What then shall we do?

BB NOTE: Excellent analysis of the recent actions of the Episcopal House of Bishops by Ephraim Radner here. There's so much to quote from, we'll choose these four excerpts, but encourage a full reading of the entire piece.

...it is very difficult to see on what basis the House of Bishops could reject the Scheme as inherently unconstitutional. The character and shape of the Scheme is one of request and permission. The unwillingness of our bishops to look at this carefully and instead insist on reading it in terms of “oppression” and “offense” is bizarre and irrational. Indeed, their rejection of the Scheme appears wholly capricious and arbitrary...

...Theologically and politically, the autonomy of the Episcopal Church was, from the beginning, profoundly circumscribed by constraints (from the Church of England and internally) imposed by Prayer Book doctrine, by the configuration of Convention, by the general claims of Holy Scripture, and by the early reiteration by the Convention (1814) that the Episcopal Church is, from an ecclesial (though not civil) perspective, the “same body” as the “Church of England”. How exactly the notion of “autonomy” must be understood in terms of TEC’s “constituent membership” in a body of churches that upholds and propagates a common “faith and order” that is “historically” traceable is exactly what is at issue in the present conflict in the Communion. The Windsor Report remains to date the most carefully articulated response to this question, and it speaks in terms very different from the House of Bishops’. They in turn ignore their own history, whatever its debatable details, and pass by in silence the Communion’s own attempt at providing clarity to this matter...

...Yet the House of Bishops wants to claim the Primates are “kicking them out” of the Communion, when in fact it is they, the American bishops, who have deliberately chosen a path they know—if they are thinking clearly—must lead to this outcome. Even their own consultative bodies have told them this. Before the 2003 General Convention, the House of Bishops’ Theology Committee recommended that no action be taken on matters that would alter the discipline of the church in the area of human sexuality – such as the consent to Gene Robinson’s episcopal election. Such actions would divide the church, since, they argued, there was no clear consensus within the church that could support it. The House of Bishops knowingly and deliberately chose in 2003 to ignore their Committee’s recommendations. The “schismatic”, as Andrew Marvell wrote, is the one who causes separation, not necessarily the one who separates...

...With whom and under whom do we now fulfill our vows made before God? It is no longer possible to receive equally the claim made by the House of Bishops to be faithful to the apostolic trust, along with the claim by the “Church throughout the world” that this trust demands another set of actions and commitments. What then shall we do?