Last week in New Orleans, Episcopal bishops pledged not to authorize rites of blessing for same-sex unions and to exercise restraint in the consecration of partnered gays as bishops. Conservatives in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion contended that the bishops had merely restated past positions and fallen short of complying with the directive.

The Anglican Communion Office is manipulating the Communion, said the Rev. David Phillips of Church Society, a leading UK evangelical Anglican voice. "The Anglican Communion Office has issued a report, purportedly from the Joint Standing Committee of Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council essentially affirming the U.S. House of Bishops statement of last week and as we predicted beforehand it is taking the view that the US Bishops did just enough (which they didn't) in order to satisfy the requirements made of them. Clearly it had already been agreed what the report would say and how the U.S. Bishops would have to phrase their response in order to match it," said Phillips.

The report has also met with mixed reviews not only from orthodox Episcopalians and Anglicans but from the Episcopal Church pansexual lobby, Integrity as well. At a recent gathering of liberal and conservative Episcopalians in Los Angeles at which four Episcopal bishops were present, speakers made it clear they felt alienated and disenfranchised by recent actions of the Episcopal Church. Opposition came from gay and lesbian Episcopalians and their advocates as well as from conservative church members. Conservatives blasted the statement seeing it as a betrayal and a failure to live up to the demands of the Windsor Report. Other speakers thanked the bishops for refusing to step back from their commitment to full inclusion for gay and lesbian Episcopalians in the Church, but some deplored the language that "clarified" the General Convention 2006 Resolution B033-a last-minute compromise that pleased few deputies or bishops---by making it clear that gay and lesbian Episcopalians are the primary persons whose "manner of life presents a challenge to the wider Church" as diocese elect new bishops.

Bishops J. Jon Bruno, Sergio Carranza, Chester Talton, and Robert Anderson tried to put the best spin on things, with Bruno telling the assembled Episcopalians at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, "We stood up and told him exactly what we thought." Bruno said that he was one of the first to the microphone to respond---and, he said, Archbishop Williams was not particularly pleased by what he heard. It was clear, the bishops said, that Williams did not understand the polity of the Episcopal Church, in which General Convention, not the House of Bishops, holds authority over matters of doctrine, discipline and worship. He was urging the bishops, Bruno said, to take actions that they had no power to take.

When the vote was in, only one Episcopal Bishop, Charles E. Bennison of Pennsylvania, voted against it saying, "I simply could not bring myself to promise I would not consent to the election of a gay or lesbian priest to the episcopate or stop our long practice of allowing rites for a commitment to a life together."

On the international front, Archbishops in Wales, Scotland and Ireland all said they believe the Episcopal Church had complied with their request for restraint. Predictably Archbishop Alan Harper, Primate of Ireland, said, "I hope that member churches of the Anglican Communion will now calmly and fairly reflect upon the New Orleans Statement and conclude that TEC Bishops have gone a considerable way to meeting the reasonable demands of their critics."

Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld, the acting primate and vicar general of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, said he welcomed the decision "for the simple reason it gives us more space and time to talk to each other." The Primate of Australia, Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Brisbane, said he believed the bishops had "responded positively to the substance of [the primates'] requests."

One orthodox archbishop, The Most Rev. Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis, President Bishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, delivered a scathing response to the House of Bishops' communique saying The House of Bishops did not respond or meet the recommendation of the Windsor Report or the Dar El Salaam Primates Meeting Communique. Instead they used ambiguous language and contradicted themselves within their own response.

The Anglican Communion Office at first ignored Mouneer's statement, http://tinyurl.com/yv85c8 but because of international outcry that his statement was being marginalized it has now been issued as a "minority report" and is attached to the Statement put out by the Anglican Communion Office.

Other Anglican primates were more critical. "What we expected to come from them is to repent. That this is a sin in the eyes of the Lord and repentance is what we, in particular, and others expected to hear" from the House of Bishops, said Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, Primate of Kenya.

The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, said the bishops' response fell short. The primates gave The Episcopal Church "one final opportunity for an unequivocal assurance" that it would conform "to the mind and teaching of the Communion," he said, and the bishops failed to do that. The primates are unwilling to accept further "ambiguous and misleading statements" from The Episcopal Church, he added.

Other orthodox opinion also repudiated the statement with two Anglican Mainstream UK leaders, Philip Giddings, Convenor, and Chris Sugden, Executive Secretary, saying they were disappointed that the response of The Episcopal Church House of Bishops failed to address the specific questions asked of it by the Primates' Meeting in February. "The TEC HoB gives no indication of being prepared to turn and walk back towards us so that we may walk ahead together, and in reality same-sex blessings are continuing." Both men expressed their full support for the statement issued by the Anglican Communion Network on 26 September 2007 and the work of the Common Cause College of Bishops.

In the meantime, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has begun soliciting the views of the primates as to whether the Episcopal Church's HOB statement is an adequate response to the demands of the archbishops. The Anglican Communion office has made it clear that there will be no meeting of the Primates before Lambeth 2008.

However, Africa's CAPA bishops are meeting in Mauritius this week and there is little doubt they will repudiate what happened in New Orleans as inadequate, at best, and not worth the paper it is written on, at worst.

It is clear now that the Anglican Communion is heading for a major train wreck. The split of opinion along factional lines is clear.

The Anglican Communion Office, more accurately the Anglican Consultative Council (it elevated itself to ACO status under Archbishop George Carey) is heavily funded by the American Episcopal Church and has, for a long time, been considered to be manipulating agendas and events in order to promote the revisionist cause. (Former ACC General Secretary John Peterson was publicly caught doing just that.) This latest move adds weight to the concerns of the Global South and destroys any credibility the report might have had. Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and a member of the Joint Standing Committee, should have recused herself in this matter. She was allowed to sit in judgment of the House of Bishops' deliberations while being its leader and a leading participant in the process and production of the statement!

The announcement last week in Pittsburgh of a new Anglican ecclesial structure is the end of the road for orthodox Episcopalians in TEC. Over the coming months, some five dioceses are expected to leave the Episcopal Church, no doubt engendering major legal battles.

With a number of African primates now saying they will not attend Lambeth next year, and with the attitude of Mrs. Jefferts Schori who said in San Francisco, post New Orleans, that the Episcopal Church will not reverse itself on sexuality issues again voicing her support for gays and lesbians several times during her visit, it is clear other primates will not attend, either.

However one defines schism, there is little doubt that we now have de facto schism in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion; the question is will it become de jure.

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