The Secretary General, Canon Kenneth Kearon, has announced the appointment of Canon Dr Alyson Barnett-Cowan as Director for Unity, Faith and Order at the Anglican Communion Office. The post is a new one in the Communion, and arose after some restructuring following the election of Canon Gregory Cameron, formally Director of Ecumenical Affairs and Deputy Secretary General, as Bishop of St Asaph in the Church in Wales.
Canon Barnett-Cowan is currently Director of Faith, Worship and Ministry of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, a post she has held since 1995. She has wide experience of the life of the Anglican Communion, having been a member of the Lambeth Commission on Communion (2003-4) and of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations (2000-2008). She is currently a consultant to the Anglican-Lutheran International Commission, and has been a member of the Plenary Commission, Faith and Order at the World Council of Churches.
I have reservations about this appointment, having had some limited exposure to her while I was a seminarian in Toronto. I was in the congregation at St Mary Magdalene there once when she, a guest preacher, began her sermon “In the Name of the One who was, and who is, and who is to come”– avoiding the “masculine, patriarchal, misogynist” (not her words) way in which God chose to identify his triune self to his Church. I couldn’t follow the sermon after that.
I know nothing of the lady but there does seem to be a continued problem with the exclusion of anyone but the small white liberal provinces from senior Communion appointments. I am sure there are some outstanding candidates in Singapore for example, but do they get appointed? There is the same problem in the JSC as the ACO and we saw the way people whose first language is not English were treated at ACC in Jamaica. Notwithstanding my own background this is all just deeply embarrassing.
If I recall, Archbishop Akinola spoke to this issue several years ago. It seems that the Lambeth Communion just cannot seem to get over being colonial in governing structure. This is one reason why I have many doubts about the health of the world wide Anglican Communion. This is one area in which the Archbishop of Canterbury could make some profound changes. But apparently, he does not see the necessity.
But it’s a FEMALE colonialist, so I guess it represents an empowering of the downtrodden women who had nothing to do with settling, taming, farming, conquering, and populating the objects of the Western Man’s Burden, eh?
To appoint a female clergy person to oversee unity, faith, and order is a deliberate slap at the remnant that upholds catholic teaching about women’s ordination. Dr Alyson is a living embodiment of disunity, divisions in the faith, and contested order. Anglicanism has a profound death wish.