It was with considerable initial regret that I read of the Diocese of Uruguay’s attempt to leave the province of the Southern Cone and re-affiliate itself elsewhere. However, upon further consideration of the matter, it became clear to me that the Diocese of Uruguay is actually offering the Anglican Communion an important example for how to deal with conflict. The background to the matter is as follows. According to the Anglican Communion New Service (hereafter, ACNS), the Diocese’s request is due to the Southern Cone’s recent refusal to allow women’s ordination, a topic which the Province last addressed nine years ago. The Diocese of Uruguay believes that in order to help it “minister within a very difficult agnostic milieu,” it should be allowed to break its canonical bonds with its parent province and then join a province that ordains women. Notably, the Diocese has stated its willingness to take the issue of its provincial affiliation before the Anglican Consultative Council (hereafter, ACC). Despite the fact that voluntary diocesan disaffiliation is an unusual, disruptive, and novel practice which no episcopally ordered church has ever embraced, we should praise the willingness of the Diocese to submit its concerns to the judgment of an external body. This is precisely the model of conflict resolution that Anglicans ought to be pursuing, not least because the historic resolutions of the Anglican Consultative Council offer much guidance.

In what follows, there are three issues which we will consider. The first, quite obviously, is the Diocese of Uruguay’s desire to separate from the Province of the Southern Cone. The second concerns the unity of the Province of the Southern Cone and how disaffiliation might affect it. The third deals with ecclesiology more broadly. We will deal with these in turn. First, does a diocese have the right to secede and re-affiliate with another province? The fourth meeting of the ACC, which occurred in London in 1979, dealt with the issue of diocesan autonomy in Resolution 19: “this Council concurs with and affirms the minimum criteria for autonomy as stated by the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church USA on April 19th, 1979, and regards them as normative.” These minimum criteria were resolved as:

Resolved, That the Executive Council recommend the following as minimum criteria for autonomy:

1. Any diocese seeking autonomy should be prepared at the same time to unite with another Province or Regional Council having metropolitical authority of the Anglican Communion; or
2. Any diocese seeking autonomy and not planning to unite with another Province or Regional Council, should be prepared at the same time to unite with no less than three other viable dioceses which are geographically contiguous, or so located geographically as to be considered of the same region, for the purpose of establishing a new Province, or new Regional Council having metropolitical authority of the Anglican Communion; and be it further

Resolved, That this Executive Council request the Anglican Consultative Council to review and respond to this resolution.

Given the present situation, Uruguay is clearly within the bounds of (1) because it is seeking to join itself with another province. However, (2) is not wholly applicable as the Diocese of Uruguay is not interested in maintaining its own autonomy but is indeed seeking to join another Province. Nonetheless, as (2) also notes, dioceses should join other dioceses that are “geographically contiguous.” It would make no sense for the Diocese of Uruguay to join, e.g., the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), but much sense for it to join the Episcopal Church of Brazil, as Brazil is a neighboring country. Indeed, such a proposition is wholly contiguous with the Anglican understanding of the diocese, spelled out most succinctly in Resolution 22 of ACC-1, held in 1971 in Limuru, Kenya:

The people of God who make up a diocese may come from diverse communities but should come from a natural area in which they live individual and corporate lives. The bishop, under God, is in a special way responsible with them and his clergy for the faith, teaching, unity, mission, and worship of that area, commonly called a diocese.

The diocese should be organic; diocesan and provincial unity should be organic; the bishop should oversee an organic unity which he himself is a part of. Anything else ruptures what the episcopate signifies.

Turning now to the second issue, we must consider the division of a province by the loss of a diocese. Here too the ACC offers some previous help. At its first meeting, the ACC also passed Resolution 21, entitled “Creating and Dividing Provinces,” which reads as follows:

Although there is no official definition of a province of the Anglican Communion, it can be described as the smallest complete unit of the Anglican Church because it exists under a College of Bishops — each of whom with his clergy and laity is autonomous within a diocese. A college requires to be more than a mere trio of bishops and is severely limited if it consists of less than four diocesan bishops. A province must have some common constitution, its geographical and political area must allow good communications, and, however much it transcends linguistic, national, or cultural boundaries, its peoples must have a community of concern which can unite them in a community of worship.

In the light of this outline, the Council makes the following recommendations:

a. It is expected that a new province should normally contain at least four dioceses.
b. It must be ensured that the remaining area of the former province is not unduly weakened in finance, personnel, or institutions.
c. The proposed province must have financial stability, adequate leadership, proper administration, and accessibility to and from each diocese.
d. There must be the good will of the existing province in order not to create difficulties of disunity after division.
e. Before the creation of a new province there should be consultation with the Anglican Consultative Council or its Standing Committee for guidance and advice, especially in regard to the form of constitution most appropriate.

Quite obviously, not all of this applies to the present situation. For example, there is no intent here to create a new province. Rather, the old province will remain and a new province will be given oversight. However, several points continue to apply, notably (b) and (d). The Province of the Southern Cone should not be weakened by Uruguay’s secession, and genuine good will — that is, genuine Christian charity — should be present at every step of re-alignment. Without this, whatever hopes for mission both the diocese and the province may have will be overshadowed by whatever sins of resentment, self-righteousness, etc., that the diocese and/or province give place to. Summing up the matter thus far, we should conclude that however irregular the present situation, the Diocese of Uruguay should be allowed to re-affiliate only if it does not weaken the Southern Cone, and that its re-affiliation should be with a neighboring Anglican province (e.g., Brazil).

Let us turn then to the third and final point: ecclesiology. There is no a priori Biblical reason why an already-constituted diocese should not be allowed to affiliate itself with a new province. It is therefore part of evangelical freedom, and may be decided as seems best by the appropriate authority within any given church (in this case, the Anglican Communion, by way of the Anglican Consultative Council). There is however the question of whether or not a diocese should be given the right to re-affiliate if and when a province makes a decision which the diocese in question does not like. My language here is intentional; by submitting the matter to its own province first, and by being willing to submit the matter to the ACC, the Diocese of Uruguay implies that it does not already have the right to realign itself as it sees fit, but must receive this permission within a hierarchical structure — the ACC being higher and of greater authority than the Province of the Southern Cone. This allows mediation; it rejects unilateral decision-making; it invites critique, observation, and participation by other Anglicans; it allows us to take the time and study the history, practices, and manifest teaching of the Anglican Communion on matters of, in this case, ecclesiology. For this we should all be very, very grateful.

Quite obviously, the Diocese of Uruguay is dealing with conflict in a very different way than the various Anglican factions within the United States have done in recent years. Indeed, we do well to avoid confusing the diocesan situation in the Episcopal Church (USA) with the Diocese of Uruguay’s request. First, the case of the former is one of provincial change resisted at the local level, whereas the case of the latter is provincial continuity being resisted by a particular diocese. Let us consider these in turn. The Episcopal Church (USA) has been wholly hostile to those who have rejected its changes in moral teaching and episcopal order in recent years; this has been met with unhappy parishes and dioceses within the Episcopal Church (USA) pursuing realignment in a helter-skelter fashion, not initially joining “geographically contiguous” dioceses, but instead with Anglican provinces scattered through Africa, Asia, and South America (including, ironically enough, the Province of the Southern Cone). The ambivalence of the Anglican Communion’s Instruments of Unity to these new affiliations — for example, the diocese of Forth Worth, TX, has not been punished for joining the Province of the Southern Cone — should not be seen as paving the way for any diocese to realign itself whenever its larger province does or does not do something that the diocese itself is unhappy with. The Province of the Southern Cone has changed nothing about its moral teaching, just as it has changed nothing about its constitution of holy orders. Rather, its recent rejection of women’s ordination has only served to maintain continuity with its own historic practice and teaching — both of which it shares with the wider history of episcopal churches, as well as most Anglicans around the world. It is not a little problematic to allow a diocese to leave a province simply because it has not received a desired change on a matter over which there is neither consensus nor universal practice.

In conclusion, I do not believe that the Diocese of Uruguay should be allowed to leave the Province of the Southern Cone over the matter of women’s ordination. This does not mean that provinces might no divide and re-form, just as this does not mean that dioceses should be utterly prohibited from creating new provincial affiliations with other local dioceses. Should either of these happen at any point in time, they should be done in close contact with the oversight and authority of the Anglican Consultative Council. Provincial and diocesan borders and boundaries are not a matter of divine law; they exist to further the Church's divinely-appointed mission. Resolution 29 of ACC-5 recognized that a diocese or a province may “be in trouble” and that in such a case, and as a last resort, the ACC may “alert the member Churches of the Communion to seek a solution.” There is as yet no indication that either the Province of the Southern Cone or the Diocese of Uruguay are in trouble, however frustrating difficulties in ministry might be for the latter. Trouble, however, is the mildest descriptor of what is currently going on in the Episcopal Church (USA). Should it be shown that the Diocese of Uruguay is in trouble, then the necessary steps to help it must be taken. This may include changing its provincial affiliation by realigning it with a local Anglican province. In such a case, it must be ensured that this change takes place peacefully and in Christian charity, with no damage to the Province of the Southern Cone and no resentment or other hard feelings between the parties involved. The steps taken by the ACC, should it consider this matter, will create a precedent that will affect future generations of Anglicans. I am grateful that the Diocese of Uruguay, through its repudiation of unilateral action and its willingness to consult the appropriate bodies, has given us an opportunity to consider this.