For a long time a number of posters on House of Bishops/deputies listserv and prominent TEC leaders have gone on and on about the Anglican Communion’s Instruments of Unity having no real authority.
What is interesting to me about Archbishop Williams statement is that he acknowledges the authority he has to invite, or not to invite, indeed possibly even to withdraw a given invitation, to the Lambeth Conference. He then chooses (in a rare instance in Anglican history) to exercise that authority in a few “cases.”
This goes all the way back to Mend the Net.
So let’s end the fiction that the instruments do not really exist, or that they don’t matter, or don’t have any real authority.
They do have authority. And we do seek to be an Anglican Communion. Whether we ever become what God wants us to remains to be seen–KSH
But how much authority? The Lambeth invitations undercut the Primates’ action at Dar-es-Salaam, and now we’re told that Lambeth is “not a formal Synod or Council of the Communion.†So Lambeth 1.10 was never an official teaching of the Communion after all. This is shaping up as quite a day’s work for Rowan Williams.
Phil,
I may be wrong in my assessment but I believe the ABC is referring to this particular Lambeth Conference. Someone please correct me if I have misread the ABC.
Could be, JAC+. Even if that’s so, I don’t think it’s something he should be announcing beforehand; for that matter, I’m not even sure it’s a decision for Rowan to make. It’s not like there aren’t decisions to be made.
The ABC may have the authority to invite or uninvite, but is anyone else still curious about why these invitations are being sent out months before the “late in the year” anticipated date? Is he doing this to issue a hint that he does have the “authority”??
There are days when whatever ++Rowan says or does is completely mystifying. He sometimes seems to contradict a statement he made the prior week by acting in an entirely different way than the statement would imply.
It is impossible to characterize his stance with any precision: similar to nailing Jello on a wall!
My New Testament professor in seminary wrote her dissertation at Duke on “Paul and authority”. The issue basically is, “What real ‘authority’ did the apostle Paul have over the churches to which he wrote?” Think about it. What legal, institutional, formal authority did he have? In what way were churches (legally, institutionally) obligated to follow his advice, or do what he asked?
None, apparently. And yet Paul had authority. What was the nature of that authority? Moral? Pneumatic? Charismatic? People ascribed authority to Paul without Paul appearing to have legal/formal/institutional power.
Here is the point. When Anglicans (or here, American Episcopalians, especially those with real power) complain that the ABC, Primates, ACC, whatever do not “have authority”… why, really, is that altogether relevant? Do they have to have legal/formal/institutional authority? Or can there be the authority of mutual relationship? That “you” have (a kind of) authority over (or “with”) “me” for the simple reason that we have a relationship that I value?
Those churches cared about what Paul said. Even though there were absolutely no canons, no legal contracts in place that would have required them to do what Paul asked. I submit that the issue (or complaint about) “the authority of the instruments of unity” is secondary, relative, perhaps even irrelevant.
Why do I have the sense of things being done on the hoof? What else is happening?
Nice site by the way :coolsmile:
Phil, Nancy,
My contribution to this STRANGE speculation going on in this thread which you got rolling (for God’s sake, Phil, the man is exercising authority which is benefitting the sake of the Anglican Communion’s well-being, even if revisionists are not willing to accept it — so who cares how much or how little? He’s doing it!) is that this is absolutely necessary DISCLOSURE prior to the SALE, which will be presented when he visits with the House of Bishops, and prior to their demanded Sept. 30 response to the Dar es Salaam communique.
Lay the cards on the table, get the hootin’ and hollerin’ over with, have a get down and get dirty face-to-face, and get on with it — “Do you want it, or not?” This way no one can attempt another “extension” at the House of Bishops’ meeting by suggesting what kind of authority LAMBETH 2008 might have if so-and-so is there, or if 2/3’s of the bishops aren’t there.
RGEaton
Indeed, Nancy, I was wondering the same thing! Something is afoot. +++Rowan is making this known well in advance of his meeting with TEC and the September deadline. He seems to be pressing TEC, knowing full well that not inviting Robinson is going to force them into a “walk the talk” situation.
I’ve been grinning and chuckling since I read this news, God forgive me.
Thanks, Rob & Brit. You may be right, and I hope you are!
Hey, I hope you’re right, Rob. I’d like to see it.
‘Authority’. There is authority in the sense that Rowan Williams and those who think like him can compel certain things to happen, such as (purely for example) who’s in and who’s out of the Anglican Communion. There is no authority in the sense that, in this day and age at any rate, RW et al. can’t COMPEL people to believe things that they don’t believe and never will (such as, purely for example, that homosexual behaviour is NECESSARILY wrong). And sooner or later (I predict, sooner) those who exercise ‘authority’ in the first sense will find themselves losing it because they can’t exercise authority in the second sense. That is why, when huff comes to puff, liberals ultimately will ‘win’. Personally, I’d prefer this battle not to be fought, but if it is to be fought to the end, that will be the outcome.
But, Mr Abraham Yisa, Board Chairman of CANA, who was in the U.S. three weeks ago to attend the enthronement of Minns told NAN “that Canterbury had no right to choose who goes to the Lambeth or not”.
http://www.tribune.com.ng/sat/26052007/news/news14.html
What to conclude? ABC has authority if he agrees with me.