It is a mistake to read the current controversy with the template of the past. The revisionists on the Hard Right have learned well from the past, and have done so more quickly and thoroughly than have the rest of us. Due to this, the Hard Right has successfully adapted its tactics to gain ground ceded to it by the Pliant Left and which it has captured from the Broad Middle.
Most of the dissenting bishops have declared their intention not to ask their respective dioceses to leave the Episcopal Church. And they mean it. It is important, though, to recognize that their dissent makes it logically impossible for them to be loyal to the same Church whose Constitution and Canons they dismiss in their dissent. Thus, it is important to discern what these bishops and their dioceses are saying to avoid being trapped by the skewed logic of their claims.
They leave the threat of overt schism to those overseas primates who are promising their support for the American dissenters, in blatant violation of the recommendations of the very Windsor Report they claim to revere. Meanwhile, some, though not all, of the American dissenters avoid talk of open schism while merely disrespecting and disavowing the Church’s new presiding bishop, and claiming to relieve their dioceses of the obligation to comply with the legislation of the Church’s General Convention. They claim to be ‘Windsor Compliant’ even as they invite and engage in non-compliance with the Church’s Constitution and Canon Law.
A few observations are due. First, the Windsor Report is an advisory document; in the words of its own Foreword, “This Report is not a judgment. It is part of a process.” It is without legislative, juridical, or punitive authority. Second, while the Report came to the Archbishop of Canterbury in October of 2004, then to the Primates of the Anglican Communion in 2005, including our own Presiding Bishop, and then to our House of Bishops, it did not make it to the entire Episcopal Church in any formal way until General Convention 2006. This left the Lay and Clergy orders of the Church scandalously little time to address officially and legislatively the recommendations of the Report. Third, because it was not prepared for the derivative jurisdictions of bishops, dioceses, parishes, and clergy, neither the Windsor Report itself nor the Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury is able to provide to bishops and dioceses ‘Windsor-compliant’ status. Fourth, the Report was prepared with the hope of helping the Communion keep its cohesion, not to give primates, bishops, dioceses, clergy, and parishes a way to declare sub-categories of ‘impaired’ or ‘compliant’ relationships with their fellow Anglican Christians. Fifth, then, for a bishop and/or a diocese to claim to be ‘Windsor Compliant’ is exactly antithetical to the very Report they claim to hold so dearly.
Surely no one imagines that the drafters of the Windsor Report believe that anyone can be ‘Windsor compliant’ on the one hand, while on the other failing to be compliant with the Constitution and Canons of his or her respective Church. Of all people, surely the primates assume that non-compliance with a Church’s C&C means non-compliance with the spirit behind the Windsor Report. This self-contradiction in the position of the C&C non-compliant bishops exposes their nuanced use of familiar terminology. When a bishop or diocese claims membership in the Church but simultaneously disavows or renounces association with the governance of that Church, it is simply absurd for the rest of us to believe that claim. The claim is truthful only if said bishop or diocese is adopting a particular definition of ‘Church.’ Unspoken in the claim is the clarification that the Church from which there is no intention to leave is a Church different from the one to which the rest of us ‘apostates’ currently belong. For this reason, the C&C non-compliant bishops and/or dioceses can truthfully state that all are welcome, but more accurately, all are welcome only if all ascribe to a particularized definition of orthodoxy that includes a particularized definition of Church.
When the C&C non-compliant bishops say they have no intention of leaving the Church, they mean it. What they further mean, though, is that they intend to compel the Church to create for them an extraordinary exception to its Constitution and Canons that will allow them a non-geographic jurisdiction from which they shall continue to push their puritan agenda. The rest of us need to recognize that this is an agenda that will, if successful, make this Church inhospitable to those of us who do not wish to comply with their puritanistic revision of the Episcopal Church. One hopes that the Church will soon cease trying to mollify these dissenters as they continue negotiating for more of the Church’s once broad, once populous, and still sacred, middle ground. The Church will do well to challenge their use of nuance, and call them to be ‘Constitutionally and Canonically compliant.’ To do this will be to begin effectively addressing the complexities of the current reality, and to own our own responsibility to defend that very breadth of the Gospel in which God has found us, claimed us, and set us free.
Jim +
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