You have to admit, the Anglicans know how to do a schism.  Five hundred years ago, just a couple of months before John Calvin was born outside Paris, this guy assumed the throne of England and was married to the first of his wives.  Twenty five years later he would separate the Church of England from Roman authority so he could be in charge, or at least get what he wanted from the church.

from Wikimedia Commons

Fast forward to today…

Now the church that Henry wanted to control is looking more and more uncontrollable by Rowan and accusations going back and forth about groups splitting off so they can get what they want.

I don’t know what the Anglican/Episcopal equivalent of a GA Junkie is, but they must be having a great time at this moment with both the U.S. Episcopal Church General Convention meeting in Anaheim, California, and the Church of England General Synod meeting in York.  And there is a conversation of sorts going on between the two of meetings.

Now I have enough going on in my life right now that I can’t keep close track of a whole different Protestant tradition, but I have been following both the Convention and the Synod at arms length because there are implications for Presbyterians in some of their actions.  And as I go forward here I will put in the disclaimer that because I am not up on some of the polity and nuances of their system some of what I mention below may be a bit inaccurate.  Also, as you can tell from the opening, this post may have a bit of a snarky tone so if that bothers you I apologize now.

The Anglican system of church government is at least doubly complicated compared to the Presbyterian form because they have at least two deliberative bodies, one of them being the House of Bishops.  In the Church of England there is a separate House of Clergy and House of Laity while the Episcopal church blends those two together into the House of Deputies.

For some time now there has been tension in the Worldwide Anglican Communion over the Episcopal church’s openness to ordaining practicing homosexuals as clergy, and especially as bishops.  Back in 2004 the Communion issued the Windsor Report which essentially asked the Episcopal church to stop doing that, at least temporarily, because there was not agreement in the Communion on those matters and it was straining relations between the member Provinces.  In response, the next Episcopal General Convention in 2006 passed resolution B033 (for the Episcopalians this has the recognition status that PUP or Amendment B has for those in the PC(USA)) that stopped the practice.

Well, within both the Episcopal church and the Church of England there is concern by conservatives who don’t like the direction they see the church going and are speaking out.  In fact, in North America a group has now set out on their own forming a new Anglican Province, the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA).

So with all that as backdrop the conventions began meeting…

In Anaheim the Presiding Bishop ( PB ) of the Episcopal church started things off with a bang in her opening statement by making a statement that a lot of those commenting seem to agree implies those with ACNA are heretics.  (Of course, other Anglicans worldwide have labeled the Episcopal church as heretical and abandoning the communion so the feeling is mutual.)  Her specific quote was:

The crisis of this moment has several parts, and like Episcopalians, particularly ones in Mississippi, they’re all related. The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.

(Another time I might take this statement apart, particularly in light of the similarity is presents to the Federal Vision theology in the Reformed branches.  For now, I would just express the view that in a Reformed setting covenant community and individual salvation are held in a balance and tension.)

In addition, to try to smooth things over the Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) made a brief appearance at the Convention before jetting back to England for his own meeting.  While there he made a plea for unity and was generally well received but things got a bit more testy when the CofE Synod started.  A motion was brought to the Synod to recognize the ACNA.  Before the resolution was even debated the PB made news by warning the CofE and the ABC that recognizing the ACNA would only encourage them and others and foment schism. (Yesterday the motion was tabled and it looks like it will be considered by General Synod in February.)  In addition, the ABC has commented that he regrets the decision of the House of Deputies at the Episcopal General Convention to overturn the restriction on gay ordination after he had asked them not to in his Convention sermon.

Although the General Convention is still going it is clear that the Episcopal church is now headed in a progressive direction.  The rules prohibiting the ordination of gay clergy have been repealed, or maybe not.  In addition same-sex marriage is being debated and there are signs of support and adding appropriate ceremonies to the Book of Common Prayer has been sent to the writing committee.  And it has been noted that there is a lack of conservative voices at the Convention, particularly in the House of Deputies, this being attributed to those dioceses that left to form ACNA.  The Convention still has a few days to run and at ten days long they have the PC(USA) seven days topped.  (Although, if you consider that their meeting is triennial and the PC(USA) is biennial, then they are about even on a pro-rated basis.) (And another thought, does this vote to go against the Windsor Report mean the Episcopal church as a body has an “individualist focus [that] is a form of idolatry”?)

With the direction that the Episcopal church is headed more and more commentators are considering schism likely, one headline calling it “inevitable.”  Of course, some said the same thing about the ACNA formation.  So for a Presbyterian, having gone through this a few times in the last 300 years, the parallels are interesting and it will be something to watch as this plays out.  I do admire ABC Rowan Williams for the work he is doing and the effort he is making to hold the communion together.

It is important to note that the CofE has its own conservative group, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans which recently held its own meeting.  While not showing signs of realigning away from the mother church, they are becoming a recognized voice in the call for orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion.  They did get into a bit of a public argument over whether they have the support of The Queen based upon the reading of the tea leaves in the response from the palace to they letters.  While some interpret it as support there are also indications that they may be reading too much into the correspondence.

In all the discussions going on, I did learn something about the Episcopal church that casts some of this in a new light.  One of the things about Anglicans is that they are territorial — none of this non-geographic presbytery stuff for them.  So one of the arguments against the ACNA and some of the churches that have realigned with Anglican Provinces elsewhere in the world is that there can (should?) only be one Province in one locality.  It turns out that the Episcopal church has an international presence as well.  For example Province II, mostly New York and New Jersey, also contains Episcopal Churches in Europe and one in Haiti.  In all the General Convention coverage I now can not find the article that brought this to my attention but my thanks for that piece of information.

And a final word about General Convention and new media.  There has been a great deal of volume on Twitter but when the General Convention began there were two hash tags advertised for the tweets – both #ecgc and #gc09.  You have to check them both for info.  (Another sign of schism? )  I would also comment that the official “Media Hub” is a great resource for news, information and video, but a tremendous load on my computer because of its background network activity.  Wish there were a lower-overhead alternative besides Twitter.