Fragmentation of the traditionalists

Two voices of conservatism have me wondering if Anglicanism would fly to pieces if conservatives ran show and revisionists were excised from the Communion.

Writing in Church of England News, Andrew Carey writes

Of equal scandal to the theological drift of the Episcopal Church into a kind of uncommitted unitarianism, has been the failure of those who are theologically orthodox to stand firm together in opposing that movement. Individualism and schism has marked the response of American conservatives to their denominational tussles. And I still don’t see how separate Rwandan, Ugandan, Kenyan and Nigerian adventurism on American soil really helps create any kind of solidity around central theological convictions.

Jordan Hylden at First Things goes farther,

And neither will the break be into two groups, one liberal and one conservative. Theological disputes over issues such as women’s ordination and the sacraments (not to mention old nationalistic and racial quarrels) will divide churches even further. Like the rest of Protestantism, Anglicanism will wind up as a confusing and quarrelsome alphabet soup.

And he writes of "Conservative divisions, which have become manifest in recent disputes over the direction of Bishop Duncan’s 'Network'."

Hylden is predicting what the fallout would be if the Episcopal Church does not conform or is not disciplined. Are the conservatives really so divided and undisciplined that without The Episcopal Church to kick around they would go after each other? Can Anglicanism really afford to go without the glue that the Episcopal Church provides? Who will be the first to go and start the unraveling?

Who thinks they possess the truth? Each of them does of course, rather than the alternative which is that each of us possesses a piece of the truth to share which the other. And certainty over the authority of scripture and over doctrine breeds contempt. Which leads, Chris Sugden not to revolution but to schism.

As Graham Kings writes from Fulcrum/Renewing the Evangelical Centre,

These consecrations seem to me to follow a 'Federal Conservative' model of the Anglican Communion rather than a 'Communion Conservative' model.

The supreme irony of this is that they put a higher priority on 'independence' over 'interdependence' just at the crucial time that the model of 'interdependence' is being pressed on The Episcopal Church and its House of Bishops.

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.

To Nigerian Synods on the Journey towards Lambeth 2008

It's worth taking a step back and remembering that the Akinola/Minns letter is addressed "to Nigerian Synods on the Journey towards Lambeth 2008." Many of us taken the letter to be intended for a wider audience. But what if we take it at face value that the letter is intended for the Nigerian Synods? The polemic -- for that is what it is, not a balanced litany of events leading up to Lambeth 2008 -- then is a piece of proganda aimed at stirring up sentiment against The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. At the same time access to information in Nigeria is limited relative to our experience. In short, Akinola seeks to pull the wool other the eyes of the Nigerians synods. He needs to in order to strengthen his base of support in Nigeria.

Yet who is actually writing this polemic to Africans? Martyn Minns.

When Akinola speaks for himself he sounds like this:

Let me also say this: that in our human existence in this world, there was a time Africans were slaves; but we came out of it. But what again followed? Political slavery, under colonial administration. Somehow, we came out of it. Then economic slavery: World Bank, IMF would tell you what to do with your money and your own resources. Now, it is spiritual slavery and we have to resist this. They had us as human slaves, political slaves and economic slaves. They want to come for spiritual slaves. Now we won’t accept it.

Why then does he need Martyn Minns to speak to Church of Nigeria? It smacks of reliance on western advisors, doesn't it?

Also look at what The Rev. Samson N. Gitau has to say in the Living Church. I am most interested in these excerpts:

The colonization of Africa also featured the entry of missionaries evangelizing the new-found world.
...
Even though the missionaries preached love for one another, they did not practice what they preached. As the saying goes, the missionaries “preached water, but drank wine.” This was figuratively as well as literally true. The missionaries also were reluctant to include the indigenous converts in the church leadership. In Kenya, for instance, the first Anglican assistant bishops were consecrated in 1955, more than half a century after Christianity had reached inland.
...
The missionaries’ reluctance to obey the word of God they preached, and their reluctance to include indigenous converts in church leadership led to the formation and proliferation of the so-called independent African churches. These churches broke away from the mainline churches. The locally founded churches coined new names that gave them their African identity such as “the African Brotherhood Church.”

So for the Global South, the saying is true, “once bitten, twice shy.” It must therefore not be a surprise to see the strong reactions from Global South Christians to Western revisionism.

Yet the actions of Akinola are to put more faith in foreign advisors than indigenous bishops, to turn away from the gospel of love, and to threaten to break away from the Anglican Communion.

The Ship God

Glynn Cardy has an opinion piece in today's Guardian that I recommend. An excerpt:

Much of the current Anglican debate is in house. It's a debate between those who want to protect the structure, strengthen the walls and keep foreign winds and doctrines out, and those who want to open the windows and doors to the world and be prepared to change time-honoured methods and doctrines in order to do so. The debate about homosexual clergy and blessings, for example, is largely about how accommodating the church can be without compromising its foundations.

Yet those of us who are pilgrim sailors tire of this debate, not because the issues are unimportant, but because the model is not true to our experience of God, faith and community. A house doesn't move. It isn't meant to. The model assumes that the land won't move either. It is essentially a static model, supportive of the illusion of an unchanging past and a predictable future.

The house God is at best a benevolent host who opens the gates to strangers, welcomes them, and dines with them. God may accommodate the strangers'
suggestions about rearranging the furniture, even knocking a hole in a wall, but the basic structure will remain unchanged. For God in this model is not only the host but also the landlord.

Compare this with the God who is the wind in our sails and the beat in our hearts. The ship God is less interested in structure and hospitality than in those excluded from structure and hospitality. Change is not a threat, inconvenience or prescription, but part of the divine nature. God is the energy of transformative love, and refuses to be tamed.

Read it all here, pilgrim. May pilgrims progress.

Trying to understand the Kenyan move?

Try Nick Knisely's essay over at Daily Episcopalian. You may find it your cup of tea.

Recommended

Kit Carlson's essay today at the Daily Episcopalian:

I wonder why we have roared on past the thoughtful, balanced, relational and wise reflections of the Virginia Report, to make the Windsor Report a club with which to beat up on some members of the Communion. I wonder why we have abandoned discussion of koinonia and the doctrine of the Trinity to craft a Covenant that is neither interdependent nor relational. ...

How can we work through Windsor without understanding and living out the vision of Virginia? How can we craft a Covenant when we have yet to strive for koinonia?

That Covenant Design Group

You have to wonder what their designs are and who their covenant is with.

Flashback:

9th January 2007

The Archbishop of Canterbury today announced the members of the Covenant Design Group that he has appointed in response to a request of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates’ Meeting and of the Anglican Consultative Council.

The group will meet under the chairmanship of the Primate of the West Indies, Archbishop Drexel Gomez, and includes experts in canon law, the nature and mission of the church and ecumenical relations from around the Communion. ...

The members are listed below:


The Most Revd Drexel Gomez, West Indies (1)
The Revd Victor Atta-Baffoe, West Africa
The Most Revd Dr John Chew, South East Asia (1)
Ms Sriyanganie Fernando, Ceylon
The Revd Dr Kathy Grieb, USA
The Rt Revd Santosh Marray, Indian Ocean
The Most Revd John Neill, Ireland
The Revd Canon Andrew Norman, Archbishop of Canterbury’s Representative
Chancellor Rubie Nottage, West Indies, Consultant
The Revd Dr Ephraim Radner, USA (2)
Ms Nomfundo Walaza, Southern Africa
The Revd Canon Gregory Cameron, Anglican Communion Office, Secretary

Footnotes:

(1) "Bishop Schofield describes a Global South Steering Committee consisting of “John Chew,(8) Archbishop of Singapore; Drexel Gomez(9) of the West Indies and the Caribbean; Gregory Venables, Primate of the Southern Cone, South America, and a [sic] three Archbishops from Africa, including Peter Akinola of Nigeria as Chairman.” Bishop Schofield also asserts that representatives of 10 American dioceses met in Virginia and submitted to the authority of the Steering Committee." (See section H here.)

(2) Member of Board of Directors of Institute for Religion and Democracy. See footnote 2, here.

Quotes of the day: Tobias Haller and Martin Reynolds

Tobias commenting at Thinking Anglicans:

The ABC has again and again shown that his primary interest is the continued existence of the ecclesiastical institution, and has even sacrificed his personal beliefs about the underlying issues -- and called on TEC to do the same. By challenging the institution, Akinola attacks the very thing Canterbury has tried to protect. This is more than a tactical error; it is a strategic mistake.

Martin Reynolds, same place:

It has always been Dr Williams’ position that, having pulled back the Americans and Canadians to a Windsor position, the real crisis would come for the so called “orthodox” to live with the position of open debate and diverse opinions recognised in the Windsor Report.

Indeed. Or, in the words of Mike, "Who is 'Windsor Compliant' now?"

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.

Enough with the navel gazing

Quote of the day:

The Anglicans, getting used to the idea of their first woman primate in the US, really do need to stop looking inward....

-Ruth Gledhill

CANA and Bishop Lee

Thank God no one take The Washington Times seriously. It is useful sometimes for revealing the image CANA-nites would project.

The Washington Times:

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is confronting Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola head-on with a new demand that he not install Truro Church rector Martyn Minns as head of a parallel denomination this coming weekend.
...
Archbishop Akinola does not have the permission to minister within the geographical boundaries of the Diocese of Virginia, which lost 11 parishes about 9,000 people to CANA last winter.

"We share the concerns of the presiding bishop," said diocesan spokesman Patrick Getlein, adding the diocese still refers to the 11 parishes as "occupied by Nigerian Anglicans."

The presiding bishop added that "such action would not help the efforts of reconciliation that are taking place in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion as a whole. Such action would display to the world division and disunity that are not part of the mind of Christ, which we must strive to display to all."
...
Bishop Minns called her actions "predictable."

"The truth of the matter is we are in a broken relationship right now and the normal things," such as asking a diocesan bishop's permission to minister, "aren't working," he said.
...
Bishop Minns pointed out the nondenominational 3,500-seat chapel was selected as the venue for Saturday's ceremony so as not to antagonize the diocese.

"We delayed this installation for months," he added, "and we deliberately did not have it in an Episcopal church. I really do want to make this event a positive not a negative witness for Christ."

Organizers have downplayed Archbishop Akinola's role at Saturday's installation. Unlike past visits to Virginia, the archbishop is neither giving the main sermon nor appearing at any press conferences.

Good idea. The more we hear from Akinola the better things get.

Bishop Lee yesterday wrote to his flock. I believe it useful for you to see the kinds of impolite comments it registered here, and here, but not here because I don't link to that dude.

Nigerian Catholic Church Condemns General Election Results

Quote:

The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigerian (CBCN) has joined local and international monitors and human rights groups in denouncing the recent violence-marred presidential elections. In a statement released on Tuesday, the bishops said that Nigerians had again failed to conduct free, fair and credible election.

- Catholic Information Service for Africa

We monitor the web from a similar statement from the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

Catholic and Anglican Bishops Diverge on Zimbabwe

The Voice of America has audio on the diverging views of Anglican and Catholic baptists on the crisis in Zimbabwe and the role of Mugabe. Go here to listen.

And SW Radio Africa reports:

In fact the targeted sanctions are specifically designed so that they do not affect ordinary Zimbabweans. They limit travel by senior government officials and deprive them of access to their assets in participating countries.

The Anglican Bishops also did not address the state-sponsored violence against the opposition and civic groups, or the corruption and mismanagement that has destroyed many government-run institutions. Father Barnabus Nqindi, an Anglican cleric in South Africa who read the pastoral letter in detail, said his first reaction was laughter because he was flabbergasted by the letter. He explained that the letter sounded like it was written by Bishop Kunonga, the Anglican Bishop of Harare who has been criticised for supporting the Mugabe regime, and the other 14 bishops just put their names down on it. Father Nqindi said he was disturbed by the fact that the bishops did not address the issues of governance, corruption and the lack of the rule of law that exist in Zimbabwe.

Ouch

Stephen Bates comments:

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, was lecturing politicians in his Wilberforce lecture in Hull last night on the importance of rediscovering their moral energy. He also stressed the necessity of C of E bishops retaining their position in the House of Lords to continue offering "independent moral comment". Meanwhile, central Africa's Anglican bishops have taken a different moral line by saying the west ought to give Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, a break and lift sanctions. Their number includes the Bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, a Mugabe crony accused by parishioners of inciting murder and seizing land, in contrast to the call by the country's Catholic bishops for Mugabe to stand down. No sign yet that our archbishop plans to disinvite them from next year's Lambeth conference.

James Graham captures my thoughts to a T:

Rowan Williams, like so many other public figures over the past couple of months, sought to co-opt William Wilberforce in a speech yesterday. In an act of stupendous logical contortion, he uses Wilberforce, an elected politician (albeit in an era of rotten boroughs) as a tool for his argument against reforming the House of Lords:

“It is important in our current debates about the Upper House of Parliament we take seriously the role of such a House in offering channels of independent moral comment”

I wouldn’t dream of claiming that Wilberforce was a secularist, but it has to be pointed out that it wasn’t the Bishops in the Lords that lead the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade. And they aren’t providing moral leadership in the House of Lords today - indeed, they barely deign to show up at all. There may well be a decline of moral leadership in modern politics today, but that is helped, not hindered, by a church which desperately clings to unelected and unaccountable power and evangelises about the desirability for us to adopt an Anglican version of the caliphate.

Well, I'm not sure I'd go so far as that last phrase. But the ABC eviscerates his own argument when his policy recommendation is to leave seats for C of E Bishops in the House of Lords. If there is a place for the voice of religion in government why should it only be the voice of the Church of England? Let's have a competition of voices.

Not a dead letter

From the letters to the editor of The Times:

Sir, Matthew Parris’s article “Shout your doubt out loud” (April 21 ) was really rather odd.

Whenever Christians embrace a cause dear to his heart, such as gay rights, he seems to dismiss it as a panic measure in the face of declining influence. He should be pleased that his views are gaining support.

Could it be that his rejection of religious belief relies upon religion remaining exactly as it was when he first rejected it? If it changes, particularly in ways that he should welcome, it ceases to be such an easy target.

Requiring religious belief to remain unchanged and unchanging through changing times is at least part of what we mean by the word “fundamentalism”. It is a dangerous and discredited tendency to which atheists are clearly not immune.

THE RT REV DR JOHN SAXBEE Bishop of Lincoln

The evangelical wing of The Episcopal Church may be sharpening their knives over this.

For the link my thanks go out to one of my favorite human browsers, Kendall Harmon of titusonenine. Here's a link to the comments over at titusonenine.

Global South leader Malango in the news

Archbishop Mulango has been in the news in the past few days.

Over at The Lead I've got a post on the recent pastoral letter from the Province of Central Africa supporting the Mugabi regime in Zimbabwe.

The other news, which Ruth Gledhill posted on April 20th but I've just read, concerns the story of the poisoning death of an Anglican missionary in the Diocese of Malawi. Here's an abbreviated version of Gledhill's telling of the tale:

On Remembrance Day last year, a 73-year-old English missionary priest died in Malawi. ... Now, it turns out, he was poisoned. Mutterings that all was not right with his death began a few weeks back, and police in Africa have this week confirmed the worst.
...
The diocese of Lake Malawi was in the public eye at about this time when Acton vicar Nicholas Henderson was appointed its new bishop, and then his appointment was blocked by the Global South leader Bernard Malango and by the diocese's court of confirmation because of Henderson's links with the liberal theology of the Modern Churchpeople's Union. The court described Henderson as a 'man of unsound faith'.
...
In spite of strong support in the diocese, which has long links with Henderson's west London flock, Malango appointed another bishop, Leonard Mwenda, in Henderson's place. Mwenda's enthronement was conducted under police guard, amid scenes of stone-throwing. Mwenda in turn appointed Rodney Hunter as an assistant priest at Lake Malawi's Anglican cathedral.

A few months later, Father Rodney was dead. Poisoned.

Police enquiries are continuing but I have to ask: have the Anglican Communion's gay wars claimed their first victim?

That, from Ruth Gledhill. Evidently it is unfair to say she is entirely in sync with the Global South.

I had not known of Malango's appointment of a bishop over the objections of the diocese although I have heard that archbishops in other provinces have more power than our Presiding Bishop. I guess he's not as reasonable a man as Archbishop Akinola. Gledhill provides this background post at Thinking Anglicans for more on the events in 2005 surrounding the appointment of Henderson and his replacement by Mwenda.

As someone has put it, it's pretty remarkable for Malango to sit in judgment of The Episcopal Church.

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."

Archbishop of Canterbury to visit US

The press release from his office is here: "this autumn."

This autumn? Very timely.

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]."

The Living Church synopsis of the HoB resolution on the cunning pastoral scheme

Quote (my emphasis):

The bishops deferred the Church's response on the pastoral council to Executive Council.The bishops listed five reasons why they considered the pastoral council and primatial vicar to be a bad idea. The pastoral council violates the canons which contain no provision for the primate to delegate authority. It would change the character of the “Windsor process.” It harkens back to a period of Colonialism from which The Episcopal Church was liberated. It replaces local rule by laity with a curial model.

“Most important of all it is spiritually unsound,” they said. “The pastoral scheme encourages one of the worst tendencies of our Western culture, which is to break relationships when we find them difficult instead of doing the hard work necessary to repair them and be instruments of reconciliation. The real cultural phenomenon that threatens the spiritual life of our people, including marriage and family life, is the ease with which we choose to break our relationships and the vows that established them rather than seek the transformative power of the Gospel in them. We cannot accept what would be injurious to this Church and could well lead to its permanent division.”