As I write this, the US bishops are reading through the first draft of their ‘message’ that will be their communique from the meeting. When it is finished, about lunch time their time (they are six hours behind) it will go to the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Primates’ Meeting. They will then study it, write a report to the Archbishop of Canterbury and issue a brief statement of their own. That will be between 6pm and 9pm New Orleans time. Their report will detail where they believe the Anglican Communion is at that time, in relation to the ‘message’ from the US bishops. The Archbishop will then consult individually with every one of the Primates before publishing his own response.
‘There has been some very dedicated hard work to find a language which the majority of the House of Bishops can gather around and which will meet the requests of the wider communion,’ the second insider told me. He was definite that the Dar es Salaam communique was not going to be met in full. The question that is still wide open – the question of which direction the episcopal shoal will swim off in tonight – is whether there will be any attempt to go with Dar es Salaam, or whether they will reject it completely and utterly and veer off into the uncharted depths of schism. ‘It could be anything from outright rejection of Dar es Salaam, to a genuine attempt to meet the Dar es Salaam communique on their terms. People in the meeting have been honest and frank, to the point of being quite harsh on one another. The bishops can be in no doubt of the tensions that have been caused in the Communion. There have not been arguments but there has been plain speaking.’
I doubt that even “a genuine attempt to meet the Dar es Salaam communique on their terms” will be enough. The key phrase is “on their terms,” which is not likely to take the world as it is, but as they would wish it to be.
So is the ABC using the Delphi technique on the 38 primates?
This is a troubling article, especially the ending. Putting this together with Steenson announcing his crossing of the Tiber, it’s clear we’re at a momentous juncture. I wonder what the rest of the Communion is going to do in the next few months? I really hope and pray that somehow the Global South and ABC will be in the same corner.
When can you remember so much preview, so much pre-game forecasting, so much hot air filling halls with the kind of statement that years ago one brought down with a pin prick,so much utterly predictable posturing? And so little in the way of results? Step back and consider how thoroughly unimportant this meeting has been. I wonder what it cost and who paid the bills.
The only element worth paying attention to is the complete failure of the ABC to demonstrate the most modest courage and conviction. If he had stayed in bed, what would have changed in NO? Not a thing.
I understand that there is no point in getting angry. That is, we are all quite helpless to act because we have no leader to act on our behalf, while this impotence only increases the anger by a quantum degree. Meanwhile, the schools in Mass are selling homosexuality to elementary school kids and the parents who object on religious grounds are told to like it or lump it. We chatter and chatter, and the public schools are selling homosexuality to elementary school kids, the world’s most willing captive audience. And the ABC has gone to Shangri-La for a conference.
Every once in a great while, I get a deep wish for God to send another flood because we deserve to be cleansed off the face of the earth. There is no evidence that God ever actually acts on prayers, so I shouldn’t hold my breath. But I am going to place a hex on all of TEC, the bat-bogey hex. I have a wand here and it has a a double core, a hair from Liberace and a hair from Dawkins, and even now, the hex is flying through the air. Larry
I bind that curse in the name of Jesus.