An Editorial

Many of you have seen the memo that circulated among members of the American Anglican Council (now aka Tennessee Anglican Council or TAC) which urged and outlined a program of calculated deceit within the Episcopal Church.

The substance of the AAC plan is a strategy for using the church's resources and facilities to set up a parallel and hostile structure within, and further, to have that structure subsequently "recognized" as the "true" Anglican presence in the US&A. Trouble is, few may be aware that there is nothing in our Communion (no "Vatican") to perform such a function of "recognition." Ludicrously, this is to be done without attracting attention, if possible, and all the while denying any fractious intent (while simultaneously threatening?). Exposure of the memo brought disingenuous protests but no denials.

At the AAC Plano/Dallas meeting attended by the Bishop of Tennessee and others of this diocese, one was required to read, affirm, and sign the AAC's confessional manifesto, "A Place to Stand," in order to be a welcome participant at its meetings. Agenda items at these meetings have included how to get around diocesan titles to church property, pension implications, canonical loopholes, etc. 

The tone of the communications is that everyone must have enough plans in place to make some sort of mass jump into the arms of overseas provinces/jurisdictions with the time frame keyed to the recent October Windsor Report and the forthcoming February meeting of the Anglican primates.

Efforts like this are nearly always led by clergy. The president of the TAC is the rector of the Church of the Resurrection, Williamson County, the chairman of the newly formed Tennessee Episcopate Search Committee is the rector of the Church of the Advent, Brentwood, who was also a signatory on the TAC organizational credentials. An appreciable number of the members of Bishop Herlong's self-appointed Search Committee are either affiliated with the AAC, the Network, Forward in Faith, AMiA (see Glossary elsewhere in this issue). The Diocesan Standing Committee and Bishop and Council who have been the sources of nominees for the Search Committee to the bishop also have members sympathetic to these schismatic organizations.

There are also members of the Committee who represent parishes who have already disaffiliated with ECUSA. The corollary to this is that the laity almost always suffer being left out of these loops and kept oblivious, but eventually are drug into them financially and not altogether well-informed.

Everyone ordained in ECUSA signs an Oath of Conformity. Further, respect for the pastoral direction and leadership of one's bishop is part of the ordination vows for priests and deacons. That direction and leadership, however, is severely compromised here as the Bishop of Tennessee makes no public effort to question their activities, and he has also served as a national consultant for AAC plans and strategies. For anyone to do lip service to these things and to feign loyalty and accountability to the Church in which one holds one's orders (episcopal, presbyterial, diaconal, or baptismal) while working behind the scenes to do harm is in my opinion unworthy and dishonest.

ECUSA and other Anglican churches generally, have never been "confessional" bodies with the kind of hard boundaries drawn by these breakaway groups. Our confessions of faith are the historic creeds. There have always been groups of the "like-minded" within the Church. NOEL, the Prayer Book Society, the Episcopal Women's Caucus, Integrity, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, and on and on, but none fancies itself a separatist or seditious movement. All are bound together by their identity as Anglican Christians, all profess Jesus as Lord, and that is enough.

To begin drawing the shades on openness, to start trying to fix boundaries between "them" and "us," to plot a "takeover" subsequent to the decisions of overseas bishops, is to begin blocking off the sunlight of truth. To lurk in secret fomenting plans of separation and manipulation of monetary commitments while playing innocent only hastens the twilight of trust and the fading of integrity. Those who serve on the search and nominating committee for the next bishop of Tennessee, the Standing Committee, and the Bishop and Council and hold such continuing disloyal and unaccountable positions should resign as their continuing membership seems altogether unconscionable and should not be allowed.

The delegates (clergy and lay) to the forthcoming January Convention of the Diocese of Tennessee surely cannot be expected to tolerate such intrusive and perfidious behavior by the diocese's executive leadership. The Convention has every canonical, constitutional, and legislative prerogative and responsibility to expect its members to become thoroughly informed about the nature, purpose, and work of these schismatic movements in the church. As well, it can move to disband the present Episcopate Committee, to order the Bishop's hands off the election, and to work with the Presiding Bishop's office and their informed assistance for a new and open process in which we can have confidence in an eventual election of an eleventh bishop of Tennessee, should there be one.

[COVENANT, Number 19, January 2005]