Mucking About in the Fields of the Lord:

Reflections on the Singapore Action.

 

The Rev. Mark Harris

(poetmark@worldnet.att.net)

 

There has been a wide range of comments in Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion circles these past days concerning the ordination on January 29^th of two bishops in Singapore.  About the purpose of their ordination there seems little question. These two bishops were ordained to exercise some form of episcopal ministry in the United States of America, a country where there are Episcopal Church dioceses of jurisdiction for every square inch of territory.

 

Most of the opinions voiced concern the morality of this action, the status of these bishops and the validity of what was done.  It is reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury will have to give an opinion soon concerning his view on whether or not the ordinations were simply irregular or deficient in substantive ways that would make them invalid.

 

Much less seems to be said about these ordinations as part of a wider effort, in progress for some time, to develop a parallel “orthodox Anglican” Province to that of the Episcopal Church and to eventually claim that Province the true representative of the Anglican Communion in the United States. That effort, however, seems near the core of this strange ordination event and needs to be kept in mind as we consider the meaning of what has taken place in Singapore.

 

Many have hoped that the strange business of working for an ecclesiastical overthrow of existing Episcopal Church authority would simply drift away, but it has not done so. What began with conversations that found voice in Kuala Lumpur in 1997 and in organizing events in the United States converged prior to Lambeth 1998, found expression there and found full force in a legalistic sounding petition to the Primates following Lambeth. These ordinations are meant to press that petition (or its spirit) and the assessment of the consecrating Archbishops on the assembly of the Primates this spring. 

 

Behind all that work and these ordinations there is not only a vilification of the Episcopal Church as apostate, but the amazing claim that persons not elected, called or named by any community of churches in the United States, are more properly the leaders of this Church than its leaders elected by canonical means.  

 

There is a bogus quality to the whole thing. The Presiding Bishop stated, “I am appalled by this irregular action and even more so by the purported "crisis" that has been largely fomented by them and others, and which bears very little resemblance to the church we actually know, which is alive and well and faithful…” He was right to be appalled.

 

Those who ordained these two bishops, and these bishops themselves, want us to believe that “this is a Gospel issue, not a political issue. It is an action to re-establish the unity that has been violated by the unrebuked ridicule and denial of basic Christian teaching,” that is teachings found in the writings of Bishop Spong and in U.S. Church resistance to the effort to make Lambeth Resolutions on sexuality binding here. 

 

These bishops, ordained and ordaining, are profoundly mistaken to think that they are pursuing a “Gospel issue” alone.  Every Gospel issue is as well a political issue, not only because it has political consequences but also because to the extent that the Gospel concerns the health, wholeness and cure of all creation (by this I mean the Salvation of the World) it concerns humankind and the body politic.

 

But we can imagine what these bishops really meant - that these bishops are not ordained with ecclesial political ends in mind. Yet that is hard to reconcile with other statements in the press release from which this “Gospel issue” assurance came. They state: “We are committed to lead the church – not leave it.” “It is time to give the faithful in the U.S. a place to remain Anglican.” “This bold initiative is intended to help Archbishops from around the world take seriously the need for reform and renewal of the Episcopal Church.”

 

The new bishops make the claim that they exercise authentic leadership, not only for the disaffected of the Episcopal Church, but as representatives in the United States of true Anglicanism. One of the new bishops stated, as reported in the news release, “We are committed to lead the church…” These bishops propose to lead the church (meaning I suppose the Episcopal Church), yet they now have no standing in the Episcopal Church, save possibly that of foreign bishop.   They propose to be a place to “remain Anglican,” yet they will impose that most un-Anglican of conventions, bishops of no jurisdiction elected by no people.

 

The statement that gives it all away is “This bold initiative is intended to help Archbishops from around the world take seriously the need for reform and renewal of the Episcopal Church.”  Reform and renewal is an ongoing task for any church. But no matter how much the Archbishops and bishops present at these ordinations may wish to make our reform and renewal their agenda, and no matter how much these new bishops and their consecrators might wish to force that agenda, the fact remains that the Episcopal Church is autonomous as regards all other church bodies in the lamentably fragmented worldwide community of Christian churches.  These Primates and their fellow conspirators in particular have no jurisdiction here. Indeed no foreign bishops, including the Primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury, have jurisdiction here. Nor does the Lambeth Conference. (see my article “No Jurisdiction in this Realm”- http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/assay01.html ).

 

The report of those who know them well is that these new bishops are not men of guile. Yet it seems to me that they are without question men with agendas not at all straightforwardly stated.  They are bishops with a purpose, one related to the now well-articulated program that they and their consecrators have worked on so hard over the past several years.

 

That program is a spoilers program: It proposes that the ecclesial processes by which Episcopal leaders are chosen in the Episcopal Church is so flawed that elections within many (indeed it would appear a majority) of dioceses have produced apostate leadership, having produced bishops and representative leadership who are not sufficiently “orthodox.”  It claims that its own new bishops, persons not elected by any body within the Episcopal Church, represent the true faith and right leadership in the face of this apostasy. These spoilers do now, or will, make the claim to be the true leadership of the Episcopal Church. 

 

This business of these two new bishops is going to get out of hand, and we will increasingly regret the day it happened. It is clear that many, both conservative and liberal already do. The Episcopal Church needs to be clear and forceful in its rejection of the notion that it is unable to manage its own affairs. The Presiding Bishop was clear about this in his statement on the matter of the ordinations, and we can hope General Convention will be clear as well.

 

At the same time we must beware of how much mischief these claimants can make. The two new bishops claim to be agents of the Gospel, and by inference will have to claim that other bishops of this church are not such agents.  That is affront enough, but sadly is only the surface of the issue.

 

The real affront of this mischief is not to opponents, but to the closest friends of so-called “orthodox Anglicanism”. If it is argued that the Episcopal Church has become apostate, rather than this or that specific bishop or diocese only, then there is no easy way not to question the orthodoxy of the House of Bishops as a body, and the lay and clergy leaders assembled in General Convention. Bishops otherwise sympathetic to the objectives behind these two ordinations need to look closely at the implications for all Episcopal elections and the jurisdictional integrity of every Diocese in this Church. In an strange way this action, ordaining these two bishops, suggests that only those who have left the Episcopal Church will have proven their orthodoxy, and they will by that proof find license from somewhere to muck about at will in this Church. 

 

In the Episcopal Church we elect and affirm our bishops from within. Although that may seem occasionally and by some to be a difficulty, or an affront to the Gospel, we live with what we have been provided by such processes.  Indeed in our better moments we can see in such electoral processes the hand of the Holy Spirit. In some parts of the Anglican Communion such election processes may seem odd, but we have come to see them as a means of knowing God’s call to us.

 

The corrective to the election of a bad bishop is usually time. If it becomes unbearable to wait for the next occasion to elect, we have in place more immediate, if more difficult, means of correction. They too are internal to the workings of this Church.

 

The consecration of these two bishops for missionary work in the United States is a mark of a profound lack of confidence in the way by which bishops are chosen in the Episcopal Church and the way in which this church orders its life. It is also a sign of the continuing agenda of their consecrators and the groups to which they are related. Having not prevailed by democratic means, such persons and groups have turned to more drastic and distinctly authoritarian methods. These methods will not meet with success, but countering them will take up a lot of time better spent in other ways. Mucking about muddies the waters.

 

Questions have been raised about why these ordinations now rather than after the Primates meeting this spring, or after General Convention this summer. Such musings are off the mark. The question is why at all? The answer is that some members of this Church and some beyond it are united in the view that this Church is sick and they, by God’s grace, have the cure. Now or later is not a relevant concern if it is somehow felt that only they have the cure for our ills. Indeed, later is irresponsible if they alone can heal.  The problem, barring this indeed being the work of God, is that supposing that these new bishops and their supporters alone can provide the healing is a form of megalomania.

 

Although they may say otherwise, these two new bishops are mucking about in the fields of the Lord here and there is no sense to it except working for intervention in this Church by outside forces and the end of the even quasi-democratic processes in the Church.  Wittingly or unwittingly these bishops are pawns in an authoritarian and megalomaniac agenda. It is time for this to stop.

 

If there are those, like these two, who wish to turn this Church to more traditional, conservative, even, dare we say “orthodox” Anglican theological viewpoints, let them stand for election here, within the Episcopal Church, as bishops, deputies to General Convention, members of diocesan standing committees and councils. Otherwise, let them hold their peace and not muck about in this field.