It’s good to see that my brother’s story has been picked up around the Net. Katie Sherrod backgrounds it here, and Father Jake picks it up here. Bishop Iker is getting quite a lot of “fan mail,” according to Stand Firm, which also carries a long piece by Fr. Matt Kennedy disputing Jerry Brower’s “conservative” stand against the proposed schism in Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, as U. S. Catholic Bishops call for a “responsible transition” in Iraq, as noted at TitusOneNine, the Province of Nigeria prays officially in “opposition to all unbiblical acts in the world.” Fr. Mark Harris has the Nigeria story and some good commentary. Looks like the “world” is pretty much the same as yesterday.

Back to Fort Worth, epiScope references this story about Bishop Iker’s response to the Presiding Bishop, noting that “Episcopalians are among several denominations struggling to agree on what the Bible says about gender and sexuality.” Struggling to disagree would say it better.

There’s lots of advice around for those of us in the Episcopalian hoi polloi by now, telling us how we should read the HOB communiqué from New Orleans, some of it suggesting that we lack the ability to read for ourselves, either because we are not in the know or because we were not present in the room with the bishops as they consulted.

One writer puts the case pretty bluntly, saying that “hypercritical second-guessing of the bishops” is “unreasonable” and “unseemly.” Another describes the communiqué as “a consensus document” and advises that we thank the bishops for their leadership, suggesting that various statements from New Orleans are still being perfected. Another argues that the responses of those of us who don’t think the bishops wrote very well are “sophomoric and self-indulgent.” Still another commends the virtues of “wordsmithing” and argues for the necessity of such language in addressing the present dissensus in our church.

Part of this seems merely academic to me, but part of it seems an inevitable consequence of the publication of a document (a public document, by the way) that possesses all the worst features of documents written by committees. Worse yet, to my mind, the communiqué is a lawyerly document. The Anglican Scotist asks, “Why can’t compromise and discernment be messy? Why can’t an honest compromise leave everyone disappointed?” My answer is that an honest compromise would have addressed the demands of the “Anglican Primates in Dar es Salaam” directly and would have detailed the dissensus in the HOB, itself. I think the resulting document would have upheld the determination of the American Church to govern itself as the bishops affirmed in March instead of appearing to retreat from that determination, but I can’t know that.

As it is, the communiqué is being read as a retreat on every hand, and nowhere more clearly than in reflections of bishops from my home state of Texas. Retreat is the clear implication of reflections by Bishops Lillibridge and Reed of West Texas, who consider themselves marginalized within the HOB, but who nonetheless were able to persuade their colleagues to “go further than the Bishops were able to go in March.” Bishop James Stanton of Dallas has issued a statement in which he laments that the HOB didn’t retreat far enough but makes this rueful observation near the end:

It seems that, even with the best of intentions, we simply cannot get beyond the thought that we might learn from what the Archbishop of Canterbury called “common discernment;” in other words, that our decisions as a House might be wrong and at any rate ought to be subject to the advice and concerns of our Communion brothers and sisters. Many bishops argued for ambiguity as the most “honest” statement of “where we are.” Perhaps that is true. That is the effectual outcome of this meeting.

Though I should be leery of indulging in unseemly second guessing of my betters, I think the attempt to produce a consensus document when no consensus exists was a mistake. Bishops Lillibridge, Reed, and Stanton hold a minority position in the HOB, but it is a position that deserves to be heard. Other bishops, who represent the views of those of us on the left, deserve to be heard as well. Lawyerly language that obfuscates open dissensus serves nobody well. But perhaps the process was better than the document it produced. Many are saying of the HOB meeting as a whole that it was characterized by a lack of acrimony and a willingness to allow all members to make their own arguments. Here’s Bishop Stanton, again:

I am grateful for the tone of this meeting and for many aspects of the process and the contributions many bishops from very different perspectives made to it. I wish that such openness and frankness, and serious discussion, had characterized earlier meetings. (And here I refer to 15 years of such meetings!)

There will be more meetings, of course, and other position papers, and maybe some new legislation at the next General Convention. I pray for good news and hope I live to hear it. But as Dean Thomas Luck wrote yesterday, “in the scope of Christianity,” time is long.

–At seventy, I’m not getting any younger.

Well, the pastoral letter has come. Not from the entire House of Bishops, but from Bishop Kirk Smith of Arizona (thanks to Nick Knisley at Entangled States). I agree with Bishop Smith that a good headline for any story about the House of Bishops’ work in New Orleans might have been, “Bishops Bend Over Backwards to Hold Communion Together,” but I think what actually happened in New Orleans is that the bishops bent over backwards to accomodate the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In this regard I’m sad to read Giles Fraser’s piece in The Guardian today which argues that “The deal that the archbishop has brokered with the Episcopal church in New Orleans protects the unity of the church by persuading US bishops that the church is more important than justice.” I’m not sure the deal even protects the unity of the church, as witness this editorial in the Global South Anglican.

Bishop Smith says that the HOB statement from New Orleans is a compromise. That’s putting the best possible construction on it, in my view. He also says the communiqué “is a confirmation of the actions of the 2006 General Convention, and that “Our polity is such that the House of Bishops could not have changed that position, even had we wanted to.”

Only too true. However, the bishops could have spoken descriptively of the present condition of our church with regard to ordinations and blessings, but they chose rather to speak legalistically in the main in a way that is being widely read as a recantation, and I think justly so (I have quoted the full text of two crucial paragraphs of the communiqué in the previous post). I don’t think these paragraphs are exactly the endorsement of the status quo that some are saying they are (see Fr. Jake, for instance).

Nor do I think the bishops’ communiqué is ambiguous; though I do think the summary (to which I believe some early responders reacted before they digested the whole text) is not a fair précis of the document. A midday post at the Episcopal Cafe argues that disparate responses to the bishops’ language reflect distortions in the media and muses ruefully that “It’s small wonder that some laity have expressed bewilderment.” Isn’t that just a lovely thought? As one of the “laity” I note the various interpretations of the communiqué that are being published by the bishops, themselves (some of them cited by this same author).

I am senior warden of a growing metropolitan Episcopal church in the city of St. Louis. I will go about my work in that capacity in the next weeks and months with a heavy heart. And as a human being and a citizen of the United States of America, my heart is even heavier because I am largely in agreement with Fr. Fraser in The Guardian that “the struggle for the full inclusion of lesbian and gay people in the life of the church is a frontline battle in the war against global religious fascism.” And when I read Bishop Smith’s statement that the House of Bishops of my church sought to be sensitive “to the cultural and theological beliefs of our partners of the Global South,” I am reminded of something else Fr. Fraser says.

Robert Mugabe has called homosexuals “worse than dogs and pigs”. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government denies that gay people exist in Iran, and hangs the ones it finds. The Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria thinks homosexuality “evil” and “cancerous”. There can be no compromise with any of this, irrespective of whether it is backed up by dodgy readings of holy texts or not.

I’m glad the bishops endorsed the “civil rights, safety, and dignity of gay and lesbian persons,” and I suppose they didn’t really mean to leave out bisexual and transgendered “persons.” But the bishops could have done, should have done, more. I think the New Orleans communiqué is an exercise in Episcopolitics (a wonderful word I have just learned from Tobias Haller). The bishops had a huge audience all over the world. If ever there was an opportunity for prophetic utterance, this was it. Instead, they labored like a mountain and brought forth a mouse. It’s a damn shame.