GC2009: Rowan Among The Ruins: What Should the ABC Do Now?

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
7/23/2009

The House of Bishops of the Church of England meets in September when they will consider the new North American Anglican province's (ACNA's) Constitution and Canons. Following Durham Bishop Tom Wright's scathing critique of what transpired at GC2009 there is every likelihood they will support ACNA. A number of Evangelical and Catholic bishops are already doing so - eight have signed the Private Member's Motion - unprecedented in General Synod history.

This puts Dr. Rowan Williams in a very difficult position. At one level he can now offer a two-tier solution to the Anglican Communion's malaise. He can also argue that he can now recognize both TEC and ACNA. He alone decides who to invite to the Lambeth Conference, and can circumvent the Anglican Communion Office and Canon Kenneth Kearon who has sworn eternal fealty to TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada and would never recognize ACNA if his job depended on it. (He needs TEC money to keep ACC afloat).

The General Synod is not in any way beholden to the ACC and can do as it likes. It could even, if it chose, reduce its financial contribution to ACC and ACO. If the Synod debates and passes the motion next February or next July, Kearon can think or say what he likes, it will not affect anything. The determination of who is or is not in communion with the CofE is a joint decision for the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York, who would find it difficult to refuse a Synod resolution. If ACNA is in then TEC may even be shown the door.

The truth is the ACC has become irrelevant following Jamaica and the debacle over Resolution 4. The vast majority of the CofE do not know what the ACC is, let alone cares. Churchgoers do not elect their ACC "representatives" they are chosen by the national church. Therefore ACC approval is something of an irrelevance. From now on one can expect that province by province will make its own decision. If the great bulk of the Communion declares itself to be in communion with ACNA, the ACC will have to fall in line.

At a deeper level, if ACNA is approved of by the Church of England, then it is not only extreme embarrassment for The Episcopal Church, but also evidence before American courts that TEC is no longer the exclusive holder of the Anglican badge.

The implications for the Dennis Canon are enormous. TEC now bills itself as a hierarchical church. It will have to live and die by that ecclesiastical sword. For those watching from the sidelines, nobody can seriously have expected the 2009 General Convention to hold back from overturning B033, the fig leaf of respectability behind which TEC has been sheltering since 2006, and in Anaheim it finally crossed the Rubicon.

TEC committed itself finally and irrevocably to LGBT "rights" (to all orders of ministry and same-sex blessings) ahead of any other consideration, including the express views of the Anglican Communion at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and more recently the Windsor Report.

A last-minute plea from Archbishop Rowan Williams at the TEC Convention fell on deaf ears. TEC is already in a state of impaired communion with 22 out of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion. Its internal divisions over property have cost it hundreds of parishes and four dioceses, not to mention millions of dollars in legal fees.

Historically only the Archbishop of Canterbury, who invites the bishops to Lambeth Conferences, has the authority to determine who is in or out of communion, but the recent actions of TEC have forced several large provinces to take such a decision for themselves, thus diminishing the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

A large proportion of the Anglican Communion already out of communion with TEC, will soon declare an end to all relationships with it. This may well be re-echoed by The Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. We shall see.

VOL has begun to outline the growing attrition as a result of Anaheim, as remaining conservatives finally recognize the seriousness of the condition into which their church has been plunged by radical activists, who now have unassailable control of the denomination.

Even the most ardent of orthodox stayers now must ask how long they can endure TEC's leadership which has now taken possession of General Convention and the House of Bishops especially after Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori condemned personal faith in Christ as a Western heresy.

Any lingering doubts in the minds of the Global South that TEC is an apostate and heretical institution were swept aside in Anaheim this past week. GAFCON's Jerusalem Declaration http://tinyurl.com/ntzsfk is more prescient now than ever. When VOL inquired as to why we had heard nothing from archbishops like Akinola and Orombi the answer was simple, "look at the Jerusalem Declaration, what is there left to say?"

The newly installed ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan did opine in an open letter to the Anglican Communion saying, "For Anglican Christians, for the Instruments of Unity (Communion), for interdependent Provinces, for ordinary believers, there is a choice to be made. The choice is between two religions, two roads, two cities, two sets of conflicting values and behaviors." http://tinyurl.com/nq947w

Indeed.

GAFCON was set against the Lambeth Conference and Williams knew it. It was the elephant in the tent at Canterbury. He could not ignore 70% - 80% of the Communion.

But the divisions go still deeper. The onslaught against orthodox Anglicans in the USA and Canada has been of such concern to other provinces that U.S. and Canadian Anglicans have consecrated bishops to offer a place of refuge for orthodox Anglicans and to reach the U.S.'s 130 million unchurched Americans - the goal of the AMiA.

This would not have been necessary if TEC had truly allowed flying bishops with real authority.

Real estate seizures (based on the Dennis Canon), depositions of TEC's orthodox bishops and priests, along with the morphing of the presiding bishop from chairman of the HOB into a full -blown medieval prelate, have created a church founded not on the word of God, but legal fundamentalism, determined to purge itself of all opposition.

Of course it could be argued that had the Archbishop of Canterbury exercised his personal authority as head of the Communion, even though he has no formal legal status, things might have been different. But he didn't and wouldn't. He demurred and deferred holding out the carrot of compromise rather than the stick of expulsion from the communion.

At the end of the day he was not willing to alienate TEC. Even as late as the 2008 Lambeth Conference the invitations to TEC bishops could have been withdrawn, sending the clearest signal that TEC must change direction.

He didn't and wouldn't. The inaction of Rowan Williams has been monumental. Even as the turmoil in the Communion grew he prevaricated and dodged the hard answers he should have given. He lost a golden opportunity in New Orleans and at another historical moment following Dar es Salaam when he was armed with a resolution to hold TEC accountable.

The result is that provinces have determined for themselves who is or is not in communion with them. The GAFCON primates, as they have been dubbed, and who hold the bulk of Anglicans in their bosom are the genuine holders of the Anglican keys.

It is difficult to see how the Archbishop or his office can ever recover the authority it once held. He has alienated his authority and has no one to blame but himself.

A meeting of the Anglican primates at Lambeth Palace preceded the consecration of homogenital bishop Gene Robinson in 2003. At that time Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold was a signatory of a letter urging TEC not to proceed. He nevertheless returned to the U.S. and personally presided at the service, telling everyone that it was not his decision, but that of the church and that he could do nothing about it. He made a mockery of both the statement and Williams himself.

Williams took it lying down.

A wave of protests followed in the U.S. sparking yet more litigation amid dissenters and growing concern elsewhere in the Anglican Communion for the orthodoxy of TEC and for the pastoral care of conservatives within it.

Little was said and nothing was done by Lambeth Palace.

At each subsequent Primates' meeting when orthodox archbishops urged Williams to act, he did nothing, using the language of "I have no power." Worse, Williams continued to protect TEC by doing as little as possible to respond to the concerns of the primates. The primates' meeting was also finally downgraded by Williams who prevented it from meeting as it had done previously.

The 2008 Lambeth Conference saw TEC bring a large contingent of bishops (even though it has only ASA 700,000 Episcopalians) accompanied by numerous activists including the uninvited Gene Robinson and a transsexual priest from the Diocese of Massachusetts.

Williams had to come up with a strategy to hold it all together. He called it "indaba" a process of candid conversation that resolved nothing. It is now being promoted around the Communion as a means of doing business. Indaba has now transmogrified into ubuntu - "I in you and you in me" but this has neither united nor provided the healing balm the Communion wounds.

Williams "Affirming Catholicism", supported by the then Scottish primus, former bishop Richard Holloway, as well as a gaggle of English sympathizers and TEC's Frank Griswold has been the ABC's vision for the future of the Anglican Communion. It has flat out failed. The attempt has produced nothing but despair, lamentation and alienation for orthodox Anglicans.

The growing acceptance of women priests in many provinces has further alienated Anglo-Catholics from mainstream Anglicanism. A number of evangelicals believe that making women's ordination mandatory rather than voluntary in TEC and now the CofE has further alienated and angered broad-minded Anglicans. ACNA is demonstrating that both views can live side by side in harmony. The actions of the TEC making women's ordination mandatory virtually guaranteed that they would walk away, and three dioceses have recently done so.

Nonetheless, homosexuality, a salvation issue, remains the lightning rod problem driving evangelical Anglicans out of TEC. A theology of morality impacting Christology and denies the authority of scripture is a bridge too far. Revisionists have liberalized and relativized clear biblical prohibitions at great cost to themselves and before a watching world.

While the scriptural evidence for excluding women from holy orders contains a number of possible ambiguities: no such ambiguity exists with respect to homosexuality, as Pittsburgh Professor Robert Gagnon has so thoroughly demonstrated.

The recent actions by TEC in Anaheim and Jefferts Schori's statements about salvation only vindicate the formation of a new Anglican province in North America. ACNA has garnered the support of the largest Anglican provinces in the communion further alienating Williams who gave TEC his tacit support in Anaheim. Furthermore 40 million Evangelical Anglicans in the Global South found Schori's remarks shallow and theologically offensive.

What is happening is that Williams and the Anglican Consultative Council are simply being bypassed by orthodox Anglicans. GAFCON, ACNA and FCA are simply ignoring the ABC and ACC by going around them to form their own more perfect union and grow the church. Meanwhile, Western pan-Anglicanism slowly withers and dies. Williams' pleas for restraint in Anaheim were blown off like so much Disneyland hype.

On his return to England, for the meeting of the General Synod in York, he was in constant communication with TEC leaders, who delivered the bad news as it happened.

It was reported that on the final day of the Synod he was reduced to feebly hoping that the bishops of TEC would hold the line, despite the overwhelming vote in the House of Deputies. It never happened. On the final day of GC2009 the House of Deputies voted 2 to 1 to pass Resolution C056 allowing rites for same sex unions to be official dogma, even though the Presiding Bishop wrote (not once but twice) that the actions of GC2009 were descriptive not proscriptive. No one with half a brain believes that for a moment.

At the same time, members of the CofE General Synod were flocking to sign a private member's motion calling for the Church of England to be in communion with ACNA; and asking hard questions about the Church of England's relationship with the Church of Sweden, which is about to authorize same gender marriages by its clergy. The biggest bombshell, however, was the announcement by Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham that the ACNA Canons and Constitution have already been laid before the English House of Bishops to be debated in September.

Williams might have hoped for a quieter life following the retirement of conservative bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, to whom he bade a somewhat ungenerous farewell at the end of the Synod, but worse was to come: the endorsement of gay ordinations and of rites for same-gender unions by the TEC House of Bishops produced in short order a ringing denunciation in the Times newspaper by the Bishop of Durham and a matching statement by his liberal evangelical Fulcrum organization, which has hitherto sat carefully on the fence on such issues.

So far there has been silence from Lambeth Palace, presumably a stunned silence. Wright is not only the chief author of the Windsor Report, and a proponent of the ill-fated Covenant which was supposed to draw the Communion back together, but is a leading voice among liberal evangelicals in England. They are large in number and influential in the councils of the Church, and have hitherto been strongly critical of their more conservative counterparts who have supported GAFCON, FCA and ACNA. Williams now faces the prospect of the whole evangelical wing united in condemnation of the Affirming Catholic agenda which he has sought to promote for the last fifteen years."

Williams has nowhere else to look for support. Half of the Anglo-Catholic movement, to which he once belonged, left the Church of England over women priests in 1993. Affirming Catholics enjoyed a period of dominance having supplanted conservative Catholics, and for a while almost every new bishop appointed wore the badge. But once women priests were a fact of life much of the raison d'être of Affirming Catholicism was dissipated, and the movement has lost momentum, so much so that its Scottish branch recently closed for lack of support.

What is most troubling for Williams is that English ordination candidates these days are firmly Evangelical. Congregations and dioceses are asking for Evangelical bishops, and many have been appointed, with every indication that this will be the trend for the foreseeable future. There are 25 evangelical bishops in the HoB and that number seems only to be growing. Conservative Catholics, and much of the mainstream, have disappeared from the ordination process.

Williams' friends in the HoB are steadily retiring, leaving him increasingly isolated in a church which respects his academic credentials, but is less certain of his agenda, and left wondering about his leadership in a time of such crisis.

Williams is being seen more and more as a brilliant fool. Nobody any longer believes in the strategies which have been proposed to resolve the North American crisis. The Instruments of Unity, the Panel of Reference, the Pastoral Visitors, the ACC, the ACO, the Windsor Report, the Covenant, Indaba and Ubuntu are all dead in the water. They have not even delayed, let alone arrested the momentum of TEC towards the edge of the cliff.

The time has come for Williams himself to choose. Will he heed at last the calls of the global south for an Anglicanism which is faithful to scripture? Will he act against the remaining liberal voices in the Church of England who aim to see TEC replicated in the mother church? Will he recognize ACNA as a province in communion with him? Will he work with the new Evangelical bishops in his own provinces who have already concluded that the old order is at an end and that the Anglican Communion must be a Communion of churches in doctrinal, not structural agreement with one another? Will he heed the calls to withdraw recognition of ministers ordained in TEC and instead to recognize ACNA?

His options grow fewer by the day. If he stays silent in Lambeth Palace he will be seen as acquiescing to the left. If he believes the letters put out by Jefferts Schori to himself and to the wider Anglican Communion that nothing really changed at GC2009 he is deluding himself. No one in the Global South is buying the snake oil Jefferts Schori is selling. The scandals, lawsuits and the hemorrhaging of members from TEC will not suddenly cease because of the actions of GC2009.

Will he devise yet more convoluted stratagems designed to pretend that the discussion continues, knowing in his heart of hearts that his master plan for Anglicanism is now in ruins?

It is a lonely position for Williams to occupy. For Williams, his own time came and is now gone. There is no retrieving it. His Affirming Catholicism has failed as it was bound to from the very beginning, for it failed to take into account the great majority of the Anglican Communion which remains committed to the authority, not of archbishops, or lawyers, or General Conventions, but of something infinitely greater: Holy Scripture.

END