March 25, 2007

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I have recently returned from a week-long House of Bishops meeting at Camp Allen in Texas. This meeting, like others before it, provided a time of fellowship and prayer, a chance for bishops to know one another better and an opportunity for them to discuss the state of our church. Each day featured morning and evening prayer; each day was centered around the Eucharist. I can report to you that, three years into my episcopate, I feel truly and fully a part of the House of Bishops. My fellow bishops are not only colleagues but also friends and partners. My time spent with them surely enriches my mission here in Florida.

During the course of our meeting, we discussed many of the pressing issues which face not only the Episcopal Church but the world itself. We reaffirmed our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals and strove to better position our church as an instrument of global outreach and healing. We looked outward and properly shifted the focus of discussion from internal affairs to those of the world we seek to serve. But, of course, we also found ourselves confronted by the recent Primates’ communique and the present difficulties within the Anglican Communion. One might suppose that, in the context of the controversial demands being made upon our church, there would exist great tension or even bitterness amongst a divided House of Bishops. Nothing could have been further from the truth. A spirit of great charity and gentle understanding permeated throughout the whole meeting. We listened together; we discussed together; then we responded to certain demands of the primates together. Some dissented, it is true, but there were none of the after-session minority reports and statements of recrimination which have, in the past, been so much in evidence. I am proud of the unity and courage the whole House displayed, and I commend to you the House’s “Message to God’s People” and the “Mind of the House” resolutions you may find in full at www.episcopalchurch.org.

During the meeting, we listened to two different speakers—Ephraim Radner and Katherine Grieb—present differing perspectives on the idea of a “covenant” document which would attempt to unify and solidify the Anglican Communion. I listened with interest to their ideas, but my concern continues to be that which I expressed in my reflections of March 1: namely, that we are not a confessional church but a creedal one. We are a communion bound by a common history, a common liturgy and by a desire to be in global partnership for the sake of the gospel. I fear the consequences of replacing our traditional bonds of affection with the legalistic, Communion-wide juridical body such a “covenant” may establish.

The House of Bishops adopted a stance towards the primates’ Tanzania communiqué which I wholeheartedly endorse. Many of my brother and sister bishops told me that they had read my March 1 response to the communiqué and agreed with it. During our meeting we did not specifically address the primates’ calls for binding prohibitions against same-sex unions and consecrations of gay bishops. Instead, we confronted the difficulty which emanates from a misunderstanding of the structure and nature of the Episcopal Church. We referred to the Executive Council—the mixed clerical and lay body truly responsible for day-to-day governance of the Episcopal Church–a recommendation that our church not accept the primates’ proposed “Primatial Vicar and Council” pastoral scheme. As I wrote on March 1, this proposal presented a potential for deep injury in our church structure; it could have led to further division and much confusion. I am glad we responded within the parameters of our own polity and glad that we maintained the integrity of our church.

The House unanimously invited the Archbishop of Canterbury and members of the Primates’ Standing Committee to meet with the American bishops here in the United States. I sincerely hope they will accept our invitation. The best way to move past misunderstanding is to meet and to reason together. It is incumbent now upon a certain number of our global partners to understand better the Episcopal Church and its manner of governance. The House of Bishops has affirmed our commitment to the Anglican Communion; what we refuse to do is to compromise the very qualities which make us a unique and wonderful Christian witness across the world.

Further to the process of understanding, the House of Bishops’ Theology Committee will develop materials for study regarding both the Primates’ communiqué and the proposed Anglican covenant. The more input–the more discussion–we as a church engage in, the better. Thus, it is critical that all Episcopalians be equipped with the information necessary to form knowledgeable opinions and contribute meaningfully to the wider conversation.

On a final, personal note, I would like to mention one of the most moving spiritual moments of the week for me. An old friend of mine who, like I, is a conservative, traditional bishop, had chosen to refrain from taking communion with the House since 2003. He did this quietly and without show; he simply felt he could not take communion with his fellow bishops because of the theological difficulties which have been with us in recent years. But during this meeting—at the very time one might suppose those theological difficulties would be most evident—my friend was at the communion rail every single day. Last week marked the first time that I have been privileged to receive communion with this old friend as a fellow bishop. It was a profound experience.

I asked my friend how his change of heart had come about, what it was that had brought him back to communion with the House of Bishops. He spoke to me of illness in his family and of turbulence in his vocational life. And he told me of how it was that as he stood in the need of prayer, it was the more liberal members of the House of Bishops who had called him and reached out to him. As my friend spoke, I heard a message of deeper and richer communion: communion formed not by agreement on all theological issues but by a common life of devotion to God and of care for one another.

My dear friends, Communion is not about having the “right answer” for every theological question. It is, as I have preached and taught across our diocese, about loving the Lord with everything that we have and everything that we are, and it is about doing the right thing by others. It is about loving others in the way we ourselves wish to be loved. This is the very summary of all the law and the prophets which Jesus has given to us. And it is in that command, and in the perfect communion of love offered us by Christ, that our church and, indeed, our world, find ultimate and permanent hope.

Blessings,

+John