Thus spake Nigeria

My, my, my! Another country heard from in response to Rowan Williams' resignation:

Church of Nigeria reacts to Archbishop of Canterbury’s Resignation

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd and Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Williams took over the leadership of the Anglican Communion in 2002 when it was a happy family. Unfortunately, he is leaving behind a Communion in tatters: highly polarized, bitterly factionalized, with issues of revisionist interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and human sexuality as stumbling blocks to oneness, evangelism and mission all around the Anglican world.

It might not have been entirely his own making, but certainly “crucified under Pontius Pilate”. The lowest ebb of this degeneration came in 2008, when there were, so to say, two “Lambeth” Conferences one in the UK, and an alternative one, GAFCON in Jerusalem. The trend continued recently when many Global South Primates decided not to attend the last Primates’ meeting in Dublin, Ireland.

Since Dr. Rowan Williams did not resign in 2008, over the split Lambeth Conference, one would have expected him to stay on in office, and work assiduously to ‘mend the net’ or repair the breach, before bowing out of office. The only attempt, the covenant proposal, was doomed to fail from the start, as “two cannot walk together unless they have agreed”.

For us, the announcement does not present any opportunity for excitement. It is not good news here, until whoever comes as the next leader pulls back the Communion from the edge of total destruction. To this end, we commit our Church, the Church of Nigeria, (Anglican Communion) to serious fasting and prayers that God will do “a new thing”, in the Communion.

Nevertheless, we join others to continue in prayer for Dr. Rowan Williams and his family for a more fruitful endeavour in their post – Canterbury life.

+Nicholas D. Okoh
Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of All Nigeria

==============

"Nevertheless ...?"

Seriously????

My one wondering about all this is how anyone could ever have imagined that the proposed Covenant would satisfy this bunch and whether +Rowan's resignation takes away the "let's adopt it for Rowan, poor chap, it's the least we can do" in the CofE. We shall see!

Latest Episode of "As The Anglican World Turns" reviewed in the Sunday NYT

There's an insightful piece in today's NYT by Ross Douthat on the resignation of Rowan Williams in specific and "As the Anglican World Turns" in general. Quote in point:

To be an Anglican bishop in Britain today, for instance, means shepherding a shrinking native-born flock alongside growing immigrant churches, trying to make religion relevant in a cosmopolitan and often anti-Christian culture, and figuring out whether the continent’s growing Muslim communities contain potential allies, potential rivals, or both. But to be a bishop in, say, Nigeria — where Christianity is expanding rapidly, secularism is almost nonexistent, and Islam looks like a mortal foe — means something very different. And asking a Welsh-born theologian to steward a Communion that probably holds more churchgoers in Lagos than Liverpool is a recipe for constant agony.

Read the rest here.

[And if you happen to be keeping track of the Other March Madness brackets -- the CofE vote on the proposed Anglican Covenant -- the diocesan count stands at 20 in opposition/12 in favor with 22 needed to defeat and 44 to go. Stay tuned!]

Words of Wisdom from the Bishop of Liverpool

Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland and Evangelism

From Lesser Feasts and Fasts: Patrick was born into a Christian family somewhere on the northeast coast of Britain in about 390. When Patrick was about sixteen, he was captured by a band of Irish slave-raiders. He was carried off to Ireland and forced to serve as a shepherd. When he was about twenty-one, he escaped and returned to Britain, where he took holy orders both as a presbyter and bishop. A vision then called him to return to Ireland…

In my day school chaplain days, every time I told this story to the kids gathered for morning chapel I would pause at this point and ask them if they could imagine that … IMAGINE what kind of vision it must have been to convince Patrick to go BACK to the place – to the people – who had held him captive in order to bring them the good news of God in Christ Jesus. For of course we remember Patrick as the great evangelist whose missionary journeys spread Christianity all over Ireland – and today we celebrate his life and ministry AND the vision that sent him back to Ireland -- which is why we wear green to school today and eat corned beef and cabbage for dinner tonight. (And one of the mysteries of life I've yet to figure out is how corned beef got to be an icon for evangelism but there it is!)

In 2003 I was in New York City on my way out to meetings on Long Island along with a train full of revelers returning from the annual St. Patrick's Day parade. One of those revelers was a NYPD officer who had sprained his ankle marching in the parade and was heading home for an icepack and some Advil.

I must have been traveling in my collar because the conversation turned to church stuff and I found myself telling him about my ministry – at the time I was the Executive Director of Claiming the Blessing – and about the work we were doing in the Episcopal Church. He had been raised an Irish Catholic – and his partner was Puerto Rican – and it had never occurred to either of them that there might be a church where they would be welcome.

We talked some more and exchanged cards and I promised to email some folks to connect with and he said, sprained ankle notwithstanding, that he felt like running into me on the train was a St. Patrick's Day dose of the luck of the Irish. And when we came to his stop and he stood up to limp off the train, he took the big, green plastic shamrock from around his neck and gave it to me. And he told me to remember there were plenty of other people like him out there who needed to hear what we had to say about a church that welcomed everybody and that I should take some of his Irish luck with me for the work in front of me. And I still have it.

And it reminds me every time I see it of the New York cop who is part of the mission field out there longing for the good news we have to offer – yearning to know that the "Episcopal Church Welcomes You" signs really means him.

And here we are in 2012 -- a church continuing to wrestle with whether or not it is going to fulfill its commitment to the "full and equal claim" promised the gay and lesbian baptized since 1976.

On this particular St. Patrick's Day I believe asking gay and lesbian Episcopalians to hang in there and continue to take the vision of a Body of Christ that fully includes all the baptized BACK to the church that still questions their vocations and relationships is like unto asking Patrick to go evangelize the Irish who enslaved him.

And yet that's the vision we've been given – that's the call we have received.

Our witness of God's inclusive love is not just a witness to the presence of the holy in our lives and our relationships and our vocations -- but a witness to the power of God's love to transcend ANYTHING that holds us captive or enslaves us.

So let's remember on this St. Patrick's Day that the same God who inspired a former captive named Patrick to return to his captors and evangelize them in the 4th century is working in us as we work to call this church and this communion to wholeness in the 21st. And let's remember that it is that power working in us that can do infinitely more than we can ask for or imagine. And then let's get on with the work we have been given to do. (After we have a little corned beef and cabbage!)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Archbishop of Canterbury to Step Down

Yes, I'm late to the ABofC Resigns Party. But it's been a busy day off of laundry and errands and the vet and ... well, just call it life in the lesbian fast lane.

Arguably a favorite press comment so far about today's breaking news came from the Guardian:

"Throughout his time in office he has been attacked by conservatives for his liberal views on homosexuality and by liberals for failing to live up to those principles."

And there you have it.

Integrity's President Caro Hall's statement included:

"Integrity wishes him well in his new position and prays that when God calls the next Archbishop he will be a forward-looking person of great courage who understands that to be the Instrument of Unity may not mean keeping everyone together in a unholy alliance. We hope that the members of the Crown Appointments Commission and the British Prime Minster will not bow to the forces who seek to keep the Church of England, and by example, the rest of the Anglican Communion, in the dark ages where women, gays, lesbians and trans-people are not welcome in the House of Bishops and thus are not welcome at all."

And the always brilliant Giles Fraser wrote:

Most people read him wrong – radical yes, liberal no. He was the spiritual equivalent, perhaps even the inspiration behind, to what Philip Blond later came to popularise as Red Toryism. He distrusted unfettered market forces, but also, and against the spirit of the age, the emphasis on individual freedom that went with it. His was a nostalgia for an old-fashioned ideal of community - perhaps even the sort of community of the South Wales village - where collective solidarity is always more important than individual choice and social diversity.

In effect, he became a split personality – with Williams the man at odds with Williams the archbishop. After the bitter Lambeth Conference of 1998, Williams, and several other bishops, made gay Christians a promise: "We pledge we will continue to reflect, pray and work for your full inclusion in the life of the church." Unfortunately, it was a promise he would fail to keep.

Indeed.

I'll have my own reflections tomorrow, but in the meantime, Episcopal Cafe has a comprehensive round up and Thinking Anglicans is another source for commentary. And no matter how you slice it, it's an end of an era.

Crocus

CROCUS

It takes courage to be crocus-minded
Lord, I'd rather wait till June
like wise roses
when the hazards of winter are safely behind
and I'm expected
and everything's ready for roses

But crocuses?

Highly irregular
knifing up
through hard frozen ground and snow
sticking their necks out
because they believe in spring
and have something personal
and emphatic to say about it

Lord, I am by nature rose-minded
Even when I have
studied the situation her
and know there are wrongs that need righting
affirmations that need stating
and know that my speaking out
might even rock the boat
Well, I'd rather wait till June

Maybe things will sort themselves out
and we won't have to make an issue of it

Lord, forgive
Wrongs don't work themselves out
Injustices and inequities and hurts don't just dissolve
Somebody has to stick their neck out
somebody who cares enough to think through
and work through hard ground
because they believe
and have something personal to say about it

Me Lord, crocus minded?
Could it be that there are things that need to be said
and you want me to say them?
I pray for courage
Amen

[author unknown to me]

For the Third Sunday in Lent

Quick post for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, fresh from this morning's experimental Contemplative Eucharist (sans spoken words) at the 9 & 11:15 services. Here's a photo snapped from the balcony as congregants lit votive candles while music played during the prayers of the people -- and one of the quotess scattered through the bulletin for meditation and reflection ... from my fav: Madeline L'Engle.

"What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason.

It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don’t even have to earn." — Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007)