executive council prepares for communiqué response

From ENS. Read the whole thing.

[Episcopal News Service] The Executive Council, the Episcopal Church's governing body between General Conventions, began its four-day meeting June 11 in New Jersey learning that a draft of a response to the Anglican Communion Primates' latest communiqué was ready for their consideration.

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After the Executive Council made TEC a founding member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (formerly the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights) expressly in violation of General Convention's centrist stance on abortion, I'm not sure I trust them to do anything worthwhile in responding to the Primates. Don't look for a ground-shaking change of direction here.

The Executive Council meeting, at the Sheraton hotel in Parsippany, New Jersey, began with three hours of committee meetings on the morning of June 11 and another two hours in the late afternoon with the plenary session in between. Council had dinner with representatives of the host Diocese of Newark.

When the Windsor bishops held meetings in Texas, I read all kinds of snide comments from Anglican leftists about how the location of the meeting pretty much told them what would be said. I don't hear much of the same about this meeting in Newark.

During her remarks to the plenary session, Jefferts Schori told Council that recently she has been contemplating how language can be used to allow for "true conversation" -- what she called "non-violent language" -- or how "violent language" is used instead for "leaping to judgment."
The church, Jefferts Schori said, must consider how it interacts with the world. "How do we keep the space open so that we can truly learn from each other?" she asked.

If she spent as much time contemplating, oh, I don't know, the book of Romans or something, maybe we'd get somewhere useful. Surely the proclamation of boundaries inherent in having a sovereign God who makes demands on our behavior constitutes some manner of 'violent speech', impinging upon our freedoms to do whatever-the-heck we please. PB Schori will doubtless discourage any talk of 'commandments' or 'moral imperatives', since these are so obviously so violent as to be un-Christian. But I'm glad she's spending time thinking about how to "keep the space open." Apparently that's becoming a bigger and bigger problem for liberal parishes and dioceses. Since PB Schori is so worried about climate change, maybe we can work out an arrangement to share our churches with, say, GreenPeace. I bet the Executive Council could arrange that . . . on a weekend . . . when no one's looking.