On the power of the primates..

It’s not a question of central authority. The primates do represent their churches. And although people have said this is prelacy as opposed to democracy the fact is every primate of the Anglican Communion works within a synodical and consultative system. Every primate within the Anglican Communion is elected. My own experience as I travel round the Communion—as I speak with people on the ground—it’s not as if their primate doesn’t represent what they are saying. Second point: the primates cannot make decisions for any province. Where we’ve come to is the primates’ meeting felt it needed to spell out possible consequences of continuing division or diversity in practice and to suggest some ways in which the unwelcomed consequences might be avoided. Those proposals are there on the table but they can’t be imposed, of course.

A weekend of prayer, reflection, and study of environmental sustainability and God’s mission has engaged the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops as its members have prepared to respond to the Primates’ Communique and the proposed Anglican Covenant.

It is the faith expressed in a common order that binds us all in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic ecclesial community. Decisions on the ecclesiastical order are best left to Primates and bishops.  Their provisions are necessary; but they are at best like the gracious provision of fig leaves that hide our shame for those who live in the East of Eden. Deeper and wider than we imagine are God’s love for the whole People of God.  To deeper wrestling with our souls and wider fellowship with all his saints he has called us, that we may together enter his rest.  The surprisingly unpolemical draft from the Global South is a concrete gesture for restoring trust.

The present does not merely call for a refreshed study of the methods of interpreting scripture…To obey Christ today, Global South churches need to submit themselves to the Scripture in a more radical manner. ... The crisis is not out there in the West, but at the home front. The challenge before the churches is in translating their formal confession of the authority of the Scripture into practice: What does it mean in concrete terms for Christian communities to live under the authority of God’s Word? 

Based on a talk to the clergy of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, February, 2007

I was joined in Dar es Salaam by Bishop Bruce MacPherson of Western Louisiana from the wider Windsor Coalition (a coalition of some two dozen diocesans that includes all the Network diocesans among its members). We were given the opportunity to provide testimony and entreaty as to how the situation in the United States could be addressed.

“This could have been the meeting that could have broken the whole thing apart,” he said, instead it was marked by “a general atmosphere of congeniality and friendship across party alliances.” He said the prescriptions offered to The Episcopal Church “and the willingness of the presiding bishop to take that proposal back to the House of Bishops” was what “saved the day.”

ACN: Anglican Communion Network Expresses Gratitude for Primates’ Work

Fulcrum: Fulcrum response to the Communiqué of the Primates’ Meeting February 2007 & Fulcrum response to the Covenant for the Anglican Communion.

Telegraph: Anglican Church leaders give liberals ultimatum

BabyBlue: Quote From Bishop Minns

Ruth Gledhill: TEC put on notice

Times: Church deadline to curb gay rights

Independent: Anglican leaders: US Church must bar gay bishops

Washington Post: Anglicans Try to Avoid Split in Church

Worth reading - Ed

Bishop Bruce MacPherson of Western Louisiana and president of the Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop’s Council of Advice; Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh and head of the Anglican Communion Network; Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Primate of the Episcopal Church; and I were asked to address some 38 Primates (heads of the various worldwide Provinces of the Anglican Communion) at the start of their meeting in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, last week.