Global South Anglican

At the invitation of the Kigali Communiqué for it’s “wider reflection”, Michael Poon shares his thoughts on the “Road to Lambeth” paper.

This is the latest new on Martyn Minns, who also serves on the Global South Steering Committee. 

“There are many Anglicans in Southern Africa who are a facing a crisis of conscience over the stand of their leadership who persist in building closer ties with those North American bishops who have declined to submit to the Windsor Report.”

It is still less than a week since the Kigali Communiqué was released. The responses have been fast and furious. 

by Michael Poon, in dialogue with Ephraim Radner on his latest article, ‘Communion’s Martyred Depth.’

If, beyond the structural considerations that consume our meetings – who gets what bishop and what form of oversight and goes to what gathering—we were to see our communion in this light, it would surely take on a very different visage.  Indeed, taken as the foundation of our thinking about communion, the “for-ness” of the Martyr Church would reorient many of our current controversies, not because they would remove the stumbling blocks that are truly in our midst, but because the way we looked at them and responded to them would inevitably be transfigured.  How can we now set out on this new road?

A reflection with Dr Michael Poon on the deeper life of the Communion

In light of the 24 September 2006 Statement on the Global South “Kigali” Communique by the Archbishop Njongongkulu Ndungane, the Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, it is necessary to make the following clarifications…

Letter to the House of Bishops

Stand Firm Interviews Bishop Jack Iker on the Camp Allen Meeting

...This is why I believe the Primates’ Meeting should take up a central role in the Anglican Communion.  This does not mean we give up the Roman understanding of episcopate from the fifth century. It only means the jurisdictional and administrative understandings we inherit from the Latin churches are not the only models the Scripture and historic Christianity authorize. 

The Kigali Communiqué, with updated links.

Global South Anglican Theological Formation and Education Task Force also met and issued this statement.

On Economic Empowerment, the team issued this statement and a covenant on ethics.

The Road to Lambeth paper was commissioned by the Primates of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) in February 2006; it was received with gratitude by the CAPA Primates on 19 September 2006 and commended for study and response to the churches of the provinces in Africa.

Response to Kigali Communiqué and Meeting

Read the responses of commenters at Titusonenine here and the round up of Kigali here
AAC response to Kigali Communique
Anglican Communion Network responds
Anglican Network in Canada responds
Episcopal News Service’s (ENS) response and a follow up story here
George Conger at the Living Church, with additional detail on attendance etc in Global South Coalition: Time for Alternative U.S. Church Structure
Ruth Gledhill at Times Online: Anti-gay bishops vote to split the evangelical church in two

We believe that we would be failing in our apostolic witness if we do not make this provision for those who hold firmly to a commitment to historic Anglican faith.

The following draft report was commissioned by the Primates of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) in February 2006; it was received with gratitude by the CAPA Primates on 19 September 2006 and commended for study and response to the churches of the provinces in Africa.

Bishop Bob Duncan addresses the recent New York Summit and the coming Camp Allen meeting. Watch the interview on video here. It will be well worth your time.

It is clear that the Communion as a whole remains committed to the teaching on human sexuality expressed in Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and also that the recommendations of the Windsor Report have been widely accepted as a basis for any progress in resolving the tensions that trouble us. As a Communion, we need to move forward on the basis of this twofold recognition.

For a complete round up and comments from other participants, visit here

The “works of love” that are witnessed to in deed and not in word only are rare enough among us all, because the reach of our horrendously fallenness is equivalent within us all.  Dr. Poon does a good job (and I mean this) of excoriating some of the failings and hypocrisies of the West; but the job needs to be universalized if it is truly to be illuminating and edifying.

A group of bishops met in New York on 11-13 September at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury and in consultation with the Presiding Bishop to review the current landscape of the church in view of conflicts within the Episcopal Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury had received a request from seven dioceses for alternative primatial pastoral care and asked that American bishops address the question. The co-conveners of the meeting were Bishops Peter James Lee of Virginia and John Lipscomb of Southwest Florida. Other participating bishops were Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori and Bishops Jack Iker of Fort Worth, Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, James Stanton of Dallas, Edward Salmon of South Carolina, Mark Sisk of New York, Dorsey Henderson of Upper South Carolina, and Robert O’Neill of Colorado. Also participating was Canon Kenneth Kearon, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion.

Round up of this meeting at these sites:

- Titusonenine

- Thinking Anglicans

The most likely outcome is a “two-church solution” for the United States, allowing conservatives and liberals to exist, separate but side-by-side, as Anglicans. It would have implications for the worldwide communion, because many other provinces, including England, have similar problems.

It is, on the whole, more likely that the North American churches merely acted, in default of a thorough deliberative process of their own, under the force of strong cultural pressure, the reasons for which they never explained even to themselves, since an ill-conceived doctrine of pluralism persuaded them that thinking was an unnecessary labour. They may have suffered something worse than a bout of racism, if such a thing can be imagined; they may have suffered an implosion of their powers of practical reason, the result of long habits of irresponsibility. And since theology is nothing if not a discipline of common reasoning about God and our life together, unless they recover it, their days of being churches of any kind are numbered.

Read the rest here at Fulcrum

Recently Bishop MacDonald kindly sent me his essay “The Gospel comes to North America”.  I am grateful for this opportunity of conversation, and for his kind permission to include his paper with this response. 

Amazingly, the churches of the West remain perplexed that their cultural framework is neither easy nor self-evident for the People of the Land.  Much of the Western mission to the People of the Land treats them, as a number of commentators have noticed, as insufficiently developed Euro-American suburbanites.  They must join the church of a European Diaspora in order to achieve spiritual legitimacy.

They will be expected to address current Communion concerns like the proposed Anglican Covenant and its adoption process, response to GC2006, agenda for Lambeth 2008 and so on. However, top in the list of priority this time round is to follow-through with the concerns raised in last November’s Red Sea Encounter…

Separation of the two churches became all but inevitable and irreversible at the General Convention of 2006. Both hold principled, but irreconcilable, religious views. Both claim to be the Episcopal Church where they are. One church has a revolutionary character. The other church has the character of evangelical and catholic via media. One church leads the way in Anglican Communion innovation. The other church seeks submission to the common mind of world Anglicanism. 

More information on the team working on theological formation and education development in Kigali, Sept 18-22 and their term of reference.
For your info and prayer. 

Two of the meetings involve Network bishops and other bishops of the Episcopal Church. The third is the gathering of Global South Anglican leaders in Rwanda.