House of Bishops

It has its use and I think actu- and he does, you know, but it's not, um, he doesn't insist on it.

I mean, it's interesting that at the, at the s- advertisement at the end of the first book of homilies, which was written by the c- the House of Bishops, sanctioned by them, they do use the Augsburg formula, which was picked up from later in four, but picked up by Augsburg, in with and under the form of bread and wine.

If that phrase was said some ultra Zwinglian phrase, the Zwinglians definitely would've latched onto it, I mean today.

Mm-hmm.

It took me a couple more years and really talking with this, um, priest scholar Blake Johnson, who you should definitely also have on this podcast.

Mm-hmm.

Um, uh, his work on deaconesses that really then also illuminated my mind of like, you know, showing that, you know, the ordination of the Philadelphia 11, the 11 women who were ordained to the priesthood without any consent of the House of Bishops in 1974.

Yep.

Unfortunately, Bishop Spalding died just a few months later, struck down right here on South Temple at E Street by one of the few automobiles in Salt Lake City at the time.

And so it was time for the House of Bishops to find a new bishop, and it seemed not only expeditious, but smart for those bishops to elect Paul Jones as the successor to Spalding.

He was only 34, but the bishops knew that Jones knew the people of Utah.

He knew them well, and he had served them with diligence and compassion and grace.

Those bishops wrote in their findings that they could not agree with Bishop Jones' premise that war is un-Christian.

Bishop Jones wrote in response, "Those conclusions I cannot accept, for I believe that the methods of modern international war are quite incompatible with the Christian principles of reconciliation and brotherhood.

And it is the duty of a bishop of the Church to express himself on questions of righteousness, no matter what opinion may stand in the way." The entire House of Bishops then convened, and the presiding bishop, which is the top leader of the Episcopal Church, who was at the time our own 81-year-old Bishop Tuttle, the first bishop of Utah, agreed Bishop Jones should step aside.

Without apologizing, but sticking to his conviction that war does not align with the Gospel of the Prince of Peace, Bishop Jones resigned.

But they pick and choose scriptures in order to kind of put a patina of faith on that, or they say things that sound faithful, and that becomes confusing and difficult.

So what are we to do in the face of such things? Our house of bishops has called out that particular theology and said specifically, not just that it's a bad theology, but that it's a sin.

We have the reading of the Ten Commandments today, and they said specifically it breaks the first two, that it makes of a particular ideology an idol that is put above the teaching, the love of God and of Jesus.

But what difference does a letter written by the House of Bishops in the Episcopal Church make? And what are we called to do? Are we called to point fingers? To look for bad theology in the world and to collect examples of it and to curse it and send it aside? Jesus had something to say about that.

He said, before you try to pick the speck out of your neighbor's eye, you should remove the log or plank from your own eye, right? Jesus is the one who is the judge, and thank goodness for that, because it's a lot of pressure to be the judge and jury for the world.

Jesus is the one who holds both judgment, but also justice and mercy.

But I do think he was wildly underwhelming at best.

There is a general frustration amongst evangelicals that once a fellow evangelical enters the House of Bishops, there is a secret ceremony in which their spine is removed.

I mean, that's kind of the standard joke.

But going back to what you're saying about kids.

That's actually, it's more technical than that, but it doesn't matter.

While a complaint to the National Safeguarding Team was investigated, his suspension followed the House of Bishops code of practice.

Quote, this included referring the complaint to the police, the church house statement said on Monday.

Lincolnshire police had said in February that a 68 year old man, the Bishop of Lincoln, had been arrested as part of an investigation of an allegation that a man was sexually assaulted.