What emerges as an ecclesiological structure, we may be sure, will be neither British nor Western. What emerges, we may be just as sure, will represent the conciliarism that has characterized Anglicanism at its best. Ironically, the Lambeth Conferences from 1867 to 1998 represented that conciliar ecclesiology in significant measure. Similarly, the
instinct that put the resolution of the North American crisis of 2002/2003 into the hands of the Primates Meeting was in the right direction, the direction of the global Anglican
future. Just as at Lambeth 1998 where the reality of a global Communion was unmistakable – with its non-Western hegemony and its uncompromised biblical and missionary commitments – the Primates Meeting actually represented where the Anglican Communion in its historic evolution necessarily had to move.A huge part of what brings us here to GAFCON is that the process of resolution of the present crisis – a process begun at the Primates Meeting of 2003 (Lambeth) and continued through the Primates Meeting of 2007 (Dar es Salaam) – was suddenly aborted. The conciliar instinct that produced repeated global consensus about how the crisis was to be addressed, that expressed the global will of the Communion in dealing with the North American problem, was abruptly terminated. In this termination the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the role of the interests of the Western and progressive Provinces were central.
Archbishop Williams remarked at the beginning of the Dar es Salaam Primates Meeting: “It is all a question of who blinks first.” Neither the American orthodox, nor the Global
South Primates, nor history would blink. Not then, not now. The so-called “blink” has taken place, but it has taken place in the re-definition of the Lambeth Conference as a
place of managed conversation, not conciliar decision, and in the recognition that to call the Primates Meeting together ever again would be to confirm that the Communion’s
engine has shifted to the South. Re-defining the Lambeth Conference and not calling the Primates Meeting are exercises of colonial control. But the inexorable shift of power
from Britain and the West to the Global South cannot be stopped, and some conciliar instrument reflective of the shift is bound to emerge as the Reformation Settlement gives
way to a Global (post-colonial) Settlement.
13 years ago I was ordained a Priest (Presbyter) in the Church by Archbishop Bob Duncan. Grateful for the work that God has given me to do and the work he continues doing in me! pic.twitter.com/O75SmugklL
— Daniel Adkinson (@DanielAdkinson) September 12, 2022