Dio. Fort Worth Being Pushed Out of Sewanee?
Stand Firm has a link to an interesting letter from the Chancellor of the University of the South (a.k.a. Sewanee), Bishop Parsley, in Tennessee. In it, Bishop Parsley says:
We at Sewanee are concerned by the news that a majority of the delegates to the 26th Annual Convention of the Diocese of Fort Worth, one of the 28 owning dioceses of the University of the South, voted on Saturday, Nov. 15, to withdraw from the Episcopal Church and to align with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.
We will be communicating with our elected trustees from Ft. Worth and with the continuing members of the Episcopal Church there as we work to discern the implications of this action.
The Board of Trustees will work through its committee structure to respond to these issues, most likely by the Board's annual meeting in October 2009.
We bid your prayers for our sisters and brothers in Fort Worth and for the unity of the Church.
RWF resumes: I was looking at the website for Sewanee this evening, and it is clear that Bishop Iker's name has already been removed from the list of trustees there! Does anyone out there know by what authority this action has been taken?
UPDATE: Apparently someone got on the stick and got Bishop Iker back on the list of trustees on-line this afternoon. Quick action, once they were called out on it!
We at Sewanee are concerned by the news that a majority of the delegates to the 26th Annual Convention of the Diocese of Fort Worth, one of the 28 owning dioceses of the University of the South, voted on Saturday, Nov. 15, to withdraw from the Episcopal Church and to align with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.
We will be communicating with our elected trustees from Ft. Worth and with the continuing members of the Episcopal Church there as we work to discern the implications of this action.
The Board of Trustees will work through its committee structure to respond to these issues, most likely by the Board's annual meeting in October 2009.
We bid your prayers for our sisters and brothers in Fort Worth and for the unity of the Church.
RWF resumes: I was looking at the website for Sewanee this evening, and it is clear that Bishop Iker's name has already been removed from the list of trustees there! Does anyone out there know by what authority this action has been taken?
UPDATE: Apparently someone got on the stick and got Bishop Iker back on the list of trustees on-line this afternoon. Quick action, once they were called out on it!
posted by Texanglican (R.W. Foster+) | 12:21 AM
10 Comments:
I was sort of wondering about that at Convention when Sewanee trustees were elected...
I can't really imagine why anyone would want to be on the Board there, but all this of course poses interesting legal and canonical questions even outside the Diocese.
I would expect, but do not know definitively, that it was at the instruction of +Parsley. My old Sewanee classmate is big on legalities, technicalities, and that sort of thing.
His name is there (3:24 11-24). Was it not there before? If so, that would be quite interesting that they decided to put it back on.
--NBS
Indeed, I promise you that it was not on there last night. I wonder if someone acted quickly to put it back on?!
When I looked this morning around 9:45 CST it was indeed missing, with an obvious extra line where it had been. Probably a story here.
Treg
Apparently a telephone inquiry to Sewanee today resulted in the caller being told it had been missing from the site due to an "administrative error"! It was corrected this afternoon.
Make a mental note--check the wayback machine in a few months. It archives internet pages, and you can see on what date edits were made to a particular page. Something tells me that the Iker edits to Sewanee's trustee page could have an interesting timing to them. The wayback machine doesn't archive until about 6 months out--so we can't tell much now.
Link to the wayback machine is below:
http://www.archive.org/index.php
--NBS, Sewanee, '96
Bishop Iker's name probably has not been removed because even though he says he is no longer a member of the Episcopal Church, his resignation from that church has not been tendered nor has the canonical process of deposition been carried out. The Church (whatever church, not just the Episcopal Church) of God moves at a snail's pace when legal matters are concerned, but perhaps that is ok in this instance. I am glad I have remained in the Episcoapl Church, and hope you are happy with your new church affiliation too, but it must be cleared up as to what church affiliation Bishop Iker has, as he has not officially resigned as a bishop of TEC. I'm sure that route would have saved a lot of lawyer's fees for the diocese of Fort Worth. It is too bad Bishop Iker did not think of the diocesan pocketbook before he decided not to formally resign.
RE: "Bishop Iker's name probably has not been removed because even though he says he is no longer a member of the Episcopal Church..."
Bishop Iker does not own 1/28 of Sewanee. The Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth does. And the Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth is an ongoing entity--just not one that is affiliated with the Episcopal Church.
--NBS
From the Constitution and By-Laws of the University of the South:
"The University of the South" is the name given to this institution in its Charter, which was granted by the State of Tennessee in 1958. Pursuant to that Charter, it must in all parts be under teh sole and perpetual control of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, represented by a Board of Trustees as hereinafter provided."
So no, it's not a grand conspiracy by Parsley and Sewanee to kick out Iker and the former "Diocese of Fort Worth." It's in the Constitution and By-Laws. Sewanee can't have Trustees from another province of the Anglican church!
I'm not sure what's going on with the poor souls who wish to stay aligned with the Episcopal church there, but if the Church organizes them back into a Diocese, I imagine Sewanee's Trustees will come from that group.
I guess Iker didn't think that one through, but as someone else said, why would someone from the new "Anglican" Diocese of Fort Worth want to be a Sewanee Trustee?
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