Subversion of the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church: On Doing What it Takes to Get What You Want

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[ACI} 22 Nov 2008--Recent actions of The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the matter of Gene Robinson have sent shock waves throughout that church and indeed throughout the Anglican Communion. These actions present both TEC and the Communion unprecedented challenges to their forms of order and governance. Indeed, an underlying assumption of this essay is that neither TEC nor the Anglican Communion as a whole at present has instruments and forms of governance capable of coping with a crisis of this magnitude. As a result, solutions (if they can be called that) are being improvised in great haste and often with little thought.

The particular concern of this essay is that the measures now being taken by the Office of the Presiding Bishop and the House of Bishops to address this crisis lack an adequate constitutional and canonical foundation. Further, because of this lack, those who belong to TEC are in fact being confronted with attempts to address the present crisis by actions that effect changes in the polity of their church that are neither constitutional nor canonical. Put bluntly, TEC’s membership faces a situation in which it may come to be governed by the will of people in office rather than by constitutional and legal provision.