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As you may be aware, on Saturday, December 5, the Diocese of Los Angeles elected the Rev. Mary D. Glasspool, a partnered lesbian, as one of two bishops suffragan elected in that diocese over the weekend. This election, like all elections to the episcopate, must receive a majority of consents from bishops exercising jurisdiction (that is, diocesan bishops) as well as diocesan Standing Committees of the Episcopal Church within 120 days of the election. In response to this election, the Archbishop of Canterbury released the following statement on December 6: “The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole. The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications. The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.”

Previously, the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in June 2006, passed resolution B033 that called “upon the Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on the communion.” There was much conversation at this year’s 76th General Convention in Anaheim about whether the actions of the 2009 Convention had repealed B033. We are mindful of the statement of this summer’s General Convention that acknowledged that “members of The Episcopal Church, as of the Anglican Communion, based on careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and in light of tradition and reason, are not of one mind, and Christians of good conscience disagree about some of these matters” (resolution D025). We reiterate our belief that The Episcopal Church should exercise the restraint called for by the Anglican Communion and, likewise, will not consent to this election.

This election in Los Angeles comes at a time when we are expecting, within the next few weeks, the release of the final draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant, which seeks to guide our common life as a communion of churches. Our diocese, through actions at Diocesan Council and statements from our leadership, has consistently affirmed our support of the requests of the wider Communion in these matters, as well as the ongoing Anglican Covenant process.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Instruments of Unity • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • Windsor Report / Process

Germany's new development minister said Saturday he opposed taxing financial transactions, putting him at odds with support for such a levy expressed earlier this year by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"I am speaking out clearly against a tax on financial transactions which would be used to finance development aid," said Dirk Niebel, a member of the pro-business Free Democrats who took up his post in October.

"It is already a stated position of the liberal party."

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Stock Market • Taxes • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany

If it did nothing else, Switzerland’s vote to ban the building of minarets drew attention to Europe’s identity crisis. The Swiss — like the French, or the Germans, or the British for that matter — are clearly worried about the Muslims living among them.

The Swiss vote (which may end up getting knocked down by the European Court of Human Rights) has succeeded in shifting the focus away from the social and economic problems of immigration and toward religion. To put the full weight of Europe’s cultural identity crisis on a slender spire of traditional architecture meant risking a dangerous debate, which has now erupted, and not only in Switzerland.

Previous debates about the role of Islam in Europe involved issues other than religion. The 2004 French ban on head scarves in schools was about the submission of women; the 2005 publication of Danish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad was about free speech.

A minaret, by contrast, is no more and no less than a symbol. Other religious symbols draw protest — a nativity scene in front of City Hall, say, or a cross on a mountaintop — but they, unlike the minaret, are not part of a house of worship.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Switzerland • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online its entire airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

The most sensitive parts of the 93-page Standard Operation Procedures were apparently redacted in a way that computer savvy individuals easily overcame.

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The Rev. Mary Glasspool said that she was aware her win troubles some people, but that she believes her election last weekend was mostly "liberating" for the denomination.

"I've had hundreds, probably a thousand, e-mails from people all over the world who don't know me but who are expressing through the fact of my election a pride in the Episcopal Church," Glasspool said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

"I've committed my life as a life of service to the people of Jesus Christ, and what hurts is the sense that anybody might have that my name or my servanthood could be perceived as divisive."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Culture-Watch • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Theology • Ecclesiology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

On Saturday afternoon, January 30, 2010, The Most Rev. and Rt. Honorable Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, will deliver the annual Father Alexander Schmemann Memorial Lecture at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. The archbishop will speak on the topic “Theology and the Contemplative Calling: The Image of Humanity in the Philokalia.”

St Vladimir’s Seminary will also confer upon the archbishop a Doctorate of Divinity honoris causa, in recognition of his contribution to the academic study of Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality. The Very Rev. Dr. John Behr, dean of St. Vladimir’s, was examined for his own doctoral degree at Oxford University by the archbishop, then a professor of theology there.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

In addition to outlining areas of longer-term work, the Commission committed itself to five immediate tasks:

1. to undertake a reflection on the Instruments of Communion and relationships among them;
2. to make a study of the definition and recognition of 'Anglican Churches' and develop guidelines for bishops in the Communion;
3. to provide supporting material to assist in promoting the Anglican Covenant;
4. to draft proposals for guided processes of ‘reception’ (how developments and agreements are evaluated, and how appropriate insights are brought into the life of the churches);
5. to consider the question of ‘transitivity’ (how ecumenical agreements in one region or Province may apply in others).

These tasks, which will be taken forward by working groups consulting electronically between meetings, aim to strengthen the unity, faith and order of the Communion.

An Episcopal election in Los Angeles, which remains to be confirmed or rejected by The Episcopal Church, took place during the meeting and was discussed by the Commission. It noted the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury that ‘the bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold’. The Commission expressed the fervent hope that ‘gracious restraint’ would be exercised by The Episcopal Church in this instance.


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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Reports & Communiques • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles

Bishop-elect Glasspool’s election comes two days after Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told an Atlanta radio station that there were no contradiction between the Episcopal Church’s 2006 pledge to abide by the Communion’s ban on consecrating gay bishops and actually electing gay bishops.

The 2009 vote by the Church’s General Convention was not “a reversal” of the moratorium, she said, as the canons had “for a long time said that the discernment process is open to any baptized person,” she told National Public Radio.

“The door has been open for many years” for gay and lesbian bishops, the presiding bishop said, confirming that she would go ahead with the consecration of a lesbian or gay bishop.

During the debate on resolution D025 at the July General Convention, the bishops noted there was a distinction between intentions and actions, with the moratorium being broken when the Episcopal Church consecrated a new gay bishop. Bishop Jefferts Schori said that was “my understanding of it. We have been asked to exercise restraint, and we have done so.”

“Effectively a moratorium remains until it is ended,” she later said on July 18.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

A parish council vote December 10 will affirm a local congregation’s support for the blessing of same-sex marital unions within the Anglican Church of Canada.

That according to Andrew Twiddy, reverend for the parish of St. Anne and St. Edmund in Parksville.

He said information he has gathered on an informal basis indicates “a great majority of the congregation is in favour of moving ahead on this. That’s witnessed I think by a vote in 2007 by the diocesan synod (a provincial legislature made up of elected representatives from every parish). Two-thirds of that group voted in favour of blessing same-sex unions.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

The Episcopal Church is not likely to heed [Rowan] Williams’ warning. The church made its view on the issue quite clear in its General Convention last July, when it passed one resolution repealing the moratorium on electing gay bishops and a second resolution allowing, but not requiring, bishops to authorize same-sex blessing ceremonies in the churches they oversee. In places where civil authorities allow same-sex unions, the church has said it will respond to “changing circumstances” and allow bishops to provide a “generous pastoral response” to couples who want the church to bless their unions. Clergy are now free to solemnize same-sex unions in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and Diocese of Vermont, although the Episcopal Church has not yet written a liturgy for them to do so.

Since the bishops at the General Convention voted 99-45 to revoke the moratorium on gay bishops, it’s unlikely that Glasspool’s election will elicit a different response. Robert Lundy, communications officer for the conservative American Anglican Council, said the church will probably not change directions now: “We’re at the stage where it’s clear where the Episcopal Church is going. There’s no pretending that they’re going to remotely hold to Biblical teachings—not just on God’s role for sex . . . but on lots of other issues they’re totally walking apart from the rest of the Anglican Communion.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

Father David Waller, of St Saviour's CofE Church, in Markhouse Road, Walthamstow, said the announcement that ... [an Episcopal leader in maryland] could become the denomination's first openly gay female bishop does not sit comfortably with all members of the Anglican church.

The Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, has urged the Episcopal Church USA not to allow her ordination.

Fr Waller said: “The issue about how the Anglican community relates to one another and to others is important.

"The more it fragments, the more it becomes a different church. All these divisions make it difficult to engage in conversations with other churches. If Anglicans have such a broad spectrum, their identity can become blurred.”

Read it all and please note the correction on where Mary Glasspool currently serves.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained

The Rev. Mary Glasspool, 55, became the first openly partnered lesbian to be elected as an assistant bishop in the church, a move that continues to press a worldwide debate over how to reconcile homosexuality with Christianity.

"We ought not be surprised when gay and lesbian Christians are elected to leadership roles in a church that believes in the inclusive love of God," the Right Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, bishop of the Ohio Diocese, said in a prepared statement following Glasspool's election.

Hollingsworth was instrumental in adopting a gay-friendly resolution at the church's international convention last July. The resolution effectively lifted a moratorium on electing openly gay bishops.

The moratorium was put in place following the election in 2003 of an openly gay, partnered man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop in New Hampshire.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention 2009 • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

The Rev. Ephraim Radner, professor of historical theology at the University of Toronto's Wycliffe College, told ENS he wasn't surprised by Glasspool's election and that he wouldn't be if she receives the required consents for her planned May 15, 2010 consecration.

What will surprise the former Colorado conservative is if the Episcopal Church will sign the latest version of the Anglican covenant.

Glasspool's election and consecration will convey the impression that not just the Los Angeles diocese but "the Episcopal Church as a whole is not interested in participating in the processes that have been so painfully put together over the last six years" to consult and to exercise restraint and be accountable to one another as outlined in the proposed Anglican covenant, he said.

He added that, if the Episcopal Church signs the yet-to-be completed covenant, it will be seen as "utter disingenuousness." The election of an openly gay partnered bishop "establishes in a formal way the Episcopal Church's decision not to be a part of this process," he added.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Covenant • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

The recent election in the Diocese of Los Angeles of a partnered lesbian as bishop suffragan raises the questions of covenant and communion within The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Anglican Communion once again. Leadership in the Diocese of Texas has consistently adhered to the request for gracious restraint and a moratorium put forth in the Windsor Report and supports the ongoing process of a Covenant within the global Communion and will continue to do so.

The Diocese of Los Angeles and the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, elected on December 5, must now follow a consent process. The implications of this vote are far reaching and it remains to be seen if more than half of TEC's 109 diocesan standing committees and more than half of the diocesan bishops will approve her election. It may take up to four months for the consent process to unfold.

The Windsor Report, written following the election and consecration of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, NH in 2003, requested a moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops and in 2006, The Episcopal Church agreed to refrain from electing additional actively gay bishops. This summer, the Church's General Convention acknowledged there is great diversity of opinion within the Church on the issueof sexuality, marriage and ordination.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Los Angeles • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Uganda

Thus ++Rowan played true to his role as Archbishop of Canterbury, while Bishop Griswold, enthusiastically supported by the same-sex activists in ECUSA, arrogated to himself the right to act in derogation of the bishops of Lambeth. Both did so despite the scorn which each thereby called upon his decision -- although the collective scorn heaped upon ++Rowan has never ceased, while that allocated to Presiding Bishop Griswold ended with his retirement. By remaining on the stage, and what is more by remaining steadfastly true to the limitations of his position, Archbishop Rowan has remained the sole target on which both sides could vent their anger. Hence he is in the impossible part of a "first among equals" who is now seen as neither "first" nor "equal".

Meanwhile, back at ECUSA, the Most Reverend Frank Griswold has given place to the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori. If Bishop Griswold arrogated to himself the right to act in derogation of his colleagues at Lambeth, Bishop Jefferts Schori seized the opportunity to so to act even before she had ever gone to Lambeth and met her equals. What is more, she has from the outset of her term in office presumed to act in derogation of her own equals in her own Church. The result has been a double usurpation of authority: where ++Griswold claimed only the right to consecrate a duly elected bishop in defiance of the advice of Resolution 1.10, ++Jefferts Schori has not only announced that she will do the same if the requisite consents for Canon Glasspool are received, but she also has made herself the sole arbiter of whether a bishop who transfers to another Church in the Anglican Communion thereby renounces his orders.

In presuming to claim that the Right Reverend Henry Scriven so renounced his orders in transferring from the Diocese of Pittsburgh to the Diocese of Oxford, and in recently declaring that the Right Reverend Keith Ackerman had done the same in resigning the Diocese of Quincy and going to work under the Bishop of Bolivia, the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA has effectively declared that she alone will be the judge of who can become, and who can remain, a bishop in the Episcopal Church (USA) -- regardless of what her equals in the Communion may believe. They are, to that extent, no longer her equals, but only bishops to be tolerated if they stay out of her way, to be ignored if they presume to disagree, and to be denounced and punished by any means possible if they try to hinder or interfere.

When one bishop so distorts the polity of the Communion as to claim the power to decide status without regard to the opinion -- nay, the full consensus -- of the other bishops in the Anglican Communion, what we have is no longer a Communion, but an autarchy.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • Global South Churches & Primates • Instruments of Unity • Lambeth 2008 • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Theology • Ecclesiology

The Archbishop of Canterbury has rarely been more impressive than in a speech he delivered in Rome just before his meeting with the Pope and just after the Roman Catholic Church had issued its astonishing offer of a home for Anglican Catholics unable to accept women bishops and other innovations. He spoke in characteristically human and erudite fashion of why there could be no going back on the ordination of women.

Just a few days later, he failed to condemn openly the new law to be enacted in Uganda that will condemn a large number of homosexuals to death. Yet when it came to the election as a bishop of a monogamous woman who has been in the same relationship for 21 years he was quick to judge. The problem was that this woman’s relationship is with another woman.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

The Anglican Church has been divided on openly homosexual clergy, with some saying Canon Glasspool's election makes a schism inevitable.

''I think this will confirm the view of people who say the communion is already broken, let's face up to the facts, let's not pretend,'' said the Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth.

''There is deep division here on profound principle, about which I can see no middle ground.''

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On Monday, Archbishop Luke Orombi’s assistant for International Relations, Ms Alison Barfoot, described as “funny and unbiblical” the choice of Ms Glasspool.

“We believe the Bible condemns homosexual behaviour as immoral. So how can a homosexual be a bishop?” she said. “This decision of the Episcopal Church in America [the equivalent Anglican Church there] will only bring more problems and divisions.”

Canon Glasspool appeared unfazed by the criticisms, telling The Times newspaper of London in comments published on Monday: “Any group of people who have been oppressed because of any one isolated aspect of their persons yearns for justice and equal rights.”

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The Episcopal Church has said for years that it is committed to both the Anglican Communion and the full inclusion of gays and lesbians, said the Rev. Jo Bailey Wells, a professor and director of Anglican studies at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C. Glasspool's election is, in a sense, a fork in the road.

"I think [Rowan] Williams' statement points out the incommensurability of both agendas," she said. "Episcopalians are prone to deny the consequences of their actions, because they so believe in what they are doing that they don't believe that others do not believe."

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