DAILY BULLETIN:  Unable to Reach a Common Mind?

Written end of Thursday, June 15, 2006

Despite delegating ‘word-smithing’ to subcommittees, the Special Committee is still trying to find exactly the right words to respond to the Windsor Report and the ‘listening process’. The more conservative members of the Committee want to situate it within a declaration of respect for the Lambeth 1.10 statement that ‘homosexual behavior is not compatible with scripture’ as the standard of teaching in the Anglican Communion. Special Commission member Ian Douglas has repeatedly argued that that must be balanced with the first resolve of Lambeth 1.10 that commends to the church the subsection report on Human Sexuality. That report states ‘We must confess that we are not of one mind with respect to homosexuality… we are unable to reach a common mind.’

So far the Committee has been so deliberate that it has only completed work on two resolutions. A166 on the Anglican Covenant was passed today with one amendment in the House of Bishops and  A159 affirming the Episcopal Church’s membership in the Anglican Communion passed with little discussion in the House of Deputies. In the meantime the Committee has gained a passel of additional resolutions and the task ahead of them looks increasingly impossible. Certainly they won’t be getting anything much done before the election of the Presiding Bishop. It begins to feel as though they’re holding the whole Convention hostage to their perfectionism.

Tomorrow, the Social and Urban Affairs will hold a hearing on a resolution that reaffirms the 1976 statement on the place of gay people as full members of the Church. After the hearings yesterday they are expected to be taking action on the resolutions opposing the FMA, and the criminalization of homosexuality.

‘We need to be moving to the margins doing justice work,’ declared Bishop Gene Robinson on tonight’s Larry King Live.  This is increasingly the call we’re hearing here at Columbus. More than 700 people gathered at the U2charist on Tuesday night to worship together with a focus on the Millenium Development Goals. This morning Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina declared ‘Millenium Development Goals and ending poverty is our common ground’.

A new vision of mission is developing in the conversations here. The budget hearing on Wednesday night drew over 100 people wanting to share their vision for ministry and mission priority in the church. As a result the ministry priority of the Church has shifted towards the Millenium Development Goals and in Bishop Curry’s words, ‘a movement is afoot for us to take seriously the Jesus who fed people’. But now the rubber hits the road as the Church has to decide how to juggle its resources for ministry when requests for funding exceed expected income by $5 million. One major concern has been the increased request for funding for the Anglican Consultative Council in order to fund the ‘listening process’ which has been promised for over 30 years and has been encapsulated in the Windsor Report.

Two events this evening drew our attention. Senator John Danforth addressed a large crowd, calling us to be a church of reconciliation. ‘Religion,’ he declared, ‘is either the direct cause… or it contributes to the polarization’ that makes political discussion so difficult in the current climate where ‘the center of American politics has eroded and the common ground has been cut out from under us.’ He asked, ‘Does the Episcopal Church intend to be part of the problem or part of the answer?’

‘A lot of attention of this General Convention is on sexual orientation’, he commented, but ‘this is the most divisive issue in America today… 99% of the US are not Episcopalian and don’t care who our bishops are… and they don’t care whether rites of blessing are in the Prayer Book or on the internet.’ He called on the Episcopal Church to be the church where all kinds of people can come together around the table, and to prioritize the ministry of reconciliation.

Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold had to leave the forum on time for his appearance on Larry King Live. Interviewed together with Bishop Gene Robinson, David Anderson of the American Anglican Council, catholic Andrew Sullivan and a number of clergy from other denominations, Griswold defended the Episcopal Church’s approach to scripture and the ongoing revelation of the Holy Spirit, saying, ‘Jesus said, ‘I have many more things to tell you but you cannot bear them now…’ Mentioning scientific advances, Griswold said, ‘We can learn many new things but we can’t learn anything new about sex. Isn’t that strange?’

But perhaps the quote of the evening goes to David Anderson. He said that he had told Griswold in 2003 that the Episcopal Church was like the Titanic being run into the iceberg. ‘Now people are voting with their feet…,’ he said, ‘700 a week are leaving the denomination…’ Larry King interrupted him with the quick question, ‘Why do you stay?’ Anderson did not mention Jesus, or any other member of the Trinity, but admitted ‘I like a good fight.’