Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in his presidential address to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) here May 11 compared the Anglican Communion’s long-standing divisions to those in the Holy Land.
“The other day we were giving quite intense attention to the situation in the Holy Land and in that discussion I thought there are echoes of language we hear nearer home,” Williams said. “Well, thank God, our divisions and our fears are not as deep and as poisonous as those between communities in the Holy Land, but I think you may see why some of the same language occasionally awakes echoes.”
It was also through the lens of Holy Land politics that Williams suggested during his address a possible way forward.
[blockquote]As Bishop Ikechi Nwachukwu Nwosu of the Church of Nigeria made his way out of the chapel, he slowed down when asked for his thoughts, but didn’t stop. He shook his head and said: “Anything anyone is doing without an eye on success isn’t worth doing.” Nwosu was apparently referring to a distinction that Williams made between “glorious failure” in which one must face one’s own failing and try again, and “miserable failure” in which one convinces oneself that failure hasn’t happened.[/blockquote]
Sad but true.
So whas is the brand new and improved answer? [blockquote] “People find each other in the depths of suffering they have endured; something shifts when those who bear the heaviest cost on either side find each other,” he said.[/blockquote]
A great idea for endless discussion without resolution. But that is the plan. Any dicision splits the AC and the ABC must prevent decision. And as long as the institutional enablers play that game nothing will ever be decided until the gay loby wins and ends the game.
Yes – comparable to the Holy Land. Quite. I think the Orthodox need a homeland just as the Palestinians do. And the ABC++ has the moral authority to recognize it.
So if the Orthodox are the Palestinians does that make TEC Hamas or Hezbollah?!
Sorry – ABC
Repentance comes before reconciliation.
And how can there be repentance without a call to repentance. Even Nathan stood up to King David. Will Rowan awaken from his slumber and stand up to ECUSA?
[blockquote]If Rowan Williams really did slip up, as even one of his critics (George Conger) hints, then he could, he must, undo the damage as best he can and as quickly as possible.
1. He can publicly state his error and apologize for the ensuing mess.
2.
[/blockquote]
Never mind.
[blockquote]He issued a plea that, no matter what happens, Anglicans should think of preserving the structures…[/blockquote]
Ah, the spirit of St. Paul:
[blockquote]”But instead, brethren, whatsoever things are Cantuar, whatsoever things are ACC, whatsoever things are Primates, whatsoever things are Lambeth Conference, think on these things.”[/blockquote]
[blockquote]My plea is, “don’t write off those instruments of communion whatever may happen in the years ahead.â€[/blockquote]
Now why in the world would it occur to anyone to write off the existing structures?
[blockquote]So if the Orthodox are the Palestinians does that make TEC Hamas or Hezbollah?! [/blockquote]
Good question. It does seem that TEC has a limitless supply of lackeys willing to strap on the ecclesial Semtex whenever it looks like things aren’t going their way.
We have this from ACO:
[blockquote] Dato Stanley Isaacs (South East Asia), Bishop Azad Marshall (Iran), Rec Dr Ian Douglas (TEC) and Dr Anthony Fitchett (New Zealand) were elected for the four vacancies on the ACC Standing Committee[/blockquote]
Notice the lack of anyone from Africa.
“…Rev Dr Ian Douglas (TEC)…”
Well, of course you have to have the American token from Harvard/EDS. Frankly, they’d elect Marvin Ellison if he wasn’t originally Presby. But, he’s probably been speaking through Douglas’s lips for years anyway.
It’s working just the way they’d like it to…
RobRoy,
Bishop Tengatenga of Malawi was elected the new chairperson of the ACC, and Jolly Babirukamu, the wonderful lay delegate from Uganda, continues on the Standing Committee
See Robert Lundy’s full list here:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/22545/#363091
I wish I could have been there, so I could have had a really good laugh! Rowan Williams is such a comedian! Either this man is lying or deluded or… well, lying or deluded. Couldn’t think of a realistic third option, except maybe joking.
Northern Ireland is a perhaps better example. In the end it demanded political leadership – courageous, risky and occasionally coercive – to move towards peace. The Archbishop’s unwillingness to risk “political” leadership has been perhaps his most significant failing.
#12 I think it unhelpful to place the burden of accountability on his motives. The failing is rather theological: a deep seated concern that exercising “political” authority is illegitimate since it cannot be connected to a Christ shaped life. Archbishop Rowan has often spoken and written about the theological problem of “anxiety”. I wonder if his theological “anxiety” about engaging in “politics” (in particular any kind of lawful coercion) might be illuminated by his own thought.
I heartily agree with most of the commenters above, but let me especailly applaud Dr. Noll’s contribution to this thread (#7), because it gets to the heart of the problem. The ABoC, like many other leaders of the AC, appears to be still stuck in denial, desperately trying to convince themselves and everyone else that the Instruments of the AC haven’t utterly failed and proven themselves completely unable to resolve this bitter, intractable conflict. After all, people are still meeting together and talking respectfully, aren’t they?
And that’s where Br. Michael’s point is so apropo and timely. As Sarah Hey has so forcefully been saying for a long time, the ABoC is under the (apparently willful) delusion that he job is merely to keep the lines of communication open as long as possible and try to keep everyone talking and “listening” as long as possible (without ever making any “divisive” decisions of course). Therefore, more and more leaders must do what ++Orombi controversially did, and what most of the GAFCON bishops did last summer, and just skip the useless international AC meetings and refuse to participate in the charade. Instead, let the FCA, hopefully joined by an ever increasing number of conservative but heretofore non-FCA leaders, hold our own events like GAFCON or the recent CP event in Houston.
Earlier today I posted a long, detailed comment about these matters on the thread below, “Religious Intelligence: Defeat for Archbishop as Covenant draft is rejected,” where it’s comment #14. I won’t rehash it all here.
But I’ll summarize one of the key points I make there, which is that the key takeaway lesson to be drawn from the utter failure of Lambeth last summer to resolve anything, and complete failure of this ACC meeting in Jamaica likewise, is precisely the very point that the ABoC is at pains to deny and guard against. And that primary lesson to be learned from those collossal failures is that the four current Instruments of Unity at the international level of the AC are hopelessly inadequate to deal with this prolonged, bitter conflict.
And I’m convinced that this is because those four current Instruments of the AC are themselves hopelessly divided internally. Each of the four, including the ABoC himself, is riven to the core by this clash between mutually incompatible values and goals, not to mention theologies and ways of life, that are futilely trying to co-exist peacefully when they are irreconciliably at odds and mutually exclusive. Each of the Instruments contains the Anglican civil war in microcosm. And therefore it’s simply unrealistic to expect any practical help or solution to come from them.
That is why nothing less than a New Reformation will do. The old wineskins of the AC have failed. They will have to be replaced. And yes, I mean exactly that. Not renewed, not supplemented, not reformed, but replaced. What is needed is not evolutionary change, but revolutionary change.
In sum, the divisions within the AC (and its Instruments) are in fact too deep to be healed. The ABoC is totally wrong and self-deluded when he imagines otherwise, or when he triies to spin it otherwise publically at any rate, even if he knows better perhaps in his heart of hearts.
Bottom line: the Covenant and the whole Windsor process always were fatally flawed, because they were intentionally designed to merely keep up the outward APPEARANCE of unity, while subverting any real unity. Becuase any authentic unity must be based on more than merely common participation in a historic organizational structure and common use of inherited liturical rites that still bear a general family resemblance. Any real Christian unity worthy of the name MUST be based on a genuine devotion to the classic Doctrine, Discipline and Worship that is in harmony with biblical faith and apostolic order and that alone makes us real Anglicans and Christians. Anything else is a sham and a pathetic fraud.
Put another way, contrary to ++RW and the spiritually blind and utterly self-deceived leaders of TEC and so much of the western world, there is an irreducible core of orthodox doctrine and worship and right practice (orthopraxis) that cannot and must not be sacrificed on the altars that have been set up in the West to the false gods and politically correct ideologies of our time (especially relativism as a denial that there is any real access to divine revelation for us humans). In short, there is such a thing as “core doctrine” even in a thological family as diverse as Anglicanism, and one of those core doctrines is the authority of Holy Scripture.
And sadly, the undeniable fact, the incontrovertiable, grim reality, is that much of the leadership of TEC and the ACoC (and the provinces of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) long ago jettisoned any real submission to the authority of Scripture, and tossed overboard that essential core of authentic doctrine and discipline (i.e., in accord with Scripture and Tradition) as so much unwanted baggage, as if they were embarrassing relics from the past.
It’s CORE beliefs and practices that are locked in mortal combat in the western world today. It’s whole worldviews that are competing for dominance, and precisely since they are worldviews they are necessarily by definition mutually exclusive.
And that is why the ABoC is totally and disastrously wrong in claiming that “the divisions are deep but they can be healed.” Baloney. That’s bullshit.
Moreover it’s spritually deadly and institutionally destructive bullshit.
Pardon the crudity, please, but it’s true. And it’s precisely the lack of repentance and the complete lack of proper outrage at what happened in Kingston that’s the real scandal when it comes to the pathetic failures of an archbishop who sits on the noble seat of St. Augustine of Canterbury but who repeatedly betrays the sacred inheritance he is sworn to guard and protect and pass on.
And perhaps that’s why this conflict is unending. The problem is that our foes on the progressive side, and the institutionalist caught helplessly in the middle, don’t have to just repent of their mistaken opinions on this one disputed matter of homosexual behavior or sexual ethics in general. No, they have to repent and give up their whole worldview that makes the toleration of such a grossly unbiblical pracitce even thinkable.
They have to undergo the throes of a total intellectual and moral convervsion. And naturally, they strongly resist such a comprehensive conversion. For in the end, such conversion is always a divine miracle and a gift of God as well as a free human choice.
David Handy+
I don’t believe he said “the divisions are deep but they can be healed” – that’s Episcopal Life’s headline.
What he asked was how, so to say, the different parties might recognize “the deep seriousness about Christ that they share”. He suggested that the “quagmires of detail and procedure” were useful only insofar as they aided such a “recognition”. (As I’ve said, I think he’s wrong about this and it flows from his theological suspicion of political authority). He suggested that the Communion’s future may in fact be more divided and more like a federation than it has been. It is in that context that he appealed for folks not to jettison the Communion entirely – in other words, even in a more federated Communion, for the need to continue to do some things together. He then asked, in that kind of context (i.e. a more federal Communion) what life giving structures of unity might be.
He seems to want to function rather like a spiritual director, reflecting back what he has heard and seen, asking questions and inviting his “clients” to go away and think about answers. He seems to be attempting to lead the Communion, so to say, to a moment of “therapeutic” insight. Indeed he is famously acute and astute as a spiritual director. I question whether such an approach is helpful in the role to which he has been called. Engaging in politics (with the possibility of coercion) is far from the tasks entrusted to a spiritual director but in the context of discussions and decisions about the shared life of a “polis” (community) I believe it is one of the responsibilities to which the Archbishop is called. He obviously disagrees.
driver8 (#16),
Oops. Boy, am I embarrassed! You’re right, of course. Thanks for correcting me so gently and setting the record straight so politely. But I stand by the substance of my comment, which I think still applies.
But I’ll add that I think your observation that ++RW is trying to act like a spiritual director to the other Instruments of the AC is a very illuminating and helpful one. The therapeutic approach of a counselor or spiritual director that emphasizes asking more questions designed to elicit insight than giving answers or advice or directly solving problems fits comfortably with his professorial training and tendencies too. He seems to delight in asking Socratic type questions.
Unfortunately, if so, you’re also right that this is a key to why he’s failed so miserably in this crisis. Being a spiritual director is simply NOT the job of an archbishop of Canterbury. And mopst certainly not at a critical crossroads time like this. It’s one of many signs that ++Rowan Williams is manifestly unfit for the crucial position he’s occupying during this fateful and momentous crisis when real leadership is required, along with faithful guarding of the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of the Church at a perilous time when the sacred deposit of the Church’s faith and practice is under severe threat and being widely subverted and perverted.
David Handy+
“We have not in this meeting given evidence of any belief that we have no future together” … BUT we have acted in such a way as to assure that only the colonialistic imperialists will be in control to their satisfaction…and if you don’t like it, lump it. Luv, the ABC
What I take Archbishop Rowan to the saying is that looks like there will be some kind of future for the Communion because there are still things on which people want to cooperate. So then he asks what kind of life giving structures would such cooperation call for. Yet as he says elsewhere it may be a future in which the Communion becomes a kind of disparate federation. I think he’s attempting to be realistic.
Indeed I think, on the whole, he’s ruthlessly realistic about the future. It’s the necessity for a political process by which one gets to any future about which he is, IMO, rather reluctant to be realistic.
But why would we want to heal the divisions? This could only be done on the terms of the Bad Guys; we know that. So why try? Does ACNA (or whatever it calls itself) intend to bow to the AofC, to recognize him in any way? Or has it cut that apron striing too? LM
12, 14, et sq, The ABC may be lying, or not. The one thing that is perfectly clear to me is that he is absolutely, total committed to preventing the institutional breakup of the AC on his watch. View any of his actions/statements/strategies/positions thru that lens and he becomes quite understandable. He apparently is willing to sacrifice any principle/virtue to achieve his goal.
How utterly sad. WS