Political test for new bishops proposed: Anglican Ink, May 28, 2013. May 29, 2013
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Ink, The Episcopal Church.Tags: Anglican Communion Institute, Ephraim Radner, House of Bishops Committee on Pastoral Development, James Waggoner Jr, Philip Turner
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New bishops in the Episcopal Church should be vetted for their political orthodoxy, a paper released by the House of Bishops’ Standing Committee on Pastoral Development has proposed. The call for conformity came in a 29 April 2013 letter released under the signature of the Rt. Rev. James Waggoner, Jr., Bishop of Spokane and was sent to the church’s bishops and standing committees.
However some of the questions were “so egregious” and so “thin in its substance as to be silly”. Dr. Ephraim Radner of the Anglican Communion Institute told Anglican Ink.
In his covering letter Bishop Waggoner wrote the committee had noticed “two extremes” in recent years of “intense scrutiny” and “uninformed consent” in the consent process for newly elected bishops. The ten questions offered by the committee were designed “to be an additional resource in your decision-making process.”
While the first seven questions elicited little comment, the final three appeared to inject the divisive politics of recent years into a process already regulated by canon law, critics have charged. The asked:
Read it all in Anglican Ink.
Conger 