Extispicy

I've just come across a word that's new to me: extispicy -  'the inspection of the entrails of sacrificial victims for the purpose of divination; haruspicy' OED. I guess there's going to be a lot of extispicy in the next few days. Some in public and much behind closed doors.

Members of the No Anglican Covenant Campaign (and blog) generally believe that as the Covenant has failed in England it will deal a serious, possibly fatal blow to the whole programme.

We hear very little about the progress of debate in other provinces. We can't be sure what's happening unless ACNS tell us.

GAFCON in London
But we may not have long to wait. Next month, in London, we may find out a lot more.

According to a GAFCON press release more than 200 delegates from 30 Anglican provinces and 20 countries will meet to "help turn the present crisis moment into a visionary future".

“We are committed to building networks and partnerships of orthodox Anglicans, strong in their witness to Jesus Christ and the transforming power of His Spirit, to face the challenge of mission around the world” said the Most Rev’d Eliud Wabukala, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya and Chairman of the GAFCON Primates Council.

The Communion will undoubtedly continue its tectonically slow process of realignment.  Some of that will be experienced as walking away, some as drawing together - and both judgments depend on where you stand.

The Covenant will not hold
But it seems fairly clear that the Covenant-based programme for restructuring the Anglican Communion is at the very least stalled. Some will undoubtedly want to keep it going. Others will know they need to start again. How many provinces wish to continue as part of the conversation will probably depend more on the GAFCON churches than any other.

It's impossible to know just what turned voters against it. My guess would be a combination of autocracy, punitiveness, centralisation and a complete failure to bring the majority of members of the Church of England on board before putting it to the vote. The arrogant assumption that if leaders said as little as possible it would be waved through on a nod from the bishops proved a disastrous miscalculation.

command, control and moving backwards

Lessons in leadership
I suggest that one lesson is that, in the days of internet and instant communication, an introspective and insulated leadership is wholly inappropriate and, now visibly, ineffective. The Spirit does not merely move through the hierarchy and God's call is not heard solely by those in mitres.

In the words of the Book of Common Prayer, the Church is 'the blessed company of all faithful people'. I believe that this should be in the front of the minds of all Anglican leaders internationally, nationally and locally.

Work from where people are already

In effect members of the Church of England were asked to 'receive' the Covenant and a majority declined to do so. Reception of change has always been a weakness of Anglican ecclesiology. Perhaps that too is starting to change. (But you can't build an ecclesiology out of one straw in the wind.)

From the Botswana - Diocese of Newcastle upon Tyne
companion link

What we can do as a starting point of leadership is to hear and value the views of the very many members of the Church of England who have had wonderful experiences of links across the Communion - personal, parish, diocesan, interest groups and other.

Let's share these stories and reflections - and use the narrative of difference and commonality to begin to build new working relationships.

But however it's done what's clear is that leaders must lead from the front - but if they leave their followers behind they're not leading at all.

Absent, but not gone

Henry Orombi in the company of the commandments. (Church Times)



The Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, has not resigned from the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion (SCAC) despite earlier reports that he had.

He merely said "I stand with my brother Primate, Bishop Mouneer Anis, in his courageous decision to resign from the Standing Committee," (Episcopal Life, which seems to have first announced that Orombi had resigned). In this sentence 'stand' should not be read as 'walk'.

What he has done is to send a 3 page letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, copied to 'Primates, Moderators, and Members of the Standing Committee of the ACC' available here (pdf).

In it he reminds Rowan (though, in fact, telling everyone except Rowan who already knows) that he hasn't been to a meeting of the SCAC since he was elected for 'principled reasons'.

(Incidentally this raises other questionr of representation of the Primates on SCAC - can they vote someone off mid-term on the grounds on non-attendance?)

His grounds are

1. He stands by the Primates' Communique after their meeting in Dar Es Salaam.
2. Members of TEC - including the Presiding Bishop who, just like Orombi, was elected by the Primates - are part of the SCAC and clearly will not vote for their own exclusion (I paraphrase, see below).
3. The leadership of the Anglican Communion Office have subverted powers which properly belong to the Primates. In particular it has been cut out of the 'Windsor process' (to which he objects in any case) and that process has been given to the SCAC.
4. The SCAC has appropriated powers to itself that neither the Primates nor the Lambeth Conference have approved.
5. The issue of homosexuality, and the standing of homosexuals in the church, is a matter of faith and order and these properly belong to bishops - and the Lambeth Conference devloved such issues to the Primates (1998, Resolution III.6)
6. And now the SCAC is to be given authority over Covenant discipline - all highly irregular.

His remedy is to restore power and authority to the Primates. Even their meetings, he says, have been subverted by the officers of the Anglican Communion Office as their secretariat.

He also wishes to exclude TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada from that Primates meeting.

Orombi describes TEC as 'gross violators of Biblical Truth' and states that TEC and the ACoC 'are proceeding with unbiblical practices that contradict the faith of Anglicanism.'

For Ormobi (and I think most of GAFCON) judgement day has passed: from his perspective TEC and the ACoC have already stepped outside the Christian pale, have done so of their own informed volition, and all that remains is frustration at the lack of institutional mechanisms to expel them formally. That was the view of Maurice Sinclair and Drexel Gomez in 2002.

===============

Well, I largely agree with Orombi's organizational analysis - though not about the Primates. The SCAC is a cuckoo in the nest. It has usurped authority already and has, inevitably, reduced the authority of all the other Instruments of Unity.

What Orombi's attitudes and (in)actions also show - as I have argued from the beginning of the Covenant process - is that creating a central executive body to govern the Communion will not resolve any dispute. It will provide new channels for campaigning, new people to be lobbied, and a new location of decision-making which those in contention across the Communion will all try to capture.

The Primates would not all share the sacraments in Das es Salaam. Why should anyone think that the members of different body would do so? Elections to membership of the SCAC - or any other such body - merely replicate pre-existing divisions and carry differences and antagonisms into a small room.

Surely, well I would have thought, surely the goal should have been to enlarge the space of Anglicanism, not to reduce it - to make more room for difference and cultural specificity and theological debate, not to try to cram volatile material into an even smaller container.

I don't know if Orombi's letter will make much difference. That (a) he should have to put this in writing, (b) he has to circulate it widely, (c) it should be made public, and (d) he describes not only the sidelining of his preferred option (Primatial power) but also his personal feelings of being sidelined - are all signs of weakness.

Under such circumstances there are normally just two options: to play a long game to get back into a position of power and influence or to pick up the ball and go find some other game.

Last version of the Covenant released

On December 18th a revised version of the Ridley-Cambridge Covenant was sent to Provinces around the world with an accompanying letter (.pdf) from Canon Kearon. There was also a video message from Rowan Williams.

On a very quick read of the critical Section 4 (which the ACC had sent back for reconsideration) the first impressions are that

• the autonomy of each Province has been reinforced (4.1.3)


• procedures under the Covenant have become much more generalised and will require more work behind bureaucratic doors for implementation (e.g. 4.1.5 on recognising other Churches which might adopt the Covenant)


• What used to be the (fairly recently created) Joint Standing Committee of the ACC and Primates Meeting is now referred to as The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion (4.2.2).


• And the Covenant, by preferring generalisations over the more forensic clarity of earlier the Nassau draft (though this remained inadequate), would give large swathes of discretionary power to this Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.


• Therefore the ACC is marginalised except as being the electorate for junior members of the SC of the AC.


• The mealy mouthed phrase 'relational consequences' (4.2.4; 4.2.7) for those who do not conform to the wishes of the SC of the AC seems to imply the instutitionalisation of layers of impaired communion on the route to expulsion.

The Nassau draft proposed a semi-legal process of judgement on a province with the possibility of expulsion as punishment. This version is taking a more traditional Anglican approach. It's giving competing reassurances to everyone; it's retaining a penal process but in broad-brush terms; and, as a consequence, its giving such powers as the Covenant contains to committees and bureaucrats.

Co-ordinating canon law seems to have gone, though I may not have read carefully enough to be sure on that.

I still see no budget.

Over Christmas I'll try to read it again and produce a further and more careful critique but my gut feeling is that because it has become more amorphous it will be all the harder to defeat.

Whether this will persuade the GAFCON crowd to sign up we will have to see.

I'm still backing 3 groupings as the probable outcome: one, centred on the US with Canada, Brazil, Mexico and possibly others; GAFCON provinces; and everyone else who doesn't want to lose the connection to Canterbury. And I predict there will be some overlapping memberberships.

Schism deepened

A GAFCON too far

The headline was:

GAFCON Communiqué issued - ACNA recognized

Which begs the obvious question: by what authority?

On the GAFCON site a communiqué has been issued which, amongst other things, declares

The GAFCON Primates’ Council has the responsibility of recognizing and authenticating orthodox Anglicans especially those who are alienated by their original Provinces.

Strictly, of course, the sentence should add, after the word 'has' - accorded itself ...

The 6 men who comprise this Council, as self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy, are a fine group telling one another how righteous they are and therefore how heterodox and unrighteous are all the rest of the Anglican world. That they may do to their hearts content. It's annoying but it's harmless.

But to claim the right to determine orthodoxy, and to claim the capacity to 'recognize' another body, is simply schismatic. It is taking themselves outside the rules and structures of the Anglican Communion. In the word of the St Andrew's Draft Covenant they have excluded themselves from communion.

This is what the ACC should be dealing with. Of course we have been shuffling one foot after another to this point since Rwanda and South East Asia first consecrated Anglican 'missionaries' to intrude into the jurisdiction of TEC. But this is a qualitatively different step howsoever small it seems - it changes the whole politics of Anglicanism.

The reason this hasn't been obvious to date has been Archbishop Rowan's mistaken tactics. By siding consistently with the conservatives against TEC (I believe on ecclesiological grounds rather than those of sexual politics) he has permitted, glossed over and covered up the schismatic actions of the conservatives (presumably in direct contradiction of those same ecclesiological principles).

So I, in my small corner, say: enough is enough. Let them recognize who they like. Let them recognize and state openly that they have excluded themselves from the Anglican Communion in doing so.

Has the tide turned?

Public execution of two gay men in Iran

I sense a tide has turned. There’s no way to know but it looks to me as though the future shape of the Anglican Communion is slowly emerging.

I guess there will be one grouping based on the present GAFCON, another on TEC, and a third, centred around the CofE, which collects together all those not wishing to fight ideological battles around the shibboleth of homosexuality.

GAFCON provinces will keep strong links with other conservative provinces who, in turn will have varying degrees of linkage with the middling group, some of whom will have strong links with TEC. The CofE will try to stay friends with everyone.

There will be compacts, or agreements, or even covenants to formalise such linkages. But I suspect that the reality of a wired world means that the majority of effective links are likely to be more fluid and more complex. Many will be small-scale (diocese-diocese, parish-parish, interest group based links) and cumulatively significant. They will be more horizontal, untidy and personal links, some brief and some long lasting. Others will be more formal and organizational, some deliberately designed to bind people together, other doing so incidentally. On some themes (e.g. a international Anglican history group) they will deliberately cross the stronger divides.

Some more provinces (Australia?) may break up, as TEC has done. There will be more cross-border interventions and more pain (and court cases) from internal readjustment before things more or less settle down (though I can see a continuing trickle of movement in one direction and another as personalities and issues in conflict change).

These predictions have been brewing for a while. They were sharpened by the way accounts of the actions of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) continue to spread across the Anglican blogosphere.

Thinking Anglicans have done their usual good job in rounding up press reports and have a 5 page pdf of the full submission of the church to the legislature. Colin Coward has pointed to the silence on the American right about the Nigerian events and rhetoric.

But the fact is that we are all using the issues of homosexuality as a means to an end: to influence the character of the future Anglican communion. We are attempting to use the Nigerian antipathy towards homosexuality as much as the development of authorised blessings of same-sex unions in the Diocese of Ottawa and Niagara. (The response of the Archbishop of Canterbury when he was told about Niagara was said to be 'less than fulsome.')

On the other hand we don't get worked up about what happens to gays in Iran - torture and execution. Nor about what happens to gay and lesbian people in other countries where their lives are in danger. Nor, for that matter, about the largely untroubled acceptance of gays and lesbians in Scandinavia. (See Wikipedia for a global overview).

In other words we are using the fate of gay and lesbian people for other purposes and losing sight that the primary concern of the church should surely be those people themselves: their love and self-fulfilment, their hopes and sufferings, their position in unjust social structures, and the use of systematic brutality to enforce social norms.

If I am even vaguely right about the beginning of the end of realignment then it is time to look away from the distractions of battle and towards the post-war settlement. Towards the end of the Second World War, but before it was over, the cry was taken up in the churches as in the political parties ‘We have won the war, now how can we win the peace?’ The wholesale disruption of civil society meant that, briefly, anything seemed possible.

We need to start up a similar cry in Anglicanism: ‘The war is coming to an end, how shall we shape the peace?’

What will a new Anglicanism look like? How can Anglicanism in England be both open to all and inclusive in its attitudes at home if it is to be constrained by the impossible stretch of keeping in with everyone else abroad?

How, in a new and less fevered Anglicanism, can we welcome the marginalised and excluded into a new-old faithful church?

==============
My guess for the three major groupings, based largely on ignorance:

Conservatives:

The Diocese of Sydney, Anglican Church of North America, Bangladesh?, Burundi, Central Africa, Congo, Indian Ocean, Jerusalem & The Middle East, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South East Asia, Southern Cone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, West Africa, West Indies, Bermuda.

Middling:

Australia (bar Sydney), Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia, England, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Korea?, Melanesia, Myanmar, North India, Pakistan?, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Scotland, South India, Southern Africa, Wales, Ceylon, Lusitanian, Spain, Falkland Islands.

TEC-aligned:

Brazil, Canada, Central America, Mexico, Cuba.

How the relative weight of these groups is to be measured is another question altogether.

Rwanda statement on the Covenant

The Most Rev. Emmanuel Kolini

March 7, 2009



The Province of the Anglican Church of Rwanda has made its response to the proposed Covenant available. (Reproduced on the FoCA site.)

They endorse the idea of a covenant which must be based on Scripture and Anglican Doctrine.

In particular they endorse Lambeth Conference resolution 1.10 by which ordinations 'ought to be carried out according to Holy Scriptures and the Book of Common Prayer of 1662. (As applied to practicing homosexuals and lesbians)' and what applies to bishops should apply to deacons and priests equally.

They commit themselves to stand by the following statements:

A) The Lambeth Palace, 2003
B) The Dromantine Statement
C) The Dar-es-Salaam Statement,
D) The Road to Lambeth
E) The Jerusalem Declaration

In conclusion, having said the above, we hold very strongly, that as we continue to engage and develop this ANGLICAN COVENANT, we shall be identified by the Anglican Faith and Practice, based upon the Holy Scriptures, Doctrine and the Anglican Tradition as passed on by the Early church.

Signed by:
1. The Most Rev. Emmanuel Kolini Archbishop/chairman
2. The Rt. Rev. Onesphore Rwaje, Dean
3. The Rt. Rev. John Rucyahana
4. The Rt. Rev. Augustin Mvunabandi
5. The Rt. Rev. Jered Kalimba
6. The Rt. Rev. Josias Sendegeya
7. The Rt. Rev. Nathan K.Gasatura

===============

This is clearly not an endorsement of the Covenant as proposed, still less one with reduced powers to sanction malefactors.

I am sure no-one wants an Anglican Covenant which is not based on 'Scripture and Anglican Doctrine'. The questions are which aspects of Scripture, understood by what criteria? Which elements of Anglican Doctrine? How are the Early Church teachings to be understood and appropriated today? But, unless there are further documents not made public, these necessary elaborations are not made.

As it stands this document cannot be used by the Covenant Design Group as it adds nothing and suggests no specific remedies to their imprecise complaints.

This is (and not surprisingly) an endorsement of the GAFCON branch of Anglicanism, increasingly separated off from the main river. It is a further step towards differing covenants - whether for cantonisation or schism.



.

The peace of God

Archbishop Peter Akinola and Bishop Martyn Minns

of The Anglican Church of Nigeria

Eruptions at the Foot of the Volcano (Leonardo Ricardo) has a long piece which celebrates a UN decision on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and attacks the attitudes of conservative Anglicans:

(New York, December 18, 2008) – ¨In a powerful victory for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 66 nations at the UN General Assembly today supported a groundbreaking statement confirming that international human
rights protections include sexual orientation and gender identity. It is the first time that a statement condemning rights abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people has been presented in the General Assembly.¨

Human rights are incommensurable with the hierarchical structuring of religion and the absolute legitimation of ecclesiastical authority as God given.

Therefore human rights should be of the deepest concern to all faithful people: how have we built a church, any church, that is capable of acting against people because they do not fit an expected mould? How can we belong to a church which does not regard every person as of equal value before God and, therefore, of equal value in our own eyes? How can we support a church which does not actively oppose all violence against God's children?

There is something rotten in our relationship with God.

===============

Subsequent note: the Vatican signed up to the statement, the US refused to. Is this perhaps because the US might have to do something about it while the Vatican never would?

3,000 to leave CofE?

Reform is: squeezing even more hot air into the church

It's rubbish, of course. Or, more accurately, Reform posturing as part of the continuing campaign to bend the Communion in one direction or another. No accident then that the report is in the Daily Telegraph.

But given that many of the Reform congregations have more or less excluded themselves from the life of the CofE anyway, will it make much difference? Many have wholly or partly stopped paying their quota so it wouldn't even make much difference to Diocesan budgets.



It's clearly the North American let's have a Province to suit ourselves model being essayed in the UK. But if 3,000 is the top estimate then you might need a microscope to find a conservative Province that covered the whole of Europe.



The trickier situation would be if the congregations don't leave. They would carry on occupying parish churches, clergy drawing stipends and pensions as now, but merely march to the Foca drum. Just like now. I suspect that only if there were to be some explicit schismatic act (e.g. inviting a GAFCON bishop to conduct a confirmation, ordaining a person on their own cognizance, or making a statement of formal allegiance in contravention of the Oath of Obedience) could any action be taken against them.

Not so much a new province as old parasites.

Gone. Fogotten?

GAFCON gone?

Pluralist has the answer:

I guess a Foca site will emerge next.

Another small step apart

The GAFCON Primates are supporting ex-bishop Duncan, using his deposition as a further excuse to do what they want to do and blaming everyone else, as usual.

Once more the upholders of the orthodox faith are made to suffer at the
hands of those who have introduced new teachings.

...

It is now impossible to believe that the exhortations of the Lambeth
Conference and the Windsor Continuation Group will be heeded. No Pastoral Forum
has been established. We remain convinced that the faithful Anglicans of North
America need to have their own Province recognised by the Communion as a whole.

All here.

Disaggregation

Dave Walker's explanation of the Southern Cone

Thinking Anglicans has a round up of stories about the Southern Cone and Greg Venables' avoidance of Archbishop Fred Hiltz.

Viewed from where I stand (which is a long way away geographically and theologically) it is hard to see sufficient detail to be able to grasp the overall picture. I wonder what the relationship is between Archbishop Venables, a Brit, and the African Archbishops who, under the umbrella of GAFCON, are consolidating their raids into North America in the form of a North American province.

So, are there enough conservative congregations to go round with leading to conflict between GAFCON and the Africans? Are they in co-operative communion with one another in the same way in which both the Episcopal Church and the Church of England work in Europe? Or in competition with one another for the same fish in the episcopal sea? Is Venables trawling in Canada because the Africans have been too busy south of the border or because the Canadians were uncomfortable with the idea of African Archbishops? Are the two groups collecting different species of conservative?

In the meantime the Diocese of Pittsburgh continues to prepared for divorce by agreeing to 'a court-appointed neutral party inventory all of its property and assets as it prepares for a final vote on seceding from the Episcopal Church.' here.

GAFCON and FOCA

The GAFCON Primates have met and made their statement (if, apparently, a little delayed in publication). With it they have posted a letter from certain North American Bishops.

Early comment from the liberal wing includes: Pluralist, Mark Harris and The Three Legged Stool. Thinking Anglicans will, as always, provide the most systematic collection of links especially to media comment. (An earlier post by Mark Harris gives some of the immediate background to the letter from the North American Bishops.)

There might seem little more to add - but if bloggers worked on that principle then the whole caboodle would grind to a halt.

The overview is clear: GAFCON is an alternative structure to the Anglican Communion. Its leaders claim the right to determine who is, and who is not, an authentic, confessing Anglican.

The twofold task of the Council is ‘to authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and congregations and to encourage all Anglicans to promote the gospel and defend the faith.’

There is no greater claim to power in ecclesiology than the power of the keys: to admit into and exclude from the company of the righteous, the community of the saved.

The Council will have an Advisory Board and a Secretariat and is intended to be permanent and world-wide. One of their priorities will be to claim North America:

It is expected that priority will be given to the possible formation of a province in North America for the Common Cause Partnership.

The letter appended to the communiqué is from bishops already under the jurisdiction of the signatories. It would be impolitic to include publicly Bob Duncan and others who have not yet formally annd finally departed from TEC. Yet it is probable that this fish too can be landed and the North American prize will be so much bigger.

At the same time GAFCON hopes to create a much bigger penumbra of members and supporters through the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (what Mark Harris calls a 'holding tank'):

We invite individuals, churches, dioceses, provinces and parachurch organisations who assent to the Jerusalem Declaration to signify their desire to become members of the Fellowship via the GAFCON web-site or written communication with the Secretariat. The Fellowship will develop networks, commissions and publications intended to defend and promote the biblical gospel in ways which support one another.

(Uncomfortably close to my Covenant for Pilgrims which, crucially, eschews any confessional test.)

This is unlikely to be merely an email list. I expect that it would be invaluable as a means of determining when a country or province has sufficient critical mass (and finance) to plan for and effect more GAFCON provinces in the west. It would enable the co-ordination of national groups to, for example, pay the lawyers necessary to untie the legal knots in each place - and, following the example of the US, to fight for as much property, pensions and anything else to which they can lay claim. Groups below the critical mass would remain as a fifth column in the Anglican church (the real one), their political power enhanced by their international links and the threat of sesession. Though all this will depend on just how good their management and organizational skills are.

Planning schism in the sunlight

(A thought: I wonder in which country GAFCON and FOCA will be legally registered - and therefore what they will be required to publish of their accounts.)

In the slow ripping of the Anglican net this is a significant step forwards. It will reshape the Anglican Communion in unanticipatable ways best left to historians of the twenty-second century to describe (should anyone be bothered by then).

In the short term:

• Will the Archbishop of Canterbury recognise the schism and formalise it by refusing to invite the dissident Primates to future Primates' Meetings?
• How will the rest of the Global South react when they find they are even fewer in the corridors of Anglican power?
• How will FOCA members act in churches where they are a relatively small minority?
• How will the split amongst conservatives who remain Anglican (into those who FOCA and those who don't) be played out in the western/northern provinces?
• It is clear that each side regards the other as responsible for the split, as not playing by the rules, as ignoring calls for moratoria. How will this be translated into future legal / structural change in the Communion and in the individual Provinces in which schism occurs?

Though I am happy to hear the view of the GAFCON Primates that

The Anglican Covenant will take a long time to be widely accepted and may have no particular force when it does.

Which reflects the comment in Rowan William's Pastoral Letter that

As the proposals for an Anglican Covenant now go forward, it is still possible that some will not be able to agree; there was a clear sense that some sort of covenant will help our identity and cohesion, although the bishops wish to avoid a legalistic or juridical tone.

So why bother, I say.