Wrecking amendments and modern heresies

The term "wrecking amendment" refers to a parliamentary tactic where an opponent of a piece of legislation introduces an amendment which, if passed, would likely ensure the legislation is defeated.

The Church of England House of Bishops seem to be determined to maintain themselves as an all-male club since they've introduced wrecking amendments that may to lead to the defeat of the measure allowing the appointment and consecration of female bishops in the Church of England.



Like the proposed Anglican Covenant, the Women Bishops Measure had to win the approval of a majority of English diocesan synods.  Unlike the Anglican Covenant, the Woman Bishops Measure was wildly successful, carried by 42 of 44 dioceses.  What's more, each approval saw a following motion demanding additional "protections" for opponents - and in the vast majority of cases, these following motions were defeated.

Pretty clear, you'd think.

Apparently not to the pointy hat brigade.

The Church of England House of Bishops had a last opportunity to "tweak" the draft Measure.  They did so, seemingly determined to prove Dean Stanley's observation:

Whenever bishops have met in councils, even in the earliest times, they have almost invariably done an infinite deal of mischief.

Of course, the tweaks are not sufficient to assuage the concerns of the intransigents.  But it seems they may be sufficient to defeat the measure since they essentially ensure that any female diocesan bishop would not be the equal of her male colleagues, but rather would be a second-tier bishop.  And because General Synod cannot simply undo the epicopal mischief making, there are few other options available.

There are, to be sure, sincere and credible opponents of the ordination of women.  This isn't really about them.

You see, the loudest opponents of women bishops are demanding the appointment of a parallel episcopacy with bishops who are not only male (which would be a legitimate conscession to their consciences), but are also opponents of woman bishops (which isn't).

Of course, this parallels what they had under the idiotic "flying bishops" regime after the Church of England started ordaining women to the diaconate and the priesthood.  What was truly wierd about that scheme was that a male bishop wasn't good enough for them.  They needed a bishop who also opposed the ordination of women.



This is a modern heresy - the unprecedented belief that every Christian is entitled to have a bishop who agrees with them on whatever particular issue happens to be their personal obsession.

I've had four bishops.  I've disagreed with all of them over something or another.  (I also had a retired archbishop as an honorary assistant, but that's another story.)

Mr. Pusey did not, so far as I know, ever get a "flying bishop" appointed to agree with him, nor Mr. Keble nor Mr. Neale.  I don't recall Mr. Newman ever writing about how the lack of a bishop who shared his prejudices motivated his departure to Rome.  Indeed, I don't recall the Oxford Fathers ever claiming that they were entitled by right to have a bishop who agreed with them.  Perhaps that was to be the subject of Tract 91 - or perhaps not.



Fr. Green, Fr. Dale, Fr. Enraght, Fr. Cox and Fr. Tooth all ended up in jail for lack of bishops who agreed with them, yet not once did they submit that as part of their defense during the ritual trials.



Many of the heroes of the evangelical revival likewise found themselves in disagreement with their bishops.  None of them ever proclaimed this novel entitlement.

No, what the opponents of female bishops are demanding is not a secure place in the Church.  Their fear of girl-cooties has driven them to embrace a principle so inherently unprincipled as to be entirely laughable.

And the English Bishops have abandoned any pretence of wanting to see their ecclesiatical treehouse go coed.



On to Indianapolis and Nadi



Members of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition did take a moment to bask in the unexpected success of our campaign in England. 

When we first launched the Coalition in November 2010, it seemed unlikely that we could possibly put a dent in a scheme that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Comunion apparatchiks had determined was the only outcome allowed.  Every institutional advantage was on the side of the Covenanters. Yet somehow this "band of bloggers" managed to ensure that the Anglican Covenant didn't just go through on a wink and a nod.  Here we sit, 18 months later, with the proposed Covenant defeated in 26 of 44 English dioceses and effectively off the table in the Church of England for the next three years.

Some have concluded that the failure of the Covenant scheme in the Church of England means the Anglican Covenant is a dead letter.  That is not correct - no matter the absurd possibility of an Anglican Covenant that excludes the Church of England (and, contrary to the posturing by ACO General Secretary Kearon, also excludes the Archbishop of Canterbury).

No, the Anglican Communion Covenant is sorely wounded, but it is not dead.  This is not the end.

So after taking a moment to enjoy the victory, the Coalition is now focussed on the next skirmish.  We have had a turnover of leadership at the international level, with the Revd Dr Lesley Crawley having concluded that it was an opportune time to step down as Moderator.  As announced at the beginning of this month, I have been appointed the new Moderator of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.

Both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia will be considering the proposed Covenant in early July.  The TEC General Convention is in Indianapolis July 5 to 12 and the ACANZAP General Synod / Te Hinota Whanui is in Nadi, Fiji Islands July 6 to 13.

In ACANZAP, seven of the four Pakeha dioceses have already voted against the Anglican Covenant, although I believe these votes are advisory and nonbinding.  However Tikanga Maori has officially rejected the Covenant and, given the unique constitutional structure of ACANZAP, it is highly likely that General Synod / Te Hinota Whanui will reject the proposed Covenant.

The situation in TEC is a little less certain.  While a few dioceses have debated the proposed Covenant (with most of those voting against it), the American situation seems, in many respects, quite similar to the Church of England at the beginning of the process, with many folk inclined to believe the bland if contradictory reassurance of +Cantuar and the ACO that the Covenant is both meaningless and vital.

Along with the Coalition's Episcopal Church Convenor, Dr Lionel Deimel, I will be in Indianapolis for General Convention to assist in making the case against.  I expect the ACO will run a desperation campaign to get their derailed scheme back on track.  While a yes vote from TEC would not necessarily undo the setback they suffered in England, it would recoup them a lot of ground.

The defeat in England hurt the Covenanters' campaign far more than they care to admit.  Wales, which had seemed certain to adopt the Covenant (if only in deference to Archbishop Williams, their former Primate, and under pressure from the Bishop of St. Asaph, the Covenant's effective author), chose to give it "an amber light," specifically citing events in the Church of England.  Scotland seems increasingly likely to vote against.  And statements at the recent Irish General Synod strongly suggest that Ireland's "subscribing" to the Covenant was significantly distinct from adoption.

It was clear from the start that the bulk of the GAFCON provinces would not sign.  By the end of July, it is likely that the bulk of the provinces outside the Global South will have done likewise.  If so, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out when the Anglican Consultative Council (the only Anglican Communion body that is not all bishops) gathers in Aukland NZ in late October.

The Anglican Covenant is so incompetently drafted that there may exist no effective way of ending the charade, even if every remaining province rejects it.  However, the ACC may have the capacity to suspend the flagellation of deceased equines from that point forward.

"Christianity is not an institution . . ."

One of the study groups in the parish meets at a local restaurant for breakfast every Saturday morning to discuss another chapter of the book Glorious Companions - Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by the Revd Richard H. Schmidt.  Each chapter consists of a brief biography of a significant figure from the Anglican tradition, followed by a few pages of excerpts from some of their writings.  The book begins with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, ends with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and covers a wide range of Anglican thinkers and writers in between.

Today, we were discussing Roland Allen, an English priest and missionary whose writings mostly date from the first half of the 20th century.  Allen's provocative claim to fame was to challenge the missionary methods of his time, comparing them to the methods of St. Paul and finding them wanting.  Where St. Paul had quickly raised up local leadership and handed the missionary enterprise over, the missionaries of Allen's time were more inclined to encourage a culture of dependence on the missionary, the mission society and the sending church.  Allen advocated a return to the apostolic model, with leadership quickly handed over to locally ordained clergy and lay people.

Now, it is not at all uncommon that our breakfast discussion may take us far away from the initial subject - although we always seem to find a means to make the connection back.  Today was no different.  While we kept coming back to discuss the Church much closer to home, we kept referring back to Allen, and in particular to his observation:

Christianity is not an institution, but a principle of life.  By imposing an institution we tend to obscure the truly spiritual character of our work.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has ever seen the Church get caught up in details about institutional survival while seeming to forget about the imperative of the Gospel.  And not only seen it, but gotten caught up in it. 

Church buildings can be a very useful resource for a thriving congregation.  They are a place to gather, for worship, for educational programs, for fellowship.  They can be a means of proclaiming the presence and existence of a Christian community.  They can even be a revenue stream.  But when a congregation isn't thriving, the building can become a burden - especially as it ages.  The congregational leadership start talking more and more and more about the physical plant, about the need for repair, about the possibility of further erosion of the fabric, and less and less and less about the mission which the building had orginially been intended to support.  Likewise parochial or decanal or diocesan structures can support the work of the Church, but can equally become a drain on the spiritual vitality of the Church. 

Creeping institutionalization has all sorts of unanticipated effects.  The appointment of stipendiary clergy tends to mean that, as the "full-time staff," they start picking up little jobs that aren't strictly part of their vocation.  Whether against their will or at their behest, the laity end up surrendering some significant part of their ministries - often ministries that they could do far more effectively and efficiently.

Most stipendiary clergy I know aren't terribly gifted in administration, yet much of the record keeping and (non-financial) reporting is done by the clergy.  Since it isn't our gift, we often procrastinate about it.  When we finally rouse ourselves, we take longer to do it than a more gifted person would have taken.  And to top it off, we don't do it particularly well.  The whole dynamic is problematical for the parish and the diocese and possibly soul damaging for the priest.

The end of Christendom over the past generation or so has added to the strain of existing institutions.  Demographic trends seem to offer little hope.  The shoots of vitality we sometimes call the Emerging Church seem to eschew the self-absorbed demands of institutional busywork.
Perhaps God is trying to remind us that:

Christianity is not an institution, but a principle of life.

All this led me to think a little more about the Anglican Covenant.  Badly wounded by its defeat in the diocesan synods of the Church of England, it is far from a dead letter.  Yet it represents, I think, precisely the kind of institutional and Christendom thinking the Church needs to shed if it is to survive, let alone thrive.

There is a Saturday Night Live sketch with Christopher Walken and Will Farrell which purports to be about the recording of the song Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult.  Throughout the sketch, Walken (as the producer) keeps asking for "more cowbell," which Will Farrell enthusiastically provides.  The sketch ranks as the number five Most Memorable Moment in SNL history, and the phrase "more cowbell" has entered common parlance to describe something generally useless that is being advocated for some incomprehensible reason.

The Anglican Covenant is all about more institutionalization.  Anglicanism needs more institutionalization about as much as Don't Fear the Reaper needs more cowbell.

Long overdue

After the NDP leadership convention, I took a couple of days to recover - or at least that was the plan.  As it worked out, I dodn't really feel much more recovered than I had the morning after.

The leadership convention results, while not entirely surprising, were slightly disappointing to me.  Niki Ashton ended up in last place on the first ballot by an 84 vote margin.  As the campaign was winding down, our expectations were realistic, however we had hoped for Niki to avoid the basement.

The good news came a few days later when the breakdown of advance voting and live voting came out.  Among those who voted live (either at the convention or from home), Niki actually finished two spots higher, coming ahead of both Martin Singh and Ottawa MP Paul Dewar (by a margin of 86 votes).

Part of the difference can be attributed to a strong convention performance.  My major role in the campaign was as the producer of Niki's 20 minute showcase, so I do take no small solace from the live voting results.  But a producer can only do so much once the show is underway, so the credit for nailing it goes to the candidate.  Over the next several hours I spoke to several people who had decided to switch their first ballot vote to Niki, and to dozens more who identified her as a future leader of the party.

I can't embed video of her convention showcase, but here is the link to the CBC footage.

And here is Niki's speech to supporters after the first ballot results.



At the end of a four ballot marathon (with repeated delays due to hostile denial of service attacks), the party elected Montreal MP Thomas Mulcair as our new leader.  The positive impression Niki made at the convention will stand her in good stead for a future leadership bid, but for now, we're all on Team Mulcair.

On the Anglican Covenant, things turned out a little better.  If two more dioceses voted "no," the Covenant would be dead in the water in the Church of England.  Defeat in the Church of England would make the pro-Covenant case even more difficult in the rest of the Communion.

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition issued our news release after Oxford and Lincoln voted down the Covenant.  As a bonus, Guilford ran up the score that same day, with Manchester and London piling on over the next week.  The tally now stands at 15 yes and 25 no, with four dioceses left to vote.

When the No Anglican Covenant Coalition first came together, the possibility of actually stopping the Covenant in the Church of England seemed like a quixotic quest.  The struggle is not yet over, but my colleagues and I can take some satisfaction in having achieved what seemed unachievable.

On this Maundy Thursday, I close by recommending anyone concerned with matters of faith or matters of economic inclusion to read Bishop Frank Weston's famous concluding address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1923.  Entitled Our Present Duty, the whole thing is worth a read (and not that long either.  But I offer you the final two paragraphs.

Now mark that—this is the Gospel truth. If you are prepared to say that the Anglo-Catholic is at perfect liberty to rake in all the money he can get no matter what the wages are that are paid, no matter what the conditions are under which people work; if you say that the Anglo-Catholic has a right to hold his peace while his fellow citizens are living in hovels below the levels of the streets, this I say to you, that you do not yet know the Lord Jesus in his Sacrament. You have begun with the Christ of Bethlehem, you have gone on to know something of the Christ of Calvary—but the Christ of the Sacrament, not yet. Oh brethren! if only you listen to-night your movement is going to sweep England. If you listen. I am not talking economics, I do not understand them. I am not talking politics, I do not understand them. I am talking the Gospel, and I say to you this: If you are Christians then your Jesus is one and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters up and down this country. And it is folly—it is madness—to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children. It cannot be done.

There then, as I conceive it, is your present duty; and I beg you, brethren, as you love the Lord Jesus, consider that it is at least possible that this is the new light that the Congress was to bring to us. You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.

One Saturday - Two Contests

It will be an interesting Saturday this Saturday.

This weekend is a very busy and likely decisive weekend for two campaigns I've been involved in over the past while.

In one case, the immediate campaign has been shorter in duration and it will come to its conclusion this weekend as Canada's New Democrats select a leader to replace the late Jack Layton who, Moses-like, led his party to the brink of power last May before succumbing to cancer last August.  Two of the original nine candidates have withdrawn from the race - although Romeo Saganash's withdrawal was too late to have his name removed from the ballot.  Many New Democrats have already voted in the preferential advance vote, while a likely smaller number will vote this Saturday, ballot by ballot and live, whether at the convention in Toronto or in the comfort of their own homes.

Anyone who has been paying attention will know that I am supporting Niki Ashton, the MP for Churchill constituency in Manitoba.  As the youngest candidate in the race (and having the arguable disadvantage of probably looking even younger), Niki has faced some criticism based strictly on her age.  Of course, if her age is her greatest weakness, then the simple passage of time will overcome it, which is better than can be said for some other candidates.

Anyone who claims to have a clear picture on how the convention will play out is almost certainly blowing smoke, and read-in media frames have distorted the race significantly in some respects.  Live voting for the first ballot opens after the candidate showcases on Friday, with the first ballot results announced Saturday morning.  I expect we will know the result by the early afternoon.

The other contest - the interminable marathon, it seems - is another round of voting on the Anglican Covenant in the diocesan synods of the Church of England.  I'm one of the original cadre of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition, and when we started organizing ourselves around 18 months ago, it seemed a bit of windmill-tilting quixoticism - an ecclesio-political juggernaut endorsed by the great and the good of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion Office was not going to be stopped by the flailing machinations of a band of bloggers.

Early on, we decided that our initial beachhead had to be the Church of England.  After all, an Anglican Covenant without the Church of England was too bizarre even for traditional Anglican fudge.  We lost an initial attempt when General Synod voted to refer to Covenant to the dioceses for approval.  And we ran into no small opposition when Anglican Communion Office and Church of England bureaucrats abused their positions to ensure that only pro-Covenant propaganda was provided for background.

Yet in the small scale skirmishing of the synods, we have found our feet.  In order to return to General Synod for the next step in the approval process, the Covenant needs to be ratified by the clergy and laity (voting separately) in 23 of the Church of England's 44 dioceses.  With 17 dioceses yet to vote, the "No" side is two dioceses short of scuttling the Covenant.  This Saturday, another six dioceses will vote.  While no one from the Coalition is interested in public prognostication, it is entirely possible that by noon Saturday (where I am), the Covenant will be a dead letter in the Church of England.

That wouldn't be an end of it, of course.  There will still be pressure - though perhaps less - for other Provinces of the Communion to adopt the Covenant.  The next round of tactical objectives will be to defeat the Covenant over the next six months in the Episcopal Church (USA and other places), the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Australia and the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.  But a defeat of the Covenant in the Church of England drastically alters the playing field.

It'll be a busy Saturday for Canada's New Democrats and for the No Anglican Covenant Coalition - and doubly busy for me.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

" . . . even if it just scrapes through . . . "

Today's results in the Church of England leave the proposed Anglican Covenant teetering on the brink, with 12 dioceses in favour and 20 opposed.  If just two of the remaining 12 dioceses say no, the Covenant is effectively dead in the water.

But Times Religion columnist Ruth Gledhill, speaking on BBC Radio, made the point that even a narrow win may not be much consolation to those who seek to centralize authority in a two-tracked Anglican Communion:

If that document fails on the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion - or even if it just scrapes through - it will really lack the authority it needs to be effective.

The interview can be heard here, beginning at about 1:33:00.

There was no YouTube in 1867

Back in 1865, at a point when the amalgamation of the British North American colonies to form the Dominion of Canada was still a drink-fueled fantasy of an Upper Canadian lawyer named John Macdonald, the colonial Anglican bishops hereabouts decided they were quite upset by Anglican goings on in southern Africa (the dubious opinions of the Bishop of Natal) and England (the reviving of the English Convocations).  Indeed, they were so upset that they sent a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury proposing a:

national synod of the bishops of the Anglican Church at home and abroad.

In due course, Archbishop Charles Longley was persuaded this would be a good thing, and he proposed a Pan-Anglican conference of all 144 Anglican bishops from throughout the world.  He invited the bishops to Lambeth Palace for late September of 1867, just a few months after the creation of the Dominion of Canada.

Not everyone was convinced this was a good idea.  The Archbishop of York, for example, William Thomson (whose predecessor was none other than Archbishop Longley) thought it was a decidedly bad idea, and would inevitably result in an attempt to impose external authority on the Church of England.  Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster Abbey, tried to get the idea laughed out of Convocation, observing:

Whenever bishops have met in councils, even in the earliest times, they have almost invariably done an infinite deal of mischief.

At the end of the day, only 76 of 144 bishops attended the first Lambeth Conference.  Archbishop Longley's assureance that the conference would neither have nor claim the status of a Pan-Anglican synod failed to reassure either Archbishop Thomson or Dean Stanley.  Thomson and most of the bishops from the northern province refused to attend.  Stanley refused to allow Westminster Abbey to be used for any part of the event.  Bishop John Colenso of Natal, prefiguring the eventual unpersoning of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson in 2007, was simply not invited.

Of course, Longley won the immediate skirmish.  The conference did not claim any synodical authority, and its resolutions were not binding on Anglicans at home or abroad.

But here's what didn't happen.

• The Archbishop of Canterbury didn't put out a YouTube video essentially calling Archbishop Thomson's and Dean Stanley's views "completely misleading and false" - and not only because there was no YouTube in 1867.
• The Bishop of St. Asaph didn't bleat on to The Times that critics of the conference idea were facists - and not only because the term "fascist" hadn't been invented yet.
• The Bishop of Sherborne didn't wander about the country claiming that anyone who didn't support the conference idea was being disloyal to Archbishop Longley - and not only because the bishopric of Sherborne didn't exist.

These things (or their 1867 equivalents) didn't happen because these arguments were and are slanderous, malicious and desperate.

Archbishop Longley may well have sworn a blue streak in his parlour at Lameth Palace over Archbishop Thomson's intransigence.  But he was at least able to grasp the subtle reality that someone might honestly disagree.

It is not "false and misleading" for people, after honest inquiry, to come to different conclusions.  Accusing people of lying just because they disagree with one's point of view is often evidence that one has run out of coherent arguments.

Archbishop Longley chose not to conduct himself in public like a petulant child who wasn't getting his way.

Some will argue, based on the success of the Lambeth Conferences over many decades, that Archbishop Longley was right and Archbishop Thomson wrong.  And they may be correct to argue so.

But that still doesn't mean that Archbishop Thomson's honestly held views were "misleading and false."

Of course, given the way that some - including the present and previous Archbishops of Canterbury - have demanded that Anglicans everywhere conform to certain clauses of Resolution 1-10 of Lambeth 1998, perhaps Archbishop Thomson wasn't so much wrong as just ahead of his time.