From the House of Bishops September 26 , 2007
To the People of The Diocese of Virginia Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: This letter comes to you from your college of bishops in The Diocese of Virginia and is written at the conclusion of the meeting of the House of Bishops in New Orleans, Louisiana. This has been a full week. After two days of private meetings with the Archbishop of Canterbury and representatives of the Anglican Consultative Council, we spent Saturday working in places where many of you have worked-the flood ravaged zones of Louisiana and Mississippi. We and our spouses mucked homes, painted and hung sheetrock as part of our material witness to the Gospel in this place. It is one thing to hear reports of ongoing rebuilding; it is quite another to experience it, be a part of it and also be a witness to how much has yet to be done. So much of what is happening here in the rebuilding effort is led by the faith community, particularly Christian groups. It was an honor to have done even this small amount of work and to add to what many of you have been doing for the past two years. The Diocese of Virginia gave in excess of $40,000 to be divided between the dioceses of Louisiana and Mississippi. That is more than four times the amount asked of each Diocese by the Presiding Bishop and half of it came directly from diocesan clergy in their response to our appeal. We saw additional evidence of the compassion of this Diocese toward the people of the Gulf Region in the signs on pickup trucks and on other materials that have been donated or otherwise made possible through the generosity of Episcopal churches and Episcopalians in The Diocese of Virginia. There have been many reports coming out of the House of Bishops. Much of what has been reported until now focused on the preliminary work in our effort to respond to concerns expressed by the Primates of the Anglican Communion in their most recent document, the Communiqué from Dar Es Salaam. You can read the complete text of the House of Bishops' statement here. The formal response to the Primates' Communiqué was adopted late Tuesday by the House of Bishops by a virtually unanimous vote. It reflected our very deep appreciation of the Anglican Communion and our strong desire to maintain and nurture our role within it, while asserting our determined commitment to include gay and lesbian persons in our common life. In our statement, the bishops reconfirmed our vote at the 2006 General Convention to "exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion." This reconfirmation constitutes our continuing agreement with that resolution and acknowledges that such language pertains specifically to non-celibate gay and lesbian persons. We also repeated our pledge not to authorize public rites for the blessing of same sex unions until a broader consensus emerges in the Communion, or until General Convention takes further action. We noted that we hope to draw upon the benefits of the Communion-wide process of listening to the experiences of gay and lesbian persons. We commended our Presiding Bishop for her plans to provide episcopal visitors for dioceses at irreconcilable odds with her own ministry as Primate and we support her commitment to consult with the wider communion in pastoral matters, seeking creative solutions that are in accord with the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church. We supported the Archbishop of Canterbury in his desire to include the bishop of New Hampshire at next year's Lambeth Conference. We called for commitment to the civil rights, safety and dignity of gay and lesbian persons. We deplored the incursion of uninvited bishops into our dioceses. We leave the House of Bishops grateful for the opportunity to be engaged in conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury and our other Anglican visitors. We will return to The Diocese of Virginia energetically hopeful about the future of The Episcopal Church and the wider Communion. Faithfully, The Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, Bishop |