Statement by Phil Ashey and the AAC on the resignation of Dr. Rowan Williams

In my opinion, there have been three instances when Rowan Williams had an opportunity to do something about The Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada and chose not to. Number one was at the gathering of archbishops of the Anglican Communion in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 2007 where the archbishops agreed that some discipline needed to be taken against these rogue churches. However, Rowan Williams took matters into his own hands, didn’t do what his fellow archbishops asked him to do and as a result, many of them decided not to come to future gatherings. They seemed to be thinking, “what’s the point in going if the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to overturn our decisions and take matters into his own hands anyway?”

Secondly, in a gathering of Anglican leaders, bishops, clergy and laity, in Jamaica, 2009, Rowan Williams intervened in the debate about the Anglican Covenant. The Covenant was designed to try and hold the Communion together around some kind of a confession of faith and discipline. His interventions during that debate, which I was present for, were bewildering. He seemed to undermine the very Anglican Covenant he’d been championing and cast doubts about his own leadership behind it.

Thirdly, in response to the crisis in the Communion, instead of giving more authority to those archbishops who were faithful to the Gospel, the Archbishop of Canterbury attempted to centralize power in his own Anglican Communion office and in the creation of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. These actions undermined the legitimacy and respectability of the other existing instruments of communion, unity and governance-and especially the Primates’ meetings.

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