News of the 2008 Lambeth Conference is all over the Net this morning. I note that Father Jake has added his voice to Father Bill Carroll’s in calling on all TEC Bishops to send regrets.

I would hope that if Bp. Robinson does not receive an invitation, that the rest of the House of Bishops will make their apologies to Dr. Williams. It would then seem appropriate for the funds designated for the Lambeth Conference to be expended on a more worthwhile endeavor, such as, perhaps, the Millennium Development Goals.

Fr. Jake’s last sentence is indeed interesting, hmmm . . .

Fr. Bill Carroll, at Anglican Resistance, has posted a strong objection to the exclusion of Gene Robinson and Martyn Minns from the 2008 Lambeth Conference. Fr. Carroll’s title, “I would not go to Lambeth: Would you?” indicates the substance. Here’s just the first paragraph.

Episcopal Cafe links here to a Washington Post article that indicates that neither Gene Robinson nor Martyn Minns will be invited to the 2008 Lambeth Conference. If I were a bishop of the Episcopal Church, I would not go, until all my brothers and sisters were invited. And I would write the people of my diocese, the Presiding Bishop, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, politely explaining my absence. I don’t see it as a boycott per se, so much as a temporary suspension of any participation in the life of the Anglican Communion, which has clearly become toxic and which doesn’t want the Episcopal Church to participate as we are. Katharine Grieb of Virginia Seminary suggested as much at the House of Bishops, and it is time to consider her idea carefully. I would devote myself to the human and divine relationships that form the fabric of real communion, and stop worrying about large, expensive meetings of bishops. There is no equivalence between Gene Robinson, a duly elected bishop of the Episcopal Church, and Martyn Minns, part of a schismatic attempt to break our fellowship apart and realign (i.e. destroy) Anglicanism into a fundamentalist shadow of its true self.

I must say that I agree. Later in in the piece, Fr. Carroll takes the Archbishop of Canterbury to task for lack of leadership in this matter and others. Those who know the Archbishop’s mind better than I may agree here too, but I am remembering something the ABC said in a recent interview:

Now, some parts of the [Anglican] Communion would be happy if we could be just a federation of loosely connected local bodies. I’m not happy with that. We could be more than that. We should be more than that. We should be living out of each other’s life and resources and vision and be more closely connected.

One doesn’t want to disagree with this statement–it seems almost unchristian to do so. But having read the proposed Anglican covenant and having observed the ABC’s apparent unwillingness to criticize the outrageous behavior of the global south Primates towards The Episcopal Church, I’m frankly suspicious of the Archbishop’s motives.

The rest of Fr. Carroll’s eloquent protest may be found here.  

On Friday I pointed to Katie Sherrod’s wonderful satiric blog about life in the Episcopal Diocese of Forth Worth. Today, Barbi Click has a fine piece at the Episcopal Majority dealing with similar issues and pointing out that there are many Episcopalians in the Fort Worth Diocese who do not share Bishop Iker’s reactionary views. Here’s just the beginning of Click’s essay:

Sometimes, amidst the deafening silence, we forget that our voice can be heard by those outside of this diocese. Similar to a nightmare where the dreamer is trying to scream but no sound comes out – that is what it is like here in the Diocese of Fort Worth. We try to make our voice heard, but to no avail. Even the strongest grow weary with time.

There are good people here in Fort Worth, good loyal Episcopalians who want to be members of the Episcopal Church – far more loyal Episcopalians than anyone from the diocesan offices would ever admit. There are people here who disagree strongly with the bishop of Fort Worth on many issues. Yet at what price? Many have been worn down into silence simply because they have fought for so long to no noticeable avail. . . .

Both these fine pieces about Fort Worth deserve a wide readership. You can read the rest of Barbi Click’s essay here

Regarding the recent Episcopal dust-up in Fort Worth, Katie Sherrod has a wonderful blog today, which she calls “Flying Chickens.” Here are a couple of excerpts:

Did you feel that? It was yet another gust of hot air emanating from the Diocese of Fort Worth. Yes, our Executive Council voted almost unanimously—apparently one rector dissented—to announce once again that they are mad at The Episcopal Church and are thinking about three ways to leave it. Sounds like a song title, doesn’t it?

. . .

They make their usual offensive and false charges against Bp. Katharine. There is the charge that she has “refused to accept the key recommendations of the Windsor Report,” as if that were akin to heresy instead of being what an editor of mine used to call “a bunch of words masquerading as a meaningful sentence.”

I love it! And I love this sentence especially, though I’m quoting out of context:

Well, an old friend of my father’s said of such attempts that, “You can put your boots in the oven but that don’t make ‘em biscuits.”

It’s almost as though Molly Ivins had returned to poke holes in Jack Iker’s stuffed shirt. But Sherrod is also very serious:

What Iker and the majority of the Executive Committee—and others in this white-male-clergy-led schismatic movement—simply do not “get” is that in the end, it comes down to relationships: the relationship of individuals to God, and the relationships of lay people with one another. Members of parishes here—and in other schismatic dioceses—who have worshipped and worked together for years on parish rummage sales, on vacation bible schools, on altar guilds, on vestries, on parish picnics, on fundraisers for the church pre-school, who have cared for each other’s babies in the nursery in the midst of deep disagreements about the ordination of women, expansive language, and/or human sexuality are not ready to say they “have no need of one another.” They are not ready to not meet one another at the communion rail.

Read it all here.