You may find a copy of this statement here with thanks to George Conger at Anglican Ink
…both the decision to permit clergy to enter civil partnerships and this latest decision which some call it a “local option,”are wrong and were taken without prior consultation or consensus with the rest of the Anglican Communion at a time when the Communion is still facing major challenges of disunity. It is contrary to “the inter-dependence” which we try to affirm between churches within the Communion. Moreover, it does not only widen the gap between the Church of England and Anglicans in the Global South, it also widens the gap between the Anglican Communion and our ecumenical partners. Further, it jeopardizes the relationship between us Anglicans living in the Global South and followers of other faiths, and gives opportunities to exploit such departure of moral standards that this type of decision may provide.
The Church, more than any time before, needs to stand firm for the faith once received from Jesus Christ through the Apostles and not yield to the pressures of the society! In other words, the Church needs to be“salt” and “light”and to present a distinctive message from that of the secular world around us.
We strongly urge the Church of England to reconsider this divisive decision.
________________________________________________________________
The Global South of the Anglican Communion
Secretariat: 37, St Paul Road, Vacoas, Mauritius . Email: dioang@intnet.mu Telephone: +(230) 686-5158 . Facsimile: +(230) 697-1096
12 January 2013
Statement from the Primates of the Global South of the Anglican Communion
We, Primates of the Global South of the Anglican Communion, are deeply concerned and worried by the recent decision of the Church of England’s House of Bishops which approves that clergy living in civil partnerships can be candidates to the episcopate.There is already an ambiguity regarding civil partnerships per se. We learnt that most civil partnerships, according to the Office for National Statistics in the UK, take place among the most sexually active age group. In addition dissolutions of civil partnerships are now increasing especially in the last few years. This puts into question the motives behind this civil partnership and adds to our confusion in the Global South.
When the Church of England allowed civil partnerships in 2005, they said that “The House of Bishops does not regard entering into a civil partnership as intrinsically incompatible with holy orders, provided the person concerned is willing to give assurances to his or her bishop that the relationship is consistent with the standards for the clergy set out in Issues in Human Sexuality.” Now, with allowing candidates for episcopacy to do the same, to whom should they give assurances? Clarification on this point is needed.
Sadly, both the decision to permit clergy to enter civil partnerships and this latest decision which some call it a “local option,” are wrong and were taken without prior consultation or consensus with the rest of the Anglican Communion at a time when the Communion is still facing major challenges of disunity. It is contrary to “the inter-dependence” which we try to affirm between churches within the Communion. Moreover, it does not only widen the gap between the Church of England and Anglicans in the Global South, it also widens the gap between the Anglican Communion and our ecumenical partners. Further, it jeopardizes the relationship between us Anglicans living in the Global South and followers of other faiths, and gives opportunities to exploit such departure of moral standards that this type of decision may provide.
The Church, more than any time before, needs to stand firm for the faith once received from Jesus Christ through the Apostles and not yield to the pressures of the society! In other words, the Church needs to be “salt” and “light” and to present a distinctive message from that of the secular world around us.
We strongly urge the Church of England to reconsider this divisive decision.
+ Mouneer Egypt
The Most Revd Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis
Bishop of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa
Chairman, Global South Primates Steering Committee
++Nicholas Abuja
The Most Revd Nicholas Okoh
Primate of All Nigeria Bishop of Abuja
Vice-Chairman, Global South Primates Steering Committee
++ Ian Maritius
The Most Revd Ian Ernest
Primate of the Indian Ocean Bishop of Mauritius
Hon. General Secretary, Global South Primates Steering Committee
++Bolly Kuching
The Most Revd Datuk Bolly Lapok
Primate of South East Asia Bishop of Kuching
Hon. General Treasurer, Global South Primates Steering Committee
++ Stephen Yangon
The Most Revd Stephen Than Myint Oo
Primate of Myanmar Bishop of Yangon
Member, Global South Primates Steering Committee
++Eluid Nairobi
The Most Revd Dr. Eluid Wabukala
Primate of Kenya Bishop of Nairobi
Member, Global South Primates Steering Committee
++Bernard Matana
The Most Revd Bernard Nhatori
Primate of Burundi Bishop of Matana
Member, Global South Primates Steering Committee
++Hector Chile
The Most Revd Hector “Tito” Zavala
Primate of the Southern Cone Bishop of Chile
Member, Global South Primates Steering Committee
++Henri Kinshasa
The Most Revd Kahwa Henri Isingoma
Primate of Congo Bishop of Kinshasa
Member, Global South Primates Steering Committee
Thank you for publishing this.
It is heartening to see that Anglican primatial archbishops around the world are prepared to call CofE to account for its actions, publicly.
Dear Primates of the Global South of the Anglican Communion, thank you and God bless you.
Turn up the heat, Your Graces!
This marvelous statement by the Global South Primates is all the more compelling and forceful because it is so carefully expressed. There is no way that our liberal foes can reasonably accuse them of letting their anger get the best of them. This is no rant, but rather a thoughtful, precise, but very firm warning that the fateful course that the HoB of the CoE has adopted will prove nothing short of disastrous, for multiple reasons that they clearly spell out.
In particular, I call attention to the highly significant fact that among the signatories is the Primate of Burundi, Bernard Nhatori. Given his prominent position within the leadership of the ACC, this is a clear signal that another “moderate” among the African primates has gotten fed up with the pervasive liberalsim of the Global North. Over time, more and more of the so-called “moderates” have woken up and realized that the official organs of leadership in the worldwide communion (including the “Instruments of Unity” and the ACO headquarters in London, and now the English HoB) were hopelessly compromised. At first, the GAFCON primates broke off relations with TEC and the Canadians. Then gradually other GS primates saw the light and dropped out of the silly games played by the Communion’s colonialist manipulators, e.g., John Chew in Singapore, Mouneer Anis in Cairo, and Ian Ernest on the island of Mauritius. Now even the patient ++Nhatori is ready to give up the pretense of trying to prop up a phony institutional unity that glosses over an ideological or theological and moral gap that’s wider than the Grand Canyon. There are some differences that are simply too great to be bridged. Who in their right mind would dream of building a bridge over the Atlantic Ocean?
And so the infamous “tear in the fabric” of the worldwide Communion continues to widen relentlessly. Alas, I feel no hope whatsoever that even the renowned diplomatic skills of +Justin Welby will be sufficient to avert the worsening of that process. Only genuine repentance on the part of the deluded leadership of the Global North churches will be enough for that. And humanly speaking, that’s just not going to happen. Of course, that’s not to say Almighty God can’t pull off a stunning miracle in that regard and by the power of his Holy Spirit bring those self-deceived leaders to turn from their catastrophic ways. But at this point, there is no sign of that beginning to happen, but rather the opposite, a collective hardening of hearts by Global North leaders who are captive to what I like to call the “[i]A-B-C[/i]” Zeitgeist ([i]Anthing-But-Christianity[/i]) now dominant in the European cultural sphere.
Some might interpret such a pessimistic assessment as a counsel of delspair. But that isn’t how I intend it at all. I still believe–fervently–that the best days of Anglicanism are still to come. The “glory days” for Anglicanism weren’t under Queen Elizabeth and the English Reformers in the latter 16th century, or under the Caroline Divines in the mid-17th. Nor am I hoping for a return to the “Golden Age” of the Evangelical Revival in the mid-18th century under the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield, or the Catholic Revival in the mid-19th under Keble, Pusey, and Newman. I rejoice in the major contributions to our illustrious heritage made by faithful Anglican leaders in all those periods (and not least by the radical reformers who are my greaterst heroes, John Wesley, and John Henry Newman, with their complementary strengths).
But all those godly leaders lived in a vastly different age, the long era of “Christendom,” when biblical or classical Christianity was the dominant religion and the most influential worldview in the Western world. Alas, the Christendom age is truly over, and it will not return in the forseeable future, no matter how many successful Alpha courses we run, or even if we double and triple the number of converts we make with zealous evangelism in the next few generations. We have lost control of the cultural mainstream, and an increasingly cynical and secularized culture has turned its back on the Church. The 1500 year-old marriage between Church and State, or Christianity and Culture, has passed through a period of unofficial separation and is now in the throes of an ugly divorce. All that’s left is the dividing up of the assets, which is going on right now before our disbelieving eyes.
But all that sad stuff is not the necessary preamble to what is to come. A resurrection, by necessity, must be preceded by a death. And the Old Anglicanism, typified by the grand old Elizabethan Settlement in England, simply has to wither away and die, before a New and Better Anglicanism, more faithful to Christ and his gospel, can arise in its place. That, at least, is my unqueshable hope.
Only Christ, the firstborn from the dead and the true Head of the Church, can pull off such a stunt. And that is precisely what I trust he can and will do, in his time and his inscrutable and unpredictable way. But this glorious rebirth of a “biblical, missionary, and united Anglicanism” (the ACNA mantra) does require the cooperation of brave and godly Anglican leaders, both in the Global North and the Global South. And this courageous and yet calm and irenic plea from the GS Primates is one of many encouraging signs that the Lord is raising up such faithful leaders in our time. Thanks be to God.
David Handy+
Oops, please let me correct a glaring typo that turned my intended meaning on its head. In my penultimate paragraph I was trying to say: But all that sad stuff (the demise of Christendom as the established, dominant faith) is just the necessary preamble to what is to come.
Some may be stuck in grief, lamenting the collapse of the formerly established churches of the West. I admit that I’m not one of them. I’ve done my grieving and moved on. The “New Reformation” I keep dreaming of may well end up surpassing the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century in terms of both how divisive and how life-giving it proves to be in the end. For what we are witnessing today is nothing less than an experiment of a millenium and a half coming to an end. The brave but misguided attempt to Christianize Europe gradually by social osmosis, trusting that the pagan tribes of Europe would gradually become more and more Christian with each generation that grew up in a society where Christianity had a monopoly on religion and was the dominant force in education and much of social life, has had a great fun for about 1500 years. But what we see on every side is that this long experiment has ended in utter failure.
All the state churches of Europe have collapsed, whether Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, or Anglican. The CoE is no exception. Nor is so-called “Mainline Protestantism” in North America, which long enjoyed an unofficial status as being virtually established, without any one denomination securing the advantage of pre-eminence. None of these churches has proven to have the institutional strength to resist the powerful cultural currents now driving Christian churches relentlessly through dangerous rocky rapids and over various waterfalls. Only those vigorous churches that are able to “go against the flow” of the cultural mainstream will survive and thrive in the scary new world of the 21st century.
If any large institutional church can manage to do that it will be the Roman Catholic Church, which is truly international and thus less subject to the whims of any national political or social system. But I truly hope that Anglicanism will also rise to that stern challenge, as the second-most international form of Christianity. The GS leaders, growing up in a part of the world where Christianity has never been dominant and who have often had to endure real persecution for the sake of Christ, are rightly leading the way into that new future. The Anglican GS Primates have picked up the ball that the faithless GN leaders have fumbled. They have picked up the baton that the official Communion leaders dropped, and this fine statement shows that they are determined to finish the race without faltering, with or without the help of the venerable mother church, the CoE.
David Handy+
Double oops. Elves, that was supposed to be, towards the end of the second paragraph, “…a great RUN (not fun) of about 1500 years.”
DH+