Via email–KSH.
The Most Rev. Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury
Lambeth Palace
London
Your Grace,
Easter greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In February I read with great interest Bishop Mouneer Anis’ letter of resignation from the Joint Standing Committee. I am grateful for his clarity and honesty. He has verbalized very well what many of us have thought and felt, and inspired me to write, as well.
As you know from our private conversations, I have absented myself for principled reasons from all meetings of the Joint Standing Committee since our Primates meeting in Dar es Salaam in 2007.
The first meeting of the Joint Standing Committee was later that year in New Orleans. At our Primates meeting in February 2007, we made certain requests of the Episcopal Church. In our Dar es Salaam communiqué we did not envision interference in the American House of Bishops while they were considering our requests. For me to participate in a meeting in New Orleans before the 30th September deadline would have violated our hard-won agreement in Dar es Salaam and would have been another case of undermining our instruments of communion. My desire to uphold our Dar es Salaam communiqué was intended to strengthen our instruments of communion so we would be able to mature into an even more effective global communion of the Church of Jesus Christ than in the past.
Subsequent meetings of the Joint Standing Committee have included the Primate of the Episcopal Church (TEC) and other members of TEC, who are the very ones who have pushed the Anglican Communion into this sustained crisis. How can we expect the gross violators of Biblical Truth to sanction their own discipline when they believe they have done nothing wrong and further insist that their revisionist theology is actually the substance of Anglicanism?
We have only to note the recent election and confirmation of an active Lesbian as a Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles to realize that TEC has no interest in “gracious restraint,” let alone a moratorium on the things that have brought us to this point of collapse. It is now impossible to regard their earlier words of “regret” as a serious gesture of reconciliation with the rest of the Communion.
Together with Bishop Mouneer, I am equally concerned, as you know, about the shift in the balance of powers among the Instruments of Communion. It was the Primates in 2003 who requested the Lambeth Commission on Communion that ultimately produced the Windsor Report. It was the Primates who received the Windsor Report at our meeting in Dromantine in 2005. It was the Primates, through our Dromantine Communique, who presented the appropriate “hermeneutic” through which to read the Windsor Report. That “hermeneutic,” however, has been obscured by the leadership at St. Andrew’s House who somehow created something we never envisioned called the “Windsor Process.”
The Windsor Report was not a “process.” It was a Report, commissioned by the Primates and received by the Primates. The Primates made specific and clear requests of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. When TEC, particularly, did not clearly answer our questions, we gave them more time in 2007 to clarify their position.
Suddenly, though, after the 2007 Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam, the Primates no longer had a role to play in the very process they had begun. The process was mysteriously transferred to the Anglican Consultative Council and, more particularly, to the Joint Standing Committee. The Joint Standing Committee has now evolved into the “Standing Committee.” Some suggest that it is the Standing Committee “of the Anglican Communion.”
There is, however, no “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” The Standing Committee has never been approved in its present form by the Primates Meeting or the Lambeth Conference. Rather, it was adopted by itself, with your approval and the approval of the ACC. The fact that five Primates are included in no way represents our Anglican understanding of the role of Primates as metropolitan bishops of their provinces.
Anglicanism is a church of Bishops and, at its best, is conciliar in its governance. The grave crisis before us as a Communion is both a matter of faith as well as order. Matters of faith and order are the domain of Bishops. In a Communion the size of the Anglican Communion, it is unwieldy to think of gathering all the Bishops of the Communion together more frequently than the current pattern of every ten years. That is why the Lambeth Conference in 1998 resolved that the Primates Meeting should be able to “exercise an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters.” (Resolution III.6).
What has emerged, however, is the Standing Committee being given “enhanced responsibility” and the Primates being given “diminished responsibility,” even in regard to a process begun by them. Indeed, this Standing Committee has granted itself supreme authority over Covenant discipline in the latest draft. Under these circumstances, it has not been possible for me to participate in meetings of the Joint Standing Committee that has taken upon itself authority it has not been given.
Accordingly, I stand with my brother Primate, Bishop Mouneer Anis, in his courageous decision to resign from the Standing Committee. Many of us are in a state of resignation as we see how the Communion is moving away further and further into darkness, especially since the Primates’ meeting in Dar es Salaam.
Your Grace, I have urged you in the past, and I will urge you again. There is an urgent need for a meeting of the Primates to continue sorting out the crisis that is before us, especially given the upcoming consecration of a Lesbian as Bishop in America. The Primates Meeting is the only Instrument that has been given authority to act, and it can act if you will call us together.
The agenda for that meeting should be set by the Primates themselves at the meeting, and not by any other staff in advance of the meeting. I reiterate this point because you will recall our cordial December 2008 meeting with you, Chris Smith, and the other GAFCON Primates in Canterbury where we discussed the agenda for the Primates meeting to take place in Alexandria the following month. None of our submissions were included in the agenda. Likewise, at the beginning of the January 2009 Primates meeting I was asked to present a position paper on the effect of the crisis in the Communion from our perspective, but I was not informed in advance, so I did not come prepared. Yet, other presenters, including TEC and Canada, were given prior information and came very prepared. I have never received a formal written apology about that incident, and it has caused me to wonder if there are two standards at work in how a Primate is treated.
Finally, the meeting should not include the Primates of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada who are proceeding with unbiblical practices that contradict the faith of Anglicanism. We cannot carry on with business as usual until order is brought out of this chaos.
Yours, in Christ,
–(The Most Rev. ) Henry Luke Orombi is Archbishop of Uganda
Than you, thank you, THANK YOU!! Archbishop Orombi for finally speaking the unvarnished Truth about our current situation.
This is not — and never has been — a situation in which finessing the truth or waltzing around it will do any real good at all. This is NOT and never has been a situation in which some kind of cobbled-together pseudo-unity can somehow be balanced against the Truth of Holy Scripture and the Faith as this Church has received It from Jesus through the Apostles.
The political shenanigans that have been allowed to go on have been utterly appalling and (in my sainted grandmother’s phrase) have made the angels weep.
The only true and effective “Way Forward” (I am so sick of that smarmy phrase) is to sit down, call “Repentance” “repentance” instead of some kind of “reconciliation process” and come back to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over His Church, His Bride.
Get me a one way ticket to Uganda, please.
This is the kind of leadership we have been so sorely needing and so sorely lacking.
Without genuinely settling the issues that Archbishop Orombi has highlighted, the Covenant is a meaningless gesture with no substance and no future.
After writing the above posting and re-reading Abp Orombi’s letter, I just put my head down and cried.
For those who think I am merely cynical, sarcastic or despairing, may I please say that it is my deepest desire that we may be Anglican Christians who are authentically Christian and authentically Anglican without the two contradicting each other. The world needs our way of doing mission so that the eternal life of precious souls may be secured in so many places.
Blessed Lord, may Your Truth, Your Mercy and Your Redemptive Grace prevail over us all.
Why is it that the discernment of African leaders within the Anglican Communion is so clear and so free of the deceit and deception and ‘dirty tricks’ that are practiced by the revisionist leaders of ECUSA and the Canadian Anglican Church?
AnglicanFirst: Because they understand what conversion in/to Jesus Christ really means, and they always have in front of them what the alternative looks like: death by AIDS, political corruption and the violence of those in love with naked power. We have the same situations here, but we have learned to cover them over with fancy language, to look the other way and to pretend that politics can save us.
We have learned over the centuries to “play church.” When people you know and love are killed for holding to their Christian Faith, that just isn’t an option.
It all gets completely real.
I especially appreciate that Archbishop Orombi, like most of his Global South colleagues, writes in clear, straightforward and understandable English.
None of this nonsense about “continuing conversations.”
++ Henry Luke is a great Christian leader, and he writes more clearly than ABC.
As I read the above it seems that +Orombi is trying to pin the tail on the donkey – a living, moving, scared donkey that wants to suffer no pain. God bless him for his effort.
Don
I had this post ready to submit hours ago – but I put off hitting the submit button because I was sure that I would be taken the wrong way – there MUST be a better way of saying what I have said – but I have not thought of such a thing. This is all that I can do. If it is wrongly said, please delete my post.
Thank you.
[Slightly edited by Elf]
I have long admired our brother ++Orombi – he speaks forthrightly, his faith in God radiates from him and there is always grace in his approach, though that grace never denies or covers up truth. In fact, discovering there are so many forthright and committed Christian bishops has been one of the great blessings for me in the morass of the past seven years: +Guernsey, +Thompson, +Murdoch, ++Duncan, +Ackerman, +Lawrence, +Iker, +Beckwith, many African bishops and archbishops, +Harvey, ++Venables – the list is so very long.
Yes, #8, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, among the living and the dead. But ++Orombi has earned special distinction throughout this long ordeal by his series of crystal clear, bold, and practical statements, backed up by equally bold and practical actions. The archbishop of Kampala is the epitome of all that an Anglican leader who is a successor of the apostles should be.
Ironically, ++Orombi may be more widely appreciated and honored outside Anglican circles than in offical AC forums. Much as Jesus said, [i]”No prophet is without honor, except in his own hometown,”[/i] it’s highly significant that ++Henry Orombi was chosen as the chairman of the prestigious Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization that meets in Capetown, South Africa in October (16th-25th). That major international evangelical missions conference is a huge undertaking, and ++Orombi’s selection as its leader is an incredible tribute to the universal respect he has won among mission-minded evangelicals worldwide.
But I suspect that this marvelous letter will fall on deaf ears at Lambeth Palace. However, I also suspect that the real target audience of this open letter are Global South leaders in the AC who are currently not involved in the GAFCON/FCA movement. With the upcoming South to South Encounter about to take place in Singapore later this month, this letter reads like a battle cry, rallying the troops, and making clear that they should put no trust in Cantaur or the ACO. And of course, he’s right. They shouldn’t.
David Handy+
KJS’ habit of uttering inane phrases such as “continuing conversations,” “living into,” etc, just turns my stomach. I appreciate Archbishop Orombi’s directness very much, and to him I say “THANK YOU, Your Grace!”
Montanan, you forgot MY bishop: +John-David M. Schofield, SSC.
This letter from Archbishop Orombi was posted on this blog on April 9 and was presumably sent on the same day or perhaps a day or two earlier. (No date was indicated in this posting)
Today (April 10), a communique` was released from the Primates Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans — the continuation of GAFCon. This communique includes the following quote (taken directly from it)
[blockquote]COMMUNIQUÉ FROM THE PRIMATES COUNCIL OF GAFCON/FCA
Grateful for the gracious guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the leadership of the Most Reverend Peter J. Akinola, the Primates Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON/FCA) met in Bermuda from April 5 through 9, 2010…….
We acknowledged that the issues that divide our beloved Communion are far from settled and that the election of the Reverend Mary Glasspool, a partnered lesbian, as a Bishop in Los Angeles in The Episcopal Church (TEC), makes clear to all that the American Episcopal Church leadership has formally committed itself to a pattern of life which is contrary to Scripture. This action also makes clear that any pretence that there has been a season
of gracious restraint in the Communion has come to an end. Now is the time for all orthodox biblical Anglicans, both in the USA and around the world, to demonstrate a clear and unambiguous stand for the historic faith and their refusal to participate in the direction and unbiblical practice and agenda of TEC.
We recognise that the current strategy in the Anglican Communion to strengthen structures by committee and commission has proved ineffective. Indeed we believe that the current structures have lost integrity and relevance. We believe that it is only by a theologically grounded, biblically shaped reformation such as the one called for by the Jerusalem Declaration that God¹s Kingdom will advance. The Anglican Communion will only be able to fulfill its gospel mandate if it understands itself to be a community gathered around a confession of faith rather than an organisation that has its primary focus on institutional loyalty.[/blockquote]
At the end of the Communique` is the following list:
[blockquote]Present in Bermuda were:
The Most Rev’d Peter J. Akinola, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)
The Most Rev’d Justice Akrofi, Archbishop, Anglican Province of West Africa
The Most Rev’d Robert Duncan, Archbishop, Anglican Church in North America
The Most Rev’d Emmanuel Kolini, Archbishop, Anglican Church of Rwanda
The Most Rev’d Valentino Mokiwa, Archbishop, Anglican Church of Tanzania
The Most Rev’d Gregory Venables, Presiding Bishop, Province of the Southern Cone
The Most Rev’d Eliud Wabukala, Archbishop, Anglican Church of Kenya
The Most Rev’d Nicholas Okoh, Archbishop, Church of Nigeria (Anglican
Communion)
The Most Rev’d Henry L. Orombi, Archbishop, Anglican Church of Uganda,
represented by Bishop Nathan Kyamanywa
The Most Rev’d Peter Jensen, Archbishop, Diocese of Sydney[/blockquote]
Since the FCA Primates’ meeting was held from April 5 through 9, it may be assumed that his fellow Primates were at least aware of Archbishop’s Orombi’s communication with the ABC.
As stated, “Institutional Loyalty” will be taking a backseat to the authentic mission of the Gospel among these folks, and reference is made to Jerusalem. Perhaps Canterbury should take careful note of these facts.
Next year in Jerusalem!
Cennyd (#11) – yes, indeed, your bishop, among many others. I named a few I have had the privilege to meet and some I have read of, but not formally met. There are so very many more, too! That, in fact, is what is remarkable. Until 2003 I was unaware of almost all of these great guardians of the faith.
montanan –
Also don’t forget former Bishop of Quincy, Keith Ackerman. What a heart for Christ!