This is a challenge to the leadership of The Episcopal Church, concerning how to be Church when the assumptions about the State prove inadequate or untrue. The preface to the Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer states, “…when in the course of Divine Providence, these American States became independent with respect to civil government, their ecclesiastical independence was necessarily included; and the different religious denominations of Christians in these States were left at full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective Churches, and forms of worship, and discipline, in s ..read more

 GAFCON HAS BEEN LED ASTRAY GAFCON IV, a conference of “1,302 delegates from 52 countries, including 315 bishops, 456 other clergy and 531 laity” adopted a “Commitment” statement supported byu the GSFA (the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches). This “Committment” proposes to renounce the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury as “an instrument of unity,”  and to “reset” the Anglican Communion.  The writers: The drafting committee for the Kilgali Statement consists of ten people, six of whom are from the west/ north (Australian, UK, Irish or US)  and white. Three ar ..read more

After the Lambeth Conference in 2022 I wrote an article titled, “GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship wants to capture the flag. Let’s not play the game.”  It is a long and Anglican nerd sort of title, but the point was clear. GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship wanted then to take leadership of the Anglican Communion out of the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Anglican Primates (four very different elements of what was thought of as “unity” within the Anglican Communion) and instead have a different sort of lea ..read more

  THE SOUND OF SILENCE: HAITI AND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. The Episcopal Church of Haiti, the Episcopal Church diocese in Haiti, has, by some counting, the largest number of baptized members of any diocese in the Episcopal Church. Often this is mentioned in the same paragraph that observes that the Episcopal Church is present in 16 countries.  There is considerable pride by some in the fact that the Diocese of Haiti is both a sign of mission action that worked, and a sign of the international character of The Episcopal Church. With all that pride, it is damning that the budget for su ..read more

In the Days of Covid I have been trying to call to mind the reality of the deaths we as a country have absorbed. How can we envision what half a million looks like, or 600 thousand? The numbers keep rising.  When the New York Times listed 1000 of the first 100,000 deaths it termed the losses “incalculable.” That number seemed so large back in May of 2020. Since then we have multiplied that number by six. And with the passing of time we have reimaged and recalculated again and again. When we reach 670,000, as we surely will,  one out of every 500 people in the US will have died from C ..read more

Haiti, among the largest of Episcopal Church Dioceses, ought to be a source of news and interest in the whole church.  Instead there seems to be very little interest in either the Church of Haiti  or the social context in which it finds itself. It comes into focus only when it is a proof-text for the inclusiveness and international character of The Episcopal Church (see, we are an international church, and our largest diocese is Haiti) or when we inadvertently (or perhaps on purpose) support the trope that Haiti, “the poorest country in the western hemisphere,” is incapable of self ..read more

A BURNING PATIENCE   Sermon 2 Advent, 2002, St. Peter’s Church, Lewes, Delaware. Mark Harris   Dear Ones: Consider this a letter to you, fellow travelers in this strange world. I’m reading this aloud, of course because we are together on internet streaming, but it’s a letter none the less.  I haven’t preached to and in an in person congregation for some months.    I write knowing that many of you are doing so much to help in these times.  I sense sometimes that you must be exhausted.  I know that some close to me are really tired, tired from ha ..read more

 After the Pandemic  “The Church is open, even when the church is closed.” We in the Episcopal Church in Delaware have found that nothing, not even a pandemic, can keep the love of God in Jesus Christ from being present and real.  That’s a powerful learning!   Plans for how we re-emerge from stay-at-home rules are already in place. We will come back with new skills, new appreciation of how we are “body”, and new challenges.  What will our return  ..read more

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