Wednesday, July 05, 2006

canon john heidt: the meaning of alternative primatial oversight

Both aspects of this Broken Communion are embodied in our new Presiding Bishop-elect. By her actions as Bishop of Nevada, in her statements during General Convention, and in her first sermon after her election, she has made it pointedly clear that she intends to pursue an agenda that patently ignores the authority of Scripture, is contrary to its plain teaching regarding overt homosexual relationships, and affronts the church’s Trinitarian doctrine and biblical witness by turning Our Lord into “Mother Jesus.”

As a bishop whose Orders several of us in the Episcopal Church and throughout the world cannot accept, she breaks the unity of the world-wide episcopate which she is supposed to represent and destroys that interchangeability of ministers essential for the sacramental unity of any particular community of Christians. In spite of her election as Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, she cannot be chief pastor to those who believe she is neither obedient to scripture nor an apostolic bishop. For them some sort of alternative arrangement is now necessary.

Read the whole thing here.

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