These few paragraphs from the Episcopal Life Online report on the enthronement of the new Sudanese primate the Most Rev. Daniel Deng Bul caught our eye:
Archbishops Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya and Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, along with bishops and priests representing many of the Anglican Communion’s 38 provinces, were led in procession by a marching band and massed choir that included a troupe of trumpeters from the Sudanese Diocese of Yei.
An ecumenical delegation from the U.S.-based Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) included Episcopal Diocese of Chicago Assisting Bishop Victor Scantlebury, officially representing Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori; the Rt. Rev. Francis Gray, former assistant bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and diocesan of Northern Indiana; the Rev. Howard Wennes, retired ELCA bishop of the Grand Canyon Synod and interim president of California Lutheran University; and the Rev. Duane Danielson, ELCA bishop of the North Dakota Synod.
Representing the Diocese of Virginia, which is among the seven Episcopal Church dioceses in the U.S. that share a companion relationship with ECS, was Bishop Coadjutor Shannon Johnston; Buck Blanchard, world mission coordinator; and Russ Randle, lay deputy to General Convention.
The Kenyan and Rwandan archbishops each support breakaway congregations in the United States. Neither will take Communion with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church. Yet, there they were at Archbishop Deng’s consecration with representatives of the Episcopal Church.
This is all to the good. Indeed, it is cause for celebration. But if Archbishops Nzimbi and Kolini are sometimes willing to commune with Episcopalians and sometimes not, if they are sometimes willing to take part in Communion affairs and on Anglican Communion panels with Episcopalians and sometimes not, it does prompt certain questions about the nature of the schism that some of their supporters in the United States and the United Kingdom keep proclaiming has already taken place. Is the schism “on” when political advantage can be gained by playing to the secular media and “off” when it is time to get about the business of ministry in desperate places like Sudan?
There is more on the Episcopal Church’s relationship with the Church in Sudan here.
UPDATE. Check out the photos at the Diocese of Virginia website.