Englandwatch

Sometimes it is almost too painful watching the Church of England. Currently the blogsphere and twitterscope are full of reports of the decisions which are supposed to go on behind closed doors with regard to the nomination of the Bishop of Southwark. The short version is that Jeffrey John was apparently on the list. His name was leaked. There was a fuss. His name is no longer on the list.

However, we are also being treated to a commentary on Rowan Williams’s temper and the suggestion that he personally vetoed Jeffrey John’s nomination. I don’t even know whether that is possible. In any case, I’d prefer not to believe it, I think. It was bad enough that +Rowan laid down his friend for his life the first time around when Jeffrey was nominated to be suffragen bishop of Reading. If he really has become someone who would lay down the same friend for his life twice, it is too ghastly to contemplate for long.

Now, its straight off to General Synod for the Archbishop, where he is sponsoring an amendment to the measure allowing women to be nominated for the Episcopate which would make them second-class bishops forever.

I hope the English Synod says no to this and does so clearly and decisively.

With regard to who gets to choose who is on the list to become Bishop of Southwark, we need to remember that it is David Cameron, who appears to be a good Anglican (ie one who turns up sometimes) and may know a thing or two about the Church of England which some Prime Ministers have not. It could still be that whatever names are suggested to him are rejected in favour of a fresh list. This one could run on for a bit, I’d say.

What's going on in America?

There is quite a lot going on in the Anglican world this week. The Church of England Synod was meeting, but did not make much headline news, with the exception that they decided not to shift power from committees and boards to bishops. (ie from laity, clergy and episcopacy to episcopacy).

More interesting is what is going on in the States, where the General Convention of the Episcopal Church is taking place. It only happens every three years and is their great decision making body.

The General Convention has passed a resolution which is getting a lot of press at the moment, Resolution D025. It is worth reading what it actually says and not simply relying on other people’s interpretation. (Including mine!)

The American church seems to have decided that honesty is the best policy. They say simply where they are at with events which have become so toxic within Anglicana. They say that they remain fully committed to the Anglican Communion and also that their methods of selecting bishops remain those of their constitution and canons. This means that those who must consent to Episcopal elections must apply their own conscience when giving consents. The Anglican world cannot simply assume that the American church will reject a bishop who happens to be gay, just because Rowan Williams (or anyone else) asks them to.

That does not mean that there will be a sudden rush of gay bishops. Nor should it. It simply means that the American church is being true to who it is. Just as in Scotland, there is plenty of scope within the canonical process to reject someone who happens at any time to be unsuitable to be a bishop. The Americans will use their own polity to determine who can be a bishop and not have some additional extra-canonical process imposed on them.

They are quite right to do so. What holds for them should hold for us.

The Americans have not walked away from the Anglican Communion. They have walked away a little from the idea that the conflict over LGBT issues would disappear if everyone did what Rowan Williams said and adopted the proposals of the Windsor Report. They were right to do so.

The Windsor process has little currency now. The notion that world Anglicanism could be held together by asking churches to discriminate against gay people is shot to pieces.

We need to return to the rather more basic notion that it is devotion to Jesus which holds the potential to unite Christians, not devotion to prejudice. And we must thank God that the Americans have shown us how to make that real.