Letters from Bishop Shannon Johnston and the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Virginia concerning their votes on Canon Mary Glasspool as bishop

We received two statements this afternoon, one from Bishop Shannon Johnston and the other from the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Virginia, concerning the election of Mary Douglas Glasspool as suffragan bishop of Los Angeles. Some of you have asked what these statements mean. Here is my best attempt:

The Rev. Canon Glasspool, who serves as the canon to the ordinary on the Diocese of Maryland, was elected suffragan (assisting) bishop by a convention of the Diocese of Los Angeles last Fall, which would make her the second openly partnered gay bishop in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion.

To be consecrated, anyone who is elected a bishop by a diocese must undergo a confirmation process involving the entire Episcopal Church. To be confirmed requires receiving consents from a majority of the elected Standing Committees representing each of our 110 dioceses, and a majority of the bishops. Canon Glasspool has, in fact, received the required number of consents to be confirmed, and she will be consecrated a bishop at a ceremony in Los Angeles in May.

The statements coming today from Virginia were to tell us how our representatives voted; both Bishop Johnston and our Standing Committee voted to withhold consent (i.e., voted no). Bishop Johnston, by the way, mentioned in his letter that he voted after Canon Glasspool had already received enough consents to be confirmed.

I believe you should let these letters from our leaders speak for themselves, and the letters are posted below. It is unusual, by the way, for bishops and standing committees to explain their votes, so this is also a mark of the sensitivity of this matter. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

April 9, 2010
Dear Diocesan Family,

The Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool, a priest of the Diocese of Maryland and a partnered gay woman, was elected to serve as a bishop suffragan in the Diocese of Los Angeles in December 2009. The consent process, a 120-day period, requires the receipt of consents from majorities of the Standing Committees throughout the Episcopal Church and from the Church's bishops with jurisdiction. On March 17, just before the opening of the House of Bishops meeting at Camp Allen, Texas, the presiding bishop's office announced that Canon Glasspool had received the number of consents required to proceed with her ordination and consecration as a bishop.

Along with several other bishops, I had been delaying my vote until the House of Bishops meeting so that we might confer with one another as to the implications of this episcopal election. As consent is a responsibility upon all diocesan bishops, I then sent in my ballot even though the process had already been decided. Understandably, the diocesan offices have received numerous inquiries as to how I voted. I write this to announce my decision for this particular process and to say something about what this means (and doesn't mean) for my leadership in the Diocese of Virginia.

Bishop-elect Glasspool's election has been both a source of celebration and of alarm for many in our diocese, just as in the Episcopal Church and our wider Anglican Communion. In my judgment, both "sides" make compelling arguments and have quite legitimate concerns. Personally, I am more torn by this decision than by any other decision I've yet faced, whether as priest or bishop. After deep prayer and thought, I voted to decline consent to the ordination of Bishop-elect Glasspool. This is not to reflect on Bishop-elect Glasspool herself (who, by all accounts, is indeed highly qualified and well suited for the ministry of bishop) but rather is about the circumstances of this case.

My decision was based on the unique context of this particular election. Under other circumstances, I would have voted differently. Frankly, I look forward to the time when I can. As it is, however, several points swayed my decision; taken together they presented what was to me an overwhelming weight.

First, as I have stated before, I believe that it is theologically inconsistent to ordain a partnered gay person as a bishop without provision for the Church's recognition and blessing of that partnership. (We would not do this with heterosexuals.) As things stand now, the cart is before the horse. To me, the controversy about partnered gay bishops would be moot if we dealt successfully with the blessings of monogamous gay relationships. I will continue to work for that result: first things first.

Second, immediately following last summer's General Convention, both the presiding bishop and the president of the House of Deputies wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury (in letters made available to the Convention) stating that the Convention's actions did not overturn, and should not be interpreted as overturning the moratorium on the consecration of partnered gay and lesbian bishops. That moratorium had been in place since 2006. With statements from both presiding officers of Convention affirming that it remained, for the present, the policy of this Church, it seemed to me that a denial of consent to this election was necessary.

Third, the 2006 General Convention committed the Episcopal Church to participation in the work developing an Anglican Covenant for consideration by the Communion. My understanding is that we pledged to cooperate in those deliberations until the Covenant was either adopted for this Church or not. We gave our word, and I believe that we should live up to that word. To proceed with such a controversial move at the very time that the Covenant is under consideration is, I believe, contrary to the good faith necessary in our commitment to that work and ensuing discernment.

As I made clear when I was elected bishop for the Diocese of Virginia, I am committed to the Anglican Communion. The Communion is not some patched together entity; still less is it something merely abstract. Communion across international bounds and embracing the globe is nothing less than a gift of grace. This is why it must be held dear. I do not know just where this controversy will lead us, but as your bishop I will work to support and strengthen the unique witness that is the worldwide Anglican fellowship of faith.

At the same time, as I have stated clearly in a variety of settings, I am no less committed to the full inclusion of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in all areas of ministry in the Church's life. I understand that my vote to deny consent in this case could be interpreted as backing away from that commitment. Even so, I can only declare again my deep conviction that full inclusion is also a sign of grace-and we should be reaching to embrace it.

From this, it follows that I am both "pro-Communion" and "pro-inclusion." I reject completely any notion that these positions are mutually exclusive. I remain hopeful, even confident, that there is a way to be faithful to this "both/and" witness. Our history teaches us that we Anglicans-when we are at our best-have been able to hold perceived opposites in a creative and liberating tension that has room for everyone and gives birth to new answers. This is the time to reclaim our best yet again.

Faithfully,

The Rt. Rev. Shannon S. Johnston
Bishop

Statement of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Virginia

The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Virginia has declined to consent to the election of the Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool as bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles because, in the view of a majority of the Committee, her election is inconsistent with the moratorium agreed to by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. That majority believes that, at this time, failure by individual dioceses to respect the Church's agreement to the moratorium would be detrimental to the good order of our Church and bring into question its reliability as an institution. The committee found no other reason to withhold its consent to the election of Canon Glasspool.

Episcopacy asserted: Part I

Our Episcopal and Anglican world is regularly rocked by the doings of bishops, and in recent years, how they become bishops. This is perhaps not surprising, given our name is “episcopal,” the Greek word for bishops, and our church structure is (theoretically) hierarchal with bishops at the top.

The selection of American Episcopal bishops is recently in the international news with the election of The Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool of Maryland (photo below) as an assisting, or “suffragan,” bishop in Los Angeles. Canon Glasspool, if confirmed, will be the second openly gay bishop living in a partnered relationship; her election has roiled the waters of the already fractured Anglican Communion.

You may recall that in 2003, the Episcopal Church elected and confirmed Gene Robinson, an openly gay partnered man, as bishop of New Hampshire, and we are still living in the aftermath of that election.

You might also ask why have bishops at all if this is so much trouble. Or perhaps you are a faithful practitioner of another church, or another faith tradition, that is not so encumbered by bishops, and you might find the rest of this posting less than relevant to your life. Fair enough.

Whether to have bishops at all was a hot topic in the Reformation, and a number of Protestant churches have gotten along perfectly well, thank you, without bishops. Also fair enough.

But we in the Episcopal Church have bishops, and like it as not, we are joined at the hip with the other bishops of the Anglican Communion, that odd creaky federation of churches that is an outgrowth (or backwash) of the British Empire. We in America were the first to break with the Brits, and our Episcopal Church was the first to find its own path, and our path not surprisingly has always had a major independent streak from that of England.

What I’d like to do today is look a bit at the topic of bishops and make a few observations that I hope might clarify some of the issues before us. I have no huge solutions to offer, but perhaps some smaller ideas that I hope will add to the dialogue. This is not a posting about gay inclusion issues, so please hold your fire on that for another day. Today, let's talk about bishops.

In my estimation, there are two countervailing forces at work that make this debate over bishops seem intractable. The first is a difference among Anglican provinces in how bishops are selected. The second is a conflict in how the various Anglican churches view the authority of bishops. The two are interrelated, but let's pull them apart for the sake of argument.
Today I will look at the election of bishops, and another time, at their authority.

The American Church began electing bishops in local church conventions soon after independence was won from Britain. The first American so elected, Samuel Seabury (picture at right), sailed to Britain in 1784 seeking ordination from the English bishops. The Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow bishops refused to “lay hands” upon him, so Seabury went to Scotland where a group of “non-juring” bishops ordained him.

The Scottish “non-juring” bishops were dissenters from the English bishops on the matter of choosing monarchs. Their political arguments are not so important to us now, but they highlight that the American Episcopal Church got off to a rocky start with the English bishops, and since then Americans have never really consulted the Archbishop of Canterbury on who should be a bishop in America. The snub from England was patched over in the decades that followed but never really forgotten.

It needs to be underlined that our election of bishops by a church convention is a novel, thoroughly modern idea, and it is a practice not widely shared in the rest of the world. In one sense, we are not very Anglican at all because we have long practiced a form of democracy in the election of bishops.

To understand how different we really are, I’ve gone back into the depths of Anglicanism by reading Jeremy Taylor’s essay, Episcopacy asserted, written in 1642, his first major work. At the time it was published in Oxford, Taylor (1613-1667) was a rising star in the Church of England (years later he would be made a bishop) and he was considered the most eloquent "divine" of his generation; at the time, Taylor and the Church of England were battling the Presbyterians over whether there should be bishops at all.

Taylor (picture at right) painstakingly traced the history of bishops from the early letters of the New Testament forward through the early church and into his own time. His conclusion was that Christ commanded that there be bishops, and that the earliest apostles would “fix” a bishop in place whenever they established a new church.

How a man became a bishop (they were all men, after all) was not by an election of a local church, but by the other bishops or apostles. “But here lies the issue and strain of the question,” Taylor wrote.

And so it is the “strain of the question” for us. Centuries ago, the English church began selecting bishops with the approval of monarchs and their ministers, and sometimes with their active promotion.

Thomas Cranmer was the pick of Henry VIII as Archbishop of Canterbury. As the British parliamentary system grew, bishops took seats in the House of Lords. Church and state grew intertwined in the persons of bishops.

In the modern Church of England, the Prime Minister, in the name of the Queen, approves the bishops. The selection process is done largely in secret, and is a mystery to all but the insiders. That church and state in Britain are a muddled mess is a major understatement. Indeed, most Americans would be highly offended if the Congress and President picked our bishops, but that is precisely how bishops are chosen in Britain.

Meanwhile, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has repeatedly suggested that the American Episcopal Church should consult more widely with the Anglican Communion in the making of bishops. He holds that our “catholicity” requires us to consider how our bishops are connected one to the other across national lines. He is perhaps correct. But his assertion invites scrutiny of how he was selected as a bishop and how other Anglican bishops are selected in other provinces.

The question for Williams should be this: Should the rest of the Anglican Communion, including the American Episcopal Church, be consulted on the appointment of the next Archbishop of Canterbury? After all, we define Anglicanism, in part, as recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury. We have a stake in who holds that office.

And that should raise a very uncomfortable question for the Church of England and all of the Anglican Communion: Should the Anglican Communion continue to be entwined the British government? The Anglican Covenant, promoted by Williams, should address this issue as well.

This is no small question, and I would submit the issue is a major reason why our churches seem to be talking past each other. The bishops in the rest of the Anglican Communion, including in Britain, have consistently brushed off our arguments that our way of church governance is crucial to our understanding of our identity.

Meanwhile, we have perhaps underestimated (and taken this value for granted) that our church is not an arm of the U.S. government. In fact, much of the world assumes correctly that their governments and religions are enmeshed, and not just in the Christian world (though it should be noted that the Vatican would never put up with the Italian government thinking it could pick bishops). The separation of church and state is still largely an American value, not well understood or appreciated in other countries, and much misunderstood in our own.

This is an old issue. Taylor himself touched on it in another book, A Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying, published in 1646. The book itself has a curious history. Taylor, once he became a bishop, tried to disown it and asked his publisher to gather up any copies that could be found and burn them. He did not succeed; I have a first edition copy in my personal library, and Liberty can be found in the compendiums of Taylor’s work. And thank goodness, for it is a little known masterpiece of the English Reformation.

In the book, Taylor argued that governments are ill equipped to enforce matters of faith. He rested his argument on the fact that there are honest differences by faithful people in interpreting Scripture. In Taylor’s view, to allow a government to be, in effect, the final authority on scriptural interpretation was irreconcilable with the freedom of conscience of individuals. “For it is best every man should be left in that liberty from which no man can justly take from him.”

The larger Reformation issue he addressed was that the Roman Catholic Church asserted that it was the sole interpreter of the Bible; reformers like Martin Luther disagreed, but some Protestant reformers sought to replace the Vatican with themselves as the sole authority on Scripture. Taylor thought it just as wrong to insert the state in place of the Vatican.

But Taylor also hedged here. He wrote that God spoke through the conscience of human beings (Ductor Dubitantium, 1660), but he also believed that bishops should rule the church. Taylor did not resolve the inherit tension in his stance, and it may be that in his English muddle much of the current Anglican tensions lay.

The notion that bishops are all-powerful is certainly a legacy of the early church and was inherited by the English Church. The issue Taylor confronted was a Puritan government trying to control the church and the bishops. Taylor took it for granted that bishops should govern the church alone with no interference from the people in the pews. “I say they [bishops] had power alone to govern alone, for they had the government of the church alone before they ordained the first presbyters.”

The American Episcopal church, though, took a much different course, shaped by the events of and between the War of Independence in 1776 and the Constitutional Convention of 1789. The Episcopal Church inherited a system of federal checks-and-balances from the founders of the United States; the Episcopal Church saw the authority of bishops differently than their English counterparts. Authority was spread among the people and clergy, and limits were put on the power of bishops. That, too, is underappreciated and misunderstood in the rest of the Anglican world.

Next time I will look at episcopal hierarchy and suggest a different way of viewing the authority of bishops.

New bishops for the Episcopal Church, new controversy (and onward we go!)

The news in our corner of Christendom the last few days comes from my old haunts of Los Angeles. The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, meeting in convention this past weekend in Riverside, elected two new suffragan, or assisting, bishops, and both are women: the Rev. Canons Diane Jarden Bruce and Mary Douglas Glasspool.

Canon Bruce (right) is from the diocese of Los Angeles, serving as the rector of the parish in San Clemente, and Canon Glasspool (left) is from Maryland, serving as the canon to the ordinary in that diocese. You can read the Episcopal News Service coverage of the election by clicking HERE.

The most noteworthy development is that Canon Glasspool is a lesbian in an open partnered relationship, making her our second bishop to live openly as a gay person (and we have other bishops who are gay but remain in the closet).

Predictably the reaction came swift and sharp, and sadly lost are the qualifications of these two women who are serving Christ's Church. Both have subjected themselves to a worldwide public spotlight that can only be excruciating at the moment. Please keep them both in your prayers.

The process of becoming bishop is not over for either of the suffragan-elects. To be confirmed, each must gain the endorsement of a majority of the Episcopal bishops and a majority of the elected Standing Committees in each of our 110 dioceses. Such confirmations are not foregone conclusions; the election of a bishop in Northern Michigan was recently rejected. You can expect that both Cns. Glasspool and Bruce will receive intense scrutiny by the bishops and standing committees, and intense media coverage throughout.

It should be noted that other elections have taken place in recent weeks in Oregon and Louisiana, and those elections (of men) have been treated as local events with nary a word in the national or international media.

Suffragan bishops assist the diocesan bishops in their sacramental ministry; they do not have the full authority of the diocesan bishop, who in Los Angeles is The Rt. Rev. Jon Bruno (center in photo above).

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams reacted swiftly. His statement, in full, is below:

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.

Meanwhile, a number of commentators have pointed out that Williams has remained silent for two months on a proposed anti-gay law in Uganda, though he was able to quickly rebuke the Episcopal Church for the election in Los Angeles. I think that criticism fair, if only because it symbolizes that the archbishop is more concerned with church politics than the politics of the larger world. It ought to be the other way around. But it also shows that he is hemmed in by his own delicate diplomacy with the African Anglican bishops.

To be fair, commentators in the U.K. have noted that if Williams speaks out against the proposed anti-gay law he may only ensure its passage; the Anglican bishops in Uganda have likened homosexuality to Satan, and are only looking for further proof that homosexuality is a colonial import (and that makes me wonder why we want to be in this Anglican club at all, but that is a matter for another day). You can read a commentary about Williams' predicament in the U.K. Guardian by clicking HERE.

My own reaction? Of course I welcome these two bishop-elects. I believe they bring great gifts to our church beyond the diocese which elected them. I believe it was inevitable that we have another gay bishop, and there will be more to come. I believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to lead the way on this, and leading will be painful and progress will come incrementally. I hope the archbishop and the rest of the Anglican Communion will come along, as I think they will sooner or later.

But it is a mixed blessing. Canon Glasspool will now get the death threats Gene Robinson has endured. More angst and anger will overheat our church conventions with little result. I am sad that this is so polarized.

My reaction is also tempered by the fact that, unfortunately, only two suffragans were elected in Los Angeles, and not three. It took seven ballots to elect Canon Glasspool in what was described by participants as a very tense election; edged out was The Rev. I. Martir Vazquez, who was certainly qualified to be bishop. The Diocese of Los Angeles, almost as big in numbers as Virginia and ten times more diverse, has 30 of its 149 parishes that worship entirely in Spanish. Los Angeles very much needs a Latino Episcopal bishop.

It leads me to wonder if Bishop Bruno and his diocese can find a way to have one more assisting bishop, and bring in Fr. Vazquez as a bishop. That would make what ought to be a great celebration even greater.