…I appreciate the cautions about this linking of conciliarism too easily to Anglican provincial autonomy that Professor Radner makes me aware of. What are we to do in the 21st century with the international vision of Christian fellowship that was so much a part of the idealistic program of the medieval canonists who crafted conciliarism? What new structures might allow us to realize more deeply what it means to be members of the worldwide body of Christ? The Episcopal Church is no longer a “national church” but is made up of a family of nations, most of which do not share the English heritage of 18th-century American Anglicans (and in some nations the Episcopal Church in fact overlaps with another autonomous Anglican province). How can the 18th-century adaptation of conciliarism to one republic serve an international church that is no longer confined to one continent? The debate about the Anglican Covenant, which enters a new stage now as we prepare for the 2012 General Convention, is an opportunity for the whole people of God to engage prayerfully the issues concerning the constitutional structures of the body of Christ that Professor Radner and I have raised.

Read it all.

Now, in 2011, The New Puritans has been revised and brought up to date with a new title: Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism: The Sydney Experiment. As with the earlier book, Muriel Porter acknowledges quite openly that she is “obviously not able to report on Sydney objectively and even-handedly.”

The acknowledgement was unnecessary. Even without it, the highly polemical nature of the book – and a significant degree of distortion that inevitably arises from that – is obvious. The book is littered with unsubstantiated assertions introduced with words such as, “Some have suggested …” and “I suspect the real reason …” and “Perhaps …….”
Unfortunately, it is also littered with factual error, half-truth and the attribution of false or hidden motives to those with whom she disagrees. Sydney Anglicans might think they are taking a stand on the teaching of Scripture but in reality, she repeatedly asserts, their motivation is much more sinister.

Read it all.

From here:

…Muriel Porter has [written] a tirade against the greatest evil facing world Anglicanism, viz., Sydney Anglicans. Now I might have a more inclusive view of women in ministry than some of my Sydney Anglican friends, but I would point out that (i) There is a lot more diversity in Sydney Anglicanism than Porter admits; and (ii) The Diocese of Sydney employs more women in ministry than any other Anglican Diocese in the world (even if not in ordained priesthood ministry). I have no intention of defending the Sydney Anglicans (they are more than equipped to do that themselves). But in my mind Porter’s attack is not just on Sydney Anglicans, but on all Anglicans all over the world who hold to the Creeds, Prayerbook, and 39 Articles, i.e., the orthodox. The irony is that her purportedly inclusive brand of Anglicanism is anything but inclusive of anyone who disagrees with her. What is more, she treats African Anglicans as little more than puppets controlled by Sydney Anglicans. Porter is so blatantly condescending towards Anglicans in the global south that it is almost unbelievable that anyone could be that arrogant. I mean, it is borderline racism, and I wonder if an African Anglican would agree with me here? Her rant is indicative of the liberal Anglicans who are absolutely livid that African and Asian Anglicans refuse to comply with their theological revisionism. The mere fact that Global South Anglicans have any voice or vote in the communion and dare speak against their former colonial masters is positively outrageous for Porter. They must have been coaxed, cajoled, and coached into orthodoxy by Peter Jensen ”“ I mean, really, who actually believes this non-sense? For a response to Porter, see Mark Thompson’s review of her book at the Anglican Church League.

The segment description is as follows:

Kevin and George take you back to 2003 and the ultimate challenge for the Anglican Communion. They also discuss the London Riots and Potter-mania. Our guest Bishop this week is Archbishop Duncan who brings Kevin up to speed on the new Ordinal for the Anglican Church in North America.

Watch it all.

The segment description is as follows:

George Conger and Kevin Kallsen discuss this day in History and the death of John Stott. This week we also have two contributors – AS Haley delves into New York states new same sex marriage law and Bishop Love discusses how this new law affects the Diocese of Albany NY. –Oh and for the curious…. we have the blooper reel at the end of the show.

Watch it all.

Frankly, much of the Church has been mad for decades. There has been a general infantilisation at work. It is not so long since the archbishops of Canterbury and York put their names to a Lent booklet distributed to all the parishes. They wrote the foreword to three guides: one for The Family; one for Adults and Youth and the other for Kids.

These glossy booklets feature Mr Men-style cartoons which we must suppose represent the general public. Achingly politically correct, with all races represented ”“ but no fat people or smokers ”“ and dumbing down beyond the farthest reaches of infantilisation, the booklets urge us to: “Do fun things together. Create a space in your home… a corner of a room… an understairs cupboard… make a prayer den using furniture and blankets… gather some objects that are fun to touch, feel and smell: a piece of velvet, feathers, a tray of sand, lavender bags or pine cones.”

And what are we supposed to do in the prayer den? “Take in some pebbles, shells or feathers…” presumably to demonstrate impeccable ecumenical relations with primitive animists and tree-huggers. And prayers are indeed supplied: “Dear God, make wrong things right… ” But this is not praying to God, only the sentimental wish-fulfilment of appealing to Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy. We are even educated as to the correct manual acts to perform while making this desolate prayer: “Shake your finger from side to side for ‘wrong’ and then do thumbs up for ‘right’.” You feel there should be a caution not to do this near a window in case the neighbours see you and phone for the men in white coats.

Read it all (from the long queue of should-have-already-been-posted material)

Frankly, I find it impossible to reconcile the good Canon’s version of our Church’s history with the known facts. There was no “Presiding Bishop” created by the founding documents to be “the head of this new Church”, much less a lead bishop “reflecting the principles of the young republic” — see the details about the gradual establishment of that office, and its subsequent mushrooming into its current form, in this earlier post.

Moreover, the Church of England and its bishops were emphatically not unwilling to “embrace [their] child’s new status.” They simply had to eliminate certain procedural hurdles, and to iron out a few doctrinal differences, before they could proceed with consecrating an American bishop, all as explained (in painstaking detail — which I know for many readers is the bugaboo of this blog) in this post, in which there are full links to all the historical documents. There, one will learn, for example, that far from being unable to “convince Church of England leadership to consecrate indigenous bishops for the fledgling Church”, the Rev. Dr. White was one of the first two American bishops to be consecrated by the then-Archbishop of Canterbury. That august official, together with the Archbishop of York, went to great lengths to accommodate the desire of the “fledgling Church” to have proper bishops to lead it, and to ensure that it was truly a church founded in the image of the Church of England, if not under its jurisdiction.

Read it all.

Well what do you know: a year ago I called it correctly on my blog in my reflections on The Limits of Management. At that point the cogniscenti in the Episcopal Church were convinced that they could push through any program they wanted by “using psychology” and beating up anyone who wouldn’t get on board. There would be “workshops” with “materials” in three-ring binders at which we poor sods could “ventilate” our feelings. The agenda would be ratified by General Convention and then there would be more workshops for “healing” and “reconciliation” with hugs and making nice. And everyone would live happily ever after except for the recalcitrant few who would soon die off.

I predicted that it wouldn’t happen, and I was right.

Now, as we await the Eames Commission’s report, I’ll venture another prediction. The report will censure the Episcopal Church for the ordination of Bishop Robinson, propose some symbolic gesture to make it good, and make noises about flying bishops and alternative jurisdictions. Within ECUSA it will not make one whit of difference””except to the extent that it provides more opportunities for bishops and their staffs to go to conferences. Conservative congregations will continue pursuing litigation to retain rights to their property, liberal clergy will keep sucking up to the secular elite and congratulate themselves for being cool, the secular elite will not notice and despise them as much as ever, and the majority of Episcopalians, preoccupied with bake sales and Sunday School construction paper projects will not give a damn.

The Episcopal Church will continue in its slide, with membership down from 5% of the population in 1960 to 1% now, and I look forward with pleasure to its eventual demise, facilitated by the arrogance of clergy who regard themselves as members of the enlightened intelligencia and imagine that they can manipulate or bully us into buying their half-baked politically correct nonsense and into doing church they way they want it done.

–Dr. Harriet Baber in a blog comment on October 11, 2004.

Most readers of this blog would agree that it would be hypocritical for the Church of England to refuse to appoint Jeffrey John to a Bishopric whilst it continued to have bishops installed who were in identical situations as Dr John and his partner. But, I am led to believe, that is not the case and the bullet points above have been drawn up because they cover safely in their five points any of the men that some might wish to out in their angry response to the leaks of this week. If it were not so then the Church of England, quite rightly, would open itself wide up to the charge of blatant hypocrisy and despite the fact that people at Church House and in the highest echelons of the CofE do make mistakes, they do not deliberately make those kind of mistakes. Those kind of mistakes lead to resignations at the highest level. If that is all true, then what would the outing of gay bishops in the Church of England actually achieve?

Well firstly, it would expose to public view as homosexual a number of men who have been faithfully celibate and abiding to the church’s teaching steadfastly for all of their lives. They would be outed for the only reason that they were single and gay rather than single and straight, outed by folks who argue vociferously on their blogs and websites that people should not be singled out just because they were gay and for no other reason. Who at this point would be the hypocrites?

Read it all.

The Covenant is a framework for just this mutual sibling encouragement and admonition around the pole of “recognizability.” This responsibility is in fact entailed in the very idea of “oversight,” of episcopacy. That is why bishops are not merely local administrators, but also constitute a worldwide collegium of stewards of the recognizability of the Gospel in the Church’s life and teaching. This is why, in the patristic era, there arose a custom that three bishops, ordinarily from neighboring dioceses, would participate in consecrations. The ministry of vouching for the catholic and apostolic nature of life and teaching was held by them jointly.

In other words, embedded in the very concept of a bishop is a ministry of recognizability beyond the merely local. A covenant of oversight for the sake of communion is implied by episcopacy itself. This ministry, to be sure, is best exercised in a flexible manner that provides for discernment over time and gathering in council. (The Covenant presents such opportunities in abundance, which makes the accusations of quasi-Romanism so extraordinary.)

Read it all.

The opposition of Nigerian Bishops and their congregations to any softening of attitudes towards homosexuality has made them increasingly uneasy with the notion of being in full communion with overseas churches which allow – in their view – an unacceptable latitude in sexual matters. The size and faithfulness of this province means that in any ensuing schism, to be able to claim communion with the Church of Nigeria will be invaluable for a body seeking to present itself as the genuine inheritor of the Anglican tradition. As British, Australian and North American churches fight within themselves over the status of women Bishops and active homosexual clergy, the Church of Nigeria, along with the other African provinces such as South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda, finds itself courted by traditionalists and reformists, Anglo Catholics and Evangelicals, as a fountain of legitimacy for whatever schismatic or unifying agency can claim it. In an extraordinary moment of thwarted ecumenicism the low church, evangelical, and frequently anti-Catholic African Anglicans even found themselves rejecting an advance by Pope Benedict XVI, who wanted to bring them into his newly formed Personal Ordinariate, where they would have been permitted exceptional latitude in liturgy and practice, including the ordination of married men.

The irony of this is that the Church of Nigeria itself is relatively untroubled by internal dissent. The old debates between Anglo Catholicism and Evangelism which wracked British and North American Churches in the 19th century barely touched the African Provinces, where Anglicanism was always defined by its distance from both the Catholic Church on one side and the Baptist and Pentecostalist movements on the other.

Read it all.

(Please note the piece to which Dr. Turner is responding may be found here).

Bagshaw envisions regional groupings of autonomous provinces committed to ongoing conversation and where possible cooperation. These groupings need not, however, be committed to mutually recognized forms of belief and practice. In his future, there need no longer be “eagerness to maintain unity in the bond of peace.” There need be only occasional meetings that might prove mutually advantageous or serve to further regional and local self-interest. What Bagshaw sketches as the future of Anglicanism more closely resembles the British Commonwealth of Nations than the body of Christ. In Bagshaw’s world adjustments to division are perfectly acceptable. As in all free trade zones, divisions simply become opportunities for regional cooperation and mutual benefit on the one hand or self-assertion on the other

I am profoundly troubled by all this first because Bagshaw’s view of an Anglican future gives the lie to all that God is up to; namely, to unite all peoples in Christ so that all people worship the one true God as God truly is. I am also troubled because the free trade zone of autonomous churches that may well lie in our future is to be ordered by centers of bureaucratic or local power rather than by Bishops whose particular charism is to maintain unity of faith, holiness of life, and peace within the church. If one thing the recent meeting in Dublin makes clear, it is that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates there assembled have abdicated the responsibility of Bishops to maintain catholic belief and practice not only within but also beyond the borders of their particular dioceses or provinces. I am troubled, in short, because Dublin spells the end of catholic order within the Anglican future he foresees. Bagshaw is quite comfortable with this eventuality. Indeed, in one place he makes the amazing statement that the discussion of the Primates present in Dublin about the differences in their roles in their various provinces was not about theology but how “to work better in the new Anglican Communion.” Just imagine a communion where theology and polity have nothing to do one with another! Bagshaw can do so with no difficulty at all. I can only say, I have a great deal of difficulty!

Read it all.

The documents posted at the close of the recent Primates’ Meeting in Dublin tell the story. The takeover of the Instruments of Communion by ECUSA, aided and abetted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is now complete. Anything of substance was carefully avoided at Lambeth 2008; the proposed Covenant itself was derailed at ACC-14 in Jamaica, and then carefully defanged by the newly reorganized Standing Committee; and now the Primates’ Meeting has let itself descend into irrelevance — with the primates of the churches having most of the Anglican Communion’s membership absenting themselves, and refusing to prop up the pretense of normalcy any longer….

There is not a word in any of the statements released from Dublin today about the commitment that ECUSA’s House of Bishops was supposed to make, and which bishops such as +Bruno, +Shaw and the Presiding Bishop herself have so deliberately flouted ever since — along with the General Convention of the whole Church. It is abundantly clear, based on the statements from Dublin, that the Primates who gathered there are not going to follow through with their commitments at Dromantine and Dar es Salaam. So ECUSA has prevailed, and will have its way.

Read it all.

See also:
1. Video and Transcript of Archbishop Anis’ talk at Mere Anglicanism
2. Video and Transcript of Q & A with Archbishop Anis

There’s a dynamic of divergence in the Anglican Communion. It is absolutely clear to most people in the Anglican / Episcopal churches in North America that the gospel demands the full inclusion of gay people. It is absolutely clear to those who speak for most churches in the developing world (though not all) that this inclusiveness merely dilutes the gospel. It provides evidence that the churches in North America ”“ and the UK is under intense suspicion as well ”“ are falling into a decadent decline. They just can’t be trusted; the only thing to do is to change the whole structure radically, either from within, or through a totally new structure. The first is preferable of course, as it means you inherit the resources; but either is preferable to the status quo.

The thing which is the obvious gospel imperative for one side is for the other side an equally obvious sign of the opposite. Blessing same-sex relationships is an unavoidable call of faith ”“ or a clear rejection of Christian values. Planting new churches is mere obedience to the call to proclaim the good news ”“ or an obvious rejection of the body of Christ in the churches already present.

No wonder a moratorium can have no effect. But what can anyone then do? Maybe giving up blaming the ”˜other’ would help: no-one can be asked to act against their conscience, however misguided any of us might think it is….

Read it all.

A little candor by those in attendance would be nice: there is a problem, and it is a major problem. Are the Primates who have gathered in Dublin facing it, or are they still pretending that everybody has “moved beyond” the resolute disrespect of TEC and The Anglican Church of Canada towards their previous commitments and the commitments of the Communion at large?

Read it all.

ARCHBISHOP MOUNEER ANIS RESPONDS TO QUESTIONS
[Transcript starts 34 mins and 17 seconds into video]

Moderator: At this time I think we can open up the floor so that other people have an opportunity to ask some questions ”“ Bishop Dickson

Q: Very quickly ”“ I think most of us here agree with the vast majority of what has been said here today. There is one thing that Archbishop Anis said that sticks with me and I felt this has been the focus we should have, and that’s with the phrase ”˜we need a joint commitment to read and interpret together’. My question is: What then? What then as a Communion do we do? We don’t just come together and have conferences like we have been doing at Lambeth. When do we do something to support the truth that we’re proclaiming? And I would like to raise the question: If this is not indeed the time to call for a general council within the Anglican Communion? And I suggest that the strength of that could be found in the African church. Now I would just appreciate your reaction to that.

Moderator: I would love to respond to that but I have no power and no authority to do such a thing, but Archbishop Anis you do, so would you like to respond?

Archbishop Anis: I agree that it is time now to take the lead. The Church in Africa and the Global South, not only them, but also the orthodox Anglicans from around the world need to take the lead.
In the last 10 years or so we have been reactive and spent a lot of time in reacting to what The Episcopal Church is doing and the wrong things that are happening in the Anglican Communion. I think we need now to take the lead, and we really look at the gathering of the bishops and the Primates of the Global South, with those bishops from dioceses that are orthodox in the West, as a Conciliar body. So that is, is going to happen, and that is happening now. This is a Conciliar body. We need to be like a faithful remnant that keeps the Word, that keeps the centrality and the authority of the Word in the middle of the Anglican Communion. We don’t have to bother much now with what is going on around us. We have to move forward and do things.

And I have said that several times before, that the orthodox church in Egypt was a small, oppressed, displaced church at the time when the Arians took over and became powerful; and in 625 AD the Arians disappeared, and don’t ask me why they disappeared, they disappeared. Even the Coptic Orthodox don’t know how they disappeared. But the faithful remnant are the ones who are strong now; ready to pay the price for their faith and taking a great lead in the Middle East. So we have to. I agree with you.

Q: I agree that we need a reformation of the great ministry of preaching the Word both in season and out of season, but we are also desperately in need of a ministry of presence. I was one of those who was privileged to enjoy the conference in Jerusalem, one of the great highlights of my life – to see bishops, archbishops, clergy, laity from all over the world in the first five minutes of the conference be drawn into the Spirit, and to be singing in the Spirit, together ”“ many of whom had never spoken in tongues or sung in the Spirit before, and weren’t even sure what it was that was happening. But there was such joy in that time together. The thing that made Lambeth 2008 so hard was that that presence was curiously absent and I could not help but wonder how much Lambeth 2008 would have been enriched by the presence of those who were in Jerusalem ”“ how the presence of our current House of Bishops in The Episcopal Church could be enriched by a vital, determined and unapologetic presence of orthodox bishops. Since the early days of Episcopalians United and the many other groups that have formed, we as orthodox have remained reactionary and our reactionism has made us determined to withdraw our presence, rather than to advance the presence of the Kingdom and to advance the proclamation of the Word. It has not served the Gospel well, I don’t believe. How can we determine to be present and the same time have fellowship one with another that strengthens and encourages us, and at the same time holds the rest of the church accountable?

Archbishop Anis: In Lambeth 2008, I attended Lambeth 2008; I didn’t believe in withdrawal. But unfortunately I was faced by the fact that meetings like this are manipulated, orchestrated ”“ orchestrated in a way that nothing happens. And I felt now that it’s a waste of time when you go to a place where the results and the outcome is already decided; and there is no consultation in order to ”˜own’ the agenda of a meeting like this, it’s cooked! – pre-cooked thing! And it is very sad, very sad, that this is happening.

But once things are done differently, I would like to assure you, you will find us right at the heart of any of the meetings even if there are people who have different views, have revisionist agendas, we are not afraid of these people, as long as the process is fair, honest, and it is not like a hidden agenda kind of thing. If there is this honesty of the process, then no one can fear to speak the truth in the presence of others.

That is why as the Secretary now of the Global South, Honorary Secretary, I want to respond to those people who say that about 10 Primates are not attending the coming Primates Meeting; they are saying they are boycotting. That is far from the truth. We are not boycotting at all the meeting. We did ask that the recommendations of the previous meetings should be followed through otherwise our meeting would be meaningless. We decided things, we recommended things, and now, time to have decisions. And we got this invitation to sit in two separate rooms, which is a joke! It’s a joke to sit in two separate rooms. And we wanted to ”“ there was not enough consultation, in order to feel that we ”˜owned’ this meeting to go to ”“ but yes, I agree one hundred percent, and that is behind our attendance to 2008. Some other people were aware of the process much better than us and they didn’t come to Lambeth.

[Our thanks to Kevin Kallsen at Anglican TV and a faithful T19 reader who provided this for us–KSH].

Also available Video and Transcript of Archbishop Anis’ talk at Mere Anglicanism to which he refers

We may consider the great Bishop Charles Gore, the melancholy protagonist in Michael Ramsey’s Anglican Theology from Gore to Temple. Gore wanted to take full account of historical criticism of the Bible and to engage with modernity, in his case in the form of evolution, and from our different perches we would all applaud this. Bishop Gore believed that the Creeds could remain a kind of safe haven from this hurly-burly, though even in his time, and afterward, a more extreme version of that same modernist method had gone to work on the Creeds themselves (as examples of fourth-century power politics, deployments of outdated Greek metaphysics, premodern cosmology, and so forth).

As a result people could keep reciting the Creeds but mean different things by them. In this vein, a generation ago the renowned pluralist John Hick would say that he enthusiastically affirmed the Creeds, though they were for him only a familiar kind of picture-language for the inexpressible transcendent. A more particularly Anglican tack might be to say that the sheer act of praying (or talking, or in this case confessing the Creeds) together constitutes our unity. My point is not to accuse, but only to point out that saying the Creeds together (which I wholeheartedly support) sometimes locates the modernist question more than it solves it.

Unfortunately the same kind of point can be made for some of the other words that are quite rightly used in the responses to identify the distinctive features of our faith. Jesus is indeed unique, but “uniqueness” per se is something that any one of us could claim.

Read it all.

The Primates’ Meeting must be that place where the integrity of the Instrument is worked through. If one does not attend the Dublin gathering, it remains the case that the Primates as individual leaders and as a body must propose and resolve how they will gather and do their work. Physical attendance may not be necessary at the month’s end and it is not going to happen anyway. But it remains the case that the composition and good working of the Primates as a Meeting, as a council, must be addressed by the Primates. How will they do this?

Read it all.

Last weekend, in London, three Anglican bishops and their families were received into full communion with the Catholic Church in a very public ceremony in Westminster Cathedral. Three Anglican nuns and some laypeople were also received. By Easter it is expected that the Anglican Ordinariate will have been set up, and up to 50 more Anglican priests will be received into the Catholic Church along with a significant number of laypeople.

This public reception is in marked contrast to the manner in which I, and many others were received into the Catholic Church in England in the mid 1990s. At that time “ecumenism” was still the main priority for the Catholic bishops of England and Wales as well as the Anglican establishment. There was a pact between the rulers of both churches that the defections to Rome would be low key. No one wanted to rock the ecumenical boat. Consequently, the publicity machines of both churches went into overdrive to downplay and minimize what was happening. In fact, in the mid 1990s there were not fifty Anglican priests who converted but 500. Some even reckoned the numbers to be between 750 and 1000. The reason it was difficult to establish how many of us converted to the Catholic faith at that time was because certain categories of Anglican priest didn’t register in the official tally….

Read it all.

….being in The Episcopal Church, and considering all that has happened in the last year, I wanted to throw out there some thoughts on what is going on in Anglicanism.

I will certainly make for these reflections to be theological, but I imagine that some will fall back into sentiment and they will have a sense of arbitrarity, for which I cannot apologize. It may seem that at times I will ramble but I hope, especially for our Anglican readership, that my fears and hopes will reveal a bit about the struggles in our Churches to be faithful both to the “gospel” as we perceive it, and to ourselves as a Communion of Churches.

I’ve grown a bit more into the role of a “Traditionalist” in matters of theological revision but I hope that I will never be received as a “Stand Firm” type. I have no pretensions about having the whole of Truth wrapped up and if I say things that are “conservative” or whatever the damn word we want to use, I am quite passionate about living together in diverse minds. But it is the width and nature of and reasons for diversity that is up for question.

Read it all, noting especially his remarks on what he has recently been reading.

What is lost in the midst of all the opinion and statements offered by various groups in the church is the ecumenical and ecclesiological implications of this movement. In particular, it may be helpful for a moment to consider this development in light of the approach to Anglicanism articulated by Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 to 1973. Ramsey is not only well-respected by both liberals and conservatives within contemporary Anglicanism, he likely has had more significance than any other person on modern ecumenical relations between Anglicanism and other Christian traditions. It was Ramsey who oversaw the creation of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC). It was Ramsey who had fought so mightily for the union of English Methodism with the Church of England. And it was to Ramsey that Pope Paul VI gave his own episcopal ring, back in days when relations between the two traditions were somewhat warmer.

Read it all.

A Covenant will yield a stronger, more coherent and unified Anglicanism. It may mean that some Provinces such as TEC and some of the GAFCON Provinces will opt out both from the Covenant and attendance at inter-Anglican meetings.

That does not mean a complete break-up of Anglicanism – participation in the “instruments of communion” is important but not the only expression of being Anglican. The liturgies of Anglican Provinces bear a strong family resemblance. The mission societies, the Mother’s Unions, diocesan links, fraternal links among cathedrals and schools will not cease to operate.

Meanwhile as the Archbishop of Canterbury has made clear, work will be done on reforming the “instruments” because it is largely their failure to be effective that has triggered the crisis in Anglicanism.

Read it all.

Prof. Hunter may be right about the Anglican Church in Britain today. But there is a problem if his readers confuse what is going on in Britain ”” or Canada or the United States, for that matter ”” with the reality of worldwide Anglicanism.

First, Anglicanism is not dying; it is growing at a stupendous rate in Africa, where more than half the world’s 80 million Anglicans live. Philip Jenkins, the distinguished professor of history and religion at Pennsylvania State University, has estimated that by 2050 there will be 150 million Anglicans in the world, “of whom only a tiny minority will be White Europeans.”

Second, while it is true some Anglicans are defecting to the Catholic Church there are also conservative Anglicans who are leaving their national Churches ”” such as the group in Canada that separated itself from the Anglican Church of Canada ”” but remain aligned with the global Church and seek oversight from orthodox African Anglican bishops. This group has little interest in becoming Catholic. If anything, they want to be more Protestant and put the Bible at the center of their lives….

Read it all.

You may find the programme [at present hosted by William Crawley] link here.

The BBC blurb reads in part:

Earlier this week the General Synod voted to press ahead with the Anglican Covenant, a worldwide deal designed to keep Anglicans around the world united. But the traditionalist lobby group, the Global Anglican Future Conference, rejected the Covenant saying it was ‘no longer appropriate’. We’ll be hearing Bishop Martyn Minns, a member of the Secretariat of the Global Anglican Future Conference Primates’ Council and Dr Graham Kings, Bishop of Sherborne in the Diocese of Salisbury.

There are two segments of particular interest to blog readers. The first starts about 6 minutes in and features comments Guardian report Stephen Bates (it last about four minutes).

The second starts approximately 33 1/2 minutes in. It features those mentioned in the above blurb as well as former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord (George) Carey (the total length of this part is some ten minutes or so).

Listen to it all and note, alas, that this audio is only available for a limited time.

“The contumacious actions of the Diocese of New Westminster and ECUSA have and continue to have profoundly divisive consequences within the Anglican Church of Canada, ECUSA, and the Anglican Communion as a whole. Within the Anglican Church of Canada and ECUSA, the “scandal” caused by the actions of these bodies has caused

”“some to leave for other churches,
”“some to call for more adequate Episcopal oversight,
”“some to form ecclesiastical bodies independent of the Anglican Church of
Canada and ECUSA (but in communion with one or another province of the
Anglican Communion),
”“some to withhold money for the support of their parish, diocese, and national
church.

Within the larger communion, a number of provinces have declared broken or impaired communion with both ECUSA and the Diocese of New Westminster. Some have even spoken of a break with the See of Canterbury if no action is taken to check the excessive claims to autonomy that lie behind the actions recently taken in Canada and the United States.

Finally, some of the most important ecumenical partners of Anglicans have issued strong statements about the divisive implications of the actions taken by the Diocese of New Westminster and ECUSA.

In short, the actions taken in Canada and the U.S. have set off shock waves both locally and internationally. They have produced as well a degree of bitterness and contentiousness throughout the communion that brings shame upon the ame of Christ and weakens the credibility of the witness of Anglican Christians. To ignore by silence and/or inaction such rending of Christ’s body is to stand idle as fellowship both within and between the provinces of the Anglican Communion disintegrates.”

”“Communion and Discipline, the Anglican Communion Institute submission to the Lambeth Commission, page 38, as posted on the old blog in June 2004