Fort Worth bishop inhibited: CEN 11.24.08

US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has suspended Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker from the ministry of the Episcopal Church on the grounds of having backed his diocese’s secession to the Province of the Southern Cone. While the Nov 21 notice of inhibition came as no surprise to Episcopal Church watchers, internal church documents show a resistance by the review committee to punish Bishop Iker on the basis of his beliefs—resisting Bishop Schori’s push to discipline the Fort Worth bishop before his diocese quit the Episcopal Church. Bishop Schori’s inhibition of Bishop Iker also appears to have introduced a new interpretation of the disciplinary canons for bishops. The requirement that the church’s three senior bishops endorse the inhibition of a bishop—which had been deemed irrelevant to the case against Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan in September—has been reinstated in the case of Bishop Iker. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper’s Religiousintelligence.com