September 21, 2005
ENS: Special Commission on Episcopal Church, Anglican
Communion to meet Presiding Bishop, House of Deputies
President appoint members
Source: Episcopal News Service
Tuesday, September 20, 2005 

Special Commission on Episcopal Church, Anglican
Communion to meet Presiding Bishop, House of Deputies
President appoint members

By Mary Frances Schjonberg 
ENS 092005-2 

[Episcopal News Service] The first meeting of the
Special Commission on the Episcopal Church and the
Anglican Communion will take place Monday, November 7,
at the Episcopal Church Center in New York.

The 14-member commission was appointed by Presiding
Bishop Frank T. Griswold and the Very Rev. George L.
W. Werner, president of the House of Deputies. They
charged the commission with preparing the way for
General Convention to receive and respond to the
Windsor Report, the February 2005 communiqué of the
primates from Dromantine, and the actions of the June
2005 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council.

The Windsor Report was released in October, 2004 by
the Lambeth Commission on Communion, established by
the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2003 in response to
reactions in the world-wide Anglican Communion to the
election and consecration in 2003 of V. Gene Robinson
as Bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson is an openly gay
man who lives in a committed relationship with his
long-term partner.

The report also addressed the decision of the Canadian
diocese of New Westminster to permit the blessing of
committed same-gender relationships.

The primates of the Anglican Communion issued a
communiqué at the end of their meeting in Dromantine
in Northern Ireland. The primates asked, among other
points, that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican
Church of Canada “respond through their relevant
constitutional bodies to the questions specifically
addressed to them in the Windsor Report as they
consider their place within the Anglican Communion.”

In June, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the
principal deliberative body of the Anglican Communion
and one of its four “instruments of unity,” agreed
with the primates’ request that ACC members from the
United States and Canada voluntarily withdraw from
active membership on the council for the time leading
up to the next Lambeth Conference in 2008. Those
members did withdraw and attended the June meeting as
observers. They and others made requested
presentations to the ACC about both church’s
experience with same-gender relationships.

Griswold and Werner asked the commission, on which
they both will serve as well, to consider those
reports and actions “as they pertain to the life of
the Episcopal Church and our relationship to the other
provinces of the Anglican Communion.”

“In doing so, the Special Commission will need to
consider how we within the Episcopal Church can be
faithful to God's mission in the world as we continue
to live with divergent points of view held by faithful
men and women,” the two wrote in a letter to the
members.

“We were seeking a group of people of diverse opinion
of the highest quality who can handle such complex
issues as these,” Werner told Episcopal News Service.
“I am deeply grateful to those who have accepted this
appointment.”

The Special Commission will prepare a report with
proposed resolutions, if any, for the Blue Book of the
75th General Convention next June. The Blue Book is
each convention’s official compilation of reports and
proposed legislation from the committees, commissions,
agencies, and boards of the General Convention.

The commission’s members are: Sarah Dylan Breuer of
Frederick, Maryland (Province III); the Rev. Dr. Ian
T. Douglas of Episcopal Divinity School (Province I);
the Rev. Mark Harris of Lewes, Delaware (Province
III); the Rev. Dr. Katherine Grieb of Virginia
Theological Seminary (Province III); the Rt. Rev.
Dorsey F. Henderson Jr., bishop of Upper South
Carolina (Province IV); the Rt. Rev. Katharine
Jefferts Schori, bishop of Nevada (Province VIII); the
Rt. Rev. Henry Louttit Jr., bishop of Georgia
(Province IV); the Rev. Charles E. Osberger of Wye
Mills, Maryland (Province III); the Rt. Rev. Mark S.
Sisk, bishop of New York (Province II); the Rev. Canon
Rosemari Sullivan of Virginia Theological Seminary
(Province III); Katherine Tyler Scott of Indianapolis,
Indiana (Province V); the Rev. Francis H. Wade of
Washington, D.C. (Province III); Christopher Wells of
South Bend, Indiana (Province V); and the Rev. Sandra
A. Wilson of South Orange, New Jersey (Province II).

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national
correspondent for the Episcopal News Service. 

Posted by editor at September 21, 2005 09:33 AM