Minneapolis Statement (September 2019)

We, Communion Partner Bishops present at the House of Bishops meeting in Minneapolis in September 2019, offer greetings to the Church in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God for our time together as a House of Bishops, and for the opportunity for fellowship in Christ.

In light of that fellowship, we note with great concern the disciplinary action now moving forward against our brother, Bishop Bill Love. We stand in solidarity with him. We are dismayed that latitude is extended to some in the enforcement of canons, but not to others. We continue to seek adaptive solutions to the current difficulty that will ensure a lasting path forward for mutual flourishing.

In our discussions at this meeting of the Lambeth Conference in 2020, we have also noted the anticipated absence of a great number of bishops from the Global South on account of invitations extended to the bishops of the Episcopal Church. This reality grieves us. We pledge ourselves to be present at the Conference, in all humility, as listeners and learners with our brothers and sisters across the Anglican Communion.

We commend the multilingual open letter released on the Feast of the Ascension 2019 by a group of Anglican bishops from around the world expressing hope for a Lambeth Conference “built on common faith and marked by charity as an occasion of hope for ourselves and for the world” (https://edod.org/resources/articles/the-lambeth-we-hope-for/).

The Rt. Rev. Lloyd Allen
Bishop of Honduras

The Rt. Rev. John C. Bauerschmidt
Bishop of Tennessee

The Rt. Rev. Gregory O. Brewer
Bishop of Central Florida

The Rt. Rev. Francisco Duque-Gómez
Bishop of Colombia

The Rt. Rev. Daniel H. Martins
Bishop of Springfield

The Rt. Rev. Moises Quezada Mota
Bishop of the Dominican Republic

The Rt. Rev. Michael G. Smith
Assistant Bishop of Dallas

The Rt. Rev. George R. Sumner
Bishop of Dallas