It is the primates, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, who are directly responsible for granting official status to a new Anglican Communion province. That responsibility is spelled out under section 3 of the constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).
The constitution explains that a new province may be admitted “with the assent of two-thirds of the primates of the Anglican Communion.”
Assuming that at least two-thirds of the primates of the Anglican Communion do consent to the formation of another province in North America when they meet in February, it is likely that the matter would come before the ACC when it meets in Jamaica next May.
“Assuming that at least two-thirds of the primates of the Anglican Communion do consent to the formation of another province in North America when they meet in February, it is likely that the matter would come before the ACC when it meets in Jamaica next May.”
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If a vote is taken by the primates regarding the formation of a new province for North America, that vote, if it is significantly less than unanimous, will ‘lay bare’ the ‘fault line’ in the Anglican Communion that has been created by the revisionists.
If a vote in favor of a new province recieves the necessary two-thirds vote, then the revisionists will be the ‘odd men out’ in the Communion.
If the vote is less than two-thirds in favor, then the Communion will have formally ‘laid bare’ a fault line that will likely result in a further distancing in the Communion between those who adhere to “…the Faith once given…” and the secularly motivated revisionists who want to ‘have it their way’ regardless of the cost to the Communion.
It is important to remember that this ‘fault line’ was created and forced upon the Communion primarily by the revisionists in the United States and Canada.
My guess is that about a third of the primates will wholeheartedly welcome the new province, one third will defer to a long process of waiting to see what happens and one third will side with TEC and say a new province is impossible.
However the majority of worshiping Angilcans will be represented in the welcoming third.
www,pwcweb.com/ecw
Thanks, AF. You mention three hypotheticals:
(1) If the vote to approve is significantly less than unanimous….
(2) If the vote to approve is less than 2/3….
(3) If the vote to approve is at least 2/3….
I’d love to hear people more knowledgeable than me (an easy thing to be) comment on the likelihood of these three events — based I hope on an analysis of who would be voting in February.
It seems certain to me that (1) is a given. There are simply far too many revisionist or fellow traveling primates to make it a near unanimity. Brazil, Canada, the US, New Zealand, and others. Am I right here?
But can someone do the math and analyze the likely outcome in February? Is the vote going to be close? Are there primates who are swing voters — e.g. they disapprove of TEC’s actions of the last 6 years, but they also are inclined to see sanctioning a new province as a border crossing, of which they also disapprove? If there are a significant number of swing voters, are there enough to make prevent a 2/3 majority?
Sorry…. that last sentence I just wrote should read “… are there enough to PREVENT a 2/3 majority?”
Also, can someone knowledgeable comment more fully on this paragraph?
In what sense would the matter would come before the ACC? Does the ACC need to also approve in order for the province to become fully legitimate? Do they take a vote of some sort?
The unwillingness to approve will be higher in the ACC than among the primates.
Let us suppose the vote is unfavorable. What optioons, if any, does the new province have? Can it form anyway? Larry
I don’t know if two-thirds of the Primates will endorse the new province. Primates representing a majority of Anglicans will.
Personally, I am not particularly concerned about whether the new province gets to send representatives to the ACC. The ACC is not a Parliament or a Congress. We are led by Bishops, and if the Bishops accept the new arrangement, that’s good enough for me. If the ACC withered and died it wouldn’t unduly distress me.
The PB and the forces of 815 have at hand a sizable weapon in this fight, the bank accounts of the TEC. There is an old saying: Cash is King. While we may all say that there is only one true King, the fact is in the current economic climate cold hard cash carries a sizable heft.
Funding will be TEC’s key weapon. It will start subtly, talk here and there about how, because of the on going financial crisis TEC might have to scale back here, ar might need to pare back there. While these soft hints are being peddled it will be made quite clear to ++Rowan that unless TEC is the sole US franchise of the Anglican Communion in the United States he will need to do some serious budget trimming. I am sorry to inform you that ++Canterbury will be able to content his conscience as he twists arms on Queen Katherine’s behalf by telling himself about all the good he is going to do with the next ten years worth of funding.
So in the end, the new providence gets maybe a bare majority, with a number of primates talking about how they may support something like this in the future, but the time has not yet come. I’d like to be q lot less cynical, but those are the cards on the table.
RS Bunker
The future for the new province will need to be independent of the “Instruments of Unity”.
It’s time to open the eyes wide and see that the “Emperor” (“The Anglican Communion”) has no clothes, and is not going to get any!
The new province may simply begin being who she is, and skip all the suspense about being “approved” by the Byzantine system that is “Anglicanism”.
Gafcon’s approach may be helpful, for those who are uninterested in reunion with catholics. However, there is that little problem with the Sydney departure into “lay presidency”!!
This is wonderful. Maybe I will come back to TEC, if my old parish joins the new province. 2/3 of 38 would be 26. They already have 7, I think. I’ll bet there will be some campaigning. As my wife and I were leaving church last Sunday, a wonderful, uplifting service, it was very crowded and noisy at coffee hour. As we were getting jostled, I joked to the pastor that I was going to go back to the Episcopal church, where it’s not so crowded on Sunday morning.
Sure, RS Bunker, and that’s part of why I think we’ll have to let the ACC go for a while. No worries. The liberal churches will wither, and the need for these structures will wither with them.
The corollary is that conservatives in the US and Canada and UK are going to have to step up to the plate on giving to the South. Some will have trouble for a while because of the lawsuits, but still money can be found. And TEC’s financial clout is seriously reduced now by both the lawsuits and by the stock market.
#5 Jon says:
The ACC is the only one of the Instruments that has a written constitution and a written list of members. You can find it here, and the part they’re referring to is this:
Of course, if two-thirds of the Primates agree to change the membership schedule of the ACC, then they’re also a majority of the Primates’ Meeting; so that would be two of the four Instruments recognizing a new province.
Now, strictly speaking, the rule above refers to membership in the Anglican Consultative Council, not the Anglican Communion. The other plausible definition of who is in the Anglican Communion is “whomever the Archbishop of Canterbury invites to the Primates’ Meetings and Lambeth,” and that is solely at the discretion of the ABC.
So theoretically, there could be a situation where the ACC and the Primates recognize a new province, but the ABC is stubborn and refuses to invite the Primate of that province to Primates’ Meetings or the bishops to Lambeth. However I think that’s unlikely, at least with +++Rowan; if the ACC and the Primates both recognize a new province, I’m pretty sure he’d go along.
Another possibility, somewhat more plausible, is one where you get more than half but fewer than two-thirds of the Primates on board. They’d have a majority of the Primates’ Meeting, so that Instrument could be said to recognize the new province; but they wouldn’t have the two-thirds majority necessary to bring the new province into the ACC. And if the Primates and the ACC split, then I think it’s far less clear what +++Rowan would do.
#6 Larry Morse says:
Nobody can stop it from “forming.” Anyone can organize anything and call it an Anglican church. The question is: will it have a tie to the Anglican Communion? TEC will take the position that this new province is simply one more Christian denomination in North America, one that happens to have a historic basis in Anglicanism but no connection to the wider Anglican Communion — much like, say, the REC is today.
In fact, the new province will certainly have ties to parts of the Anglican Communion — the GAFCON provinces and likely a few more — but my prediction is that it won’t get the two-thirds Primates’ majority necessary to be unambiguously a member of the AC. But then, many of the posters here on T19 who are in dioceses that will be part of the new province have said they don’t care about that.
That was very helpful, Ross. Thanks! Very thoughtful perceptive assessment. You also say that:
(1) “my prediction is that it won’t get the two-thirds Primates’ majority”
(2) “many of the posters here on T19 who are in dioceses that will be part of the new province have said they don’t care about that.”
As far as #2 goes, I’d like to go on record as saying that I do care about it. And I think if you talked to the leadership in the four breakaway dioceses they would all say they care about that too. It is true perhaps to say that none of them care about it so much that the concern becomes idolatrous — i.e. elevating ecclesiology and formal recognition by the AC to such heights that it seems we care more about that than the Gospel. But gosh, to break off from the AC without any formal recognition, as the REC did — that is VERY far from ideal.
As far as #1 goes, I’d love to hear concrete arguments from someone knowledgeable. The way to go, it seems to me, is to produce a roster of primates who will be voting (along with their province) and then categorize them as:
* Certain to approve
* Probable approve
* Total swing voter
* Unlikely to approve
* Certain to oppose
as best as the person can assess — someone as I say knowledgeable about the individual primates and how they’d be likely to vote. That’s certainly not me… I can tell you that Akinola will say yes and KJS will say no and not much else.
Can anyone else help?
Now, is that 2/3 of the Primates?
Or
2/3 of the Primates PRESENT?
😉