Noll raises some important questions that must be addressed:
* Why and how has the biblical, apostolic and historic role of the Primates been diminished and marginalized by the Anglican Communion bureaucracy? What role has the Archbishop of Canterbury himself played in marginalizing the Primates, and to what end?
* Why were the recommendations of the Windsor Report ignored-recommendations that the Primates take a leading role in drafting the Anglican Covenant?
* Likewise, why has the role of the Primates in overseeing the Covenant been replaced by that of “The Standing Committee”?
* By what authority did the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACC Joint Standing Committee establish itself as “The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion (SCAC),” with responsibility to oversee the Covenant? And what is to prevent the new SCAC from becoming a “Fifth Instrument” of disunity?
* What “relational consequences” can the SCAC impose on those who breach the Covenant?
* Why have the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACC consistently ignored the consequences recommended for those who breach Communion discipline and order-such as reduction to observer status, the establishment of a parallel jurisdiction, and provision for a new jurisdiction and communion suspension of the intransigent body- outlined by retired Archbishops Drexel Gomez and Maurice Sinclair in their essay “To Mend the Net”?
And the most important question of all: Why not do the Anglican Communion Covenant right by replacing the role of the ACC and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s “ersatz Standing Committee” with that of the Covenanting Primates and the Lambeth Conference in overseeing the Covenant? Authority should be placed in the hands of Covenant-affirming churches. TEC and its proxies should be excluded from the governing bodies of the Communion-for the sake of Communion order and our ecumenical relationships.
Read the rest of Philip Ashey’s introduction of Stephen Noll’s analysis here
Surly these questions are rhetorical! The ABC did it to control the outcome in favor of TEC.
1. Br. Michael,
Agreed. Do you think Dr. Noll is making a case for the Global South to head another direction? There is absolutely no hope of reform of the WWAC with RW at the helm. His thinking is so muddled that the atheist Christoper Hitchens recently (and correctly) scolded the ABC on his advocacy of sharia law.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AHivWxHX2s.
Well, the questions Dr. Noll asks may be rather rhetorical (ala #1), but the primary suggestions he makes are anything but empty rhetoric. I’m sure Noll means them seriously. Yet I have to agree with Dcn Dale that the realistic prospects that Noll’s proposals will be followed are somewhere between slim and none. I’m afraid his plan is probably DOA as far as the Global North is concerned. But it’s probably best to face that grim reality sooner rather than later. As I’ve said for a long time now, the AC is a house divided against itself. It simply can’t and won’t hold together, as this report frankly concedes and urges us to take seriously.
I welcome Fr. Ashey’s fine, brief summary of the detailed 51-page essay and I’m especially grateful for the enthusiastic backing that he and the AAC have given to this important paper by one of the most astute and best-informed leaders on the orthodox side.
FWIW, I think it’s more likely that Dr. Noll’s first main proposal will eventually win out than the second one. That is, his first call if for the decisive power to resolve this conflict be vested clearly in the bishops once again, especially in the Lambeth Conference and most particularly the Primates, as the ones chiefly charged with upholding the historic faith and order in Anglicanism. I think that argument is unassailable and must eventually carry the day, despite the determined attempts of the ACO and many western leaders to thwart that move and to preserve the current colonial structures of the AC as long as possible. That futile effort will inevitably fail, sooner or later, as the demographic shift of Anglicanism to the Global South inexorably proceeds.
But I think it’s far less likely that his more controversial proposal will be accepted, namely that the AC be redefined so that only those provinces (or dioceses, etc.) that sign the Covenant will be considered a part of it. Obviously, it’s been the whole objective of the ABoC, built into the entire Windsor/Covenant process, that there be two tracks rather than just one, and that those refusing to go along with the new Covenant will still somehow be considered Anglicans.
Bravo, Dr. Noll. And bravo, Fr. Ashey.
David Handy+
Regarding David Handy’s last point, I find it striking how the two-track concept has evolved since +RDW’s Challenge and Hope reflection of June 2006 in which he spoke of the possibility of a situation in which constituent Churches would be distinguished from “churches in association†with the latter “not bound in a single and unrestricted sacramental communion, and not sharing in the same constitutional structures†and “hav[ing] no direct part in the decision making of the ‘constituent’ Churches.†He also likened the relation between the two to “that between the Church of England and the Methodist Church.†It has been observed that the Covenant text itself is not the place for this kind of differentiation to be fully accomplished but that acceptance of the Covenant could start a dynamic that would lead to action by the Instruments to alter their own structures along these lines. But as I think what Dr. Noll says drives home, even the two-track vision from the Challenge and Hope reflection seems to have changed in a way more fundamental than just that the mechanics for achieving it are lagging behind.