Dr Williams is careful to convey that he takes the concerns of those who attended GAFCON seriously. Our conversation is peppered with references to these “serious concerns”; but GAFCON’s Jerusalem Declaration, and its inherent attack on his authority, is clearly a significant source of his frustration.
And it may be this emotion that leads him to dwell on the potential for division within the GAFCON movement. “It is not as if it is a single-issue thing. There are motivations and perspectives even there, which pull in slightly different directions, and, I think, depend on different visions in the Church.
“Someone like the Archbishop of Sydney, whom I greatly respect as a theologian, has a very clearly worked out theology of the Church, which is much more federal and locally independent. I am not sure that would be exactly the theology you would find in some of the traditionalist American bishops. I will watch to see how some of the theological discussions evolve.”
He insists that, despite the Jerusalem Declaration, the Anglican Communion will still continue in some form, albeit weakened. “The kind of fellowship we will have may be different, less immediate. That is hard. That is a loss, and there will always be a sense of loss and not feeling all right. But the reality is: we are where we are. We may be less obviously at one for a few years, but that doesn’t let us off the obligation to keep listening to each other.,,,”
In 2006, Rowan Williams said the following:
[blockquote] The reason Anglicanism is worth bothering with is because it has tried to find a way of being a Church that is neither tightly centralised nor just a loose federation of essentially independent bodies – a Church that is seeking to be a coherent family of communities meeting to hear the Bible read, to break bread and share wine as guests of Jesus Christ, and to celebrate a unity in worldwide mission and ministry. That is what the word ‘Communion’ means for Anglicans, and it is a vision that has taken clearer shape in many of our ecumenical dialogues.[/blockquote]
Today he says:
[blockquote]But how diffuse can it be before it fails to remain a Communion?
“That is rather a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string? question. Because, if you look back at the history of the last 150 years, the actual contact with members of the Anglican family has been pretty slight.[/blockquote]
Notice the difference between a “coherent family of communities” and “pretty slight . . . actual contact with members of the Anglican family.” Rowan Williams no longer believes in a Communion but a Federation.
Is he saying – the GAFCON group is too diverse in its positions to remain together, but we can find a way to successfully keep the diversity of the Anglican Communion together?
IMHO, it is a bit misplaced to describe GAFCON’s Jerusalem Declaration as an “inherent attack on [the ABC’s] authority.” That may be a perception or reaction – but GAFCON did not occur in a vacuum.
Rowan Williams took actions to counter the authority of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 and the conciliar communiques of the Primates’ Meetings. The teaching of the AC does not seem to matter much in the ABC’s dealings with provinces that do not observe that teaching. Those actions devalued the authority of the office of ABC. How can it be but otherwise? What does it mean when one instrument of unity works against other instruments of unity? Sadly, they all become less important, less meaningful to maintaining unity.
What was once meangful or worthwhile now carry very little weight for the common life of the AC. This is not to say, however, that the instruments do not carry residual value in the appearance of authorizing the innovations of TEC.
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How can there be any kind of [i][b]inherent attack on the authority[/b][/i] of someone who repeatedly insists that he has [i][b]no[/b][/i] authority at all anyway?!
I am amused that the ABC points to differences of opinions among the bishops who attended GAFCON while totally ignoring the amazing differences among the bishops attending Lambeth! While not ignoring that there most certainly are differences among the GAFCON folks, their differences PALE before the theological incoherence ( a virtually tower of babble) taking place at Lambeth.