“This is not how Anglicans should behave,” said Christina Rees, a member of the General Synod, the governing body of the Church of England. “It’s awful. It’s a terrible outcome to the meeting of the primates in Canterbury. What action will now be taken against all those churches in the Anglican Communion who treat gay men and women as criminals? Will they be suspended for three years, too?”

Jim Naughton, former canon for the Archdiocese of Washington and now a communications consultant specializing in the Episcopal Church, called the sanctions a “weird” attempt by the primates to take power away from elected bodies and claim it for themselves.

But Naughton expects no impact in the life of the Episcopal Church.

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From his Facebook page:

Thank you my dear friends for your prayers for me and for the Primates meeting here in Canterbury. God responded, praise the Lord! We affirmed with overwhelming majority the traditional and biblical teaching of marriage which is between a man and a woman for life.
The resolution of the Episcopal Church in America to allow same sex marriage was a fundamental departure from the church doctrine. For this reason TEC is not allowed now to represent the Communion in ecumenical and interfaith meetings. The cannot be elected or appointed in the standing committees of AC & ACC. The cannot participate in decision regarding doctrine and polity of the church for the upcoming 3 years.

The primates of the Anglican Communion have suspended the Episcopal Church from full participation in the life and work of the Anglican Communion. On 14 January 2016 a motion was presented to the gathering of archbishops and moderators gathered in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral that called for the Episcopal Church to be suspended for a period of three years.

A copy of the resolution seen by Anglican Ink calls for the Episcopal Church to lose its “vote” in meetings of pan-Anglican institutions and assemblies, but preserves its “voice”, demoting the church to observer status..

The motion asks that representatives of the Episcopal Church not be permitted to represent the Communion in interfaith and ecumenical bodies or dialogue commissions, nor serve on the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, nor vote at meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council — whose next meeting is this summer in Lusaka. Unlike the recommendations of the Windsor Report, which called for the “voluntary withdrawal” of the Episcopal Church from the life of the Communion, today’s vote directs the archbishop to discipline the American church.

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Take the time to watch and listen to it all.

JUSTIN WELBY: It is a sense of, hang on; you are telling us whom and what we should be. A senior figure in one country said to me a few years ago – he said, I didn’t go through the colonial period and get rid of you people in order for you to come back in a different form and do the same to me as you were doing before.

[NPR’S TOM] GJELTEN: One more consideration – Christians in the global South often compete with Muslims. Philip Jenkins, a religion historian at Baylor University, says their resistance to same-sex marriage must be seen in that context.

PHILIP JENKINS: If they were ever to waiver on these gay issues, they think that would just hand a massive propaganda victory to Muslims. Christians in those countries would be seen as just toeing the Western line, giving way to Western immorality.

Read or listen to it all.

GAFCON was established in 2008 to restore scriptural fidelity to the Anglican Communion.

And in the United Kingdom, evangelical Anglican pastors have watched with trepidation as the linchpin in the debate””the Church of England””works loose from biblical orthodoxy. Sam Allberry, associate pastor of St. Mary’s Maidenhead, in Berkshire, is same-sex attracted and has championed the cause of similar Christians seeking to live in faithfulness to God’s Word””which means celibate living in singleness.

“God’s Word on this is not only clear, but I think it is good,” Allberry said during a 2014 conference hosted by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

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Up to 15 of the 38 prelates taking part in the talks are also understood to have withdrawn from joint prayer services in Canterbury Cathedral in a sign of the depth of the divisions over issues such as homosexuality.
But sources claimed that fears of a dramatic public walkout on the first few days of the talks had been avoided by negotiation tactics involving separating people into small groups, unable even to communicate with each other for most of the time.
Clerics are understood to have been asked to hand in mobile phones for much of the time during the talks, overseen by two trained “facilitators” specialising in “reconciliation” tactics.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Rev Justin Welby has invited Jean Vanier, the Canadian Catholic theologian, to address the bitterly divided primates of the worldwide Anglican communion who have been meeting this week in Canterbury to discuss the themes of living together and the creation of a community.

After two-and-a-half days the 38 archbishops were still together, defying threats of an early walkout by some African leaders over the vexed issue of the western churches’ tortuous accommodation with homosexuality.

Third world archbishops, backed by some English and American conservative evangelicals, have repeatedly demanded over the last decade that liberal American, Canadian and some British churches should be punished for tolerating gay clergy and the meeting is seen as a last chance of compromise. There have been predictions that between three and a dozen archbishops may walk out if their demands are not met.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury could face a walk out Wednesday of conservative archbishops, whose call for him to honor past agreements of the primates meetings and to restore “godly order” to the Anglican Communion, appears not to have been met. Though no walk out has happened so far, and ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach has been a full participant from the start, the tone of the meeting has changed, and the pace has quickened.

On the second day of the gathering of primates, sources tell Anglican Ink, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was asked by leaders of the GAFCON and Global South Anglican movements to address the divisions within the Communion caused by innovations in doctrine and discipline adopted by the Episcopal Church of the USA and Anglican Church of Canada. Late on Tuesday, it appears he has failed to do so to their satisfaction.

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Despite fervid media speculation of a walk out by some bishops on the first day of the meeting, the participants gathered for a public evensong service on Monday, accompanied by young people from the new religious community of St Anselm, launched by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby at his London headquarters of Lambeth Palace last year.
Informal sources said during the first working session of the meeting the bishops focused on setting their agenda and listened to an address by Archbishop Welby on the history and key issues facing the Communion.
Ahead of the historic encounter, the Anglican leader asked people of faith to pray for the bishops so that they may be able to discern the will of God, despite the difficulties which challenge not only Christians but all of us in today’s world

Read it all and listen if you wish to.

From here:

So, it is two hours after Evensong in Canterbury Cathedral finished. Last night it was electric – the Holy Spirit preaching to the Church through the lectionary – Amos 1’s warning, 1 Corinthians 1 pleading for unity, practically all the Primates gathered. A real sense of God being present.
Tonight I sat in the Quire an hour before the service and just prayed for God to be glorified. Interspersed between my tongues I sang the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy which I realised afterward is to the tune Nicaea. Then the choir and Primates processed in. A third if not more of the Primates were missing and the atmosphere was totally different to Monday. Amos 2 moved from the warning of chapter 1 into judgement. Justin Welby spent large parts of the service knelt in prayer, almost oblivious to what was going on around him. I felt suddenly spiritually drained after the power of my hour of prayer. Afterwards a number of journalists wanted to ask me what I thought, but I needed a moment to myself. I was genuinely close to tears.
Clearly something is happening and it’s probably happening right now – we need to pray for the Primates and we need to pray for Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. And don’t pray for what you want to happen, just pray for God to be glorified

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…while there are few official communications from the gathering, different groups of church officials have been communicating with their churches. Both ACNA ”” and the broader Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) group with which it is affiliated ”” have shared prayer requests and created web sites around the gathering, as has Welby via an official web site operated by the London-based Anglican Communion Office.

In contrast to Welby, who has granted multiple interviews in advance of the gathering, Episcopal Church officials have said little publicly. New Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry is not regularly active on social media (Curry averaged one tweet a month for the past three months) and he has faced both an unplanned emergency surgery and the administrative suspension of three high-ranking church staff in the past month.

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Attendance at Church of England services has plunged to its lowest level ever as the Archbishop of Canterbury warned it was battling to maintain its place in an increasingly “anti-Christian” culture.
Official figures ”“ based on an annual pew count ”“ show that only 1.4 per cent of the population of England now attend Anglican services on a typical Sunday morning.
Even the Church’s preferred “weekly” attendance figures, which include those at mid-week or extra services, has slipped below one million for the first time ever.

Overall average attendances at Sunday services across England fell by 22,000 to 764,700 in 2014 – a fall of seven per cent in just five years.

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Today's Collect for #Primates2016 is a prayer by William Temple: https://t.co/2TvcTRLZBa #OneFamily pic.twitter.com/CUAlmcA5en

— Primates 2016 (@Primates2016) January 12, 2016

The reality is that a Church such as the Anglican Communion is such a mixture of histories, and of theological difference, that inevitably there will be deep differences and from time to time these will lead to grave crises, such as the one faced in recent years.

Like all crises in the church it is complicated. It springs from history, the history of centuries a history of Anglicanism and of the church in England which began before the fall of the Roman Empire and long before Augustine, with Bishops, including at York.

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Found here:

Perfect storm of Scripture at BCP Evensong tonight in Canterbury Cathedral.

Psalms 59-61
Amos 1
Magnificat
1 Corinthians 1:1-17
Nunc Dimittis

O Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness

And for those for whom numbers are important, I counted them all in (including Foley) and I counted them all back out again.

[John] Stott takes time in his speech to detail the specific circumstances in which a Christian might be justified leaving his or her denomination. To him, those circumstances include the following situations (as The Very Rev. Justyn Terry once summarized Stott’s points):

When an issue of first order is at stake, such as deserves the condemnation of “anitchrist” (1 John 2:22) or “anathema” (Gal 1:8-9)
When the offending issue is not just held by an idiosyncratic minority of individuals but has become the official position of the majority
When the majority have silenced the faithful remnant, forbidding them to witness or protest any longer
When we have conscientiously explored every possible alternative
When, after a painful period of prayer and discussion, our conscience can bear the weight no longer

These, I take it, are the kinds of criteria that GAFCON leaders and others are weighing as they gather together. And, in particular, Stott’s fourth point seems to be what the Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to explore. While I have reasoned hope that these criteria have not been met and the Communion still has a way forward, they are (it must be said) not simple questions.

Read it all.

I’ve done my very best over the past month to talk to as many people in the know as I can and I think the very best outline of events I can give you is this:

1.the GAFCON Primates will hold the line on discipline. I have this from a source very close to senior GAFCON leadership. I would be very surprised if more than a handful of GAFCON Primates don’t join in this very clear stand.
2. the same source advises me that a number of the non-GAFCON Global South (GS) Primates will also be taking this same stand.
3. Justin Welby will invite TEC and the ACC to consider their position, acting as mediator not enforcer. This is now my gut speaking. I can’t see Welby execute discipline himself. He is far too rooted into his “reconciliation” scheme to actually take the lead that he needs to. He also has the unity of the Church of England to consider. If it were known that he was the one who clearly told TEC/ACC that if nothing changed they were no longer welcome, nor at the upcoming Lambeth Conference, then he might very well face an open revolt just the other side of the Lambeth Palace walls.
4. TEC/ACC would ask for more time. Perhaps a night to sleep on it, perhaps another appeal to “not being able to speak on behalf of the General Convention” (which was the way Griswold and then Schori avoided the issue before). They then might come back with a proposal that would be simply unacceptable to GAFCON. They will also effectively be calling Welby’s bluff to do something, daring him to be the one to enforce the will of the majority GAFCON group (and, no doubt, portraying that will as bullying).
5.Welby tries to broker an agreement rather than taking the lead.
6. GAFCON/GS partners walk. We never get to the Gathering – the meeting has failed because Welby has failed to lead at the moment where he should. I first made this prediction back in September when the meeting was originally announced.

Read it all.

A schism in the Anglican Communion would be a “failure” but not a “disaster”, the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Monday, shortly before the opening of the first meeting of Primates since 2011.

Interviewed on Today on BBC Radio 4, Archbishop Welby said that he “certainly” wanted reconciliation; but he went on: “There is nothing I can do if people decide that they want to leave the room,” Such a walk-out ”” reckoned to be 90-per-cent likely, according to one senior church source”” “won’t split the Communion”, he said.

He explained: “The Church is a family, and you remain a family even if you go your separate ways. That has always been the case, and it always will be. God puts us together, and we have to work out how we live with that, and how we serve God faithfully in a way that shows that you can disagree profoundly and still love and care for each other.”

He went on: “A schism would not be a disaster in the sense you put it. God is bigger than our failures. But it would be a failure. It would not be good if the Church is unable to set the example to the world of showing how we can live with one another and disagree profoundly, because we are brought together by Jesus Christ, not by our own choice.”

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The opening business session of the meeting of primates of the Anglican Communion is scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm, local time, sources tell Anglican Ink. Some primates drawn from each of the competing factions attended public worship of Morning Prayer in Canterbury Cathedral on the morning of 11 January 2016, and the day’s events will be concluded with Evening Prayer in the Cathedral. Attendance at these services is a matter of private conscience, AI has learned, and is not part of the meeting’s program. A Eucharist service will be offered as well, but it also is not part of the formal agenda as the primates as a corporate body have been unable to celebrate communion together since their 1993 meeting at Lambeth Palace.

The first item on the agenda is the creation of the agenda.

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A split in the Anglican Church over the issue of homosexuality “would not be a disaster, but it would be a failure”, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of Church leaders, Justin Welby said he wanted “reconciliation”, but that would mean “finding ways to disagree well”.
Views range from liberals in the US – who accept openly gay clergy – to conservatives in Africa, who do not.
There are fears of a permanent schism in the 80m-strong Communion.

Read it all from the BBC.

On January 11th, 38 leaders of Anglican provinces around the world will begin a five-day meeting in Canterbury, the spiritual home of the global Anglican communion. They have been invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby…in what observers are calling a last-ditch attempt to save the third-biggest Christian denomination in the world, with some 85m followers. Why is this meeting so important for Anglicans and what is likely to happen?

Anglican primates usually meet every two years, but have not convened since 2011, largely because of an ongoing dispute about homosexuality. In 2003 the Episcopal Church (the American wing of Anglicanism) consecrated a sexually active gay bishop and last year moved towards allowing its clergy to solemnise same-sex marriage. The Anglican communion cannot excommunicate people or provinces and, as a result, conservative bishops have formed a group, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which is threatening to break away entirely. (If this meeting had not been called, they might have done so already.) Another group of conservatives in America has already split away from the Episcopal Church to form the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). At the last primates’ meeting in 2011, a third of the archbishops did not show up, in protest at the Episcopal Church’s stance on homosexuality. It is clear, wrote one cleric at the time, that, “barring a miracle, there cannot again be a Primates’ Meeting in which the Archbishop of Canterbury gathers all Anglican primates from across the Communion.” That miracle has come to pass. The appointment of Michael Curry, a more conciliatory head of the Episcopal Church, may have helped. He has not balked at an invitation being issued to Foley Beach, leader of ACNA, despite his breakaway church’s never having been officially recognised as a province of the Anglican communion.

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The conundrum could be filled out along the following lines:

Failed response: The Communion has not found a way ”“ other than repetition of requests ”“ to implement its response.
Leading to same patterns of behaviour continuing:
Despite finally agreeing a text, the covenant has at best stalled, perhaps sunk.
Although interventions have ceased that is because of the creation of a new province and it is clear that some provinces will again intervene elsewhere if they think necessary.
Rites to bless same-sex unions are authorised and provinces are now taking the much more theologically significant step of canonical and liturgical acceptance of same-sex marriage.
Undermining the goal:
The long-standing declarations of impaired and broken communion between individual provinces remain
This gathering of Primates will be the first since 2009 to convene practically all Primates
It appears this meeting has only happened because of the invitation to ACNA’s Archbishop.
Despite much wonderful work inter-provincially, many provinces are barely remaining together in the Instruments, it looks like some do not wish to remain together, and the Communion as a whole is clearly not living out its commitments as a Communion.
Consequences: Four Options

Faced with this conundrum there is a need to consider its consequences.

Read it all from Fulcrum.

Thirdly, I’ve signed because the church must be a place of compassion and love. The Quakers (who have often been a long way ahead of the C of E in matters of justice, including their acceptance of homosexual people) are known as the Society of Friends. This is how St John sees the church gathered in the upper room, where disciples are set fee to love one another in a way that echoes God’s eternal love for them. Human pain and suffering have a particular claim on our compassion. And we shouldn’t make any mistake about the suffering and pain many gay people around the world experience. I include in this gay clergy and other ministers in the Church of England who, in an ecclesiastical culture perceived to be hostile, live in real fear of being found out. The Primates have a special responsibility to make sure that our churches are communities of hospitality and friendship that do not collude with hypocrisy. They, we all, have that calling because this is how God himself is always reaching out towards each of us. It’s a great deal harder to act hospitably than to uphold simple binaries that banish the non-approved from acceptance. This truly is ‘tough love’.

I hope that this letter will not come across as trouble-stirring or polemical. It’s meant to be firm but eirenic in tone. It would be great if it helped give the Primates confidence as they debate human sexuality, if it helped them to know that every step they take, however tentative, towards changing entrenched attitudes and welcoming gay Christians into their communities will be warmly and gratefully supported. The first step, maybe, is to recognise that just as with female ordination, there will be differences of view among the Primates and this needs to be respected. (I’m not sure that it altogether is, yet.) As Justin Welby has said, in grown-up communities there must always be room for ‘deep disagreement’.

But our letter is looking for much more than this. We’re looking for a deep change of hearts and minds. We use the word ‘repentance’. That’s undeniably a strong word, but nothing is less is called for in the face of any great wrong we have committed. I am pretty confident that in decades to come, we as churches shall be saying we are deeply sorry for the way we have mistreated and oppressed gay people in the past. So why not say it now? That would make the Anglican Communion a place of hope and sanctuary for LGBTI people across the world.

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The teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the faithful traditions of the Church stand in the way of this new egalitarianism, and are widely attacked. Those refusing to subscribe to the emerging equalities agenda by adopting the LGBT value system, are increasingly ostracized and punished.

It began with Christian bakers who were targeted for refusing to bake cakes celebrating gay weddings. It developed into the sacking of people who held public office, ranging from the chief executives of Internet companies who had dared to support traditional marriage like Brendan Eich, to the sacked Harvard Urologist Dr Paul Church, who refused to endorse the new political correctness. Increasingly anyone holding public office does so as a hostage to the new uncompromising ideology.

The Church is having to decide whether or not accommodates itself to this new celebration of the gods of equality with the developing cultural fascism that is emerging to enforce it, or whether it remains faithful to Scripture and Christian experience (otherwise called, tradition.)

The Episcopal Church in the United States decided early on that it would accommodate.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, who spent his first 18 months travelling to every Anglican province to visit each primate, is desperately hoping to avoid an open split. However, he has decided that the internecine feuding must stop. He will propose to fellow church leaders a looser structure for the communion. Instead of all 38 churches keeping full ties of doctrine and worship with each other, they will become more independent, keeping ties only to Canterbury as the hub of an Anglican federation. As one source in Lambeth Palace said a few months ago, “It’s not really a question of divorce; more of sleeping in separate bedrooms.”
This may not work. Lambeth Palace is already fearful that some conservative churches, especially those making up Gafcon (the Global Anglican Future Conference), will refuse any compromise and focus on the divisive issue of gay clergy, insisting that all primates reject gay bishops in any province of the communion. They might then set up a rival organisation and denounce as “sinful” the more liberal churches. Freed from fraternal constraints, future relations might be marked by the extreme language and biblical polemics both sides have hurled at each other, adding to the bitterness and mutual antipathy of recent years. The chances of what the archbishop calls “good disagreement” look slim.
The first row will be what to do about the Anglicans in the US. The Episcopal Church set off the latest round of infighting with the consecration as bishop of Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, in 2003. This caused a furious reaction with dozens of clergy and some 200,000 parishioners walking out. They set up the conservative Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and chose Bishop Foley Beach as their new primate, with 120,000 members and 31 dioceses. Being America, the schism has led to lawsuits across the country over the control of individual parishes and ownership of churches and their assets.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury is facing the prospect of a decisive split in the worldwide Anglican church over issues such as homosexuality at what is being billed as make-or-break summit of leading clerics next week.
The Most Rev Justin Welby has invited archbishops and bishops from around to what is intended to be a week-long primates’ meeting in Canterbury to discuss a plan he hopes will avert a permanent schism between liberals and conservatives branches of the 80 million-strong church.
But there are fears the event could break up amid angry recriminations within days, with the leaders of the church in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and other countries walking out.
That could herald the beginning of a permanent estrangement between different wings of the worldwide and marking the effective end of the Anglican Communion in its current form.

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