BOB ABERNETHY, host: The Vatican announced plans to make it easier for disaffected Anglicans to convert to Catholicism. Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, said new structures will be created to accommodate growing numbers of Anglicans who want to leave the worldwide Anglican Communion because of disputes over homosexuality and female clergy. Under the new plan, those Anglicans can become Catholics while still maintaining some of their distinctive beliefs and practices, including the tradition of married priests. Our managing editor, Kim Lawton, is here, and so, from Denver, is John Allen, longtime Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. Welcome to you both. John, what’s the Vatican up to here? Is it fishing for converts?

JOHN L. ALLEN, JR (National Catholic Reporter): Well, officially, Bob, the answer to that question is no. I mean, some Anglicans may see it that way, but the Vatican’s position is we didn’t go looking for these folks. They came to us. That is, there is a small but significant number of more traditionalist Anglicans who very publicly have asked to be received into the Catholic Church, and the Vatican’s line is that even though we didn’t solicit them, when people knock on our door we have a responsibility to open it up.

Cardinal William Levada

ABERNETHY: And Kim, what do you hear—reaction from the Anglicans?

KIM LAWTON: Well, officially, the spiritual head of the 77-million-member Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has been, you know, somewhat positive about this. He says he does not see it as an act of aggression from the Catholic Church, but certainly his church body has been under enormous pressure from a lot of fronts, and this one more front, one more sort of exit possibility for many Anglicans who are unhappy with what’s been going on in their church.

ABERNETHY: What do you both think, John first, what do you think about the numbers that will be involved here? Will it be a lot of people that are switching, or just a few?

ALLEN: Well, the signals from the Catholic side, at least, is that expectations are this is going to be a fairly small number of folks. When Cardinal Levada was asked this question at a Vatican briefing earlier in the week, he said that there were 20 or 30 Anglican bishops in various parts of the world who had put out feelers, but of course putting out feelers is different than signing on the bottom line. And at the grassroots the expectation is that at least in the early stages you’re talking about fairly small pockets of people who will be coming over.

LAWTON: And especially, well, here in the United States, the people that are unhappy with the Episcopal Church, which is the US branch of the Anglican Communion—they come from two different wings of the church. One certainly are those who are more Catholic in their traditions and their style of worship, but there are also evangelicals, who are conservative theologically but not so comfortable with the idea of Rome and the pope, and those two groups here in the US have come together. They’ve formed their own structure, the Anglican Church of North America, and they’re really focusing on building that. So I think a lot of the traditionalist Anglicans here in the US may not immediately head to the Catholic Church.

ABERNETHY: But is there a possibility that out of this, Kim, will come a more conservative Catholic Church and a more liberal Anglican Communion?

LAWTON: Well, of course, if a lot of conservatives leave the Anglican Communion it will become more liberal overall, but another scenario is that it puts more pressure on the worldwide Anglican Communion to itself become more conservative so it doesn’t lose more members.

ABERNETHY: John, what about the effect on the Catholic Church of having more Anglicans in it, and especially with regard to married priests? I mean, is it a step, inevitably, toward a change in that position? If you let in a lot of married Anglicans, don’t you then have to change your position about existing Catholic priests?

ALLEN: Well, that’s certainly an argument some people are going to make. I mean, what we know for right now is the Vatican has clearly said that current Anglican ministers who become Catholics and become ordained as Catholic priests, if they’re currently married can remain married. The Vatican has also clearly ruled out married bishops. But what the policy is going to be going forward we don’t know. I mean, we should say that while the Vatican has made this announcement, they haven’t yet given us the legal document that provides all the fine points, and this is certainly one of those fine points people will have their eyeballs on. What Vatican officials are saying on background is that, whatever happens, they want to make sure that this doesn’t become a loophole that in the short term erodes the broader discipline of priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church.

ABERNETHY: And, John and Kim, very quickly, Kim first, what do you see as any larger effects, very quickly?

LAWTON: Well, certainly Christianity is realigning in many ways around the world, and you’re finding people grouping together in new and different ways than they had in the past.

ABERNETHY: John, what do you see?

ALLEN: Well, I think in many ways ideology has replaced theology as the thing that drives Christian behavior at the grassroots. I mean, in the old days it was debates over things like the authority of the pope versus the Bible. These days it tends to be where do you stand on the culture wars, and that in many ways is what’s in play here.

LAWTON: Although a lot of the traditionalists would say those are theological issues, too.

ABERNETHY: Yeah. Kim Lawton, John Allen—many thanks.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: When the sun comes up in Second Life, which it does every four hours, you are immediately overwhelmed by the vast, brightly colored mish-mash of stores, houses, and malls stretching across multiple continents—all of it, including the mountains and forests, designed and built from scratch by the tens of thousands of people who regularly visit here.

Move your mouse and you tour the Taj Mahal. A few clicks and you are launched on a NASA rocket into low orbit. Click again and you can join a service in an Anglican cathedral. This live, online world called Second Life was launched in 2003 by the San Francisco company Linden Lab and its founder Phillip Rosedale, who says he had no idea what would happen.

PHILIP ROSEDALE (Chairman of the Board, Linden Lab): Well, I always figured in the beginning that if Second Life looked like anything we were able to predict that we would have failed, that if it was predictable we weren’t doing the right stuff.

SEVERSON: Second Life is definitely not predictable. Turn a corner and you might run into a furry animal that talks. It isn’t just the buildings that are designed by residents. They also design themselves, creating virtual bodies called avatars either sculpted in their own likeness or, more often, someone they would like to be. And then they chat with other avatars, even becoming close friends. For some, the virtual world is a way to escape. Others say it enriches their real-world lives.

(to Michael Adcock): You still seem to get this social value out of it.

MICHAEL ADCOCK (Freelance Designer): Yeah, I do.

SEVERSON: Michael Adcock has been into Second Life for about three years. He says, for him, hiding his real identity behind an avatar which, in his case, looks like a warrior painted in silver, has helped him learn more about himself.

MICHAEL ADCOCK: I’ve found that I’ve been able to be a lot more up-front and blunt in what is on my mind right away. That happens to say quite a bit about myself, and I choose to look at that as a learning experience.

SEVERSON: Most people in Second Life don’t use real names. The woman you see here might actually be a man, or vice versa.

This avatar actually is a man. He’s Tom Boellstorff, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine and editor-in-chief of the American Anthropologist.  He has written extensively on the culture of virtual worlds.

PROFESSOR TOM BOELLSTORFF (University of California, Irvine): For some people, the escape factor is one of the best things about a virtual world like Second Life. You can try having a totally different life, and there’s people who get married inside of Second Life to someone that they don’t even know who that person is in the physical world, even if it’s really a man or a woman in the physical world. They have a house and even virtual kids and a job, and they have a whole life inside of Second Life.

SEVERSON: It costs nothing to get into Second Life, but if you choose to be part of it, to build a home, for instance, then you will have to spend real money. It’s like visiting a foreign land. You convert dollars into Second Life currency called Linden dollars.

Professor Tom Boellstorff

PROFESSOR BOELLSTORFF: So here is what my house looks like. This is land that I own. I spent—this cost about $50 US to buy this land and about $15 a month to keep, to be able to continue to own it. That’s how the company makes their money.

SEVERSON: You constructed a cathedral like this once?

MICHAEL ADCOCK: Yeah, I did.

SEVERSON: How long did it take you?

MICHAEL ADCOCK: Eighteen months.

SEVERSON: Eighteen months of your life.

MICHAEL ADCOCK: Yeah, off and on, you know.

SEVERSON: Where is it?

MICHAEL ADCOCK: It’s deleted now.

SEVERSON: Wait a minute. Eighteen months, and it’s deleted?

MICHAEL ADCOCK: I couldn’t afford to maintain the simulation, to keep it running, yeah.

SEVERSON: It would have cost him $350 a month to keep it. But there are other cathedrals he can visit which took other residents months or even years to build.

MICHAEL ADCOCK: There is a cathedral right here.

SEVERSON: You don’t look like a typical Sunday churchgoer.

MICHAEL ADCOCK: That’s true, I don’t. But they’re nice, and they welcomed me and asked me how I’m doing.

SEVERSON: It took a decade for churches to have a strong presence on the Internet, but Professor Boellstorff says it is beginning to attract followers in Second Life.

PROFESSOR BOELLSTORFF: There are already people I know who say that they go to, you know, every Sunday they don’t go to church any more in the physical world. They go every Sunday to church in Second Life, and that is their faith community that they are interacting with.

SEVERSON: We spoke with the leadership team of the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life. Mark Brown is the priest-in-charge. In real life he runs a Bible society in Wellington, New Zealand. Cady Enoch chairs the committee. She’s in Columbus, Ohio, and Helene Milena is the worship service leader. She’s in West Yorkshire, England.

HELENE MILENA (Teacher and Counselor): I think there is an intimacy here, in any online set-up, actually, but at the same time there is an anonymity, and the two mean that people can be very, very open. It would be very unusual in real life to meet someone and ten minutes later be knowing about their difficulties with their marriage, or something of that nature.

SEVERSON: In order to accommodate attendees from around the world, the virtual church is now offering 7 services a week.

MARK BROWN (CEO, New Zealand Bible Society): Straightaway it is the opportunity to mingle with people around the world. We have about 20 nations represented in our community. I absolutely love that. I love the richness of that, that regardless of where we are in the world, we can come together and worship.

SEVERSON: Second Lifers tend to become hooked on the experience. Michael Adcock says he was spending 12 or more hours a day for awhile. This can have negative consequences on real-world relationships. There have been at least two highly publicized divorces resulting from what were supposedly virtual affairs in Second Life. Questions are often raised about ethical behavior by people who can hide behind anonymous identities on the Internet.

SIBLEY VERBECK (Founder and CEO, The Electric Sheep Company): If you look out on the Web, as long as there’s been forums where people post comments or chat rooms, people are often quite rude to each other, and a lot of that is that degree of anonymity that’s there.

SEVERSON: Sibley Verbeck founded the Electric Sheep Company, which has created its own virtual worlds. He thinks people tend to be more civil in Second Life

SIBLEY VERBECK: But it is more human, because you see this human figure, and you’re interacting with them in real time.

MICHAEL ADCOCK: I don’t see much of a difference between what I’m doing here, or what I’m thinking, or what I’m doing in my real life. It’s all the same thing.

SEVERSON: There’s not much you can’t find or do in Second Life. There are virtual shops that sell everything from virtual artwork to virtual waterfalls. Second Life is a community of creators, and it’s economy is based to a large extent on marketing art and architecture.

PHILIP ROSEDALE: So far as we can tell, there’s like 60,000 people that are cash-flow positive from their operations, but there’s thousands of people that would call this employment of some kind.

SEVERSON: Elisha Allen is director of new media and extended learning at the University of New Mexico. Like many learning institutions, the university is experimenting with Second Life as way to reach students who can’t make it to the campus.

ELISHA ALLEN (Associate Director, New Media and Extended Learning, University of New Mexico): I’ve been to a number of conferences in Second Life where I had the opportunity to meet peers at other universities without actually having to fly there, and it’s interesting because the memories of those conferences are very real, and it did feel like I was there, wherever “there” was.

SEVERSON: But Elisha agrees with those who say that navigating around Second Life can be daunting.

ELISHA ALLEN: Second Life, while it’s maybe the state-of-the-art for virtual worlds right now, I think has a long way to go before it’s something that I would consider to be really, fully immersive.

SEVERSON: For others, like Reverend Mark, it’s a godsend.

MARK BROWN: There’s no artificiality of me, here I am sitting in my study in New Zealand looking at a monitor. I am real flesh-and-blood. The way I am communicating and relating, of course, is different, but the same experience is welling up, and that is really how this is able to be intense and intimate and actually quite a real experience.

SEVERSON: About a million-and-a-half people have visited Second Life in the last couple of months. They are typically in their mid-thirties. But there are millions of kids under 12 who are growing up with virtual reality games and programs designed especially for them. Verbeck and others predict that a decade from now, when these kids are in their 20s, places like Second Life are going to grow dramatically in popularity.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in San Francisco.

BOB ABERNETHY, Anchor: After decades of debate and division, the US Episcopal Church this week said overwhelmingly that gays and lesbians are eligible to become bishops or serve in any other ordained ministry of the church. At their General Convention, Episcopal leaders also moved toward developing an official rite for blessing same-sex unions. These decisions are likely to widen the divide between Episcopalians and the worldwide 77-million-member Anglican Communion of which they are a part. Kim Lawton has our special report from Anaheim, California.

KIM LAWTON: At their meeting in Anaheim this week, Episcopal bishops, clergy, and lay representatives tackled a host of social issues, from global poverty to justice for Disneyland hotel workers. But the most divisive topic, once again, was homosexuality.

REV. IAN DOUGLAS (Episcopal Divinity School): It wouldn’t be a meeting of the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion if we didn’t somehow engage matters of human sexuality.

LAWTON: Despite concerns from many global Anglican partners, convention delegates overwhelmingly voted to move ahead on two of the most contentious questions: whether to ordain gay bishops and whether to bless same-sex unions. On the issue of gay bishops, the delegates asserted that “God has called and may call gays and lesbians to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.” The vote effectively ends a de facto moratorium that was approved three years ago, although it does not guarantee that more gay bishops will be consecrated.

Separately, the delegates also voted to move forward in developing liturgies for blessing same-sex relationships. The issue will be taken up again at the next General Convention in 2012. In the meantime, the measure allows local clergy leeway in blessing same-gender relationships, especially in states where gay marriage is legal.

Reverend Susan Russell is the outgoing president of Integrity, a group that works for the full inclusion of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people in the Episcopal Church.

REV. SUSAN RUSSELL (Integrity): I think the overwhelming message coming out of this convention, not only for LGBT people but for all who are looking for a community that that embraces peace, justice, tolerance, compassion, and the good news of God in Christ Jesus, is that the Episcopal Church welcomes you.

LAWTON: The measures passed in part because many conservative Episcopalians have left the denomination. Those remaining feel increasingly isolated.

BISHOP WILLIAM LOVE (Diocese of Albany, at press conference): It is very sad for me because I am a lifelong Episcopalian, I’m a lifelong Anglican, but first and foremost I am a lifelong Christian, and it is breaking my heart to see the church destroying itself in the manner in which we seem to be doing.

LAWTON: Many delegates here said they voted for the direction they believe God is calling their church to go in. But those votes pose new challenges for a global Communion that has already been strained close to a breaking point. There’s a lot riding on how what happened here gets interpreted around the world.

Many Anglicans, especially in Africa, Asia, and South America, were outraged in 2003 when the Episcopal Church approved the consecration of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the church’s first openly gay bishop. An emergency Communion report called on the US to ban on any future consecrations of gay bishops until an international consensus emerges.

The Communion’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, attended this meeting before the controversial votes took place.

ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS: Along with many in the Communion, I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart.

LAWTON: Much of this week’s debate centered on balancing Communion concerns with a desire to move forward.

BISHOP GENE ROBINSON: I believe with my whole heart that we all know where this is going to wind up. It is going to wind up with the full inclusion of all of God’s children in God’s church.

BISHOP PETER BECKWITH: I would concede that if indeed that it is the right thing to do, we should do it now. I do not believe it is the right thing to do.

BISHOP NATHAN BAXTER: While I am very, very much concerned about our covenant with the Communion and our mission, I am also concerned about our covenant with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

BISHOP SHANNON JOHNSTON: The Communion, for me, is too much to lose. There is too much at stake with mission and our ability to apprehend larger, wider truths that go way beyond our own small church and setting in the Western world.

LAWTON: Shannon Johnston, coadjutor bishop in the Diocese of Virginia, said he personally supported the gay ordination resolution, but voted against it because he didn’t want to further divide the Communion.

JOHNSTON (Diocese of Virginia): It was quite wrenching, because it took two of the core values of the church and juxtaposed them against each other, mission and inclusivity on the one hand and then the unity of the church on the other, which is no less a core value of the Gospel.

LAWTON: Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said her church is not fomenting division.

BISHOP KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI: Schism is not a Christian act.

LAWTON: The approved resolutions reasserted the Episcopal Church’s desire to remain an active member of the Anglican Communion. But Bishop Jon Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles says that doesn’t mean total agreement with overseas churches about homosexuality.

BISHOP JON BRUNO (Diocese of Los Angeles): I think I would explain it to them that the context that we live in is totally different and that they have to be tolerant of our context as well as we are tolerant of their context. I still want to be in relationship with them fully.

LAWTON: Reverend Ian Douglas, a representative from Massachusetts, described the votes as being honest with the rest of the world about what the Episcopal Church stands for.

DOUGLAS: There’s no Communion without genuine relationship, and there’s no genuine relationship without truth-telling. So I see commitments to being in Communion and telling the truth about who we are as being of a whole.

LAWTON: Conservative Anglicans already don’t like what they’re hearing.

BISHOP DAVID ANDERSON (American Anglican Council): I think it signals to the rest of the Communion, the Anglican Communion, that the Episcopal Church wants to be a member only on its own terms, and that if terms are applied to it, then they will go their own way and have things the way they wish, and others can be with them or not.

LAWTON: David Anderson is among the Episcopalians who left the denomination over theological issues. He was ordained a bishop in the Anglican Church of Kenya. Disaffected Episcopalians, including four breakaway dioceses, have formed a rival jurisdiction called the Anglican Church in North America. They’re seeking recognition from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

ANDERSON: I see that as The Episcopal Church continues to go through these earthquakes of adopting things there is going to be a constant stream of both people and churches, perhaps more dioceses, that wind up leaving and coming over into the rest of the Anglican Communion.

LAWTON: But at the same time, many Episcopalians believe their actions here will help bring in other people who may have felt alienated in the past. Both sides say they’re anxious to focus on mission rather than division. I’m Kim Lawton in Anaheim, California.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a moving story today on reconciliation in Rwanda.  In 1994, for 100 days while the world looked away, one group slaughtered another at the rate of 10,000 a day.  This Spring for another 100 days Rwandans are reliving what happened with public trials and the unearthing of mass graves. There is also repentance, forgiveness, and hope.  Lucky Severson reports on Rwanda’s recovery and one of the remarkable men who’s helping lead it.

LUCKY SEVERSON: The dormant volcanoes that loom over the hazy Rwandan countryside can erupt as suddenly and violently as the country itself did 15 years ago. Over a million Rwandans, about an eighth of the population, were massacred in one of the worst cases of genocide in recent history. Then the volcanoes were silent, and it seemed that only the gorillas that live alongside of them were safe from slaughter.

Today Rwanda is a much different place thanks, in part, to this man—Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana

Bishop JOHN RUCYAHANA (Chairman, Prison Fellowship Rwanda): People are smiling because they have the hope, but the wounds and the healing is a process that we’ll continue to engage deliberately to tell people that they just can’t cover it up. We need to be able to unearth it and deal with it head on.

SEVERSON: That’s what the bishop has been preaching from the pulpit of his beautiful church in northern Rwanda since the killing stopped: deal with it head on. And it was personal for him. How could it not be after so many members of his extended family were murdered, including his niece?

Bishop RUCYAHANA: I have forgiven those who killed my niece, and they peeled off the flesh off her arms to the wrist, and they left bare bones, and they gang-raped her, and I forgive them because forgiving is not only benefiting the criminal, it benefits me.

SEVERSON: There are still tens of thousands of people convicted of genocide in Rwandan prisons, but as many as 30,000 have been released back to their communities through a restorative justice program that Bishop John chairs called Prison Fellowship Rwanda. These criminals, shown in a Prison Fellowship video, killed their neighbors and even there friends.

ANNOUNCERS VOICE (in video): Eighty-three-year-old John Hebian Berriff lost 187 family members in the genocide, yet he has forgiven all those responsible.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN (in video): The only child I had was killed but I have forgiven so I will be free and I will have peace in heaven.

SEVERSON: Prison Fellowship sends ministers into these penitentiaries to preach repentance, and then after a long period of counseling, if the killer repents, the victims, those who are willing, are brought into the prison to meet the perpetrators face to face. And then, if the victims can find forgiveness in their hearts, the process of redemption and healing begins.

JOHN HEBIAN BERIFF (in video): You killed my wife with my child. I will not do wrong to you. I forgive you.

SEVERSON: There had been a simmering hatred fermenting in Rwanda ever since it gained independence from Belgium in 1962. The Belgians designated Rwandans with at least 10 cows as Tutsis and those with less than10, by far the larger group, as Hutus. Tutsis became the ruling, privileged class, and when the Hutus came to power they began to exact their revenge. And then for 100 days, beginning in April of 1994, as the world and the United Nations sat idly by, Rwandans killed each other at the rate of 10,000 a day.

Bishop RUCYAHANA: I knew I was not going to get the gun and go on a rampage and shoot people as a bishop or as a clergyman. But I was bitter. I was seeking a bitter judgment on them.

SEVERSON: And then he says he remembered the story of the crucifixion.

Bishop RUCYAHANA: You know, when Jesus Christ was still hanging on the tree nails were still into his palms and feet, and he was naked, and he was being mocked by Pharisees underneath the cross, he did not wait for the pain to subside. He cried to the Father, “Forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” The fact that Jesus called within the pain is a guide and a teaching for us to forgive.

SEVERSON: Pastor John Richardson of the St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama, has visited Rwanda four times, has seen what forgiveness and repentance can do.

Pastor JOHN RICHARDSON (St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Birmingham, AL): They have come to repent of their sins, and as part of that repentance they’re telling people where they can find their loved ones, and so they’re still digging up the bodies and laying them to rest, and these families were laying their loved ones to rest after 12 and 13 years. But it just occurs to me that for them there’s finally now some sense of closure.

SEVERSON: The Rwanda transformation is not just among the victims and perpetrators. The country still has a long way to go, lots of unhealed wounds, but Rwanda now has one of the fastest growing economies in Africa and one of the reportedly least corrupt governments. Identity cards classifying the holder as Hutu or Tutsi are no longer allowed.

Bishop RUCYAHANA: We cannot wait until we forget the genocide to build a nation. It’s now, and nobody will build that nation for us. Our destiny is our calling.

Pastor RICHARDSON: The one thing that is obvious about John is that he truly believes that the truth sets you free.

SEVERSON: This man now guards the gates at Prison Fellowship, and he knows about being set free. He was a genocide killer and says before he repented for his crime, every minute of every hour of every day a horror movie played in his head.

Bishop RUCYAHANA: You need to see the pain they have. They can’t sleep. They hear the voices of the people they hacked to death. Voices are still fresh in their minds, and the stink of death and the smell of death are still upon them. They feel it, and they need to be relieved of that by means of repentance.

SEVERSON: Fredrick killed seven members of one family. After eight years in prison, he now has a family of his own. The man with the guinea pigs is Matais. He killed five of his neighbors, even after they gave him a cow as a token of friendship.

SEVERSON: Jacquelyn lost 11 members of her family, but she has forgiven, and she says that has relieved her pain. Now the victims and the perpetrators live in the same village, side by side, in peace. In fact, this whole village was paid for by Prison Fellowship and constructed by the killers and victims working together. There are several reconciliation villages in Rwanda and more being built.

Everyone here has stories, but the idea that they would be sitting together sharing them, victims and killers, would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.

Bishop RUCYAHANA: You need to be able to have both parties, give them time, cry with them, pray with them, engage them until you bring them to the level of confronting the reality that we are living in this county, we are going to produce together, and we are going to live together again.

Pastor RICHARDSON: My 17-year-old observed as we left Rwanda, she said, “You know, Dad, some of those people probably didn’t repent.” And I said, “Yeah, you’re right.” I’m sure some of them were looking for a way out. But that doesn’t mean that many of them haven’t repented and that they don’t work hand-in-hand and side-by-side.”

Bishop RUCYAHANA: No, it doesn’t always work magically. We have to give it time. We have engaged a process. We have to hang onto the process until the work comes to completion. We may even die doing it. But we have to continue doing it anyway.

SEVERSON: There are nearly 400,000 genocide orphans in Rwanda, and they make up the majority of the 1,000 students at the Sonrise Boarding School, sponsored by the prolific fundraising of Bishop John.

Bishop RUCYAHANA: My school has become one of the best schools in the country, and we are training them. We are telling them they will be the leaders of Rwanda.

SEVERSON: This is a remarkable place, especially for kids who have never seen an indoor toilet or a computer. There’s plenty of food here, and beds, and classes on just about everything. They’re connected to the outside world with a satellite dish, and there’s even a working farm to teach them how to live off the land. The school is the focus of Bishop John’s fundraising these days as he makes his Sonrise School even bigger and better. The bishop knows all the school is doing to prepare Rwandans for the future won’t be enough unless they can also deal with their past.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson reporting.

This week leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion called on Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, to step down and asked that a church representative be sent to Zimbabwe.

Watch Rev. Thomas Shaw, Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts, who visited Zimbabwe last year and talked with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton just after his return about the African country’s ongoing religious, political, and humanitarian crisis.

by J. Peter Pham

Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies Are Reshaping Anglicanism. By Miranda K. Hassett. Princeton University Press, 2007.

The bishops and other leaders gathering this month in Canterbury for the fourteenth Lambeth Conference will be considering the future of the Anglican Communion. The last meeting ten years ago is best remembered for the major role which the bishops from the “global South” played, especially in the 526-70 (with 45 abstentions) passage of a resolution upholding as the “teaching of Scripture” the ideal of “faithfulness in marriage is between a man and a woman in a lifelong union” and abstinence “for those not called to marriage” as well as “rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture,” while calling for pastoral ministry and sensitivity to “persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation.”

Far from putting the matter to rest, the tensions raised during the often acrimonious debate leading to the declaration have only been exacerbated over the course of the ensuing decade. In fact, nearly one-quarter of the more than 800 bishops invited are snubbing this year’s conference in protest over the presence of prelates whom they accuse of sanctioning same-sex unions and ordaining non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy. In June, the boycotters held a separate summit in Jerusalem, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), where they were also joined by sympathizers who are nonetheless attending Lambeth.

As Philip Jenkins has argued in his recently completed trilogy of studies, a great deal of this theological contretemps can be explained by the fact that “the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa and Latin America,” where the approach to theological and moral issues is more traditional than in that found among more progressive believers in Europe and North America. Certainly there has been a decisive shift in the demographic center of the Anglican world in the last one hundred years. The fifth Lambeth Conference, which met under Archbishop Randall Davidson in 1908, represented a church 80 percent of whose communicants lived in the British Isles. In fact, the principal concern of that meeting was foreign missions to places like Africa, where less than 1 percent of Anglicans were then to be found. Today, the situation is the reverse: more than 55 percent of the world’s Anglicans live in Africa, while only 33 percent reside in the United Kingdom (the latter figure is somewhat deceptive, however, since, according to the Church of England’s statistics, only about 1 million of the 26 million nominal Anglicans attend church). The U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church, counts some 2 million members, a decline of more than one-third since the 1960s, who account for approximately 3 percent of the worldwide body. In fact, just between themselves, five of the archbishops not present in Canterbury–the primates of the Anglican churches of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and the Southern Cone of the Americas–represent nearly one-half the Anglicans in the world.

As simple and elegant as this demographic explanation is, it did not completely satisfy Miranda K. Hassett, who made the tensions in Anglican family the subject of her research as a graduate student in anthropology at the University of North Carolina. Anglican Communion in Crisis is distilled from her 2004 doctoral dissertation. Hassett has a personal stake in the object of her study: not only is she admirably forthright in disclosing that her “personal sympathies were with the liberal side,” but she was recently ordained a transitional deacon by the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina and has taken up the position of assistant rectors at a parish in the Diocese of New Hampshire, a jurisdiction whose choice of a gay man living in a partnered relationship, V. Gene Robinson, as its bishop in 2003 her own book notes “drew an intense outcry from Anglican leaders around the world” and led several Anglican provinces to downgrade relations with the Episcopal Church. These factors render all the more laudable Hassett’s treatment of the subject which, within its limits, is generally balanced and, unlike many other recent works, free from rancor. The volume’s subtitle–How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies Are Reshaping Anglicanism–hints at her conclusion: “The Episcopal Church’s [conservative] dissidents and their Southern allies are not merely carried along by global trends, but have actively shaped the character and impact of globalization on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.”

Hassett’s research opens in the period after the 1998 Lambeth Conference and focuses on the transnational alliances which were forged between some seemingly unlikely partners, “American social conservatives, commonly stereotyped as having little interest in including the marginalized, and Southern church leaders, whose demands for greater influence threaten the Northern-dominated status quo.” Her key insight is her appreciation that globalization is not an inexorable and impersonal force, but a dynamic process which can be shaped by human agents. Thus her research included extensive time with a congregation in the southeastern United States she pseudonymously calls “St. Timothy’s,” which had left the Episcopal Church to affiliate with the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) under the jurisdiction of the Church of the Province of Rwanda, as well as six months in central Africa, where she focused her efforts on the Uganda Christian University, an Anglican university and seminary with close ties to a number of more conservative U.S. parishes and organizations. (In accordance with the conventions of her discipline, Hassett protects the anonymity of her sources. While the discretion, especially in the case of laypeople, is understandable given the nature of some of the issues with which she grapples, it also makes impossible any independent assessment of the ecclesiastical weight to give to pronouncements she attributes to bishops and other prominent church leaders.)

From the narrative of the fieldwork as well as Hassett’s nuanced analysis of her observations, it is clear that she is a dispassionate scholar, willing to challenge widely held stereotypes about conservative Anglicans in both the United States and Africa.

While the members of St. Timothy’s originally joined AMiA as what Hassett describe as “a lifeboat” away from an Episcopal Church they perceived to be increasingly errant in its leftward drift while still maintaining their connection to the larger Anglican Communion through the archbishop of Rwanda, she found that the new relationship had a profound impact on both parish and parishioners that went far beyond canonical formalities to forge “a transnational relationship of significant local meaning.” Describing the congregation’s efforts to “think more seriously about what their connection to Rwanda might mean”–which ranged from a display and sale of African handicrafts to assisting an African priest raising money for AIDS orphans to a trip to visit their new provincial see by several congregants–Hassett notes that the “congregation’s experience of finding an alliance with an African church first thinkable, then desirable, involved more and more members’ coming to see African Christianity as a positive model.” As a result, members of St. Timothy’s “were coming not only to think about Africa in new and positive ways but also to look more critically on their own way of life as Americans.”

If “conservative dissidents point to the orthodoxy, zeal, and other desirable traits they perceive as characterizing the churches of the global South, and seek to bring that moral force to bear in transforming the Episcopal Church,” the Anglicans Hassett encountered in Uganda–the heirs of a colonial church if ever there was one, as Danish Africanist Holger Bernt Hansen’s monumental study Mission, Church, and State in a Colonial Setting: Uganda, 1890-1925, authoritatively documented–have been excited by the discovery that “Africans have something to teach American Christians.” According to Hassett, African Christians see this as an exchange not unlike that of economic globalization whereby “each region is envisioned exporting what it has in plenty, trading those goods for what another region can readily provide”–in this case, spiritual aid in return for material assistance. Consequently, Hassett posits broadly: This collective and individual rethinking demonstrates that globalization, as represented by the transnational Anglican dissident movement, is not simply Westernization, a one-way process in which the Southern partners take on the culture and ideas of Northerners. Instead the people of St. Timothy’s were influenced by their Rwandan allies to adopt new ways of thinking and talking, indicating that such global relationships have effects in both directions. While she cautions conservatives that an idealization of African Christianity “invokes concepts ultimately derived from older and negative views of Africans as childlike, primitive, and uncivilized,” Hassett reserves a stronger criticism for liberals who, long presuming on the solidarity of the developing world due to “the bias toward the Left in the scholarly literature on global movements,” have reacted angrily to the unexpectedly strong doctrinal stances of Southern bishops by describing them as “superstitious, ignorant, and opportunist.” In contrast to scholars like Ian Douglas, subsequently her professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as a member of the design group for this year’s Lambeth Conference, who propose a vision of globalization which she describes as “diversity globalism”–that is, “characterized by the affirmation of cultural and experiential diversity” and “nothing more clearly defined than general mutual good will”–Hassett writes that conservative Northerners and Southerners have together built various networks into the interconnected structure she labels “accountability globalism”: This is no veiled anti-globalism or reactionary vision, in which older authority structures of white male Euro-American dominance are reestablished to maintain order in an increasingly complex worldwide organization. Instead, this conservative vision embraces the diversity and complexity of the contemporary world…call[ing] for power to shift away from traditional centers and to locate instead in a worldwide network of church leaders united in their commitment to Anglican orthodoxy. New, global patterns of discipline are envisioned in the service of correction, help, and, above all, accountability among Anglican churches around the globe. While Anglicans, like Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, have historically organized their ecclesiastical polities around local bishops whose jurisdiction is largely defined by territorial boundaries, Hassett sees the potential of the nascent affinity networks which are manifestations of accountability globalism to radically transform relationships within the church: [P]articular connections between individuals, parishes, dioceses, and provinces…bypass and even subvert the centralized, nested geographical authority structure of the Communion. It remains to be seen whether the total “realignment” of the Communion into networked clusters of Anglican bodies defined by affinity rather than geographical proximity will come to pass…Today many believe that such networks will become, functionally if not officially, the new organizing structure of the whole Anglican Communion. Certainly there have been moves towards such realignments across the Anglican world. In the last year, the Nigerian, Ugandan, and Kenyan provinces have followed the Rwandan province in consecrating “missionary bishops” for work in the United States. More recently, the bishop and diocesan convention of the Diocese of San Joaquin, California, have voted to align themselves with the South America-based Province of the Southern Cone, and other Episcopal dioceses are reported to be considering “exit strategies.” And while strategic partnerships between Northern conservatives and Southern Anglican leaders and churches have clearly become more common, there is no reason to preclude moderates and liberals within the Communion from creating their own affinity networks. Hassett, for example, chronicles the founding in 2000 of a Ugandan branch of Integrity, an advocacy organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Anglicans, and the subsequent controversy within the province over the involvement of a retired bishop, Christopher Ssenyonjo, as the group’s counselor. The author’s most important contribution might well prove to be her disentangling of this bewildering collection of efferent strands and reweaving them into a comprehensible narrative heralding one vision of how today’s feuds might eventually be resolved.

As an academic work, Anglican Communion in Crisis is not without its share of problems. For example, while differing attitudes about homosexuals has certainly received a great deal of media attention, is it really “the defining issue in contemporary Episcopal Church (and, arguably, Anglican Communion) conflicts” that Hassett characterizes it as? A credible case can be made that the fault lines run much deeper into clashes over fundamentals of faith and that the controversy over homosexuality is perhaps better understood oftentimes as a proxy used by some on both sides of the revisionist/traditionalist divide. Despite serious efforts to “struggle against [her] eagerness to offer [her] own solutions or conclusions” and to “avoid adjudicating in matters of debate,” Hassett occasionally lapses into making assertions which are at the very least methodologically weak, undocumented, and possibly even inaccurate. To cite one case, since she correctly reports that most Episcopalians “are not particularly mobilized on the issue of gay rights” and that “public, outspoken activism for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) Episcopalians in the church is largely limited to the leaders of the Episcopal GLBT rights group, Integrity, and a few outspoken bishops, other church leaders, and scholars,” as a matter of social science how can she then claim that “the mobilized liberal camp represents a position with general support of a majority of Episcopalians” in the absence of any reference to survey data supporting that conclusion? Also, the book is bogged down at times in a tendentious disputation with certain conclusions in Philip Jenkins’s The Next Christendom, a conceit all the more disappointing since Hassett does not appear to have taken into account any of the subsequent work by the Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University that would have obviated a substantial part of the critique.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings and the fact, modestly acknowledged by the author, that its “account of current debates in the Anglican tradition is contestable,” Anglican Communion in Crisis is a must-read, not only by those most directly involved in what are, frankly, often unseemly fracases within the Anglican body politic–especially the mitered heads at Lambeth (as well as GAFCON) who are called, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer, “for the work and ministry of a bishop…the edifying and well-governing of the Church”–but also by anyone interested in the future of Christianity as a whole amidst constantly shifting global dynamics.

J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Virginia, is the author of many works on religion, international affairs, and African politics. An ordained priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, he has written for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on books by Pope Benedict XVI and Philip Jenkins.

Q: You’ve been here 18 years. How do the students at Brown today compare with the students who were here when you first came to Brown? Are they the same?

A: They are both the same and different. They are the same in the sense that Brown has long attracted an entrepreneurial intellect, somebody with a lot of imagination, somebody who tends to be engaged, and that’s still true. I would say these students have been raised with an unusually strong sense of responsibility, which tends to make them more conservative. They are less likely to just raise an issue and protest about it. They are more concerned about how you build structures, and how people get along, and what the complexities are of that.

Rev. Janet Cooper Nelson

Q: Why is that?

A: I think their world has done some falling apart. I think they are less secure about the fact that if they simply raise a concern in a strident way that there are institutions around them that can support that protest without their also being engaged in some kind of construction. But maybe it is because they are my children by age — my own son is 24. I watch, I think perhaps those of us who went through college in the ’60s and the ’70s had the attitude of the strident raise the voice, raise the protest. I’m not sure we appreciated what the construction piece was about. As we’ve gone along in our lives we’ve probably taught them that.

Q: Are students more interested in spirituality than in joining organized religion, as the surveys suggest?

A: I think that’s true. I also want to push back against some of those surveys just a little bit because I think one of the reasons those surveys are showing that is because surveys are finally being taken of these attitudes, and I’m not so sure that is a change as it is that we are noticing it. The Astin studies [by UCLA professor Alexander Astin] out in California didn’t used to ask these questions about spirituality. Once they started asking, they began to see numbers like 70 percent of the student body thought issues of spirituality were important issues.

Q: Why do you think college students are more interested in inner spirituality than in attending religious services or belonging to a church or synagogue?

A: I think that distinction is important, and I think it’s verifiable. If you took a group of Brown students and did what we call a forced choice exercise — go to one end of the room if you are religious, go to the other end of the room if you are spiritual — two-thirds of the students would be on the spiritual end. But if you asked people along the spectrum to speak about why they stood in the position they stood in, the kids on the religious end would say “I’m not so sure about whether you can be spiritual if you are not religious somehow,” and the students on the spiritual end would [say] the institutions of religion have failed, they seem coercive, they seem disingenuous, so we’ve gone to this end because the sacred content of life is still important, but we don’t really trust the institutional conveyance of that. And then we of course would bug them with, well, does that mean you don’t want to read the sacred literature? “Oh no, no, no, we think those are important.” I think there’s a new probing of the way people develop spiritually and religiously which is new to the academy. I think it’s new to the press. I think it’s somewhat new to the public, and I think it’s actually revealing some very interesting aspects about this generation which are truly different — not so different than when I arrived at Brown in 1990, because it was already underway. This generation is much more eclectic in its practice. We have students currently studying for the rabbinate who would tell you that the reason they are doing that is because they sat Zen while they were at Brown. Their grandparents probably wouldn’t have done that, and their grandparents might worry about whether that’s a legitimate way to arrive at rabbinical study. So we are seeing much more borrowing of practice across lines of tradition, and I think that’s a function of the invitation these universities have made to people from a variety of places in the world, cultures, languages, religions. Students become each other’s teachers.

Q: How can students who were teenagers at the time live through 9/11 and not have it affect them spiritually, not make them more vulnerable?

A: There I think you’re completely right. That’s what I meant to say with some strength earlier about the fact that they are very much more unsure of how the future will unfold. They feel as though there could be some great challenge to them personally, ethically, morally, and how will they be ready for that challenge? We don’t have to convince them that could be a question for them. They know it is a question already, and for many of them the resources they want to probe are the ones their families introduced them to by birth. They may have been raised and confirmed in traditions, but now as adults [they are] standing away from their families, but not in opposition [to] their families. That’s actually the piece I mean to point to. Students are much more likely to have rich and warm relationships with their families that they are continuing to develop. We see students far more religiously engaged than their parents.

Q: Are more of them more interested in service and in doing good works for others?

A: In [the chaplains and religious life] office we actually have a rabbinical colleague who is placed at our Center for Public Service. Our students, particularly the ones whose religious engagement and religious identity was more in the liberal world — Reform Jews, mainline Protestants, somewhat secular Catholics and Muslims — we found those students in record numbers engaged in all kinds of community engagement and service. They were building homes. They were responding to disasters. They were organizing tutoring. They were working literally in all kinds of relief occasions in the city. We felt it was very important for them to have somebody working with them who would help them reflect about those activities. Brown University has attracted people who want to ameliorate human wrong. The worth of life is not a topic that I have to raise with students. It’s one that they want to probe in their classes; they want to probe it in religious organizations. Whether I am teaching, whatever it is I’m doing, that is a question that captivates students here. I think it captivates this faculty. I think that’s a continuing passion here. People are really fired up here to do the good. They are not opposed to making money. I don’t mean to say we have saints who have come, and we are going to be totally unmaterialistic. We definitely have a business culture that’s percolating, but it feels to me that it’s percolating around how do we do the good and make a living?

Q: It seems like we’re going through a period of religious intolerance. Has that affected college students?

A; It has affected us. I mean, for instance, right after 9/11 we had students coming to the chaplain’s office saying I’m concerned about my woman friend who wears a hijab. How will it be for her here? Will she be okay passing through the airport in Rhode Island? Would it be appropriate for me to offer to travel with her? I want my friend who I don’t know so well to be safe. Well, why would you make such an offer except that you really thought there would be trouble for that person, or you had observed it? And we did what all universities did. We reached out to people and said we need you to tell us if you’re having trouble. But I think those moments have affected our students, and I think quietly they may well be nervous about each other’s beliefs, concerned about whether there is understanding sufficient in the world for there to be peace, awkward about asking questions they need answers to. So that’s actually at the core of what we’re trying to do.

I think students more determined to solve the problem than to exacerbate it — but they are affected by it and affected by the tension. We had a meeting with our Muslim students after a bit of a blowup over [free] expression here a year ago. They talked about what it was like to be at Brown, what it was like to be in the world, and I think many of the senior administrators who were there were deeply moved that these very young lives were having to navigate some pretty acidic commentary about Muslims generally and that many of those freedoms we talk about in America that we think everybody should take for granted were not theirs. They didn’t really feel that they could count on their safety, their freedom from harassment of a kind of garden variety.

Q: What about student interest in the environment and global warming?

A: Brown is an environmentally fired up place. We have environmentalists that come to that with a spiritual passion….When I was in college we used to frequently be confronted with the nuclear clock: How close was it to midnight? Was it three minutes? Was it five minutes? These students are likely to use those images in their papers. I was listening to someone tell me about a management book that’s just come out and it’s called “My Iceburg is Melting,” and it literally apparently uses a fictional piece about penguins having a meeting about their iceburg melting and how are they going to solve these problems, and this becomes a management tool at a Harvard Business School sort of place.

Q: Do you think involvement in issues like that increases their spirituality or their search for spirituality?

A: I think it exposes that deficit if they feel as though they aren’t grounded spiritually in something that may transcend their age or these problems. I hear students saying all the time, “My parents were — one person was this tradition and one person was that tradition, so we weren’t raised with anything. I have arrived at college, and I don’t know this world. I look at my friends who have a spiritual practice, and I really would like to have one.” But how do you go about doing that when you are 18? People my age thought that the best thing to do was to raise children without religious background and then let them choose when they were 18. In my mind that’s like raising children without table manners and then expecting that you can hand them a knife and fork and a napkin when they’re grown and they’ll know what to do with it.

I think religious literacy, some sort of way of approaching a set of issues, needs to be a part of a person’s formation. They will then decide as they move through their life, as you do, as I do, what does that mean in this moment? How do I appropriate that? Is it adequate? One of the things, of course, in the university we are endlessly trying to say is your spiritual tradition, the literatures of your tradition, have to be interrogated. Not all my clergy colleagues agree with me about that. Some people think nope, the Bible said it, I believe it, that’s all there is to it. We don’t subscribe to that theory, so we are actually taking a position with respect to religious texts and traditions that says they have to change. These students will be their leaders.

Q: What differences do you see in this group of students and those in the past, religiously and spiritually?

A: These students live historically in a different time. The context around them — as you’ve already pointed out they have seen 9/11. My son said to me on the phone the day of 9/11, “Remember how I said to you, Mom, our generation didn’t have a historically defining moment? Well, now we do.” He’s right about that. They do, and that does change everything for them. I don’t think it’s made them more religious. I think it may have made the whole world around them, as well as them, more conscious of spiritual questions and religious questions, which is probably why they are being surveyed more about it. The surveyors have noticed, too, and thought, maybe these kids are praying.

Q: Do they have a sense of vulnerability, of needing help from any source they can get?

A: I think there’s also a piece that’s contextually very different. When I was in college, and we laid out the newspaper at Wellesley, we did it with spray glue and a light table. When our Brown Daily Herald students lay out the daily newspaper, they do it on the Internet. They have a computerized system. Our students know so much more about Darfur, about what’s going on when a tsunami hits. They know more about whether there’s tolerance in China toward religious expression or there isn’t. They see the tragedy of Iraq unfolding in front of them, and I think they are asking themselves the question, what is it I am going to have to do about that, and how will I do that? We were beginning to have that knowledge in the ’60s and the ’70s, but their immersion in the world is far more nuanced than ours was because of what’s around them informationally. It doesn’t surprise me that they are worried.

Q: They are aware that we are a part of the world, and there’s no getting around that.

A: Those oceans on either side of the United States don’t separate us quite the way they used to. They’re spanned all the time electronically, and our students are wanting to propose to students around the globe that they work together on something, especially environmentally.

Q: Have scandals in religious institutions made them more skeptical and cynical?

A: I would say in the same way they look to Washington and see a thoroughly inadequate government system for responding to contemporary challenges, in many religious structures, especially Protestant Christian ones that have become very much a part of the popular and political culture, they see inadequacy. Then it means as a 20-year-old I’m not only confronted with sorting out my own beliefs, but I’ve actually got to think about what would the communitarian structure look like through which those beliefs could come integrity, because it’s clearly not that. But I don’t know if they’re faced with any different problem with respect to the governing structure that they live with in this country or many others. I think there’s a real sense of “we have much rebuilding to do and we need it while we are in college.” And we also say the word “leader” here a lot. Brown students are endlessly told — identified for their leadership, entrepreneurial qualities. I sometimes want to wrap my arms around them and say “You know what? Today you are off-duty. You don’t have to lead today,” because there is so much pressure on their shoulders. When the news comes on in the morning, and one of our homeless shelters is about to be closed, and the three people standing in the way of that are Brown students, I am very proud of them for being there, because I know that they wouldn’t even know to be there if they weren’t spending endless hours enmeshed in issues of homelessness and care for the homeless. But how many issues are there like that? They do need to say their prayers in the middle of the night to keep going with that kind of energy.

Q: Do you get the sense that their pastors and religious leaders are up to date or in tune with what’s really concerning them?

A: No, I don’t think their preachers and rabbis and priests are up to speed, and I’m actually on a tear to hope that we can find in this generation many new such folks among Brown students, around the university culture across the country, because one of the reasons our religious institutions have failed in this country is that they have not been able over the last 25, 30 years to draw into their leadership positions people of the very first rank. That sounds, I’m sure, elitist, but in my own denomination [United Church of Christ] we have commented about it, and I think that we are really reaping the whirlwind of that, when you look at the evolution discussion like we’ve seen in this country recently. These students have all studied science. Most of them have not, in secondary school or in college, had the kind of rich opportunity to study religion, philosophy, ethics and really think about those issues, and we need to bring those strands together or we are going to be faced with everything from stem cell decisions to genetic engineering to evolutionary questions to moral questions in this society, about whether there should or shouldn’t be torture. Can we really be facing that question — in America?

Q: You think religious institutions ought to be dealing more with issues like that?

A: I think they must deal with them. When they don’t, students then say that religion is inadequate, spirituality is where I belong, and they are right if religion is not about those issues that are framing the human life. That’s always been the province of what is a worthy life, and how would I live it and articulate it? So our students are actually taking themselves quite seriously and, I think, calling on the institutions that they will be a part of to be somewhat reflective of the kind of integrity and coherence that they are being taught in a university to acquire. It’s a tough standard.

Q: Do you find students questioning their own beliefs?

A: That question is our question. It’s not theirs. They are questioning their beliefs the way you did, the way I did, of course. But their purpose in questioning them is not to throw them out. Their purpose is to understand them better, to probe the foundations of those questions. My friend Scotty McLennan, who is my [chaplain] counterpart at Stanford, wrote a book a few years ago called “Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning.” It’s a great title, but as I said to him, writing my review in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin — we both went to school there — I said has the science of your childhood held up? Has the math of your childhood held up? Why would the religion of your childhood work in your adult life? It doesn’t. It doesn’t have to be discontinuous, but it seems to me that what you are taught as a kid — where there’s thunder in the sky that’s God bowling — is not going to fly when you are 22. You are going to have probed the physics, you are going to know a little meteorology, and you are going to have moved along. I don’t think it’s about giving up something you were taught when you were a child. It’s about doing what grownups have always had to do, which is to reappropriate traditions now that they are past innocence. They know more. Sept. 11 is not just something your parents shield you from. It’s something where you think, my God, the guy I used to play football with was on the 86th floor of that building. That could have been me. What does this mean? Could my life end that quickly? What would it have been about? Is it worthy? That’s not a question most children are asking. And I don’t think it’s questioning in the sense of giving up. I think it’s about probing deeper and making sure that what it is you are laying claim to and articulating is something you can really stand by, live by, speak for.

Q: These students want religion to become more active in current affairs, in issues that affect the least among them, like the poor.

A: They absolutely do, and they are measuring religious institutions against the very articulated beliefs of those organizations. If a Christian organization is saying the measure of who we are is whether we fed the hungry, responded to the homeless, showed up when there was a war to do anything peace-making about that — and students said, “Look, you said all these things, you said Jesus said those things. You are not doing anything about that. In fact, none of those issues can come up.” In one segment of Protestant Christianity there’s been a real effort to bring about a certain social agenda through the church, and those congregations and those pastors and those traditions have become very mired in that. There’s actually an internal critique that’s been developing in that very movement. Randall Balmer at [Barnard] is probably the person I would look to there, because he is a card-carrying evangelical, and he really feels the evangelical church has thrown the baby out with the bath water by becoming so enmeshed in politics. I think the tension between how spirituality is sufficiently political and concerned with the amelioration of human wrong on behalf of the great spiritual traditions and yet not so enmeshed in lobbying specific political action, that in fact the pulpit becomes confused with the soap box — that’s a really tough tension, and it takes very wise leaders, smart leaders, careful leaders, thoughtful leaders, and they need to come from places like Brown. We need our rabbis to begin to come out of our best institutions. We need our pastors, our preachers, our monks, our nuns — they need to come from places where we’ve been really able to — I don’t mean just elite institutions can do that. I mean that we really need to be speaking to each generation about the need for it to produce exactly what those who founded Harvard College said: Pretty soon our leaders we brought from Europe are going to be moldering in the ground. We need a new generation of those leaders, so we founded a great university here. We need, in our great universities across the country, to keep calling forward the leaders of our traditions. In Islam, for instance, in the United States there isn’t a single institution yet where one can study to be an imam. The American Muslim experience is percolating. There are people coming from many different countries. They are settling in the U.S. for all of the promise that this offers. We need to create the educational institutions, and these students will be in the generation that will do that, as their Jewish forebears of the ’30s created the great Jewish educational institutions of this country. I think it’s a very exciting time, but it’s a serious time. We need our very, very brightest and most engaged or rooted students to do that, and we need to say that’s honorable. We’ve spoken to them about being politicians and doctors and lawyers and all those things. We haven’t talked to them so much about being religious leaders, and we need to do that. I think we are doing better at it. I think they are becoming each other’s teachers in important ways

I often feel like we open the door in the morning and get out of the way. [The students] are our teachers. I think one of the things we care most to model for them is a kind of collegiality not based on how erudite you are or how new you are to the question, because frequently the newest scholars have the most innovative, imaginative questions to ask, and we need to hear them. They are proposing syntheses among traditions that were not dreamed before. They come together around an issue like Burma overnight. My advisee from two years ago walked in the door and was the person organizing the entire campus on Darfur, led the university faculty in divesting our portfolio from Darfur. He’s a sophomore in the college. There’s a certain humility we all need about who’s smart around here. But I also think there is an extremely lovely blessing we’re receiving by looking over the shoulders of these students, seeing where their eyes are taking them for the things that need to be worked on and then trying to offer our tools, our history, our background in ways they can make better use of. I sometimes think we are surgical nurses or midwives in an operating theatre where the surgeons are very young, very skilled, but surprising for their precociousness in terms of where we need to go, and they’re not listening sometimes to all the old arguments about why you can’t go there. They’re there.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now the Episcopal Church divisions over homosexuality and the interpretation of Scripture. This week the U.S. Episcopal bishops went as far as they said they could to comply with the demand from the worldwide Anglican Communion that the U.S. church clarify its policies on gay issues. The bishops said they would “exercise restraint” on consecrating gay bishops and would not officially authorize same-sex blessings. Conservatives around the world say the bishops did not do enough. So the question remains: can the church avoid schism? Kim Lawton reports.

KIM LAWTON: The Episcopal bishops gathered in New Orleans amid intense pressure from inside their own church and from their fellow members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Top Anglican leaders had given the U.S. church until September 30 to state clearly that they will not consecrate any more gay bishops or authorize any sex-same blessings. Failure to do that, the leaders said, would have unspecified consequences for the Episcopal Church’s place in the Communion. Episcopal leaders said they answered those concerns, even if their document did not go as far as many Communion leaders had sought.

Bishop TOM SHAW (Diocese of Boston, at news conference): This document that we passed this afternoon shows how important inclusion in the Anglican Communion is for all parts of the Episcopal Church and how much we deeply respect the Anglican Communion.

LAWTON: But many conservatives say the response was inadequate. Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan didn’t stay at the New Orleans meeting for the final vote.

Bishop ROBERT DUNCAN (Diocese of Pittsburgh): It’s not enough for the dioceses like my own that really don’t see a way to go forward within the Episcopal Church.

LAWTON: One of the strongest international critics, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, said the U.S. bishops fell far short of what he was looking for. Akinola spoke at a conservative church gathering near Chicago this week. He was greeted by protesters who accused him of being anti-gay.

Anglican leaders from Africa, Asia and South America, the so-called Global South, have been building alliances with American conservatives who share their theological perspective. Overseas churches have consecrated several Americans as bishops who will work in the U.S.

Bishop JOHN GUERNSEY (Anglican Church of Uganda): I receive the authority given to me to oversee and care for the clergy and congregations of the Church of Uganda in the United States of America.

LAWTON: In New Orleans, the Episcopal bishops urged an immediate end to what they called these “foreign incursions.”

The bishops acknowledged their document doesn’t set any new policy. It’s not an outright ban on future gay bishops, but rather a promise to exercise restraint in consecrating any bishop whose “manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church.” Likewise, while the bishops promised as a body not to authorize public rites for blessing same sex unions, there is leeway for individual bishops to allow blessings in their dioceses.

Bishop KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI (Presiding Bishop, U.S. Episcopal Church, at news conference): Not everyone was 100 percent happy with every word in this document, as you might imagine. But together we believe that we have found a place that all of us can stand together.

LAWTON: Many bishops argued that the international leaders do not have the authority to determine positions for the U.S. church, which is self-governing.

Bishop PETER LEE (Diocese of Virginia): The Anglican Communion is not a juridical group where there is a clear method of kicking someone out, to put it bluntly. So if we are — if our relationship is stressed with the rest of the Communion to the breaking point, the break will come from others, not from us.

LAWTON: New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the church’s first openly gay bishop, says he believes the New Orleans meeting will ease the tensions plaguing the Church.

Bishop GENE ROBINSON (Diocese of New Hampshire): The prediction was that this would be like Katrina II, you know, some horrible storm that would tear the Episcopal Church apart, and what actually happened was that the vast majority of the bishops of all persuasions came together for this common statement. And it’s really, really a miracle.

It’s unclear whether the bishops’ statement will be enough to satisfy other members of the Anglican Communion. The Communion’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, was traveling and did not have an immediate comment. He had been in New Orleans for nearly two days of closed-door meeting with the bishops, but left before they issued their statement.

Bishop LEE: I think it gave us an opportunity to let him see more of who we are as bishops, in a very different context than where he usually works, and it gave us an opportunity to hear some of his concerns from his perspective looking at the whole worldwide Communion.

LAWTON: Robinson acknowledged he had some frank exchanges with the archbishop.

Bishop ROBINSON: I understood him to be saying that we had to choose between fidelity to our gay and lesbian members and fidelity to the process of what he called “common discernment.” And I said that, as a gay man, choosing a process over human beings felt dehumanizing to me. And perhaps there were people who were shocked that I said that, but after all, I’m the only openly gay voice in that room.

LAWTON: The New Orleans meeting seemed to solidify the decisions of those already contemplating leaving the Episcopal Church. New Mexico Bishop Jeffrey Steenson announced he was resigning in order to become a Roman Catholic.

Bishop JEFFREY STEENSON (Diocese of the Rio Grande): There are a lot of doctrinal matters that are being debated in the Episcopal Church that just astonish me, and I felt that it was really important for me now to be clear with myself about where I could be comfortable.

LAWTON: Four of the 110 U.S. dioceses have begun steps to break with the Episcopal Church. Conservative American bishops, including some who left the Episcopal Church decades ago, met together in Pittsburgh this week to discuss ways they can work together. Many are aligning with Global South Anglican churches.

Bishop DUNCAN: From the beginning, the message to me and to other leaders from the archbishops around the world has been get it together, find a way to work together, agree on a leader, agree on the way you’re going to work together and declare it. Move forward and we’ll go forward with you.

LAWTON: Meanwhile, Episcopal Church leaders spent a day of their meeting doing service projects around the Gulf Coast. They said they wanted to put the controversies aside and focus more on ministry and mission. And on this point, the conservatives agreed.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton is in Pittsburgh where the conservatives were meeting. Kim, most of the Episcopal bishops took a position of this week that many of the conservatives didn’t like. Some of the conservatives are leaving the church, they say. What’s changed? What’s new?

LAWTON: Well, in fact no new policy was set at this meeting. The U.S. Episcopal bishops restated the situation that’s been in play in their church for the last couple of years. They may have said it a little more clearly, which is what I think a lot of people in the Anglican Communion were looking for, but they have not set any new policy. For the conservatives I think, though, this was a line in the sand. This was a moment they were looking for, and it seems like it’s a point of no return for them, and so it seems to have solidified a lot of the decisions that many people were considering anyway.

ABERNETHY: So what are the possibilities now?

LAWTON: Well, the conservatives that met here in Pittsburgh this week are trying to put together what they’re calling a federation of all of these groups that have left the Episcopal Church over the years. And they’re trying to see if they can put aside all their many differences and have a united alternative Anglican body here in the United States that might in some ways rival the U.S. Episcopal Church, that they can present to the worldwide Anglican Communion as here’s a viable form of Anglicanism in the United States. They have a plan of planting up to1000 churches over the next year, and they really want to move forward with that plan, and they’re getting support from many of these conservative archbishops in the Global South.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

Q: What did you think of the final document the House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans produced?

A: The final document from New Orleans was very much what the House of Bishops has said before, and it revealed the commitment of the American church to continue on its move forward in terms of the innovations in faith and order. It did acknowledge the trouble in the Communion and the pain that the American church has caused. It did maybe slow things down a little bit, but it’s not going to change the direction, and clearly in New Orleans as there has been for some while there really are two churches under one roof and those two churches are one that is moving in a way with the culture and with secular society, moving toward embrace of the culture itself, and the other is moving in a direction — I mean we are trying to stand where we’ve always stood. That’s the reality. So that’s New Orleans, but that’s old news.

Q: Is it going to be enough to satisfy some others in the Communion who have been concerned?

A: Well, it’s not enough for the dioceses like my own that really don’t see a way to go forward within the Episcopal Church. We believe that we will be forced to be something other than we have been, to stand in some new place, and we’re not going to go to a new place. We’re going to stand where Christians have always stood, where scripture and the tradition just have always caused the church to be. For the worldwide church already a number of influential leaders from major places in the communion have said this isn’t enough. It’s very sad for our Communion. It’s heartbreaking the way in which Anglicanism is tearing apart. The hope of course is that God will put it back together in a new way, in a stronger way, in a reformed way as part of the reformation he is working in the whole of the Christian world.

Q: Tell me about this meeting in Pittsburgh. What are you and all these groups trying to accomplish here?

A: There are 10 jurisdictions who have been working together, a growing number, we started as six in 2004, who have committed to make common cause for the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel as it has been received, and to make common cause for a biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America. We are fragments, like some of us represent fragments, dioceses of the Episcopal Church that can’t go down the road that the Episcopal Church is on, can’t leave the faith once delivered, and other fragments [are] folks who as long as 134 years ago actually found themselves put out of the Episcopal Church because of their stand on the gospel and their belief that the Episcopal Church was shifting and wavering and moving away from its Reformation position. This meeting is a meeting in which these fragments, as bishops, and for the first time it’s all the bishops of these 10 fragments from the US and Canada, they are together and we’re together and what we’ve done is agree to the way in which we’ll move forward, move forward forming a federation of the Common Cause Partners, pushing that schedule along, and before too long appealing to provinces within the Communion to recognize this federation as a new ecclesiastical structure in the States, the very thing that a number of the primates just a year ago in September called for from Kigali as they looked to the problems in the US church and to the wavering and wandering of the majority.

Q: So the goal here is to create an alternative Anglican structure?

A: The goal has been to bring together all of those who stand on scripture, who stand with the tradition, who are committed to mission and who can’t bring themselves to separate from what Christians have always believed. So we’re working together as bishops, forming a college of bishops, again first ever meeting here, who can work together in mission. We’ve shared all kinds of ministry initiatives together, from ministry to youth, all kinds of exciting things with postmoderns to work with the global church in relief and development to the more ordinary matters of church planting. Indeed one of the calls of this conference was for us together to plant 1000 new churches, which would be quite something to see.

Q: These groups do have theological differences of their own, on issues like ordination of women, certainly worship style. Some are more charismatic, some more Catholic. How strong are those differences, and how big is the challenge going to be?

A: These are important differences, but they are not salvation differences. They are differences that are part of what all of Anglicanism is comprehending at the moment. About half of the provinces of the Communion ordain women, the other half does not. Again, the role of women in holy orders is a question that the church in the 21st century, the Anglican Communion, is looking at. Can women be priests? Can women be bishops? We’re working that through, but since 2003 we have committed to each other despite this difference to go forward together. Again, it doesn’t change the gospel message that we bring, that Jesus Christ came as God’s answer to our problem, that we needed a rescuer and a savior, and we are all absolutely united about who that rescuer is, who that savior is, and the new life he brings, the transformed live he gives through the power of his Holy Spirit. We see that as incredible good news, and we all together want to share that. We have no differences about that.

Q: There are suggestions that there have been some challenging personality issues as people try to work all this out.

A: Well, sure. What’s true about a family is a family cares enough about one another that they actually disagree. This isn’t a paper — this isn’t some “lite” association, this is a deep association for the future of our part of the Christian church, and we care enough about each other and are deeply enough related that we sometimes, you know — voices get raised this way and that way, but I can guarantee that the end of it is not voices raised in anger but voices raised in praise.

Q: What do you hope the relationship of this federation will be to the broader Anglican Communion?

A: The next step in this — we have articles of federation. I as the chair of this Common Cause Partnership — we now have all but two of the 10 partners having had their councils meet and approve the articles of federation, which again a federation is a body that doesn’t take away the distinctives or the independence of each of the jurisdictions but really creates a deep level of interdependence. I’m going to call the first leadership council for the first week in January. That council will appoint the committees that the articles call for. They will be the committees that really will structure things. Within a year we will actually gather the second council, and at that time we will be ready, I think, to go to the rest of the Anglican Communion and say here we are. We really are that new ecclesiastical structure in North America that draws all of the separated orthodox Anglicans together and that is ready to be partners with the rest of the world on the terms the rest of the world expects Anglicanism to represent, to uphold, to share and propagate.

Q: Many of your members already have direct relationships with some of the conservative Anglican international leaders. Are they encouraging this effort?

A: Well, absolutely. From the beginning the message to me and to other leaders from the archbishops around the world has been get it together. Find a way to work together. Agree on a leader, agree on the way you are going to work together, and declare it and move forward, and we’ll go forward with you.

Q: How complicated will it be for you to separate a diocese from the Episcopal Church, as you’ve announced — the diocese of Pittsburgh?

A: The last time that Episcopal dioceses separated from the Episcopal Church was in the American Civil War. Nine dioceses actually separated for a period of years. When the war was over the Episcopal Church came back together. There was an important social issue, I mean the whole issue of slavery divided the nation. The North and the South were divided. When the issue was settled the church came back together. Where we are right now is seeing the church moving in two distinctly different directions on issues of Christian morality quite different than the slavery issue. What our diocese and a number of other dioceses are going to have to do is try to figure out, okay, we joined, we federated. Can we break that federation? Again, the whole purpose of it is not because we’ve changed, but the Episcopal Church is so radically changed we as a diocese in order not to embrace that change or be forced into that change are saying the best course forward for us is to let them go their way and the way in which we will operate is in alignment with another province in another part of the world that still upholds what the worldwide Christian church, what worldwide Anglicans believe and teach and want to share.

Q: And do you anticipate the property struggles in all of this?

A: Those issues are all there. Jesus was real clear about how difficult it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Again, if that’s what you’ve really got your mind and your heart set on, that’s what you get. What we’ve got our mind and our heart set on is preaching the gospel. And even if we lose our property, we lose our offices, so what? We believe these are the things that are our heritage. Again, the people here in Pittsburgh haven’t changed. The church here is as it has been. Why should the property that generations here have given to the Episcopal diocese of Pittsburgh be taken from it? But if the courts should do that, if that’s how it turns out, if for the good of the gospel we determine that’s what we want to do is just give it away, we have a dominical mandate that sort of suggests that would be a good thing to do.

Q: is there anything else you want to add?

A: We are in the midst of an immense reformation of the Christian church. Anglicanism is just a part of that. It’s particularly a reformation of the church in the West, because the West has drifted with its culture, and Christianity is principally countercultural. In what had been a Christian society, or for instance in England a state church, it was a vision for a time that the Christian church and the state could be one. That’s not where we are any longer. We’ve secularized Western societies and the church needs to stand for what it has been called to do, for a saving message that takes people out of the “secula” in which they find themselves and into something that looks more nearly like the heaven God intended.

Q: How would you describe the statement of the bishops who met in New Orleans?

A: I think it’s a miracle when you look at what a broad piece of common ground we are standing on with this document. Then you look at the bishops who are in the room, all but one of whom, a very liberal bishop, voted for it. And it was the full range of liberal to conservative, all kinds of different faith and practice. That we could craft such a broad piece of ground to stand on, I think it’s a really wonderful thing. I think the prediction was that this would be like Katrina II. You know, some horrible storm that would tear the Episcopal Church apart. And what actually happened was that the vast majority of the bishops of all persuasions came together for this common statement. It’s really, really a miracle.

Q: Where does it leave gay and lesbian members of the church?

A: I think it leaves us pretty much where we were. That is to say we’re somewhere between being totally excluded, this was the case in the past, and we’re not quite towards full inclusion yet. The Episcopal Church has made enormous progress here, and yet we are a part of a broader Anglican Communion. And although we would like it all to have happened yesterday, that’s not the way the church works. I would say it’s not the way any group works. We are undergoing vast change at a pretty good pace. Would I have liked to have gone further faster? Absolutely, but there are also people who would have liked it to go much slower, and that’s what being a church is about. It’s about finding that middle ground, something that we can all live with for this moment. Then we see where the future takes us.

Q: Where does it leave the diocese of Chicago if Tracey Lind, an openly lesbian priest, is elected bishop?

A: We have a resolution of the General Convention that says we should exercise restraint, and we don’t really know where that will take us, and we won’t know until there is another bishop-elect who is gay or lesbian, and then we’ll see how that happens. I think we’re all exercising restraint in a sense that we know this is an important issue. We know it’s a controversial issue, and only time will tell how that will go either with bishops or with standing committees. And remember in our church it’s not just bishops who decide, but clergy and laity as well as the bishop.

Q: What did you learn at this meeting about the feelings of the rest of the world?

A: I think the international visitors underscored for me what we’ve known, but hearing it coming from their lips is even more powerful. Their contexts are so different from ours. It should not surprise us, but perhaps we’re naive when we forget that in many countries of the world if you’re known to be gay you can be imprisoned. There’s just rampant discrimination. In a context like that, to ever have a chance to sit in the room with a faithful, committed Christian person who also happens to be gay or lesbian — it’s just not something that happens. So to hear from their lips how their contexts are different from ours, I think it always helps to have that personal contact. It was just as important for them to experience how very different our context is. So I think there was learning on both sides. That’s really why we treasure the Anglican Communion so much is that if we hold together there is so much to be learned from one another.

Q: We understand there were some pretty frank exchanges. What did you say to the Archbishop of Canterbury?

A: I was frank with the Archbishop of Canterbury, at his invitation. I began my remarks to him by saying, “Your grace, you know that I respect you and your office. I always have. I always will. But some of what you had to say to us was disturbing.” And I understood him to be saying that we had to choose between fidelity to our gay and lesbian members and fidelity to the process of what he called “common discernment.” I said that as a gay man choosing a process over human beings felt dehumanizing to me. Perhaps there were people who were shocked that I said that, but after all I am the only openly gay voice in that room. I did feel that way. I know that other gay and lesbian people, had they been in the room, felt that way. I owed it to him out of my respect for him and his office to say to him what he came to hear, which was our responses to him. So he invited us to respond. I was not the only one who responded, nor was I the only one who responded in a frank manner.

Q: What about your attendance next year at the Lambeth Conference?

A: Actually, the thing I most hoped for happened during this week related to my participation in Lambeth, which is that it would be taken out of being a solitary decision between the Archbishop of Canterbury and me of New Hampshire. It would actually be owned by the House of Bishops. Part of the response that we made was to say that this whole house hopes for the full participation of the bishop of New Hampshire. I’m very pleased by that. There was hardly any debate over that at all, that the people of the House see my inclusion in Lambeth. That’s a really important thing for the American church.

Q: Several of the most conservative bishops weren’t here for that part of the meeting.

A: It’s important to remember that the bishops who left right after the archbishop left have not attended our meetings in years, have not lodged with us, eaten with us, or worshiped with us. So this was nothing new. The only thing new was that they actually showed up. They had announced very early on that they were not staying. That grieves me, but I cannot make someone stay at the table. I think the important thing here is that the vast majority, liberal to conservative, all stayed. We hung in there with each other. We spoke our minds. We disagreed about things. Then we found a place that we could stand together. That’s amazing.

Q: What message do you hope this sends to the wider world?

A: What I hope it says to the American church and the Anglican Communion is that we dearly love each other and we dearly love this church. Although there are many things we disagree about we intend to hang together. We treasure our partners in the Anglican Communion. We hope they treasure us. If we just keep holding on to one another while we fight some of these things out, it’s going to be okay. So the result I’m hoping for is a kind of lowering of the anxiety and discomfort, just to say it’s in Christ that we find out unity, not in our agreement. If we just hang in there with one another long enough, the spirit of God will hold us together.

I think the message for gay and lesbian Episcopalians is that the Episcopal Church is not going back; that our movement towards greater and greater inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the life and leadership of our church is continuing forward. It may not be going as fast as we would like, but its there. It is heartfelt. Even, it’s interesting, even some of the conservatives today in our closed session said we know where this is going. We know how this is going to turn out. Even they see it. I think they are just arguing pastorally that it needs to be at a pace that their people can absorb. So I don’t think there’s been any change in where we’re going. We’re only talking about how long it takes us to get there.

Q: And finally your thoughts on the involvement of foreign bishops in some U.S. dioceses?

One of the great surprises, to me, of this meeting was to hear of the sheer number of dioceses that have had incursions by bishops from foreign jurisdictions — archbishops, bishops, clergy coming from other international churches really with the purpose of undermining the Episcopal Church. I knew it was happening. I read about it like everyone else does. I am blessed not to have that happening in my diocese. But I was stunned at the number of dioceses in which this is happening. I don’t think the members of the Anglican Communion realize what an assault on our church this is. No one seems to be remembering that the Windsor Report, which everyone thinks called only us to task, actually called for that kind of incursion to end. There are no efforts that I know of in the Anglican Communion to stop those incursions from happening. That, too, is a part of the Windsor Report. The Americans would be happy to see some support from the Anglican Communion for stopping those incursions.