meant the plea for the entire spectrum of Anglicans.

There’s no mention of the Diocese of Vermont, like Canada’s Diocese of New Westminster, distributing rites for blessing gay couples — one of the very actions that led to the Lambeth Commission’s creation.

There’s no mention of Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno blessing a gay priest and his partner, or Bishop John Chane of Washington, D.C., doing the same. (Yes, General Convention has declared that such actions are “within the bounds of [the Episcopal Church's] common life.” But if General Convention’s votes were the last word on the matter for the whole of the Anglican Communion, the Lambeth Commission need not exist.)

There’s no mention of bishops railing against the American Anglican Council and the Anglican Communion Network as if these bodies are openly attacking the Body of Christ.

Fr David Moyer, leader of Forward in Faith in North America, told The Tablet that at the minimum Eames must ‘sternly rebuke Ecusa for its go-it-alone attitude’ and offer ‘immediate provision of security for the life and witness’ of conservative clergy. But he said Ecusa had become ‘irreformable’: liberals are in ‘tight control’ of the ship, he said.

At the other end of the spectrum, Integrity, for 30 years the lobby group for Episcopalian homosexuals, refused to believe that Ecusa could be ‘voted off the Anglican island, as in Survivor‘. Its president, the Revd Susan Russell, said that ‘prophetic ministry always comes at a cost’. ‘The Church is stronger, the Gospel better served’ because of its change of mind about homosexual acts, she told The Tablet, adding that it was ‘incomprehensible’ that the presence of practising homosexuals in the episcopate might make people feel obliged to secede.

Russell’s use of imcomprehensible is reminiscent of Vizzini, Wallace Shawn’s character in The Princess Bride, and his fondness for the word inconceivable.

And let’s not forget Inigo Montoya’s perplexed response: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Stephen Bates of the Guardian reports today on something remarkable: a “senior North American bishop” says the Episcopal Church is willing to punish African dioceses financially if it is disciplined for consecrating Gene Robinson as an openly gay bishop. Patrick Mauney of the Episcopal Church Center has previously said, “The disbursements are offered without strings attached.”

I reported in 1999 on Ronald Haines, then the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, applying financial pressure on the acting vice chancellor of Uganda Christian University — and other bishops — because of African bishops’ votes at the 1998 Lambeth Conference.

Bates’ report does not mention, as an Associated Press report in his paper made clear in April, that some African archbishops already have told the Episcopal Church what it can do with its money and power.

Further, the threat that Bates attributes to this anonymous bishop is inconsistent with Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold’s soothing letter to his brother and sister bishops about the forthcoming report of the Lambeth Commission.

When the Telegraph reported that American bishops, including Griswold, would travel to London for talks with Archbishop Rowan Williams, Episcopal News Service distributed a clarification from the Diocese of Massachusetts and a brief notice on Griswold’s trip to London.

ENS has been silent so far about Bates’ report. But we can be sure of this: If any American bishop truly has been talking about using money as a weapon — something liberal Episcopalians normally decry — it will attract many comments in conservative Anglican circles.

On a related matter, blogger Andrew Carey linked last week to a presidential address by Barry Morgan, the Archbishop of Wales and a member of the Lambeth Commission.

We may now count Archbishop Morgan as the highest-ranking Anglican bishop to use this remark widely attributed to Richard Hooker (without any textual proof, to date): “Pray God that none may be offended if I seek to make the Christian religion an inn where all may be received joyously rather than a cottage where some few friends or family might be entertained.”

Bishop Jon Bruno of Los Angeles, whose use of this Snopes-worthy quote first attracted the critique of the Rev. Richard Menees, now refers to Anglicanism as a “roomy house” rather than a “roomy inn.” Well, it’s a step.

The way things are going lately, the Anglican Communion may become a balkanized global village before the end of the year, with plenty room for all Anglicans to do as they see fit.

The usually excellent Jonathan Petre of the Telegraph reports today that four bishops of the Episcopal Church arrived in London on Tuesday to express their anger about possible discipline of their church for approving an openly gay bishop.

Petre identifies the four bishops as Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts, Robert O’Neill of Colorado, J. Clark Grew [Petre spells it as Drew] of Ohio, who is now retired, and Don Johnson of Memphis, Tennessee.

The theological balance of that group — three bishops who favor gay blessings and one sort-of conservative who has nevertheless excoriated the conservative American Anglican Council — would reflect the pastoral sensitivity the Episcopal Church normally shows to the rest of the Anglican world.

There’s one catch, though: Unless O’Neill has taken up time travel, it’s unlikely that he could speak in Colorado on Tuesday night and still have arrived in London on the timetable reported by Petre.

Such a meeting as Petre reports may well be occurring. If it is, however, Petre’s source apparently cannot tell one liberal bishop from another.

Update: Bishop Johnson weighed in again on the American Anglican Council, with less anger this time, in a pastoral letter (PDF) dated Aug. 23. In that letter, he refers to a pending meeting with Archbishop Rowan Williams:

God willing, I will meet with Archbishop Rowan Williams at Lambeth Palace in September to share with him what it has been like as your bishop in the midst of the challenges and opportunities presented to us this last year. A generous private donation has underwritten the trip. I am honored to join the long line of bishops from varying theological and ecclesiological perspectives who have had the opportunity to meet with Archbishop Williams in recent months.

I’ve sometimes covered the same events as Larry Stammer of the Los Angeles Times, and I’ve found him unfailingly soft-spoken and courteous — especially at press conferences, which so often bring out some reporters’ tendencies toward preening arguments posing as questions.

It’s distracting, then, to see Stammer using the “what he sees as” qualifier in his profiles of Bishop Jon J. Bruno of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles (left) and Archbishop Henry Orombi of the Church of Uganda (below, with his wife, Phoebe). Three congregations in Bruno’s diocese have renounced Bruno as their bishop and accepted Orombi’s offer of refuge. Both Bruno and Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold have decried Orombi’s action as intrusive and illegal.

You’re probably familiar with the “what he sees as” construction, in which a reporter notes that a subject sees something in a way that someone else would see differently. It can imply that a person is eccentric, if not detached from reality. A reporter could qualify virtually any belief this way, but I’ll admit to seeing it as a label applied more often to conservatives than to others. Throughout the 1990s, the church-owned Episcopal News Service so often favored the phrase “what conservatives see as the church’s drift toward liberalism” that I figured ENS must have stored those words as a word-processing macro.

I’ve almost certainly used the device at some point in my career, and let me repent now in case anyone turns up some damning proof. I Googled for it myself, but my admittedly cursory search turned up nothing.

Here are examples of the form in Stammer’s profiles:

In the last two weeks, three conservative parishes in his six-county Los Angeles diocese had left the Episcopal Church, alienated by what they said was their church’s drift toward heresy and wrongful affirmation of homosexuality.

. . . Orombi, 55, has a reputation for two things: welcoming refugees from the civil war and ethnic strife in neighboring Congo and preaching fiery sermons against what he sees as the Episcopal Church’s fall from historic Christian teachings.

Compare this with Stammer’s characterization of a cornerstone in Bruno’s teaching:

For conservatives, those issues have become a test of fidelity to biblical tradition. To Bruno, they test something equally important: Christ’s message of inclusion.

(Christ’s message of absolute inclusion would have been news to the Pharisees and Sadducees, who could not have felt very included when Jesus called them a brood of vipers; see Matt. 12:34.)

Stammer’s profiles of both bishops include good details — such as Bruno’s saying of himself, “I am one of the most Christo-centric men in this world,” and Orombi’s perspective on keeping faith with the apostles: “There is a tradition on human sexuality that was passed to us by the apostles, and if we’re an apostolic church, how come the Episcopal Church claims they are better than St. Paul?”

Another difference in how Stammer describes the two bishops: the gentle Bruno is disturbed “in the predawn stillness” and must force himself back to sleep, but Orombi has brought “evangelical intensity to his denunciations of the American church.” The deck headline says Orombi “berates the American church.” One could come away with the impression that Orombi is personally responsible for disrupting Bruno’s circadian rhythm.

Nevertheless, Stammer closes his profile of Orombi with a deft contrast in how the two bishops describe reconciliation:

Speaking of the three breakaway parishes, Bruno said, “I will have my hands open to welcome them back anytime they choose to come. I hope they’ll make that decision. I hope they’ll move back toward this reconciliation.”

Orombi spoke of the entire American church. “There is an opportunity to repent and come back,” he said. “There’s always an opportunity if you injure your brothers to say, ‘I am really, really sorry.’ If this is not going to happen in the Anglican Communion, this fragmentation is inevitable.”

John Rather of The New York Times has written an intriguing roundup about the protracted conflict between Bishop Orris G. “Jay” Walker of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island and some of his clergy. (I apologize that the story is now available only in the Times’ electronic archives.)

Walker survived a national controversy beginning in late 1996, when Penthouse magazine accused Lloyd Andries, a priest in Walker’s diocese, of being sexually involved in a sex ring with young Brazilian men. An investigation by church leaders concluded that most of the allegations in the article were untrue or unproven, although it confirmed that Andries was sexually involved with two Brazilian men who told their story to writer Rudy Maxa.

The latest battle involves what religion writers might expect when a bishop fires a priest: charges of abused power, racism, indignation on both sides — and rumors of an HIV-positive bishop. Say what?

Rather eases that bombshell into the story through Diane Porter, a former employee of the Episcopal Church’s national headquarters who now works for the diocese and defends Walker vigorously:

Ms. Porter said remarks about Bishop Walker’s health, including his alcoholism and what she said was an oft-repeated rumor that he was H.I.V.-positive, were “sour grapes.”

“You try being a 61-year-old black man in the United States of America with some authority,” she said. “Your authority is constantly being challenged having to deal with issues of white privilege all the time. I am a black woman, so I have had plenty of experience with it.”

Bishop Walker said he had publicly acknowledged that he had a problem with alcohol and had been in a program offered by Alcoholics Anonymous. He declined to comment on whether he was H.I.V.-positive.

Most of Rather’s story focuses on the conflict between Walker and the Very Rev. James J. Cardone, from whom Walker demanded a resignation as dean of the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City. The bishop made his demand on June 10, only two weeks after the death of Cardone’s 22-year-old son:

The dean was also in mourning for his son, Petty Officer Second Class Benjamin J. Cardone, 22, who died only a month before Bishop Walker’s surprise announcement on June 10. The son was serving on a Navy frigate stationed in Japan; his death is being investigated as a possible suicide.

Last week, as some parishioners called upon him to reconsider, Bishop Walker, 61, said in an interview that his decision was final and had been made some time ago because of worsening relations with Dean Cardone. But he said he was aware that the congregation was deeply concerned.

The timing, he said, was regrettable. “I certainly did not feel good about that,” he said.

Cardone’s greetings to visitors still appear on the websites of both the cathedral and the diocese (upper left corner).

Cardone told Rather he has no interest in being reinstated, despite the efforts of some cathedral leaders:

Dean Cardone said he would not resume his post under Bishop Walker. “He goes or I go,” he said.

There should be no mystery about who will prevail in that showdown.

S.C. Gwynne of Texas Monthly has turned in a tour de force article about the current struggles of the Episcopal Church, marred only by a liturgically informed but sneering headline (“Peace be with you. And also with you. Unless you’re gay”).

Gwynne’s article soon enough finds that, even among the most outspoken conservative Episcopalians in Texas, the sentiments aren’t as rough-hewn as in the headline. Gwynne writes this of Bishops James Stanton (Dallas) and Jack Iker (Fort Worth) and of the Rev. Canon David H. Roseberry of Christ Church, Plano (pictured):

It is a common misconception that conservatives like Iker, Stanton, and Roseberry want to exclude gays from the church altogether. This is not what they say, and there is no evidence that it is true. (They are even agreeable to being part of a church that ordains homosexuals, as they have proven for more than two decades.) Their position is that Scripture holds homosexual acts to be unnatural, ungodly, and therefore sinful. The foundation of that belief — necessarily — is that homosexuality is a behavioral choice. Like any behavioral choice, it can be resisted. Like any temptation to sin, it needs to be resisted.

Gwynne writes of Stanton’s cordial but strained pastoral relationship with an openly gay priest. He perfectly captures Episcopalians’ love of ambiguity in these remarks by the Rev. Fred Barber, whom he describes as a conservative rector of a liberal parish, Trinity Church in Fort Worth:

“I am ready to stay ambiguous here,” he says. “I told the congregation in a sermon that if I had been a delegate at General Convention, I would not have voted for Gene Robinson’s consecration. I got applause. Three days later a gay congregation member stood and said how she valued being here. She got applause too. That is ambiguity. I may have lost some parishioners because I said I would not perform same-sex blessings. But I have also said that I have gay people here, and they will continue to be welcome.”

Gwynne overstates conservative bishops’ likelihood to lead their dioceses out of the Episcopal Church. No bishop enjoys clear support in every congregation, and a strict property law functions, even at the congregational level, as a powerful golden handcuff. But Gwynne clearly has talked to many Episcopalians across the theological spectrum, and he writes about them without condescension.