The eCrozier

As you may have read, our Presiding Bishop, the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts-Schori, has announced that she’s discerned she won’t stand for election to another nine-year term as Presiding Bishop. At our most recent meeting of the House of Bishops in Taiwan, she shared with us her discernment process. Her own letter to the Church described well that discernment. I think her decision is a wise one. She’s led our Church in a remarkable time of transition. We’re still in that transition. Indeed, our Church along with every other religious institution in our culture is going through significant transition. In such a time, no leader will find universal approval or support. While I haven’t always agreed with her decisions, I believe she’s shown remarkable and courageous leadership in this very tenuous time. I also believe she wisely discerned it was time for another bishop to lead the Church in the next decade.

A challenge of our present time is to recognize that we don’t need complete agreement in order to remain in fellowship with one another to support God’s mission through the Church. In our culture, where tribalism has taken hold, one instance of disagreement seems to mean one must condemn the other side for their perceived lack of purity (just look at our national political culture). This relatively new notion is disastrous to any group, especially the Church. We ought to be able to disagree on particular decisions or positions and still rest on our unity in Christ.

One point of disagreement I’ve had with our Presiding Bishop is the focus on the internationalism of our Church. We have 16 nationalities represented in The Episcopal Church. While this does provide a rich diversity to the Church, it runs counter to the Anglican ethos we’ve received over the centuries. At our Church’s core is the belief that our catholic heritage is best lived out locally. That’s why the Church in England became the Church of England. No Bishop in Rome could define particularly how the catholic faith would be lived out in England. As Anglicanism spread, we were faithful and effective when we deliberately indigenized the church. Throughout the world Anglicanism is most faithfully led by indigenous leaders who follow the local expression of the catholic faith. The strength (and some might say, genius) of our Church has been Anglicans who come together around the authority of a bishop and other chosen leaders to lead a local diocese in God’s mission. That bishop and other leaders then maintain communion with other Anglicans. An example of this is in the Episcopal Church of the Philippines. As long as the American Church directed and funded it, it didn’t grow significantly. But once it gained indigenous leadership and autonomy in the 1990s, it flourished. Prime Bishop Edward Malecdan of the Philippine Church presented their remarkable witness and story to us this week at the House of Bishops meeting.

Our next Presiding Bishop, I believe, needs to lead us to a more diocesan-based focus for God’s mission. That means we need a smaller national church with fewer resources leaving local dioceses to support the national church structure. My hope is that our efforts at re-imagining our Church’s structure for mission will lead us in this “back to the future” direction reclaiming our Anglican ethos for a new thriving Church.

+Scott