(ACNS) The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion have announced the membership of an important new commission, following extensive consultation with the Provinces of the Communion around the world. The Chair is the Most Revd Bernard Ntahoturi, Primate of the Anglican Church of Burundi.
IASCUFO will oversee the ecumenical life of the Anglican Communion, and will:
* promote the deepening of Communion between the Anglican Communion and other Christian Churches and traditions;
* advise the Provinces, the Primates, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, on all questions of ecumenical engagement, as well as on questions of Anglican Faith and Order;
* review developments in the areas of Faith, Order and Unity in the Anglican Communion and among ecumenical partners, and give advice upon them to the Churches of the Anglican Communion and to the Instruments of Communion;
* assist any Province with the assessment of new proposals in the areas of Unity, Faith and Order as requested.
A new group to study the same controversial and apparently irreconcilable issues that have raised by ECUSA and other revisionist elements in the Anglican Communion.
What is this new group going to accomplish that the instruments of communion have been unable to accomplish?
The most likely effect of this new group will be to take pressure off of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACC.
One way to defuse and delay action on controversial matters is to form a ‘task force’ to ‘study’ the ‘problem(s).’
Such a task force can have the perceived effect of lifting leadership responsibility off of the shoulders of those who are supposed to be leading. This not only ‘defuses’ issues, it also serves to make issues ‘diffuse’ to the point where the issue becomes ‘someone else’s responsibility’ and it can be said that the issue is “under study.’
Forming this committee seems to be either a display of ‘non-leadership’ by the ABC or a cynical act of manipulation on his part.
My first reaction was similar to #1; but then I looked over the names of the Committee members and am quite a bit more optimistic. I count 7 names that I understand to be committed to the Historic Faith (I associate two others with a reappraising view–and the remaining 11 I don’t know).
But holding on to the cautious optimism for a moment–is it possible that ABC is looking past the Windsor Covenant and kick starting a process that begins to examine those things that hold us together?
The fact of the matter is that the Covenant will be nearly complete one way or the other in December (i-the Review Committee approves with a solid Section 4 and sends it out to the Provinces, OR ii-the Review Committee weakens Section 4 and the Covenant dies). So what comes next? In the later case, the ABC has to immediately get something else going to keep the parties talking. In the former case, the ABC would again want something in place to keep the momentum going. Now here is the tricky part: if the WC has been a smoke screen all along, then this Unity committee needs to also be a smoke screen. If on the other hand, the WC has been a process with some substance and the parties want to maintain that substance, then the Unity committee can be a tool to keep the issues before the Communion–or the powers that be might try to use the Unity committee to undermine the substance of the WC (if they felt that they had lost a round there).
Therefore, what do people know about the members on the Committee? Michael Poon out of Singapore is a strong man and a good thinker, a historian, a priest who was sent by an earlier bishop to an “out of the way” parish which Michael led to a new season of growth and vigor.
Reply to LCF+.
I concur with your hopes for the committee should a covenant be approved that actually has enforceable disciplinary powers. But so far, to me, that is a big ‘if.’
I know nothing of the ECUSA person from VTS who is on the committee, but today’s VTS seems to be more of a revisionist seed bed than it does a seminary that teaches “…the Faith once given….”
Why should we care?
Br Michael, this post will not get much attention but I do think it is important both for those remaining in TEC and for the new Province–actually probably more so for those in the new Province. During the next nine years the AC will need to adapt to the presence of the new Province. The Global South in general and the GAFCon movement in particular are the majority of the Communion and therefore do not see themselves in any way spitting off from the Communion–when whatever splits come, it will be from their vantage point, the heretical twigs breaking off from the trunk of the Anglican tree. The Global South does need to expound their principles for incorporating the new Province as well as for holding together the Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Charismatic branches of the Anglican Tree.
Since Michael Poon is on the Committee, and his archbishop John Chew is on the Review Committee, and Dr Edmund Kalengo of Uganda University also on the committee, I see the hopeful possibility of major input into this discussion from the Global South. Many a good soldier will tell you that the battles are won on the front lines, but the war is won by the supply lines. I believe the orthodox majority in the Communion are paying attention to the supply lines, and we need to also.