Episcopalians and tradition

By TERRY MATTINGLY
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Connoisseurs of ecclesiastical humor can answer this question: "How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?" The most popular answers sound something like this: "Ten. One to change the bulb and nine to start a newsletter about the irreplaceability of the original bulb."

Episcopalians do love their traditions, a trait that they share with everyone else in the Anglican Communion. Nevertheless, the reason the world's 77 million Anglicans fight so much is that many cherish some traditions more than others or sincerely believe that, in changing times, some traditions trump others.

Consider, for example, the recent letter from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to Nigerian Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, urging him not to visit the United States to lead rites installing a bishop here to minister to those who believe the Episcopal Church has veered into heresy.

"First, such action would violate the ancient customs of the church which limits the episcopal activity of a bishop to only the jurisdiction to which the bishop has been entrusted, unless canonical permission has been given," wrote Jefferts Schori, in an epistle that Akinola didn't receive because he was already in the United States.

"Second, such action would not help the efforts of reconciliation that are taking place in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion as a whole. Third, such action would display to the world division and disunity that are not part of the mind of Christ, which we must strive to display to all."

This "ancient customs" defense is more than ironic, stressed a key conservative strategist. After all, the issue driving this Anglican conflict is the Episcopal Church's insistence that it has a right to modernize traditions about sexuality, salvation, biblical authority and some other hot-button doctrines.

Early church teachings that marriage is between a man and a woman or that sex outside of marriage is sin didn't prevent the Episcopal Church from ordaining a non-celibate gay priest, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, as the bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

"The hypocrisy is rather obvious," said the Rev. Kendall S. Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina. "When church traditions serve their purposes, these people love to quote them. But when a church tradition gets in the way, they feel free to toss it out."

Thus, in his response to Jefferts Schori, Akinola argued that the 18.5 million-member Church of Nigeria _ Anglicanism's largest province _ created its Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) to provide shelter for those defending the "faith once for all delivered to the saints."

The Nigerian archbishop wrote: "You speak in your letter of centuries old custom regarding diocesan boundaries. You are, of course, aware that the particular historical situation to which you make reference was intended to protect the church from false teaching not to prevent those who hold to the traditional teaching of the church from receiving faithful episcopal care. ... I also find it curious that you are appealing to the ancient customs of the church when it is your own Province's deliberate rejection of the biblical and historic teaching of the Church that has prompted our current crisis."

This argument makes sense for traditionalists. But for mainstream Episcopalians, it sounds like a mere rationalization to allow a foreigner to invade _ setting up a non-traditional throne for the newly installed Bishop Martyn Minns of Truro Church in Fairfax, Va. At this point, one-third of CANA's 34 parishes are ethnically Nigerian, one-third are in northern Virginia and the rest are elsewhere in the United States.

In other words, Archbishop Akinola is "staking a claim on the soil of The Episcopal Church, putting his chair there and welcoming someone (Bishop Minns) to sit there," said the Rev. Mark Harris of Delaware, a member of the executive council of the Episcopal Church.

But the archbishop's new throne isn't real, wrote Harris, at his "Preludium" website. Akinola's new "diocese-like thing" is not an Anglican province. Instead, it's a kind of ecclesiastical joke.

"There is no remedy except to get rid of the chair. And since it is a mostly a symbolic chair the way to rid ourselves of it is to laugh it out of its power," he said. Thus, the best strategy for Episcopal leaders is to "hold the chair in derision. ... The chair, like the cigar, is sometimes only a chair."

Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.