The Archbishop of Canterbury will visit Nairobi on 19 and 20 October as a guest of the Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Revd Eliud Wabukala.
The purpose of the visit, which has been arranged at short notice, is to be in solidarity with the Kenyan people following the attack on the Westgate shopping mall last month.
Well, isn’t that an interesting spin?
Things get curiouser and curiouser. This press release totally ignores ++Welby’s imminent meeting with the GAFCON primates (a silence that speaks volumes). That’s asounding. This PR piece even suggests that the real reason why he is making the sudden trip to Nairobi is to show solidarity with the grieving people of Kenya after the horrible terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping mall.
Hmmm, methinks this doth protest too much… After all, the shocking terrorist attack in Kenya wasn’t on a church, like the even more horrific attack on that Anglican church in Pakistan that killed even more people, who were all Anglicans. Yet the ABoC isn’t making a sudden, swift trip to Pakistan.
In the world of covert spy operations, there is this well known concept of seeking cover under the appearance of “plausible deniability.” Well, this sure doesn’t even appear plausible to me. This looks like a blatant diplomatic attempt to pour oil on troubled ecclesial waters, as if some liberals (or even Fulcrum evangelicals) in the CoE are alarmed at the prospect of ++Welby making this trip to Nairobi and having anthing whatsoever to do with the “hotheds” who are fomenting the schism that GAFCON represents to them. As with the great Sherlock Holmes story of “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” sometimes a mystery can be solved when you pay attention to the dog that didn’t bark. It’s always dangerous to read too much into what isn’t said. The argument from silence is a well-known fallacy. But in this case, the silence over the meeting with the orthodox primates just shouts at us. Apparently some interesting things are brewing within the CoE…
David Handy+
The story was Silver Blaze, not the Hound of the Baskervilles. And the silence here is deafening.
The text of the press release is irrelevant.
What is relevant is that the ABC is making an unscheduled 8,000 mile trip to see the GAFCON primates. That is news.
Over on SF some commenters are pretty cynical about the ABC’s motives for this visit, seeing it as a trick to advance TEC’s interests. I am more willing to give the new ABC time to see what happens. If Archbishop Welby has decided to take first steps to repair relations with the orthodox Primates, this is what such a first step would look like.
“And the silence here is deafening”
+Gregory, is ‘here’ in Britain, or South America or somewhere else? Just curious as to how this is perceived in the UK.