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In order to weigh current arguments about the structure of The Episcopal Church and its relationship to the other members of the Anglican Communion, it may be useful to reflect on earlier periods in which the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church have changed significantly. It could be argued that the three most important such periods in the history of The Episcopal Church in which such change took place were: the American Revolution, the early 20th century, and the 1960s. The first of these three periods was perhaps the most radical, an attempt to revise English canon law in light...
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In his recent address to his diocese, Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina identified a challenge confronting both his diocese and the wider Episcopal Church: an entirely new challenge has surfaced: A constitutional question about the ability of a diocese to govern its common life in a way that is obedient to the teaching of the Bible, the received heritage of The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and in accordance with The Constitution & Canons of The Episcopal Church.... It is a challenge to how for over two hundred years The Episcopal Church has carried out its...
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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. We at ACI have often written in recent years about the autonomy of dioceses within the constitutional polity of The Episcopal Church. Indeed, as we have noted elsewhere, TEC's polity mirrors that of the Anglican Communion as a whole. That is, the churches of the Communion are autonomous in the sense that they are self-governing, but by tradition, now articulated in the Anglican Covenant, they are bound one to another by mutual subjection in the Lord. In The Episcopal...
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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. Reports this week from the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia indicate that it passed a resolution approving in principle the first three sections of the Anglican Covenant, but requesting legal advice on the "appropriateness" of Paragraph 4.2.8. The relevant clause of the resolution as passed reads as follows: Requests the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to obtain an opinion from the Legal Advisor to the Anglican...
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UPDATE: After this piece was posted by ACI, Fr. Harris removed the article on his blog to which we were responding and later replaced it with a corrected version that contains the following notice: The primary correction is that Bishop Douglas has resigned Executive Council. He will at some point not be the ACC clergy member from The Episcopal Church, but when is still in question. Although Fr. Harris changed his original statement that "Bishop Douglas announced his resignation from the ACC position as clerical member from TEC at the February meeting of Executive Council," he does not in fact...
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It is ten years since Anglicanism's current travails were formally inaugurated with the formation of an alternative "Communion" church in North America, the Anglican Mission in America. Not the cause, it was nonetheless the first major sign that "communion" was no longer a given in Anglicanism, but something to be variously asserted, antagonistically claimed, and built up or torn down as the case may be. And after ten years, I think it necessary to say that most of the work thus far has been one of tearing down. Tearing down, but also of exposing new things and clearer lines of calling, so...
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A reflection on the Pentecost Letter of the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church The central teaching of Jesus Christ in John's Gospel concerning the Holy Spirit is found in chapters 14 and 16 of the Fourth Gospel. The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church is representative of the view that the Holy Spirit (or "the Spirit") is responsible for endorsing a new understanding of sexual relationships as appropriate for members of the same gender. The warrant for this view more widely held is John 16: God the Holy Spirit is 'leading the church into a truth' the church has not known until now...
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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. The Episcopal News Service has announced that Bishop Ian Douglas of Connecticut was elected by the Executive Council on June 18 to succeed Bishop Catherine Roskam as the episcopal representative from TEC on the Anglican Consultative Council. In addition, a presbyter, the Rev. Gay Jennings, was elected to the clerical seat on the ACC formerly held but since vacated by Bishop Douglas. We note that until recently Bishop Douglas also held a presbyter seat on the Executive...
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It has become commonplace for The Episcopal Church to proclaim itself an international church of sixteen countries. For example, the minutes of the October 2009 Executive Council record that: The Presiding Bishop gave Opening Remarks. She asked for a moratorium on use of "National Church" and enumerated the countries in which The Episcopal Church [hereafter, TEC] works. Again, in her recent sermon at Southwark Cathedral, the Presiding Bishop began by giving her standard enumeration of the sixteen countries: I bring you greetings from The Episcopal Church, from Episcopalians in Taiwan and...
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Over the past few weeks, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (TEC), Katharine Jefferts Schori, has responded pointedly to the removal of TEC's members from Anglican Communion commissions dealing with ecumenical relations and matters of the Communion's "faith and order". The removal itself was announced at the end of May in a letter to the Communion by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It was later explicated by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon, during visits to the Canadian church's General Synod, and TEC's Executive Council. At issue...
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