For me, the significance and urgency of these next few days and weeks is in part because of the clear and specific, time-limited requests to TEC from the Primates and their warning that “if the reassurances requested of the House of Bishops cannot in good conscience be given, the relationship between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a whole remains damaged at best, and this has consequences for the full participation of the Church in the life of the Communion”. With Lambeth now less than a year away if there are indeed to be ‘consequences for…full participation’ it is clear the Primates will either have to eat their words or action will have to be taken by the Instruments sooner rather than later.
There is also the rapid rise in interventions within TEC and these now increasingly in the form not of taking parishes for a period under a foreign jurisdiction but of consecrations to the episcopate. When such consecrations began over 7 years ago, the then Archbishop of Canada, (in)famously remarked, “Bishops are not intercontinental ballistic missiles, manufactured on one continent and fired into another as an act of aggression”. There now looks dangerously like an episcopal equivalent of an arms race developing as Nigeria (having followed Rwanda in establishing a US mission wing with its own bishop in Martyn Minns) have announced four more bishops (despite CANA having only 60 congregations and 80 clergy requiring oversight), Rwanda another 3 AMiA bishops, while Kenya and Uganda have recently joined in and elected and already consecrated new suffragan bishops to serve American parishes under their province’s jurisdiction. Linked together under Common Cause and meeting as what looks like a potential proto-college of bishops just after TEC’s House of Bishops and just before the African provinces of CAPA gather in early October, it now seems TEC’s claim to be the sole structural representative of Anglicanism in the US is unsustainable, especially if a number of dioceses shortly seek to remove themselves and become part – as whole dioceses – of another Anglican province. While this is, of course, simply the latest in a long line of defections and breakaways over the last 30 or 40 years, the fact these are fully integrated into other provinces of the Communion and their leadership apparently committed to working together in mission and ministry mean we are now clearly in uncharted waters for the Communion and its unity. These “interventions by some of our number and by bishops of some Provinces, against the explicit recommendations of the Windsor Report, however well-intentioned, have exacerbated this situation” (Primates at Dar) and I wish they had not happened and would now be stopped. However, they will only come to an end and the bishops and congregations somehow reintegrated and made regular within an ordered church if the American bishops next week change course.
My hope and prayer is therefore obviously that TEC’s bishops will respond clearly and positively to the request of the Primates. That will require them to reverse their initial rejection of the proposed Pastoral Scheme (which rash rejection, to be honest, played into the hands of those eager for more interventions, certainly in the case of Kenya and Uganda who were happy to work with the Scheme as a means of providing oversight for their American congregations). They will also need clearly to give the assurances sought[1] as to the effect of the actions of General Convention 2006 (and I don’t think they are being asked to unconstitutionally usurp or ‘trump’ Convention but simply to interpret its ambiguous resolutions and to make commitments clearly within their remit as bishops – episcopal authorisation of rites and consent to elected candidates for the episcopate). Only this will enable the Primates at last to be “in a position to recognise that The Episcopal Church has mended its broken relationships”.
Sadly, this outcome looks highly unlikely and so serious thought needs to be given to what happens next. I look forward to hearing how you think the Communion should respond to such an outcome but suspect you will call for a recognition of provincial autonomy and diversity in secondary matters, the need for ongoing respectful dialogue on both sexuality and the nature and structures of life in communion (especially as regards the proposed covenant), and the importance of Lambeth 2008 as a place where such dialogue can take place and bonds of affection be strengthened. As I write that – please forgive me for putting the words into your mouth and correct me where I am wrong! – I realise that stated in those general terms and abstracted from our recent history I could agree. The difficulty is that, as with the majority of the Communion, I don’t at present see these as areas of legitimate diversity. I also honestly believe that if the dialogue and Lambeth conference we so urgently need is to be in the context of trust that will enable conversations to flourish and move everyone on from the current impasse then the American church must take the steps called for in the Windsor Report and reaffirmed consistently by all the Instruments of Communion.
What then do I think should happen if TEC fails to respond adequately? In one sense of course that is of little importance. TEC is responding to the Primates who in turn are simply following the mind of the Communion as expressed in TWR and its reception. It is, therefore, vital for the Primates as a body to determine – or at least be integrally involved in the determination of – the Communion’s response.