What does commitment to “Global South work” mean for two iconic primates from Africa and Asia? Such clarification is necessary. Without which Anglicans across the Southern Hemisphere do not have a shared platform on which they can discuss how to support one another in promoting the common good.
In what follows, I shall chart the emergence of “Global South Anglican”, and place its rise within the broader historical developments of churches in the Southern Hemisphere. I shall end with some broader questions for the future of the Communion.
Thanks for posting this thoughtful analysis.
[blockquote] GAFCON holds before the Communion a new and unfamiliar utopia that is post-modern to its core. Webmasters and web bloggers render synodical processes irrelevant. They preside over web blogs in the virtual worlds of their own fabrication. Its power in shaping public opinion on ecclesiastical authorities simply cannot be ignored. A communion that is no longer dependent on patient face-to-face encounters and governed by geographical proximity: it is a Gnostic gospel that renders the Cross in vain. [/blockquote]
I must disagree very strongly with Michael Poon here. It is NOT “webmasters and web bloggers” who “render synodical processes irrelevant.” It is the participants of synodical processes who make commitments at those synods and who then leave them and never implement the decisions and resolutions decided upon at those synods who have created the crisis.
Simply holding more and more “patient face-to-face encounters” to solve our problems will not do so. If leaders in the Communion, whether Global South or Global North, Global East or Global West, would simply keep their word and follow through, then we might be able to stand against a “Gnostic gospel that renders the Cross in vain.”
Neither the world wide web, webmasters nor web bloggers, Stephen Noll and Uganda Christian University, nor GAFCON should be blamed (as Michael Poon does in other places in this essay). Those consecrated to serve as Defenders of the Faith who fail to do so and who offer any gospel other than the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ alone are the ones to blame for the crisis in the Anglican Communion.
And, I repeat, those who fail to follow through on decisions reached at synods are complicit. Michael Poon aims his ammunition at the wrong targets.
I would have to agree with Freddy+. Poon’s is a convoluted piece relying heavily for his input on Hasset who tries to maintain a lengthy but incorrect thesis. The issues of communion we presently face were put before the IATDC in 2001–and they refused to deal with them. It has been a continuous breaking of the dam since Lambeth 1998 and piling on questionable theses will not hold or repair the breach. Poon is trying to help us reconstruct the Anglican Communion, which is, at this point, both improper and a loosing proposition. Its ecclesiology will not hold.
So, Michael Poon thinks that American conservatives are to blame for current institutional tensions and that they have cynically manipulated the “Global South” for their own domestic ends.
How can he say that when only 10 out of the 16 members of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) leadership team come from North America, Australia and the UK?
Re #3: Quite obviously, the effort to reconstruct the Anglican Communion (which was the goal of the Windsor Report and the first two or three South to South Encounters) is “a losing proposition” for those who have already given up. That does not make the effort “improper” for those who still value the Anglican Communion as a worldwide fellowship of inculturated Christians from many lands.
It might make it improper for those who have already abandoned that goal to remain within a fellowship they have already abandoned in principle for no other apparent purpose than to block the efforts of others to save it. (And yes, I am including much of the TEC leadership in that category along with some aligned with the Global South.)
Equally obviously, Anglican ecclesiology “will not hold” among those who follow some other ecclesiology, perhaps Roman Catholic or congregationalist. Again, that does not make it “improper” when those of us who do continue to hold that ecclesiology attempt to support and sustain it.
It might make it improper for those who hold other ecclesiologies (again including reappraisers with reasserters) to try imposing their beliefs on those who still support traditional Anglican views.
For those of you who do not know of him, Dr. Poon is the central figure in the effort of the Global South movement to develop Communion-wide standards for Christian education and catechesis. He is an insider offering his analysis of a situation in which he himself is a key player. He cannot be dismissed as a tool of the Westerners, heterodox, or liberals.
His primary concern, in fact, is whether the current Global South movement may be [b]too[/b] influenced by the West—valued by its Western allies for the support of their sheer numbers behind just another variant of Anglo-American (and Australian) individualism, rather than for their own valuable insights into the Gospel.
Dale, Anglican ecclesiology does not hold simply because it is not good ecclesiology. No discipline, not even a shred. So you cannot blame folks for not holding onto aire, a fictitious grouping of churches, a club. True fellowship doesn’t exist there. Some historic ties and clothes are all that’s left.