Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner

The recently announced disciplinary process against Bishop Mark Lawrence of the Diocese of South Carolina is deeply disturbing on at least two fronts. First, it sullies the Gospel and the Lord of the Gospel; second, it promises to do serious damage to The Episcopal Church (TEC). In the first place, the allegations against Bishop Lawrence, and the claim that they may amount to "abandonment" of TEC are so absurd as to cross the line into deceit and malice.

As we move into a new year, there is a special spur to pose the question, "what hope is there for the future of the Anglican Communion?". To which I would answer: "from God, there is much hope indeed; but not from women and men". With mortals, it is impossible, but with God all things are possible (cf. Mark 10: 27). "Put not your trust in any child of earth, for there is no help in them When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help!" (Ps.

Too much is being made, in the run up to the General Synod, of the fact that the Anglican Covenant's future is tied to the Church of England's vote on the matter: if the Synod does not vote to take the Covenant up for further diocesan approval, the Covenant's own life, many say, will be over.

The Bishop of Toronto recently issued a set of "Pastoral Guidelines for the Blessing of Same-Gender Commitments". Some of the basic theological contradictions and destructive pastoral confusions involved in these guidelines have been pointedly disclosed by Catherine Sider Hamilton and F. Dean Mercer (see their "Response", posted on the ACI website on November 9, 2010).

When the turmoil surrounding Gene Robinson's consent and consecration arose in 2003, everyone knew that the Anglican Communion was in for some rough times. But even more pessimistic observers believed that these times would be relatively limited, and that somehow the Communion would muddle towards some stabilizing resolution. Few could have imagined how quickly and how completely the organizations that held the Communion together would fragment and crumble.

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 is

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.

There is general agreement, I would guess, amongst more traditional Anglicans, that the current set-up for the implementation of the Covenant is flawed, and that especially the ordering of the ACC's Standing Committee in this implementing process is so confused and liable now to engendering such further distrust amongst churches as to demand rethinking.  That is what ACI has argued in its paper "The Anglican Communion Covenant:  Where Do We Go From Here?" (1.31.10). What we have not argued is that we need to start the whole process of writing a Covenant over again; or that some party must co

In May, 2007 the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada issued a Pastoral Statement on same-sex blessings. At the end of the statement, the bishops made the following request: "Looking ahead, we ask the Primate and General Synod for a report on: The theological question whether the blessing of same-sex unions is a faithful, Spirit-led development of Christian doctrine (St.