I do not read this as the break up of the Anglican Communion. I expect that many of the attendees at GAFCON will be attending Lambeth but I do see this conference and its statement as an important breakthrough in the impasse of the communion crisis. In the game of chess I believe there is a term called tempo. It has to do with which player is the one to which the other must respond. One player has the upper hand and then there is an exchange and the player who was setting the tempo is now the one who must respond. Until this meeting in Jerusalem the tempo was in the hands of the North American churches. They acted and the rest of the communion was in the position of responding to their actions. The existing instruments of communion including the Archbishop of Canterbury have in part by inaction and in part by intention, continually moved the tempo back to TEC and The Anglican Church of Canada. The emergence of GAFCON as a confessing group within the Anglican Communion which is willing to take bold action, though at this point action short of a formal break with Canterbury, changes the tempo. It is now the rest of the communion including its existing instruments of communion which must respond. It is the consensus of the emerging confessing majority in the communion which is now setting the agenda. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth conference do not respond to this initiative in a meaningful way they are likely to become irrelevant to the future of global Anglicanism. Irrelevancy for Canterbury, Lambeth and the Anglican Consultative Council seem a greater risk at the moment than the risk of a formal break or repudiation of these instruments by members of GAFCON.
This is a very helpful summary of where we stand.
Dr. Harding, I like your analysis and believe the tempo has indeed changed and that the Church is back in its rightful place of determining the standards and values she will tolerate. I pray the other GS and orthodox Primates will hurry to sign and join in this powerful witness and restoration movement.
As I’ve pointed out on Stand Firm, unfortunately, Dr. Harding’s generally apt and perceptive analysis is slightly marred by using the wrong chess term. Technically, the right word for what he is describing is the “initiative.” That is, those of us who play chess as a hobby say that one side “has the initiative” when the other player is forced to react to his moves. This conveys a significant advantage in terms of limiting the opponent’s options. Consequently, among players of roughly equal strength, White (who always begins the game) wins more games than Black, roughly by a 6 to 4 margin among chess professionals. It’s similar to the advantage enjoyed in tennis by the player who gets to serve.
But that quibble aside, I believe Dr. Leander Harding is absolutely right in his observation that the initiative has now been seized by the leaders of GAFCON. And this represents a crucial change in the tides. The impasse and stalemate that has paralyzed the AC for far too long has now been decisively broken, and this is a very promising development.
Garry Kasparov, the former chess world champion (roughly from 1985 to 2000), often was willing to sacrifice a pawn or two just to seize the initiative and launch an attack, putting his opponents on the defensive and under increasing pressure. For in chess, as in football or soccer or other sports, it’s often true that “the best defense is a good offense.” And the same may well apply in the much more serious realm of this church civil war.
David Handy+
Chess enthusiast