The 2008 Lambeth Conference will craft an Anglican Covenant that will set the boundaries of Anglican Church order and discipline, the Archbishop of Canterbury has stated in his Advent letter to the Primates.
But these parameters will not include gay bishops or blessings, Dr. Rowan Williams wrote on Dec 14 in a 4500 word theological tome/political manifesto outlining the ordering of Anglicanism.
The Advent letter will satisfy neither wing of the Communion, as liberals will be outraged at his rejection of the “prophetic” gay agenda, while conservatives will take umbrage that while he acknowledges the problems created by the gay agenda, Dr. Williams will not take action to correct it, preaching continued dialogue and conversation.
Dr. Williams told the primates there was “no consensus” on the merits of the American Church’s response to the Windsor Report and the Primates’ communiqués. The call for clarification had not been met, and had resulted in further questions about the Episcopal Church’s understanding of the nature of the episcopate and its views of its place within the wider catholic church.
[blockquote] The 2008 Lambeth Conference will craft an Anglican Covenant that will set the boundaries of Anglican Church order and discipline. [/blockquote]
Words that drip honey, but the end will be bitter as gall. The covenant is intended to be a molasses pit of process. There will ultimately be no agreement on what it means, and no willingness to enforce its provisions. It will produce neither boundaries nor discipline, but only ambiguity. But it could keep conservatives “at the table” – stuck in the Molasses Swamp, and hoping to draw a red card. The joke is on them though. All the red cards have been removed from the deck.
Follow this path, and the events of the last four years will simply be repeated – more meetings, more resolutions, and more lines drawn in the sand. But then the AoC will brush the line aside with his foot, and the Anglican bureaucracy will issue findings that the Americans are compliant after all. Whereupon learned voices will furrow their brows, and talk somberly about the necessity of moving forward.
What will have been accomplished?
carl
The Archbishop’s letter regarded “further reflections and proposals” and is well worth re-reading. This take seems to torture the spirit of that letter, as Williams speaks of having no executive authority, and yet he is regarded as a final arbiter in the argument put forth here.
Adam 12, I think the inconsistency you point out is the weak edge that needs to be pushed hard by the conservatives at Lambeth. Williams needs to be forced to act, and act in accordance with Lambeth 98 as well as the Windsor Process. TEC must be disciplined for breaking the accord reached in both those events, otherwise there is no meaning to anything he or the AC says. Once TEC is effectively disciplined I believe the issue of the validity of Schofield, CANA, etc., will work itself out.
“But these parameters will not include gay bishops or blessings, Dr. Rowan Williams wrote”
Well, then why go to Lambeth?
If the agenda is confined to that upon which there is consensus, then it is right that conservatives stay away.
If the cat (conservatives) is away (Lambeth 08), the mice (liberals) do play. [I couldn’t resist].
If the main reason for Lambeth 08 is to craft a covenant, what will that covenant look like if a main body of conservatives boycotts?
A cogent point, Virgil.
Carl (#1) said
“The covenant is intended to be a molasses pit of process.”
I don’t know that this is true, but its a ‘sure money bet’ that the revisionist-progressives within the Anglican Communion will try to make the processes of any Anglican Communion Covenant so turgid and non-executive that we orthodox Anglicans, we who believe in “the Faith once given,” will be begging for a return to pre-Covenant days.
If the revisionists-progressives are not ‘brought to heel’ or are not excluded from the Anglican Communion, then all I can see is an endless revisionist campaign to force things to happen their way in the Anglican Communion.
Since most of the revisionist-progressives are in the non-Third World primacies (i.e. USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, New Zealand and some of Australia) and since those primacies have the smallest numbers of active church-goers and have the greatest numbers of revisionist-progressives, then maybe its time to ‘take them on’ within each primacy.
That is, within each non-Third World primacy (i.e. USA, Canada, England, etc), its time that those who adhere to “the Faith once given” should separate themselves from those who cannot or will not ‘confess’ adherence to “the Faith once given.” This would be a biblical sorting of the wheat from the chaff.
Then, those of the whole Anglican Communion who have no problem ‘confessing’ “the Faith once given” can meet synodically at the primate level and develop a simple form of synodic governance for the Anglican Communion. This can be done in such a manner as to avoid an Anglican magestarium while maintaining Communion-wide oversight over matters of Scriptural ‘reading,’ doctrine, tradition, church order, etc.
Its time to tell the revisionist-progressives that theyeither must ‘return to the fold’ or be ‘left in the cold.’
They need to be told that what they think are ‘propheitically new’ readings of Scripture are not ‘new’ at all. They only need to look at the book of Isaiah to find historical precedents for their current follies. The revisionist-progressives are repeating mistakes and sins that are well over 2500 years-old.
[blockquote]If the main reason for Lambeth 08 is to craft a covenant, what will that covenant look like if a main body of conservatives boycotts? [/blockquote]
It’s a fair question but, as Carl points out, if no one is going to enforce the provisions of the resulting document there’s really no reason to even draft it. Revisionists will properly treat it with contempt as they have Windsor, Dromantine, DeS. Indeed, a Covenant drafted with reasserter input will likely have the pernicious effect of keeping conservatives within heretic provinces under the false hope such provinces will repent or be disciplined. Perhaps is would be better that a revisionist Covenant be promulgated so reasserters can see, in black and white, exactly how far off the reservation their church has wandered.
If the conservative “orthodox” bishops boycott Lambeth, the yare guilty of dereliction of duty. What good did it do the Venezuelan opposition to boycott elections? It simply gave the thug Chavez total control of the country while the opposition sits and sulks in their tents. Lambeth could turn out that way as well if nobody attends but the revisionists and their fellow travelers. If our bishops behave the same way, shame on them. They should all go to Lambeth and fight tooth and nail for the soul of Anglicanism.
They fought tooth and nail, #9, for Lambeth 1.10. Where did that get them? They stood and shouted from the rooftops after the election of VGR…he was still consecrated. Reasserters stood firm for Windsor, Dromantine, Dar es Salaam. ++Rowan Williams either ignored or undercut all of them. Do you really think any Covenant will be respected by TEC? Do you think the violation of it will result in discipline? What gives you hope?
It’s becoming obvious that Canterbury isn’t going to do a thing about TEC’s heresies. The only thing we reasserters can do is change the conditions on the ground and hasten the demise of TEC through the raiding of its dioceses, parishes and members. The result will be a fait accompli that Canterbury will have to recognize.
We all want discipline, but there is no mechanism for discipline in a situation like this–that’s one of the issues that Lambeth must address, and one of the points the Covenant is meant to deal with. Boundaries must be set and authority conveyed in order for discipline to occur.
The only example of provincial discipline I’m aware of resulted from the Rwandan Genocide when the former leadership of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda had to be relieved because of their participation/complicity in the killing. Even given the situation in Zimbabwe Lambeth could only “postpone” the invitation to the (former?) Bishop of Harare, and it was up to the province to discipline/remove him from their roll of Bishops. And regardless of what we think about what is happening in TEC, it doesn’t rise to the level of the Rwandan Genocide, rhetoric of spiritual genocide aside.
Lambeth will set the course for the future of the Communion and it’s up to the various camps as to whether they want a role in that, whether reasserter or reappraiser. Common Cause and the rest of the orthodox movement has no coherent plan or “strategy” and the only result of going it alone will be a fragmentation of the communion–which, in my own humble opinion, makes the whole conflict pointless and a waste of time and energy. We could have joined pre-existing protestant churches without all the conflict–and in fact, most of those leaving TEC have done just that (or went nowhere) rather than go to one of the Anglican alternatives.
I think this is a good summary – short and sweet.
I agree with #4, and would add, if Lambeth 1998 held no moral sway on the communion (i.e. TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada), why should we believe 2008 would be different? Frankly, the ABC has the moral authority to say to TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, “Repent, and tow the line,” especially if, as he says, the standard in the communion is Lambeth 98 I:10. His refusal to do shows the weakness of all this.
When the ABC says there is no consensus, I think this is code for a lack of willingness to put teeth to what has already been said in primates’ communiqués and Windsor. And any “covenant” that would come out of Lambeth in this context is unlikely to have teeth either.
Also, interventions, such as that by the Southern Cone into Canada, may not be the way forward, but + Greg Venables has said of his actions that they are unusual and temporary. And this is because of the failure of, in this case, of the ACC, to provide the episcopal oversight needed, requested, and recommended by the primates.
The conservatives should put their brains to work, if the bishops consecrated by the African provinces to America are made suffragan of African Dioceses, Rowan will need to invite them. Cana could be a deanary of Lagos and AMiA a deanary of Kigali.
I read the Advent letter the same way, but few on either side of the aisle seem to be paying attention to the ABC’s rather precise words.
I think not going to Lambeth would be to hand the communion over to the revisonists to spread their “Gospel” -I the orthodox need to go to Lambeth and get an appropriate covenant. Lets call it a containment strategy. While at the same time setting up alternative structures should the communion need to be abandoned. The Orthodox are not ready to abandon the communion en masse for elements to do so now it would lead to fracturing. With the growth in conservative provinces – by the next Lambeth the orthodox should be stronger – and hopefully a North American Orthodox Province looking to be a viable successor to a reduced and likely exhuasted TEC.
[blockquote]Williams needs to be forced to act[/blockquote]
Have you ever tried to herd cats or push water up a hill?
It is my hope, perhaps futile, that the work on the covenant will
As a result of this process, I continue to hope that we will see a counciliar form of governance begin to take shape, for this will give a certain democratic construction to governance – that is, votes will be taken and they will have the power to become law – while leaving the hierarchy unaltered. This is not a curia, not a college of cardinals, nor is there a pope, although there must be a head who has the power to call the council together. The council will be in effect the whole church, greater than any single or set of voices whose voice, because it is collective, may be able to prevent endless fragmentation.
Only by the pooling of the churches voices will we be able to find a collective voice that will be able to deal with the erosions of science/technology and the inevitable cultural tidal wave as man leaves the solar system. It WILL happen after all, and this journey will change us all irrevocably. Who will we be then?
There must a collective memory, something that is not a memory chip, however powerful, whose life blood is not information, but identity. Larry
In my comment (#7), I was alluding to the fact that it may be necessary for the orthodox Anglicans within the national churches of the Anglican Communion who are being doctrinally and canonically dominated by revisionist-progressive clergy/laity to disassociate themselves from that often coercive domination.
This means that the orthodox within each national church must insist upon a return to “the Faith once given,” even if that insistance results in an ecclessiological separation of the orthodox from the revisionist-progressives.
This separation will not be an act of schism, on the contrary, it will be an act of adherence to “the Faith once given” that the revisionist-progressives have schismatically separated themselves from.
Unfortunately, the time for ‘talk’ is over. The revisionist-progressives have proven again and again that they cannot be trusted in the arenas of debate and negotiation. It time for us to ‘shake their dust from our sandals’ and ‘move on,” leaving the revisisionists to stew in their own unBiblical ‘devils brew.’