Articles have recently appeared on a number of websites and blogs attacking elements of the new constitution adopted by the Anglican Consultative Council and its standing committee. These bodies have recently been registered under English not for profit company law and in the process, it is suggested, a number of new elements have emerged which may endanger the Communion, shift power from one group to another or even undermine the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It has even been suggested that retaining a legal status in England, the site of such property as the Communion owns, enforces the suggestion that Church of England is clinging to the vestiges of colonial authority. Others worry that the European Union might now be entitled to interfere in Communion affairs. The primary concern seems to be that the new body may position itself to dilute such authority the proposed Anglican Covenant may vest in the Instruments of Communion, which in addition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates Meeting and the Lambeth Conference includes the Anglican Consultative Council and its standing committee. Note that a standing committee by definition is a committee of the body which appoints it and must answer to that body.

At the root of this unease is the concern that the ACC in membership will continue to reflect the dominance of the “Western” predominantly white churches and thus produce a buttress for the North American Provinces against attempts to discipline them. One might well reflect that the recent travels of the US Presiding Bishop to the provinces of the Communion which, with the possible exception of New Zealand, are white and “liberal” underscores a backlash against the rest of the Communion, composed of people of non-white races, who now in terms of “membership” far outstrip the older white provinces. There remains more than a hint of patronage in the determination of western liberals to, if not dominate a future Communion, at least create a political base to provide safety. Western liberals are sure that in time, as the Third World become more “civilized,” it will become more receptive to “progressive” thought and practice.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s legal officer, John Rees, has attempted to quieten the fears of those who suspect that the ACC is now a danger to orthodoxy. Poor Mr. Rees is hardly the best choice to perform such a mission after the muddle in which he participated at the last meeting of the ACC in Jamaica, and his office is not noted for its efficiency or the swiftness of its actions even in small matters.

Yet one must observe that the resignation of important traditionalist members of the standing committee has been ill-advised. One may not logically complain that seats are being filled by inappropriate people when they are vacated by those who now accuse the ACC of being some form of a liberal bastion. While traditionalists continue to run away rather than participate, their voices and votes won’t count however large their constituency may be. It is as if traditionalists really want the Communion to appear liberal in order to excuse their desertion. If traditionalists remained they would govern. Certainly they would call the shots in a Communion which would not be entirely to their liking, but that’s Anglicanism. If the traditionalist agenda is to create an Anglican Communion of like-minded people why not become Roman Catholic?

There remain utterly puzzling developments such as the appointment to the ACC of a South African priest of advanced liberal views, and that from a province whose new primate recently chided the Episcopal Church for the consecration of Bishop Glasspool.

The point of the Covenant is to secure the borders of conformity and perhaps create a status for those who find such territory too narrow which does not drive them into schism. It is not the object of the Covenant to create an Act of Uniformity. Anglican liberality, the right to think, to question, to explore defines, in part, who we are. The object of the Covenant is not to silence dissenting voices but to constrain local synods from enacting measures which compromise the essential faith and order of the Communion, defined in the first three sections of the proposed Covenant.

Having said this, traditionalists should be most careful that they don’t sound like conspiracy theorists or a sort of Anglican tea party. Over and over in the past forty years traditionalists have lost the sympathy of others by their unwillingness to temper their voices or their plans. Chicken Little isn’t a Gospel evangelist.
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“If traditionalists remained they would govern.”  Really?  Is this what we have seen over the last seven years?  Is this what the recent changes have been intended to strengthen?  Were the traditionalists that resigned being listened to prior to their resignations?  The answer to all three questions is a rather obvious no.

Tony, and does the resignation of orthodox bishops from the Instruments contribute to the witness of the Gospel within the Communion?  Right from the beginning of this crisis, orthodox provinces have acted as if they were autonomous, unilaterally declaring themselves in impaired communion with other provinces, as if “communion” was their gift, rather than that established by mutual relationship with the See of Canterbury.This strategy of withdrawal, typified by refusing to take communion with or receive from those deemed unworthy, makes every province and indeed every individual an autonomous moral authority. If we refused to kneel next to gossips, or adulterers, or those who abuse their spouses, or nowadays children who abuse their parents, liars, the jealous and indeed all who fall short of the glory of God and seem to defy general calls to repentence, our Eucharists would be thinly populated, and as +Michael Ramsey once observed, those remaining would be disqualified for their pride.

If we have confidence in the Gospel, we demonstrate such confidence by engaging those who err, even if we seem to lose, becoming noted for our consistence in adversity, our love for Jesus and our pastoral passion to restore those who fall. The present strategy of erecting pillars and perching on them in the desert, as modern versions of Simon Stylites, merely hands our mother the church into the hands of those in error. 

The Communion isn’t TEC, isn’t as nearly far gone from original righteousness as TEC. If the southern provinces are loyal to their Anglican mission they should step up and take responsibility.

Yes it does by making it plain that the ABC and others in the AC are engineering a shift of power that will limit the authority of the primates, limit the discipline of heterodoxy, and will marginalize the orthodox majority representation in communion decision-making overall.  Your statement, “If traditionalists remained they would govern,” is a faith statement at best and is way far of the mark, imho, given what is going on at the higher levels of our AC hierarchy.

Orthodox provinces recognized years ago what Canon Kearon has recently said, that pecusa does not share the faith and order commitments of the AC.  To state that one is not in communion with a non-church is a statement of reality.  Refusing to share communion with those who have rejected the faith of the Communion is a godly act.  To stay in communion with heretics and an apostate body is to be complicit with the damage that pecusa has done and continues to do to the Communion, imo.  I have read the arguments of Radner, Reno (before he left for the RCC) and Turner.  The ACI crew are good theologians, but they are not the only good theologians in the AC.  I would cite J.I. Packer as just one among a number who have understood the ACNA as a godly response to the heterdox actions of pecusa and the ACiC.

If you want to stay in pecusa and play the political games of pecusa that is certainly your right.  You can call it an act of theological coherence as Radner does; that’s fine.  I will proclaim with a clear conscience the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the support of others free of association with those who have embraced the false gospel of pecusa.  Your example of Simon Stylites is strange given that the various jurisdictions within the ACNA are tied to various provinces of the AC.  For example, CANA, as you know, is a missionary endeavor of the largest province in the AC.  If you want to denigrate our attachment to the AC you are certainly free on this site to do so.  Because you cannot understand why orthodox bishops would resign their posts is no reason to declare (self-righteously I would say) that they have done the wrong thing.  This is nothing more than your opinion.

As I did in my first response, I continue to question your position that “If traditionalists remained they would govern.”

Fr. Tony - whilst I respect your conciliatory spirit, I do have to wonder at either (1) your astonishing naivete or (2) your refusal to deal with reality.  Do you REALLY think that the Lambeth Conference would have had ANY different result had the GAFCON bishops attended?  As for the ACC, the western liberals managed to exclude GS delegates (and decided that the same rules didn’t apply to them when it came to SC membership) and managed to engage in political and procedural trickery and deception to pass a motion that had been previously defeated.  As for the Standing Committee, the resident orthodox primates (including Abp. Mouneer) resigned because he said that his voice was being ignored, and, in addition, ineligible liberal westerners were accepted as SC members in pretty clear violation of the rules.

Fr. Tony - all of the above happened with the tacit or open approval and/or planning of Rowan Williams.  Williams has time and time again played the GS leadership as dupes and fools - marginalizing them from any significant positions of power within the Communion, yet then claiming that “all is well” because they attended his emasculated gabfests.

Rowan Williams knows what needs to be done.  He has the power and authority to do it.  There is no point at all for the Global South leaders to continue playing Rowan’s games.  They have learned through bitter experience that Rowan has fully enough power to marginalize and sideline them when he wants to.

IMHO, the smartest and wisest thing for the GS leadership to do now is to NOT play Rowan’s games anymore until Rowan starts taking their concerns seriously.  When Rowan indicates that he is prepared to seriously address the Communion’s problems, then the GS can step forward.  Until then, there is no value at all in playing games in which the referees are clearly stacked in favor of the opposing team.

Naive and unreal!!  Oh well James.

First, I am thankful for Fr. Tony’s irenic and insightful post. As an avowed revisionist, I have long thought that the resignations of traditionalists were unfortunate. I have no desire that the Communion become monochrome and have valued my friendships with those who hold convictions very different from mine.

Second, I have grown weary of complaints that one is being ignored or not listened to. As a revisionist I have neither ignored nor refused to listen to traditionalists. At the end of the day, however, I have made decisions that traditionalists wouldn’t make, not ignoring their convictions, but disagreeing with them. A similar process may happen in settings like ACC meetings, and a decision that one doesn’t like doesn’t mean that one was ignored.

It is notable that Fr. Clavier does not actually make a case that the substantive critiques of the ACC constitutional document and the process by which it was developed are much ado about nothing.  For example, in an attempt to deflect some of the criticism, he says,

Note that a standing committee by definition is a committee of the body which appoints it and must answer to that body.

But the point is that the new document uses the term “standing committee” but defines it in a way, within the document and by reference to the Companies Act, which is inconsistent with the usage Fr. Clavier says holds “by definition.”  In this case and others, Fr. Clavier has neither effectively rebutted the point or shown why it is unimportant.

Fr. Clavier also ranges over other territory not specifically the subject of the critiques of the constitution.  However, when it comes to supporting the charges of “much ado” or sounding like conspiracy theorists, he may think he has done so via atmospherics, but he hasn’t hit home.

Thank you Dan for your openness. 

Daniel Weir - 19 August 2010 08:41 AM

First, I am thankful for Fr. Tony’s irenic and insightful post. As an avowed revisionist, I have long thought that the resignations of traditionalists were unfortunate. I have no desire that the Communion become monochrome and have valued my friendships with those who hold convictions very different from mine.

Second, I have grown weary of complaints that one is being ignored or not listened to. As a revisionist I have neither ignored nor refused to listen to traditionalists. At the end of the day, however, I have made decisions that traditionalists wouldn’t make, not ignoring their convictions, but disagreeing with them. A similar process may happen in settings like ACC meetings, and a decision that one doesn’t like doesn’t mean that one was ignored.

The sad result, IMHO is that this openness is in fact the opening to a parting of the ways.  That which you hope for as a diversity in one community is not possible to such as I.  In my opinion you have embarked upon another path; diverged sufficiently from the apostolic path to have walked into a religion that I cannot recognize as Christian.  This is disagreement that can be done irenically and lead to a mutual parting of the ways, which is how I understand it between us.

HOWEVER neither you nor I have influenced those who seem to lead.  I believe shenanigans of the ACC, the Standing Committee and these new developments as a form of hostile institutional take over by those on the “revisionist/reappraising” side.  This was most obvious in Jamaica.  It clearly had been going on for some time as we see now revealed in the writings of those who resigned or did not bother to turn up.  So far as I am concerned “they” can have the AC, its institutions and its “brand” name as the latter is increasingly worthless.  The western Church has sadly become a declining institution that embraces heresy and apostasy.  This is not to say that all it members are of the same mind, indeed there are the faithful therein.  However, institutionally, and I use a personal metaphor, it is sitting out on the end of a branch while sawing itself apart from the trunk of the tree.  Exceedingly sad.

Meanwhile those who embrace what was historic and apostolic Christian Anglican belief and practice will continue to flourish.  The are led by mostly GS folk who have seen the “train-wreck” that is the western church and which is now grabbing up the institutions of the AC.  I got off that train a while back.

Bless you for your willingness to talk and being irenic.  You and I each are going different ways.  You will keep the institutions that the ACC/Standing Committee now is grabbing up.  May they bring you comfort.