Delegates from the Church of Nigeria stated they were perplexed by Dr Williams’ actions. “All of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s contributions were positive” up until the last moment of the meeting, Bishop Ikechi Nwosu of Nigeria said.
Nigerian Archdeacon Abraham Okorie said there was a “satanic” spirit of confusion in the air. He noted it was hypocritical of the ACC to make a great noise of using African ways of decision making in addressing the covenant, but then resorting to slippery parliamentary tricks to thwart the will of the meeting.
Dr Williams was a “very weak leader,” Bishop Ikechi Nwosu of Nigeria observed. “Of course we pray for him, but couldn’t he be courageous for once?”
Again, if Rowan Williams hadn’t castrated the primates meeting and the Lambeth Congress, we might think about cutting Rowan some slack for repeating the Rowanization of the ACC.
When a woman first two husband’s die violent deaths, then her third husband also dies under suspicious circumstances…
How is getting the result you wanted a “defeat?”
He neutered the primates’ meeting. He neutered Lambeth. There is no doubt of these two. Why give him the benefit of the doubt with the neutering of the ACC?
Apparently, he did not make amends with his closing speech. Hooray.
robroy and Jeffersonian,
I normally agree with you guys, but we weren’t there, and George Conger was. I suspect that this first-hand report is bringing out some of the perplexing complexity of the situation. For example, I doubt that the anger that ++RW evidently displayed after this whole fiasco took place Firday was feigned. Also I don’t think we should simply discount Nigerian Bishop Nwosu’s judgment that all of the ABoC’s contributions to the discussion had been positive and in support of the Covenant up until the last, climactic moment.
But regardless, the practical outcome of this meeting has been to further increase distrust of the Instruments of Communion and widen the tear in the fabric of the AC. And yes, if it was a defeat for ++RW, it was indeed in large measure a self-inflicted defeat, as Conger also points out. Remember, ++RW also failed to get his way at the disastrous General Synod of the CoE meeting last summer (where all the safeguards for those staunchly opposed to WO were scandalously removed, breaking the solemn promises made to many of England’s most conservative clergy of a safe haven for them).
But let’s not keep focusing on the ABoC. This was most certainly a major defeat for the conservative majority of the Anglican world, and especially for “moderate” conservatives of the ACI/CP sort. It was a stinging defeat for the likes of ++Gomez, ++Chew, and ++Anis, who made a valiant effort to try to preserve the old wineskins of the AC, as we have known it.
But now that the Covenant has been delayed, and in great danger of being gutted, it’s time for those Anglicans who’ve pinned their hopes on the Covenant to come up with Plan B. And there is a blessing in disguise in that, for there never really was any realistic hope that the Covenant would work anway. I fully agree with robroy about that.
David Handy_
I’m confused by this, and I read the entire article, was the covenant actually defeated? Something changed between now and Friday?
I think the ABC deserves an Emmy or a Golden Globe or the Brit equivalents for acting ability at General Synod and Jamaica. Gives ‘im a bit o’ cover for his support of the ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC and furthers his ability to turn off the respirator at critical points where the patient might be on the verge of recovery. Acting that good deserves an international award, say an advisory position to the Dominatrix of the Global North Assembly of the New Thang Gozpell(c), where he can be trotted out from time to time to remind the nostalgic of where they came from.
[i]I think the ABC deserves an Emmy or a Golden Globe or the Brit equivalents for acting ability[/i]
How about the “Flying Fickle Finger of Fate” award?
lol, libraryjim, I’d forgotten that one.
NRA, #4, I wish I could be as charitable, but that well has run dry for Rowan Williams. The bill of particulars is well-known and entirely consistent with what he did in Jamaica.
I tend to thin of Rowan like the bewtiched King in Lord of the Rings. Under the power of compromise he just seems to draw a cloak of confusion over everything he touches, without ever seeming to lead or inspire. And he does it in such a way that noone really knows who he is or what he really stands for….in the end I really question if he knows the answer to that either.
A rambling academic wiht no grasp of what is required. He seeks to hold the church together by creating a vacuum of leadership….what a defeatist attitude for a Christian to hold.
#10.rugbyplayingpriest,
[blockquote]I tend to thin[k] of Rowan like the bewitched King in Lord of the Rings.[/blockquote]
Actually, I believe he has been charmed to such an extent by KJS that he will not do anything that would oppose what she would like. In this case he, like Odysseus did not put wax in his ears but unlike Odysseus, he did not tie himself to the mast of the ship and piloted it onto the rocks.
rugbyp0layingpriest (#19) and Dcn Dale (#11),
I don’t think analogies to Tolkien’s Thoden, King of Rohan in LOTR, or Homer’s Odysseus work very well. I don’t think ++KJS has bewitched ++RW like Grima Wormtongue. I think BabyBlue is right that there’s no love lost between them; the PB’s power lies rather in her control of the wealth of TEC, not in any putative charm.
Nor do analogies to Saruman or Denethor really fit very well either, although in some ways the ABoC resembles them too, perhaps especially in that both the corrupted wizard and the despairing Steward of Gondor fell for the lie that the power of Mordor was invincible. And that’s where I see a similarity to Cantaur. ++Williams has fallen for the Devil’s lie that it’s inevitable that homosexuality will be accepted eventaully as normal, at least in the West.
David Handy+
#12. New Reformation Advocate,
[blockquote]I think BabyBlue is right that there’s no love lost between them.[/blockquote] Do you remember the words of Doc Holiday (Val Kilmer) in Tombstone? “My dear, I believe you are trying to kill me” as his girl friend lights another cigarette and hands him a glass of whiskey. This, just as the doctor is leaving the room.
Dcn Dale (#13),
I’m sorry, I have to admit I haven’t seen the movie. But I think I get your drift. You may well be right, of course.
But my point on this and a couple related recent threads about the Covenant fiasco in Jamaica Firday is that we shouldn’t focus too much on the untrustworthy ABoC. Yes, he’s failed miserably in his responsibilities as chief pastor and spokesman of the AC. Yes, he has inexcusably “castrated” or sabotaged the other “Instruments of Unity.” Yes, ++RW has subverted and blocked any real resolution of this grave crisis that’s destroying Anglicanism as we know it (the old Anglican wineskins), etc.
I have no desire to whitewash his egregious failures.
But what I’m trying to do is to call attention to less obvious elements in this fateful church civil war that we’re tending to neglect or overlook. That is, I think the root problems go far beyond the personal foibles of any one man, even the man who occupies a uniquely important place at the central hub of the international structures of the AC. I mean, the real problems are systemic flaws in the design of the AC as we know it now, and not just personal weaknesses.
And by that I mean that even if George Carey or Donald Coggan or Michael Ramsay were occupying that pivotal spot at the heart of Anglican polity, I’m pretty sure we’d still be facing many of the same issues, though in a less intense and complicated way. The underlying strategic conflicts would remain (e.g., the inexorable shift of power to the Global South and the bitter enmity between two mutually exclusive religions trying to co-exist under one roof), although the tactical factors would be different.
I’m not trying to defend ++RW’s character so much as to broaden the focus of our post-mortem analysis. This wasn’t just a failure by the primus inter pares; this was a huge set back for everyone who worked on the Covenant and who pinned their hopes on its success (such as the ACI and the CP bishops but also key “moderate” primates (theologically conservative, non=FCA), and so on.
There are a lot of angry, disappointed people out there now. And their anger and resentment is fully justified. The questions is, at whom or what will they direct their anger and what will they do now that the Coveant in which they placed all their hopes has been derailed?
And my own hope is that all that anger and energy won’t be wasted on just blaming the ABoC or the ACO or Bishop Patterson as the Chair of the ACC, etc. It’s the old AC wineskins themselves that are significantly to blame for this intractable, seemingly unresolvable conflict we’ve been stuck in for so long.
To put it in a nutshell, among other things (and there are other major problems as well), there is a gross imbalance between provinical authonomy and inter-provincial accountability. TEC is
claiming and insisting on total autonomy, and refusing to repent for its grievous wrongs, and trying to manipulate, bribe, bully or intimidate anyone and anything that gets in the way of its “New Thing.” That is simply intolerable.
Yet it’s been tolerated far too long, because we lacked the will as well as the practical means to maintain healthy boundaries and to impose real discipline on the wayward western provinces like the US and Canada. This simply can’t go on. And it won’t. Without some actual resolution, the whole system will completely fall apart.
And that’s exactly what we’re witnessing, as each of the Instruments of Unity has proven itself unable to handle this conflict, since each of the Instruments was fatally compromised and torn by the same bitter conflict internally, and that includes the ABoC, I think. I perceive him as genuinely inwardly conflicted, to the point of being virtually paralyzed by his competing and irreconciliable desires to hold the AC together and his sincere, although terribly mistaken, belief that God is indeed doing a new thing in our day and declaring homosexual behavior now clean. In other words, the Instruments (all four of them) are torn in two, just like the fabric of the AC as a whole. Therefore, no help can reasonably be expected from them.
The idea of a Covenant was proposed by the blue-ribbon Windsor Commission on Communion back in 2004, because it’s been apparent to almost every informed observer that the AC has no mechanisms in place that are sufficient to deal with a crisis of this magnitude when provinces like TEC and the ACoC just blithely and stubbornly insist on doing their own thing and going their own way. There is plainly, by all accounts, no system of checks and balances in place that can put limits on provinces that willfully refuse to heed all warnings and proudly go their own way, even though it’s catastrophically self-destructive, as well as the fact that it destroys any real koinonia or communion in the AC. And we are all now paying the price for that fatal flaw in the very design of the AC (the old AC that we’ve known and loved).
But as robroy and others (including myself) have repeatedly argued, the failure of the Covenant is probably a blessing in disguise, however bitter that pill may be for some coinservative Anglicans to swallow. For the remedy proposed by the CDG was simply inadequate. It offered FAR too weak a system of checks and balances, and it left untouched the fundamental problem that the “working theology” that’s dominant in so much of TEC and the rest of the global north is radically and intolerably at odds with the stated, official theology enshrined in our creeds and implicit in our liturgies. And, as I keep harping on endlessly, the harsh reality is that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Just as Lincoln recognized that our nation couldn’t endure half slave and half free, so likewise the AC simply can’t, and won’t endure half orthodox and half heretical. Just like you can’t serve both God and Mammon, so we Anglicans can’t serve both the official bibilical theology that’s our pride and inheritance from the apostles, and the completely unacceptable and utterly incompatible rival “working theology” (Dr. Philip Turner’s apt phrase) that’s taken over so much of the liberal, faithless western provinces.
Bottom line: the Covenant always was a futile attempt to keep up appearances and maintain a superificial institutional unity between people and institutions that all called themselves “Anglican” but in some cases fraudulently so since the apostates had in fact abandoned true Anglicanism for their fantasy new religion that calls evid good and error truth.
What is needed is REAL unity, and that unity has an irreducible core of doctrinal and moral content. And TEC and its spiritually blind, self-deceived allies in the West have long ago jettisoned that essential core of theological truth and moral practice as unwanted baggage from the past.
Now that the Emperor has been clearly exposed as having no clothes (not only the Covenant but also the four current hapless Instruments themselves), there is a great new opportunity before us. And that is for the ACNA/FCA folks and the non-GAFCON conservatives to work together to rebuild Anglicanism upon a more solid foundation. A Global (not British), Post-Colonial (not English-centered and western-dominated) Anglicanism that’s MORE biblically sound, missionary-minded, and theologically coherent than ever.
And of course, my own hope is that this New Anglicanism will also prove to be Post-Constantinian as well, though I often feel like a voice crying plaintively in the wilderness when I say that.
Soi what happened in Jamaica may well prove to be a blessing in disguise, since it reveals so spectacularly and clearly and unmistakably that the old wineskins of the AC just can’t and won’t suffice anymore. They had to be replaced anyway. This will help speed up the process.
David Handy+