Presiding Bishop, Bonnie Anderson review Executive Council meeting

[ENS] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and President of the House of Deputies Bonnie Anderson offer an overview of the recent Executive Council meeting, held June 11-14 in Parsippany, New Jersey. The Rev. Jan Nunley, deputy for communication for the Episcopal Church, reports.

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Anglican Demand for Change Is Rebuffed by Episcopalians

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
New York Times
Published: June 15, 2007

The executive council of the Episcopal Church announced yesterday that it would not comply with demands from leaders of the global Anglican Communion to retract the church's liberal position on homosexuality and create alternative supervision for disaffected conservative Episcopalians.

The announcement came a day after the Anglican archbishop of Kenya said he would consecrate an American bishop in Texas to minister to alienated Episcopalians in the United States. In May, the archbishop of Nigeria installed a bishop in Virginia, a step considered by many to be outside the bounds of Anglicanism’s traditional lines of authority.

The churches in the Anglican Communion, which trace their heritage to the Church of England, have been brought to the brink of schism over the issue of homosexuality. The executive council’s action makes clear that the Episcopal Church, Anglicanism’s American branch, does not intend to back down.

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Bonnie Anderson, president of the church’s House of Deputies, composed of clergy and lay representatives, said: "The Episcopal Church has spoken quite clearly as to where we are on this."

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Parsippany Postcard #6

Bonnie Anderson answering a question during the press conference.

John Clinton Bradley
For Integrity
June 14, 2007
Parsippany, NJ

A press conference was held this afternoon following adjournment of Executive Council. Present were a handful of reporters from church-related publications. A few reporters from secular publications and wire services joined the event by teleconference (though there were some technical difficulties that hampered their full participation).

I asked the Presiding Bishop what the Executive Council response to the primates' communiqué says to gay and lesbian people in the Episcopal Church and the United States.

The Presiding Bishop asked Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, to answer the question. Anderson replied that the statement speaks to the entire Episcopal Church. The statement invites a continuation of the conversation with the Anglican Communion on the vocation of gay and lesbian people within the church.

Episcopal Leaders Developing Response to Anglican Requests

By Lillian Kwon
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jun. 12 2007 01:03 PM ET

A draft of a response to the requests of worldwide Anglican leaders is ready for U.S. Episcopal bishops to consider.

Three months before The Episcopal Church's deadline (Sept. 30) to respond to the Anglican Communion's latest communiqué requesting the American church body to make an unequivocal pledge not to authorize same-sex blessings and confirm another openly gay bishop, the Executive Council began a four-day meeting Monday to discuss the draft report.

House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson, who chairs a work group appointed earlier this year to draft a potential response, announced that the Executive Council – the Episcopal Church's governing body – reportedly discussed the draft report in private conversation Monday and will discuss it during an open plenary session on Thursday, according to the Episcopal News Service.

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In the meantime, Davis Mac-Iyalla, an Anglican gay-rights advocate from Nigeria and founder of the country's only gay-rights organization – Changing Attitude Nigeria – is on a speaking tour across U.S. Episcopal Churches and met this week with the Executive Council's Concerns (INC) and National Concerns (NAC) committees.

He claimed that Church of Nigeria Archbishop Peter Akinola has been directly involved in a bill that would impose a five-year jail sentence for relationships, activism, advocacy and shows of affection among lesbian and gay people. The Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act 2006, currently pending before the Nigerian legislature, bans both same-sex "marriage" and those who advocate for gays.

Claiming 2,500 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members in his organization, Mac-Iyalla said, "It is wrong to say that homosexuality is a Western, imported culture," according to Episcopal News Service.

He urged The Episcopal Church to petition the Nigerian government to oppose the bill.

"Our hope is in The Episcopal Church," he said. "If you don't speak out for us, we don't know where we will take our voice."

Although Akinola initially supported the bill, he later expressed concerns "about individual human rights that must be addressed both in the framing of the law and its implementation.

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Executive Council prepares for communiqué response

By Mary Frances Schjonberg, June 11, 2007

[Episcopal News Service] The Executive Council, the Episcopal Church's governing body between General Conventions, began its four-day meeting June 11 in New Jersey learning that a draft of a response to the Anglican Communion Primates' latest communiqué was ready for their consideration.

In a public plenary session, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson said that Executive Council members would discuss during private conversation later in the day a draft report of the EC008 Task Group, requested by the Executive Council (via Resolution EC008) during its March 2-4 meeting in Portland, Oregon. (Council normally spends some time during each meeting in such private conversation.)

The EC008 Task Group document suggesting a Council response to the communiqué issued by Primates of the Anglican Communion at the end of their February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania will be discussed during an open plenary session on June 14.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Anderson appointed the EC008 Task Group. Resolution EC008 named Anderson, who is vice president of Council, to chair the work group. (Jefferts Schori is president of the Council.)

The Executive Council meeting, at the Sheraton hotel in Parsippany, New Jersey, began with three hours of committee meetings on the morning of June 11 and another two hours in the late afternoon with the plenary session in between. Council had dinner with representatives of the host Diocese of Newark.

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Decision on Lambeth Conference invitations draws reaction

By Matthew Davies and Mary Frances Schjonberg, May 22, 2007

[Episcopal News Service] The Archbishop of Canterbury's decision to withhold a small number of invitations to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Bishops drew reaction as soon as the announcement was made public May 22.

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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori sent a short e-mail message to the House of Bishops urging "a calm approach to today's announcement regarding 2008 Lambeth Conference invitations, a subject on which I plan to make no formal statement at this time. It is possible that aspects of this matter may change in the next 14 months, and the House of Bishops' September meeting offers us a forum for further discussion."

House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson also issued a short statement saying that "the Episcopal Church elects bishops and consents to the election of bishops in a democratic and participatory manner. The process is carried out within our Constitution and Canons, both at the General Convention and in our dioceses. The Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson is a duly elected and consecrated bishop of this Church. Not inviting him to the Lambeth Conference causes serious concern to The Episcopal Church."

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Meanwhile, according to a posting on the website Anglican Mainstream, Archbishop Peter Akinola, primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, said that withholding an invitation to Minns "will be viewed as withholding invitation to the entire House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria."

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The Rev. Susan Russell, the president of IntegrityUSA, said that her organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Episcopalians and their supporters, is "outraged and appalled" at Williams' decision not to invite Robinson. She suggested that the Episcopal Church's bishops ought "to think long and hard about whether they are willing to participate in the continued scapegoating of the gay and lesbian faithful as the price for going to the Lambeth Conference."

"This is not only a snub of Bishop Gene Robinson but an affront to the entire U.S. Episcopal Church," Russell said in part. "The Archbishop of Canterbury has allowed himself to be blackmailed by forces promoting bigotry and exclusion in the Anglican Communion. This action shows a disgraceful lack of leadership on Williams' part."

The complete IntegrityUSA statement is available here.

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COLORADO: Bonnie Anderson tells Episcopalians that their church is alive and well

By Mary Frances Schjonberg, May 21, 2007

[Episcopal News Service] House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson told a gathering of Episcopalians in Denver May 20 that Christianity has always been embroiled in controversy and that, while the Episcopal Church is no different, it "has the Good News of reconciliation to bring to this world and we are doing that in amazing ways."

"We walk along God's tightrope balancing our great value for diversity with our desire to speak with one voice," Anderson told the Martyn Hart Legacy Society. The organization recognizes parishioners and friends of Saint John's Cathedral in Denver who have made provisions for the future ministry of the parish through estate gifts.

Anderson spent May 19 and 20 in the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado where she spoke to three different groups of Episcopalians including the legacy society and preached at two services in St. John's Cathedral in Denver.

Noting that the Acts of the Apostles records the early controversies over inclusion of Gentiles in the early Church, Anderson said that from their earliest recorded history "Christians have failed to agree on what unites them and what separates them."

The prior evening, Anderson told another group of Episcopalians that "the Episcopal Church is alive and well and the Anglican Communion is about God's mission in the world."

She told the general meeting of the Richard Hooker Forum that "the Episcopal Church is a significant part of this work in the world."

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