Timeline of Significant Events in the Episcopal Crisis
“Beginning in the early 1870s, a theology deeply skeptical about many of Christianity’s central claims began to influence the leadership of the Episcopal Church, and then spread throughout it. By the late 1960s it had come to dominate the Church entirely.” So observes Dr. Les Fairfield. The following timeline highlights some of the significant events in the Episcopal crisis.

1966-1967
Bishop James Pike charged, but never tried, with heresy for denying the doctrine of the Trinity

1976
General Convention commenced dialogue on sexuality and ordination of homosexual candidates (resolutions A068 and B101)

1977
Bishop Paul Moore (New York) ordained an openly homosexual ordinand

1979
Several bishops refused to abide by General Convention’s reaffirmation of traditional Christian ethics on sexuality and marriage (resolution A053)

1985
General Convention resolved to “dispel myths and prejudices” against homosexuality (resolution D082)

1987 & 1989
Heresy charges against Bishop John Spong (Newark) dismissed by panel of peer bishops

1988
General Convention continued dialogue regarding sexuality (resolution D102)

1989–1991
Bishops Spong and Walter Righter (Newark) and the Diocese of Washington, D.C., ordained non-celibate homosexual ordinands

1991

• General Convention rejected a resolution calling clergy to abstain from sex outside of marriage
• Over 75% of dioceses began a three-year dialogue about sexuality

1993
Bishop Richard Grein (New York) led Sunday Eucharist liturgy that praised pagan deities Ra and Ausar at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine

1994

• General Convention began considering rites blessing same-sex unions (resolution D049)
• 90 bishops and 144 deputies signed “Koinonia Statement” defining homosexuality as morally neutral

1996

• Heresy charges against Bishop Righter dismissed due to “no clear doctrine” prohibiting ordination of “persons living in committed same gender sexual relationships”
• Integrity counted over 100 ordinations of openly homosexual candidates to date

1997
Virginia Theological Seminary began revision of policies to admit actively homosexual seminarians and to provide shared housing for non-celibate unmarried faculty and students

1998
Lambeth Conference of global Anglican bishops reaffirmed “the primary authority of the Scriptures” (resolution III.1; cf. III.5) and reaffirmed “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture” (resolution I.10 by vote of 526 to 70)

2000
General Convention acknowledged relationships other than marriage and disagreement on church’s teaching (resolution D039)

2001
Anglican Primates acknowledged estrangement in Communion due to changes in theology and practice regarding sexuality and called provinces to avoid actions that may damage the Communion’s “credibility of mission”

2002
Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) urged dioceses and bishops to refrain from unilateral actions that would strain the Communion

2003

• Primates negated authorization of rites for blessings of same-sex unions
• Bishop Michael Ingham (New Westminster, Canada) issued rite for blessings of same-sex unions
• General Convention rejected affirming the authority of Scripture (resolution B001); confirmed the episcopal election of a priest openly living in a same-sex relationship; and recognized blessings of same-sex unions as “within bounds of our common life” (resolution C051)
• Primates’ emergency meeting declared that General Convention’s decisions “will tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level”; reaffirmed 1998 Lambeth Conference resolutions Presiding Bishop Griswold consecrated a priest openly living in a same-sex relationship as bishop

2004

• Bishop Otis Charles (Utah, retired) “married” his homosexual partner
• Bishop J. Jon Bruno (Los Angeles) performed blessing of same-sex union
• Bishop John Chane (Washington, D.C.) performed blessing of same-sex union
• ECUSA promoted pagan Druid eucharistic liturgy on its website
• Lambeth Commission released the Windsor Report which reaffirmed traditional Christian morality

2005

• Primates’ Meeting endorsed Windsor Report; called ECUSA to withdraw its representatives from the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) until Lambeth 2008; requested ECUSA’s explanation for recent actions
• ACC endorsed Primates’ call for ECUSA withdrawal; ECUSA presented To Set Our Hope On Christ as its official response to Windsor Report

2006

• General Convention rejected Windsor Report’s “moratorium” on consecrations of those who are “living in a same gender union”; and instead called for restraint “by not consenting” to any candidate “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church”; did not address a moratorium on same-sex blessings
• Archbishop of Canterbury Williams acknowledged “deep division” in the Communion
• 7 orthodox dioceses that uphold the teaching of the Anglican Communion and reject the actions of General Convention petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury for “alternative primatial oversight”

What Does It Mean To Be an Episcopalian?
“What does it mean to be an Episcopalian, and should I be one?” This question goes to the very heart of the 40 Days of Discernment. How would you answer this question? How others in The Episcopal Church (TEC) answer it varies greatly depending on whom you ask. And therein, essentially, is the crisis that has led to this booklet. There are two distinct and competing visions for what it means to be an Episcopalian, and for that matter, what it means to be part of Christ’s church.

On the one hand, the Anglican bishops during the Reformation, and the founders of the Episcopal Church, defined the church as “a congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance.” The “pure Word” was the Holy Scripture, of which the church was to be “a witness and a keeper”—not an author. Those Scriptures contained “all things necessary to salvation,” and their salvation message was simple and exclusive: We are all “inclined to evil” and deserve “God’s wrath and damnation.” But God has graciously offered to rescue us, by sending his one and only Son to take on human nature as Jesus, to live a sinless life, and “by sacrifice of himself once made” through his death and resurrection to “take away the sins of the world.” We accept this gift of God by turning from evil, repenting of sin, and placing our “true and lively faith” in Christ. It is “only” by “the Name of Jesus Christ” that a person may be saved. (Articles of Religion 2, 6, 9–12, 15, 18–20, Book of Common Prayer pp.868–71.)

On the other hand, the Presiding Bishop-elect of TEC recently said to Time magazine, “We who practice the Christian tradition understand [Jesus] as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.” Several years ago, the Bishop of Newark called for a new reformation in Christianity, saying, “The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.” In an Easter Sunday sermon, the Bishop of Washington, D.C., described Christ’s resurrection as “at best, conjectural” and not of significance. At its 2006 General Convention, TEC declined to approve a resolution endorsing John 14—that Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life” and that “no one comes to the Father except through” him. In 2005, at the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting, TEC’s presentation explaining its actions at the 2003 General Convention discounted the writings of Paul opposing homosexual practice, because he was “a first century Jewish male steeped in the tradition that includes Leviticus.” And in 1998, the Bishop of Pennsylvania, when asked how TEC could bless homosexual marriages when the Bible clearly forbids it, answered, “Because we wrote the Bible and we can rewrite it. We have rewritten the Bible many times.”

What do these two visions have in common? If the answer is little or nothing, can and should persons who see Christianity so differently consider themselves fellow believers, or should they admit that they are irreconcilably divided and walk apart? This question is not theoretical or academic. We must confront daily, and painfully, what our churches should be teaching to their congregants each Sunday and what parents should be teaching to their children.

Questions of doctrine are not the whole picture. In a fallen world, we will never find an unblemished church. The church faced heresy as soon as it was founded, as your study of 1 Corinthians will reveal. We should be humble and cautious toward the church in this world: And, while Jesus’ parables in Matthew 13 are about the kingdom, not the church; his warning about God’s judgment at the end times, should give the church pause as it seeks to discipline people in the present age: “while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let them both grow together until the harvest” (v.29–30).

Yet the Bible is filled with passages denouncing and urging action against false teaching and immoral living within the church. In the book of Revelation, in letters to the early churches of Pergamum and Thyatira, the Son of Man recognized that the faithful and the heretical coexisted, and while praising the faithful for their faithfulness he chastised the churches for tolerating false teachers (Rev 2).

The Anglican reformers wrestled with the same problem: They saw that all parts of God’s church “have erred” in all areas including “their living” and “matters of Faith” (Art. 19, BCP p.871). They also knew that the Bible calls Christians to unity: “one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4). And yet those bishops, after prayer, study, and debate, found it necessary to separate from the Roman Catholic Church of their day. As Bishop John Jewel put it soon after the English Reformation, “Of a truth, unity and concord doth best become religion: yet unity [is not] the sure and certain mark whereby to know the Church of God. For there was the greatest consent that might be amongst them that worshipped the golden calf.”

How does one know when unity has been broken? How does one determine how to respond to division within the church? The purpose of this booklet is to help you think through these questions and prayerfully seek answers in the current crisis. Several of the readings address these questions in some detail. Here, perhaps, we can at least say this: We need to determine the extent to which any doctrinal or ethical failure compromises or threatens our faithfulness to God or our witness to the world, as well as the likelihood that such failures and their results can be corrected.

Bishop Jewel, a former Catholic vicar, defended the English Reformation by admitting,

It is doubtless an odious matter for one to leave the fellowship…We have now done to depart from that Church, whose errors were proved and made manifest to the world, which Church also had already evidently departed from God’s word…We truly have renounced that Church, wherein we could neither have the Word of God sincerely taught, nor the sacraments rightly administered, nor the Name of God duly called upon.

Not only does recognizing a break in fellowship involve difficult decisions, but it also stirs up a host of emotions, not the least of which can be grief over broken relationships. There also may be fear: Will a change be for the better? The ancient kingdom of Israel, which separated from Judah with seemingly good cause, provides a cautionary tale.

Finally, we as individuals, congregations, and dioceses face the question of maintaining unity not only within TEC, but also within the worldwide Anglican Communion. One might say that TEC through its actions already has broken unity, so the real question is not whether, but how unity will break: Shall we let go of our unity with TEC for the sake of maintaining our unity with the Anglican Communion, or vice versa?

This crisis is different from every other crisis TEC has faced, whether the departure of evangelicals in the late 1800s or the departure of Anglo-Catholics in the 1970s. Many consider the issues to be more fundamental, and now the Anglican Communion is watching and acting. The 1998 Lambeth Conference of all Anglican bishops responded to the ordination of a practicing homosexual within TEC by “rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture” (resolution I.10). When TEC in 2003 consented to the election of a non-celibate homosexual priest as bishop, the leading Archbishops of the Communion (the “Primates”) warned TEC against “tear[ing] the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level” by consecrating him. TEC’s Presiding Bishop then presided over the consecration. The Archbishop of Canterbury responded by commissioning The Windsor Report, which has, with the Primates’ endorsement, become the benchmark for continued unity within the Communion. This report recognized that “the overwhelming response from other Christians both inside and outside the Anglican family has been to regard [TEC’s actions] as departures from genuine, apostolic Christian faith.” Many believe that TEC failed to respond adequately and chose to walk apart at its 2006 General Convention. Thus, many “Windsor bishops” within TEC have asked the Archbishop of Canterbury for alternative oversight in order to remain within the Communion.

The Anglican Communion is straining to uphold its understanding of Scripture and doctrine and to hold the Communion together in unity. If TEC has walked apart and the two visions of our church are irreconcilable—the questions that motivate us to set aside these 40 days of discernment—then, like Joshua several millennia ago, we must choose now whom we will serve.