An Interview with Episcopal Bishop Duncan

Episcopal Church faces ‘significant pruning’ over doctrine, bishops says

By Mike Sullivan
5/24/2007

Our Sunday Visitor

HUNTINGTON, Ind. (Our Sunday Visitor) – Episcopal Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh has been interviewed by nearly every major news outlet in the country within the past few years, but not necessarily for something he wishes was happening.

Bishop Duncan has emerged as the leader of a movement within the Episcopal Church in the United States to realign Episcopalian doctrines with those of traditional Christianity.

The disagreements between the American church and the worldwide Anglican Communion have capture headlines around the world. He is one of 110 diocesan bishops and numerous laity within the Anglican Communion who were dismayed with the ordination of a bishop who is living an openly homosexual lifestyle. The movement for realignment includes about 900 of the 7,000 congregations within the U.S. Episcopal Church.

In the following interview, Bishop Duncan shares insights about this “realignment” and offers a courageous example for all faithful Christians to truly live their faith, even when it is unpopular.

Our Sunday Visitor: Would you describe the movement to realign the Episcopal Church with the traditional doctrines of Christianity?

Bishop Robert Duncan: The movement that I lead has been called the Anglican Communion Network. The Episcopal Church, during the last four decades, has been headed on a path of innovation. As these years have passed it’s become clearer and clearer that the Episcopal Church, if it hadn’t previously stepped outside the boundaries, it would at one point do that clearly enough for all to recognize.

That point of great clarity came in August 2003, when the Episcopal Church agreed to a bishop who had been married, divorced and was in a long-term same-sex relationship. The movement that I lead is a movement that’s attempting to hold to the truth that the church has received and has always taught, as opposed to the innovations that are being held up now.

We’re in the midst of a reformation of our tradition, and, in fact, we think we’re actually in the midst of a major Christian reformation. Pope Benedict XVI wrote, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, that the Western church will not be fruitful again until it was severely pruned – referencing John 15. We’re in the midst of a significant pruning, and not only of the Anglicans but also of the whole of the Western Christian church.

That’s what we’re in the midst of. And again, it’s affecting all of the churches in the West, it must do so because God always reforms his church, and in the words of our lady, in her song, which we sing daily at vespers, he’s always casting the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly, because the mighty think somehow they’re God, and so God always realigns his church.

Our Sunday Visitor: You are considered by many to be a leader of a “conservative” faction of the Episcopal Church. Is what you stand for a “conservative” viewpoint, or do you see it in a different light?

Bishop Robert Duncan: My understanding is that it’s simply what the gospel says, and that it is what the mainstream of Christianity has always held. All of the great Christian traditions, all of the major streams of Christianity would teach precisely what we teach on these issues. And again, it’s what the ages have always taught as well.

So, is this conservative? Well, it is conserving. And, of course, Christianity is a revealed religion. It’s not a religion that keeps unfolding.

We have the “word made flesh” as a definite center point in history, into which and from which and at the end of which all things must submit and against which must be judged. That incarnate Word also has inspired, through the Holy Spirit, the revealed word, and all we’re doing is saying, “Well, this is what the revealed word says.”

Our Sunday Visitor: I’ve read that some of the more “progressive” elements within the Episcopal Church are very critical about you and your work for doctrinal realignment. What words would you offer in response to such criticism?

Bishop Robert Duncan: Well, the harshest of this criticism began in the fall of 2003, after I led 20 other bishops to stand before our triennial synod and protest that the action the convention had taken had departed from the mainstream of the Christian faith.

When I stood, and led others to stand that fall, the Lord gave me a passage from my local synod, which was taken from 1 Corinithians 16, the 13th and 14th verses, where St. Paul says, “Be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong,” and then he says, “Let everything you do be done in love.”

And for those who would stand, the New Testament is utterly consistent. Folks often criticize me for breaking the unity of the Church, and they often quote John 17. In fact, if you look at this chapter of John, it says exactly what these two verses in 1 Corinthians say. It says that Jesus is consecrated in the truth, and in the truth people will be one. So, it’s always truth and love. And it’s not just love and it’s not just truth.

Our Sunday Visitor: How do you respond when people accuse you of dividing the church?

Bishop Robert Duncan: It’s rather like a father in a family who confronts a teenager who’s acting out. And what the other members of the family say is, “Dad, don’t be so hard, you’re dividing our family.” It’s a bizarre argument, but it appeals to the modern heart and mind because it gives the modern heart and mind precisely what it wants.

That is to say, “We ought to be able to do what we want to do.” And the modern Church has no doctrine of sin and no sense of boundaries. So, I divide the church by simply saying: “Well, sin is what human beings are wired to do and from which they’ve been delivered, and the father actually has boundaries, rules and a way he wants us to live because he’s designed and called us to live that way. It’s what’s best for us.”

The other criticism that gets made is that we’re just worked up over sex. That’s not it at all. We’re actually worked up over what scripture says, and in every regard. We’ve been lax about allowing remarriages after divorce. We’ve been lax on what scripture clearly says about human life and its sanctity. We take those positions in morality because of what the word says. Because of what the Lord said. And that’s the same thing that Catholics have always done.

Our Sunday Visitor: For Catholics, the church’s doctrines are clearly defined for the faithful by the church. We know the doctrines of the faith as they are handed on to us by the popes and the magisterium. Would you comment on the basis of the authority for those in the Episcopal Church?

Bishop Robert Duncan: For Anglicans, tradition helps us to understand Scripture, but scripture is the ultimate authority, and Anglicanism as a result of [the Council of] Trent also factored in human reason.

That is to say that God had given men and women the ability to think and understand, and that reason should also be applied to the plain sense of scripture and of how you coordinate scripture and tradition as you try to live it in the present.

That understanding – that scripture is the ultimate rule and standard, mediated by tradition and by human reason – has stood intact until the very recent sort of postmodern assault where truth and words mean what you want them to mean. In fact, in the Episcopal Church now, it would be said that reason and human experience is the trump. Not scripture or tradition. And so we’re in midst of this vast battle because the basis of authority has been so altered.

Our Sunday Visitor: Many Catholic observers see your strong stance in favor of traditional values as a bridge between the more conservative Anglican community and the Catholic Church. In what way is this common ground a bridge to ecumenical dialogue?

Bishop Robert Duncan: Well, absolutely. One of the greatest encouragements, people still speak of it, to us as we began this movement came in the fall of 2003 when then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote to us, to a meeting of almost 3,000 Episcopalians gathered in Plano, Texas, and he wrote from Rome saying, “We are watching you, our brothers, you who are standing against these innovations are standing with us.”

When the cardinal became Pope Benedict XVI, the letter was hung in our office. We’ve also had approaches from the Russian Orthodox Church who historically were very tied to Anglicans and very much wanting to work with Anglicans. And they’ve actually broken off all relations with the Episcopal Church, but they have asked that we enter into a process of beginning to restore relationships with them.

The only way to unity is unity in Christ, and the nearer you get to what Christ teaches the nearer you get to each other. The farther you get from what Christ teaches, the farther you get from each other.

So, our standing in this way has brought not only the kind of intercession for us that I spoke of earlier, but also actual initiatives between us that have increased our mutual respect and understanding.

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Mike Sullivan writes from Ohio for Our Sunday Visitor.