Yes, I am. No, you're not.

I remember the arguments we had as children. "Yes, I am." "No, you're not." Ad infinitum. Maybe it was about whether you were in the top reading group in 4th grade. May be it was about whether you lived in the right neighborhood. What ever.

As a child it was very frustrating to "know" you were right, but to be told confidently by the other (with a smirk perhaps) that you were not. You wanted them to admit they were wrong, that they were only pretending in order to get your goat.

That's the way it is in the Anglican Communion these days. Who is in the Anglican Communion? Some people say they are even though their bishop is not invited to Lambeth. Or they are in the United States but not members of the Episcopal Church. Some people might decide I'm an apostate and say I'm not an Anglican for that reason.

No one can deny anyone their fantasy, or pretended fantasy that they are members of the Anglican Communion. It's not as if we have to swear allegiance the Archbishop of Canterbury or something. Maybe that's a good thing, I don't know.

But what it means is that there's no need for anyone to set up an alternative worldwide Anglican Communion. There's no point. We can all believe there's a man behind the walls of Lambeth who agrees with us. Or even if he comes out and says no he disapproves of you or me, we can ignore him. Whether you're in the Anglican Communion is all in your mind. And when that's so no one can exclude anyone from membership.

There's a new sheriff in town

And some of the boys in purple don't like it.

Check out the photo of the sheriff.

Source of the quotation, "there's a new sheriff in town."

Our Rowan he sent Howe a letter

By now you've probably seen or know where to find a copy of the email letter the Archbishop of Canterbury sent to Bishop Howe who heads up the Diocese of Central Florida. But I'm going to post it here with my comments interspersed. The ABC's letter is in italics.

14 October 2007

Dear John

I've just received your message, which weighs very heavily on my heart, as it must - though far more so - on yours.

Heavy hearted because a substantial number of churches in the diocese are contemplating leaving the diocese.

At this stage, I can say only two things. The first is that I have committed myself very clearly to awaiting the views of the Primates before making any statement purporting to settle the question of The Episcopal Church's status, and I can't easily short-circuit that procedure. The second is that your Rectors need to recognize that this process is currently in train and that a separatist decision from them at this point would be irresponsible and potentially confusing.

He's referring here to the recently concluded House of Bishops statement and the process he's set in place to review whether that response is adequate. The process to my understanding is not fully articulated but the next signpost in view is for the primate responses (and other ACC member responses) due late this month. I would be surprised if he saying that a decision is imminent or that he's concluded even who exactly has the authority to make such a decision.

However, without forestalling what the Primates might say, I would repeat what I've said several times before - that any Diocese compliant with Windsor remains clearly in communion with Canterbury and the mainstream of the Communion, whatever may be the longer-term result for others in The Episcopal Church. The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such.

To paraphrase: "I'm saying nothing new. If your diocese is Windsor Compliant you are Anglican regardless of the fate of The Episcopal Church." I had not realized that this was the status quo under which we were operating. You'd certainly not get that impression from Bob Duncan, or from Martyn Minns. Why does one need to go seek another harbor if the ABC himself is giving you safe harbor (the Diocese of Virginia is Windsor Compliant, no?)?

This status quo, though, undermines the ability of a national church to cohere. What incentive do dioceses have to stay in dialog with each other, to listen to each other,to be mutually forebearing towards each other - to pay their dues - if they can opt out of the national church and still be Anglican? Is that what is implied?

Those who are rushing into separatist solutions are, I think, weakening that basic conviction of Catholic theology and in a sense treating the provincial structure of The Episcopal Church as if it were the most important thing - which is why I continue to hope and pray for the strengthening of the bonds of mutual support among those Episcopal Church Bishops who want to be clearly loyal to Windsor. Action that fragments their Dioceses will not help the consolidation of that all-important critical mass of ordinary faithful Anglicans in The Episcopal Church for whose nurture I am so much concerned. Breaking this up in favour of taking refuge in foreign jurisdictions complicates and embitters the future for this vision.

A criticism of those rectors cum churches who leave their dioceses. A criticism, too, of Common Cause bishops who have one foot out the door with their dioceses. And a criticism of foreign Primates offering harbor. (Notice: They're not Windsor Compliant. Hmmm.)

Do feel free to pass on these observations to your priests.

Translation: "I'm about to wrap this up. And I should say something tender. Oh, but here's another thought as I'm getting in touch with my feeling side...."

I should feel a great deal happier, I must say, if those who are most eloquent for a traditionalist view in the United States showed a fuller understanding of the need to regard the Bishop and the Diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the 'national church'. I think that if more thought in these terms there might be more understanding of why priests in a diocese such as yours ought to maintain their loyalty to their sacramental communion with you as Bishop.

He's reiterating his core point about ecclesial identity. But then he throws in the phrase "abstract reality of the 'national church'." There's been much buzzing on the web about what that means. As in, isn't the Anglican Communion a communion of national provinces? Perhaps he means 'national church' isn't Biblical; nor of course then is the Church of England. Nor is the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the Pope. Nor the Primates! Or is he saying something specific about the organizational design of The Episcopal Church? My guess is, no. But it's only a guess.

But at the emotional level I can understand something of the frustration they doubtless experience, just as you must.

With continuing prayers and love,

+Rowan

Ok, I'm done. Stick a fork in it.

Pillories in NYC?

The Ecubishop writes:

Where I live, in New York, we bishops will be pilloried if we make any concessions in a conservative direction. An 815 staff person walked out on Katharine Jefferts Schori after she reported on General Convention Resolution B033. It was too conservative.

Yes, that's part of the problem. You're being pilloried by your own staff? It may be uncomfortable to take a stand that someone close to you abhors so much that they walk out on you. But that's why you're getting paid the big bucks.

WSJ: US dissidents go global

Andrew Higgins writes this page one article in this Wall Street Journal of September 20th. The topic is the relationship of those who have left the Episcopal Church and the African bishops who have taken them in.

Like many WSJ stories it is gives one some of the color of the story at the cost of not covering all points of view about these boundary crossings.

Here are some excerpts:

The Rev. John Guernsey, rector of a church in a middle-class Virginia suburb, stood early this month before thousands of Africans here on a rickety, ribbon-bedecked podium. Clutching a wooden staff in his left hand, he shouted in Runyankole, a local tribal language: "Mukama Asimwe!" -- Praise the Lord!

Mr. Guernsey, 54 years old, had reason to rejoice. A defector from America's Episcopal Church, he had just been made a bishop -- by the Church of Uganda.

"I had no idea that this is what God had in store for me," said the bespectacled Virginia priest after a five-hour consecration ceremony in Mbarara, a Ugandan district best known for its long-horned cattle.

Mr. Guernsey represents a religious byproduct of globalization: A small but growing number of Christians in North America are turning to developing countries in Africa and elsewhere for spiritual direction. Some priests call the phenomenon "theological offshoring."
...
More than 200 American churches have relocated their spiritual guidance offshore, switching allegiance to more conservative Anglican churches in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Bolivia and Argentina. No longer part of the Episcopal hierarchy, they report to overseas leaders and follow the more orthodox theology espoused by their new foreign base.

Some of these are new churches created by dissident Episcopalians. Others are established parishes that bolted from the Episcopal Church.
...
Mr. Guernsey is now back at his All Saints' Church in the Virginia suburb of Woodbridge. The Episcopal diocese to which he used to belong now has three resident bishops in its territory. One was named by the Episcopal Church. Then there are the Uganda-ordained Mr. Guernsey, and the Nigeria-appointed Mr. Minns. Each has the accoutrements of a bishop -- a purple shirt, flowing red vestments and a special ring.
...
Uganda "is certainly very different" from Woodbridge, says Mr. Guernsey, who first visited Africa as a student. The average family income of around $54,000 a year in Virginia is 154 times that of $350 in Mbarara. But the African country's church is in tune with the Bible-based spirit of his Virginia parish, says Mr. Guernsey. "This is about fundamental issues of scripture that won't go away." Homosexual acts, for instance, are illegal in Uganda, where politicians and priests denounce them as Satanic.
...
After Uganda's independence from Britain in 1962, the church served as a rare pillar of stability in a country tormented by coups, war and economic collapse. In 1977, the dictator Idi Amin, a Muslim, had Uganda's Anglican archbishop murdered.

Which begs raises the question, where is the wisdom in the church in Uganda devoting its energy to persecution of homosexuals rather than building up the poor? Thanks to the Wall Street Journal for raising the issue.

False: "200 of the 7000 congregations in The Episcopal Church have opted out"

Just because you read it in The Times today doesn't make it so. Here's the offending sentence,

More than 200 of the 7,000 Episcopal congregations in the US have opted out of the covenant.

When the Washington Post made the same error back in June epiScope was there to correct the record,

There's no hard evidence presented to back it up, for one good reason: not all, or even most, of those congregations--however many there are--ever were TEC congregations.

Standing Firm offers a primer on document and computer security

Last week major two documents of the Anglican Dissident Network fell into enemy hands.

The first, "Agonizing Journey," was a public document attributed to Archbishop Akinola. The text of this document was originally made public on the Church of Nigeria website, obstensibly as a letter to Akinola's bishops. It was, however, clearly meant for wider distribution. What fell into enemy hands was the electronic version of the document in a format that allowed the Church Times to track changes and draw the plausible conclusion that much of the document was written by Martyn Minns. Both Standing Firm and Titus 1:9 played this discovery as much ado about nothing.

The second was the draft of a document left on a public computer at Camp Allen during the recent meeting there of Windsor bishops. The letter was addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, giving him the Windsor bishops' opinion of how he should handle his meeting with the House of Bishops in late September. The letter was designed to "manipulate" him if you will. (The public stance after the meeting was rather more humble.)

In a post at Stand Firm, Greg Griffith has now (1) given credence to the provenance of this second letter and (2) undercuts his own assertion that the authorship of "Agonizing Journey" is of no consequence. The post, "A Computer, Data and Communications Security Primer," contains this (... in the original):

Harris doesn't identify the bishop. Who wrote a letter on a publicly-available computer at Camp Allen.

And didn't save it.

Didn't delete it.

Just left it there.

For anyone to see.

Pardon me for a moment while I scream.

...

OK, there. All better now.

No, wait. One more scream.

...

...

OK, really better now.

This is perhaps the most boneheaded move I've read about in months. I don't know who the bishop was, although it's a good bet I know him, respect him, and am personally fond of him.

Still... what in the world were you thinking, bishop???

This falls completely outside the realm of not knowing about email headers, or document headers, or even the "track changes" feature. It falls squarely into the category of leaving your open briefcase full of private correspondence, or a large stack of cash, on a table and walking off. Unless the bishop left the letter on the computer as part of a cunningly devised scheme the genius of which I've simply been unable to discern, this should go down in the annals of bonehead history.

Lisa Fox shares similar thoughts to mine.

Denominational fecundity, conversion, and apostasy

I read today that:

The conservative denominations have grown more than the mainline denominations in large part because they have higher fertility, and that has given them a growth advantage. But part of conservative growth is attributable to the recent decrease in conservatives' rate of switching to mainline denominations. While the diminished influx has hurt the mainline denominations, it has not necessarily helped the conservative ones. That is because conservative denominations are losing the same fraction of their young people as they were losing 30-50 years ago; intergenerational persistence has not increased for conservative denominations. People leaving conservative denominations have just changed their destination after a switch. Conservatives used to switch to mainline denominations; recently they have chosen other religions (especially Catholicism but also some of the "other" religions) and no religion more often than they have chosen the mainline denominations.

-Michael Hout; Andrew Greeley; Melissa J. Wilde

Blogsite amplifies Church's cyber voice

Episcopal News Service provides a nice review, "Episcopal Café serves up nourishing spiritual food online." Try it, you'll like it.

I liked this bit the most:

The Café offers accessibility, Shott believes, like "a youth baseball game where people gather and talk about the real events in their lives, about what to do about an aging parent, or surgery, or some pressing deep consideration. I can't tell you how many of these conversations I've had. I look around the group and say 'boy, they don't know anything about the Episcopal Church, where are we?' This is where the church needs to be."

Episcopalians, Unitarians and Reformed Jews

Although the Episcopal Church is often considered part of the U.S. "Protestant establishment," a study of moral valuing across a national sample (Wood and Hughes 1984) found that Episcopalians formed a constellation with Unitarians and Reform Jews that stood separate from any other group of Christians. Because these two groups share with Episcopalians significant overrepresentation among elites today, this strongly suggests that the social status component operates in shaping life values.

—William H. Swatos, Jr .

Woods and Hughes write,

In order to develop a dummy variable representing conservative religion, we used data from the General Social Surveys. Looking first at GSS samples for years not containing the pornography items, we examined the relationship between religion and a variety of attitudes (e.g. sexism, sexual behavior, abortion, tolerance) reflecting social conservatism. We found a consistent pattern that Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and "other" Protestants (not Episcopal) were the most conservative. Those in the "other" category, largely fundamentalist, were found consistently to be the most conservative, the strongest believers, and the most frequent church attenders. We also found that persons indicating they were Jewish, Episcopal, did not have a religion, or were in some other religion (i.e., other than those mentioned here) were the most "liberal" on these issues. We then looked at a variety of issues among samples in survey years in which the pornography items had been asked, and found the same pattern.

My emphasis.

Myths and realities in the history of the Episcopal Church

The latest Church Times has a useful article about the history of the Episcopal Church. There are some things here to ponder:

The Episcopal Church in the newly independent United States made a virtue of necessity, and repudiated the state connection when it no longer had it anyway.

So much for the myth: the historical reality is that Episcopalians have performed a crucial part in witnessing to the common faith of the Church. Its eucharistic liturgy remains notable for its fidelity to the Early Church. Its involvement of laity in the governance of the Church after independence was a critical model in the revival of synodical government throughout the Anglican Communion.

The Episcopal Church revived “missionary bishops”, who went ahead of settlers rather than following them. These likewise became the model for the expansion of the Church in the British Empire.

American and Canadian bishops essentially forced the calling of the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 on a reluctant Archbishop Longley. They wanted to have their say on the theological developments represented by Essays and Reviews and by Bishop Colenso’s denial of the historicity of the Pentateuch. (They condemned them.)
The Americans also freely criticised the authority of the civil courts and the Privy Council over doctrinal disputes within the Church of England. All the time, they harked back to the model of the Primitive Church. English churchmen were resentful of colonials’ telling them how to run their Church.

Today, the issues are different and the roles are reversed. Now it is the American bishops who resist claims of reciprocal obligation. They resent the insistence that unless we are interdependent and mutually accountable, our Communion is meaningless.

Primatial creep explained :: Loren Mead

Posted at The Episcopal Majority is Loren Mead's letter on state-side primatial creep:

I come from the branch of the Episcopal Church that knows that our constitution was not shaped by the federal Constitution (the way all the confirmation classes insist), but by the form of government the United States had when the Church constitution was produced: "The Articles of Confederation." So our constitution doesn't really have an executive branch (or president); its focus is in legislative authority that is bicameral – with only vestigial executive and afterthought judicial powers, and no provision for a president or for "national" taxation or rules. So we provided for a presiding officer for each of our legislative branches, but the presiding bishop has no authority in any diocese, and can only act in a diocese by the authority of the diocesan bishop.
...
I think it was in John Hines' time that "primatial creep" set in. The instrument was the General Convention Special Program (GCSP). ... You'll remember the fireworks and anxiety about national staff "interfering" with dioceses (especially dioceses in the South where racial issues were painful and keen). Primatial creep is not my name for what happened to the Presiding Bishop – but for what happened to the House of Bishops. The House of Bishops had to work with conflict between dioceses and 815. (By now it had been built. Remember, it was 1963 when it was finished and we actually had national staff located in one place.)That – in my opinion – was when the House of Bishops first began usurping the power of the bicameral legislative process that was in our constitution.

Emphases in the original.

Take The Lead

There's a new blog in town. Take a look at The Lead here.

The Lead is one of several blogs at the Episcopal Café. More about the just-opened Episcopal Café here.

The blogs at Episcopal Café:

• The Lead covers news items of the day of interest to an Episcopalian audience
• The Daily Episcopalian provides a daily essay or editorial often on or about the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
• Speaking to the Soul "includes sermons, reflections, multimedia meditations and excerpts from books on spirituality."
• Art Blog

Drop in today and take a peek around the place. We are just getting started.

We? Full disclosure: I will be serving on The Lead and on the editorial board of Episcopal Café. More about the contributors here.

Episcopal Café is frankly evangelical, following in the footsteps of The Four Evangelists.

Archbishop of Canterbury announces he will meet with Episcopal Church

Excerpting from Episcopal Life:

Speaking in a news conference in Toronto, Williams said he would make the visit together with members of the Standing Committee of the Primates, of which Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is a member, and the Anglican Consultative Council.
...
Williams said the meeting will take place during the House of Bishops' previously scheduled fall gathering in New Orleans September 20-25.

"I am glad that he has accepted this invitation, and I know the other bishops will be glad, as well," Jefferts Schori told ENS in an interview following Williams' announcement. "We look forward to a conversation together in September."

Jefferts Schori said that she has received replies from some members of the Joint Standing Committee indicating their plans to attend. Replies from other members are still pending at this time, she said.

This will be the first time Williams has met with the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops or attended a meeting of any of the church's leadership bodies such as General Convention or Executive Council.
...
Jefferts Schori has underscored in earlier interviews that the House of Bishops' resolution inviting the Archbishop of Canterbury to meet with them was passed unanimously.

The article includes this reminder:

In their communiqué, the Primates also gave the House of Bishops, via a response from Jefferts Schori, until September 30 to agree to "make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorise any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention" and "confirm that the passing of Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention means that a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion."

The Spring House of Bishops meeting

In glorious detail as told by Bishop Kelsey (Northern Michigan). It's lengthy but well worth reading in its entirity. If you want a digest see Jim Naughton's selection.

Among the points Kelsey covers:

1. How the coalition formed that supported Resolutions 1 and 2. Including how reports by TEC's Covenant design group representatives, including Ephraim Radner, influenced the dynamic at the HoB of the coalition.

2. The floor debate and amendments to the resolutions.

3. Report of a meeting of American bishops and Rowan Williams subsequent to the Primates meeting.

4. Report of an insider's view of the Primates meeting.

5. Notes on the report by the Property Disputes Committee.

Quote of the day :: Ephraim Radner

Quote:

Because the Primates – as those asked to respond to the threats against this Anglican vocation – have offered together a way forward, I believe it is best to follow this way as far as one can from within the position God has placed us – in this case, Americans within TEC. How do this, if TEC’s own bishops as a group have rejected this way?

i. Those bishops who do not in fact share the “mind” of the House of Bishops, must say so openly and separate themselves from that mind; they must have a different mind, a mind that is at one with the larger church’s.

ii. They must respond positively to the Primates’ request, by publicly acceding to their recommendations, both in word and deed: clarifying their own commitments on matters under dispute, and following through with the request to gather and nominate a Primatial Vicar to a Pastoral Council – now seemingly capable of being made up only of 3 persons, given TEC’s refusal to participate. What the Council does with this rests in their hands; but “communion-minded” American bishops must at least do their part.

iii. Individual congregations and clergy and laity within TEC should encourage Communion-minded bishops to this work, by urging them forward and committing themselves to the Pastoral Scheme as it unfolds under the direction of the Communion and the Communion-minded. Such a commitment could be given in a number of ways, but it should be done openly and clearly.

iv. Communion-minded bishops and their supporters may indeed face sanctions from the official structures of the TEC – other bishops, the legal offices of 815 and the Executive Council. This will represent the practical side of the conflict now upon us. But be of good cheer – He has overcome the world.

v. We must in all things act together, and not apart. Shall there perhaps be a moment on October 1st when we shall stand as one mind and one heart? But if this is to happen, the choices we make today must move in this direction and not another.

-Ephraim Radner

My emphasis. It reads to me as an open call for secession from TEC with the aspiration of the "Communion-minded" being recognized as the Anglican Communion's recognized affiliate in the USA. Refreshingly open. Read also my related quote of the day of March 24th by Sarah Hey. Hey and Radner are on the same page in seeing the Pastoral Scheme as an instrument for division. No doubt the House of Bishops signaled the same opinion of the scheme by rejecting it.

Jim Naughton doubts the opening premise, "the Primates – as those asked to respond to the threats against this Anglican vocation – have offered together a way forward [by recommending formation of a Primatial Council]."

You can't take it with you

UPDATE: Outline of the charges against Armstrong here.

Casper Star-Tribune reports:

Colorado's largest Episcopal church was left in chaos after leaders voted to leave the denomination and the bishop responded by dismissing the parish's leadership.The controversy at Colorado Springs' Grace Episcopal Church and St. Stephen's Parish is the latest to roil the Episcopal Church following the national denomination's acceptance of homosexuality.

The vestry of Grace Church and St. Stephen's Parish on Monday voted to bolt from the national church and instead join a conservative Anglican church based in Nigeria.But Bishop Robert O'Neill rejected the move, dismissing the local leaders and saying the Colorado Springs parish would remain part of the Episcopal Church.

"The fact is people may leave the Episcopal Church but parishes cannot," O'Neill said in a statement.The church's longtime rector, the Rev. Donald Armstrong III, who was suspended for allegedly mishandling funds, said O'Neill no longer has jurisdiction over the parish."He doesn't have an army. The courts will not interfere in an internal church dispute and the congregation is solidly behind us," Armstrong said.

Beckett Stokes, a spokeswoman for the Colorado diocese, said church law states that all parish property and assets are held in trust for the diocese. She declined to comment on Armstrong's reaction.

The leaders of Grace and St. Stephen's voted to join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a missionary diocese of the Church of Nigeria led by Archbishop Peter J. Akinola.

Colorado Springs Gazette:

The Colorado diocese responded Monday by claiming that the local parish is forbidden by Episcopal law from leaving the denomination, even if some members decide to. The diocese asserted its rights to the historic downtown church building, valued at $17 million. Even though the vestry no longer recognizes the authority of Colorado Bishop Robert O’Neill, he removed them from office and said he’d be in touch with parishioners about how to proceed with worship and protecting church assets after the disruption.

From the Diocese (pdf):

This action, taken by the vestry in consultation with Father Armstrong (still a priest of the Episcopal Church under inhibition by the Bishop), has been taken unilaterally and has no canonical or constitutional grounding or effect. "The fact is that people may leave the Episcopal Church but parishes cannot," Bishop O’Neill stated. "Grace and Saint Stephen’s Church remains a parish of The Episcopal Diocese of Colorado and will continue to be so for any and all who desire to be members of The Episcopal Church."

Quote of the day :: Sarah Hey

But on the other side of that aspect of holding up the standard was -- hard upon its heels, so to speak -- the looming "rear guard effort" of the Pastoral Council, the "structures for pastoral care", and the Primatial Vicar. That trinity of interlocking pieces was to care for those individuals, clergy, parishes, and dioceses who wished to remain within the Anglican Communion, yet were unable to continue in their present oversight circumstances due to their bishop's inability to accept the Windsor Report.

That trinity of pastoral actions by the primates was like a looming Damocles sword to every bishop who had assumed, in that Golden Episcopal Past, that if he or she violated the boundaries of the Windsor Report and of orthodoxy, there would be no place for Episcopalians in his or her diocese to go, while remaining within the Anglican Communion.

And the key word that seemed to me so shocking and important in the Tanzania Communique was the word "individuals". Not even the Network allowed individuals to partake of its ecclesial structure.

What did this mean? It meant that if a group of Episcopalians was stuck in a massively heterodox diocese and parishes, surrounded on all sides, if they could find one another, organize, plan, act together -- they could appeal as individuals to the Pastoral Council and form parishes. They could be within the Anglican Communion together, as an entity. It meant that every entity within the Episcopal church -- priest, bishop, diocese, parish, and individual -- could be cared for within the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal church.

It was a monster-beautiful plan, from my perspective. It meant that every traditional Episcopalian could, with the hard work of blood, sweat, and tears -- showing some enterprise, courage, commitment, and energy -- plant parishes, form associations, be together, and enjoy the benefits and order of the Anglican Communion.

-Sarah Hey

Source

What The Bishops Didn’t Do :: Bishop Epting

The three resolutions passed by the HoB are momentous and clear. But it is important to reflect on what the bishops did not do. Bishop Epting tells us:

What we did NOT do was to foreclose discussion on the Episcopal Church’s response to the main requests of the Primates’ Communique. We have not “ruled” on whether or not to reassure the Primates that General Convention meant what it said when it asked us and our Standing Committees not to give consent to any bishop-elect whose manner of life might prove of concern to the wider Anglican Communion and to clarify for them the status of the blessing of same-sex relationships in this church.
...
What the Episcopal Church’s bishops did not do is claim some kind of prelacy like the Primates have done, and to act in a high handed manner not permissable under the polity of either the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion.

Episcopal Life Online has more:

"We did not talk about gay bishops or same sex blessings," Jefferts Schori said in response to one question. "We did not begin to respond to the Primates' communiqué in that area."

Sisk said there was no discussion on a moratorium that the Primates have demanded. They want the Episcopal Church not to consider openly gay or lesbian clergy for the episcopate and for bishops not to authorize blessings of same-gender relationships. A deadline of September 30 has been set for the bishops to respond.

Sisk said a statement in one resolution, approved by the bishops that all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of the church "was not intended to signal anything more than what it says. We did not discuss the moratorium," he said. "That issue did not surface."

Bishops Speak About Their Meeting :: telling beads

telling beads is keeping an updated comprehensive list of links, Bishops Speak About Their Meeting.