Anglican Mainstream

Although we have written before of our concerns over the substance of the new Articles of Association of the Anglican Consultative Council, until now we have said little about our concerns over the procedures followed by the Anglican Communion Office in managing the development of these Articles. Others voiced complaints and we remained hopeful that the ACO would respond to these complaints with transparency and by providing satisfactory answers. This has not happened.

AM Comment:  Canon Trisk, a priest and lawyer, is taking the place of Ms. Nomfundo Walaza of South Africa, a member of the lay order, in contravention of the ACC's constitution and bylaws. Read here 

by Sarah Hey, Stand Firm

While it's clear that she is a progressive/revisionist activist of the most extreme, the Sea of Faith Network is certainly a few steps beyond revisionist Anglican activism — beyond support for non-celibate gay relationships and their affirmation, beyond feminist Marxist liberation theology, beyond manipulation of political processes at ACC meetings, beyond heretical Christology. Other than the Sea of Faith's interest in the use of religion, it would be hard to find a more antithetically religious organization than one that denies the objective existence of God. And just because Janet Trisk has had some book reviews posted on the Sea of Faith Network doesn't mean she's a member of such an interesting, albeit godless, organization. But the shocking fact is that Janet Trisk is a member of the Sea of Faith Network.

From Global South Anglican

From ACI

From ACNS (Hat Tip: Kendall Harmon)

Q. When did discussions about this change first take place? Who drew up the new articles and on what basis?

The issue was first raised at the time of the ACC meeting in Dundee, Scotland, in 1999, and a drafting committee was established after the Hong Kong ACC meeting in 2002. The drafting committee met with me on a number of occasions between 2002-2005, and the Committee’s draft was the subject of intensive discussion at the Nottingham ACC meeting in 2005.

Q. There’s recently been media speculation that proper procedures weren’t followed as regards getting assent to the change from the old constitution to the new.

It’s good to see that there are Anglicans out there who care that things are being done properly. Certainly no one in the Communion is above criticism. I’ve already explained that a change to the Constitution was planned and discussed at several ACC meetings. Then, as required by Article 10 of the old constitution, the draft was circulated for approval by the provinces of the Communion after the 2005 Conference. It finally achieved the requisite level of replies—two thirds of Anglican Communion provinces—and this was reported to the ACC in Jamaica in 2009, after which it was submitted for registration at Companies House and by the Charity Commission.

Read here

By George Conger, CEN

By A S Haley

[.....] indeed, why should anyone any longer care? The Anglican Communion has devolved from a State-church led union of national churches, sharing common doctrine and worship, into a cacophony of scattered voices, the loudest of which proclaim "doctrine" which would make Archbishop Cranmer despair that his own noble witness to the Anglican cause (as it then was) had been utterly in vain. As others have observed, there is today no longer a "Communion", but a "Dysunion.

By David W. Virtue, Virtueonline

Despite a proposal from orthodox Anglican leader Dato Stanley Isaacs from the Province of South East Asia that the American Episcopal Church be separated from the rest of the Anglican Communion over sexuality issues, Committee members of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council (aka the Anglican Communion Office) rejected the plea, arguing it "would inhibit dialogue and … would therefore be unhelpful."

While rejecting the proposal, Standing Committee members agreed to defer further discussion on the matter until progress on a listening project had been considered. Currently, Anglicans worldwide are participating in "The Continuing Indaba and Mutual Listening Project," which is intended to open the ears of Anglicans to the experiences of homosexual persons, according to a July 26 bulletin from the Anglican Communion Office.

The committee, which included the Archbishop of Canterbury, met in closed sessions July 23-27 at the Anglican Communion Office in London.

Once more no one is prepared to exercise godly discipline on the Episcopal Church for its blatant defiance of the Windsor Report and a Covenant in the process of being ratified by all the provinces of the Anglican Communion over sexuality issues which has seen TEC defy the communion not once, but twice by electing an avowed homosexual and lesbian to the episcopacy. The open defiance of the communion's requested Moratorium is met with muted outrage as no one is prepared to put their foot down and lay down the law, largely because the communion's Instruments of Unity are stacked with liberals and token orthodox believers who get shot down if they should so much as raise their voices. Witness what happened to Isaacs.

Groaned one English cleric, "Why, oh why, oh why is TEC permitted to retain such influence in a Communion in which it is an insignificant flea on the rump of the orthodox majority?"

Read here

By A S Haley

In  the Anglican Communion Office's report of the second day of proceedings at the meeting of the ACC's "Standing Committee", we find this paragraph:

A proposal from Dato' Stanley Isaacs that The Episcopal Church be separated from the Communion led to a discussion in which Committee members acknowledged the anxieties felt in parts of the Communion about sexuality issues. Nevertheless, the overwhelming opinion was that separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues among Communion Provinces, dioceses and individuals and would therefore be unhelpful. The proposal was not passed, and the group agreed to defer further discussion until progress on Continuing Indaba project had been considered.

Dato' Stanley Isaacs is a Malaysian attorney, and one of only two lay persons serving on the fifteen-person Committee. The next meeting of the ACC will be his last, because he has already served at the two previous meetings. The fact that his motion did not pass is a reflection of the composition of the Committee, as discussed in this earlier post. Its membership now comes largely from ECUSA and those provinces sympathetic to it.

Read here

From Anglican TV

Friday July 16 2010 Church of England Newapaper By George Conger

OBSERVANCE of the Anglican Consultative Council’s bylaws are discretionary, a spokesman for the organisation tells The Church of England Newspaper, when they are inconsistent with its political agenda.

ACC spokesman Jan Butter told CEN the future membership rules of the organisation which seek to promote gender parity take precedence over its existing rules.

However, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s press spokesman tells The Church of England Newspaper, the ACC staff’s views are not the final word on the matter, as the appointment of Bishop Ian Douglas and Canon Janet Trisk to the ACC Standing Committee are under legal review.

Weakened by charges of mismanagement following ACC-14 in Jamaica, the credibility and moral integrity of the ACC Standing Committee is now being questioned over the propriety of seating two members whom critics charge are ineligible to serve.

The Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS) reported on July 2 that two new members of the Standing Committee would attend its July 23-27 London meeting. Bishop Paul Sarker, moderator of the Church of Bangladesh and Bishop of Dhaka would attend the meeting in place of the President Bishop of the Middle East, Dr Mouneer Anis of Egypt, who resigned in protest in February.

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By George Conger, CEN

A battle is looming over the composition of the Anglican Consultative Council’s (ACC) Standing Committee with conservative leaders urging the chairman of the ACC declare the seat of American delegate Dr. Ian Douglas vacant.

The fight over Dr. Douglas’ seat comes in the wake of sharp criticism of the integrity of the ACC’s staff and hostility towards the usurpation of powers by the Standing Committee voiced by Global South Anglican leaders attending last month’s Singapore encounter.

While the fight over Dr. Douglas’ seat may not have the emotional intensity as the consecration on May 15 of Mary Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles, moderates within the Global South leadership tell The Church of England Newspaper the continued malleability of the rules of the Anglican game in favour of the US may well prove too much.

A professor of missiology at the Episcopal Divinity School, a clergy delegate to ACC-14, and deputy from Massachusetts to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, Dr. Douglas has served on a number of pan-Anglican commissions including the Lambeth 2008 organizing committee. One of the rising stars of the Episcopal Church and widely acknowledged as its most articulate spokesman at ACC-14 in Kingston, the ACC delegates elected the first-time American clergy delegate to an open seat on the Standing Committee at the meeting.

Read here

By Canon Gary L'Hommedieu, Virtueonline

"If over 80% of Anglicans live in the global south, why is this not reflected in communion structures?" writes Indian Ocean Primate Ian Earnest in an April 12 letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in which he protests, among other things, the illicit transfer of power from the Primates' Meeting to the Anglican Consultative Council and its Joint Standing Committee.

Why indeed?

The short answer is that the present "structures" of power and influence continue to reflect the colonial history of the Anglican Communion. More to the point, these persistent "structures" demonstrate how that history continues unabated. While cosmetic changes have been made to church governance, and while token appointments give the appearance of social transformation, the fact remains: the present structures of power and influence in the Anglican Communion continue to serve the same socio-economic interests as during the pre-conscious Age of Colonialism. The same dominant group that colonized the Global South is still in charge and serving primarily the same social interests-its own.

Here's the difference: We are at least two generations past the world-shattering consciousness-raising of the mid-twentieth century. The West has long stood convicted of its imperialism, its historic tendency to exploit the resources and even the will of indigenous populations, and even to romanticize this through mythology such as Kipling's "White Man's Burden." We know about the near determinism, the almost transcendent force, whereby "structures" of self-interest project their structured history through relations of power unto the third and fourth generation, even against the most guarded good intentions and sublime gestures of penitence.

In other words, the usurpation of the Primate's Meeting and the transfer of power to the ACC and its Standing Committee were done in the full light of day, in the full awareness of history, and in the consciousness of full intentionality. It was a deliberate usurpation of power and authority without any need for the former rationalization that "it's for their own good". It was done so that the same group could make sure that the major perks of the institution-in particular, the power to define its future-continued to fall to them.  Read here

By Matthew Davies, ENS

The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, during its Dec. 15-18 meeting in London, has issued a call for "gracious restraint in respect of actions that endanger the unity of the Anglican Communion."

According to the text of the resolution, the call for "gracious restraint" came in response to the recent election of the Rev. Mary Glasspool, a partnered lesbian woman, as a bishop in Los Angeles, as well as the decision by some dioceses in the U.S. and Canada "to proceed with formal ceremonies of same-sex blessings," and the "continuing cross-jurisdictional activity within the communion."

The committee said its call reaffirms Resolution 14.09, passed by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) at its meeting last May, which urges "the implementation of the agreed moratoria" on such actions. The ACC is the communion's main policy-making body. The moratoria on same-gender blessings, cross-border interventions and the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the episcopate were first proposed by the 2004 Windsor Report and have been reaffirmed by successive Primates Meetings and supported by the 2008 Lambeth Conference of bishops.

The Episcopal Church's General Convention, meeting in July, passed Resolution D025 saying that God's call to ordained ministry is "a mystery which the church attempts to discern for all people through our discernment processes acting in accordance with [its] Constitution and Canons …"

Glasspool is the first openly gay priest to be elected bishop since the passage of Resolution D025 and the first since the 2003 election and consecration of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson. Robinson's consecration as bishop prompted the Windsor Report with its call for a moratorium on such actions.

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By David W Virtue, Virtueonline

The House of Bishops of the Church of England meets in September when they will consider the new North American Anglican province’s (ACNA’s) Constitution and Canons. Following Durham Bishop Tom Wright’s scathing critique of what transpired at GC2009 there is every likelihood they will support ACNA. A number of Evangelical and Catholic bishops are already doing so – eight have signed the Private Member’s Motion – unprecedented in General Synod history.

This puts Dr. Rowan Williams in a very difficult position. At one level he can now offer a two-tier solution to the Anglican Communion’s malaise. He can also argue that he can now recognize both TEC and ACNA. He alone decides who to invite to the Lambeth Conference, and can circumvent the Anglican Communion Office and Canon Kenneth Kearon who has sworn eternal fealty to TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada and would never recognize ACNA if his job depended on it. (He needs TEC money to keep ACC afloat).

The General Synod is not in any way beholden to the ACC and can do as it likes. It could even, if it chose, reduce its financial contribution to ACC and ACO. If the Synod debates and passes the motion next February or next July, Kearon can think or say what he likes, it will not affect anything. The determination of who is or is not in communion with the CofE is a joint decision for the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York, who would find it difficult to refuse a Synod resolution. If ACNA is in then TEC may even be shown the door.

The truth is the ACC has become irrelevant following Jamaica and the debacle over Resolution 4. The vast majority of the CofE do not know what the ACC is, let alone cares. Churchgoers do not elect their ACC "representatives" they are chosen by the national church. Therefore ACC approval is something of an irrelevance. From now on one can expect that province by province will make its own decision. If the great bulk of the Communion declares itself to be in communion with ACNA, the ACC will have to fall in line.

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From the Church of England Newspaper

QUESTIONS have been raised by a conservative American church pressure group over the impartiality of the Anglican Consultative Council’s “Continuing Indaba Process” following disclosures that the funding for the project came from a single American Episcopal priest linked to pro-gay activist organizations.

During the May meeting of ACC-14 in Jamaica, the ACC announced that it had been given a $1.5 million grant to continue the Listening Process on human sexuality. Delegates were told the grant, the largest in the ACC’s history, was made by the Satcher Health Leadership Institute of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

However, when pressed by a reporter for the American Anglican Council (AAC) in Kingston, the ACC conceded the Satcher Institute was a conduit for a gift made by the Rev Marta Weeks, a retired Episcopal priest and philanthropist in Miami, Florida.

Long active in social justice issues, Mrs Weeks endorsed the Jan 200 Religious Declaration on Sexuality, Morality, Justice and Healing that called for the “full inclusion of women and sexual minorities in congregational life, including their ordination and the blessing of same sex unions” as well as “a faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment.”

Mrs Weeks told the AAC that she had been approached by the Satcher Institute to fund the programme, and had agreed due to her long-standing relationships with the Institute’s Center for Excellence for Sexual Health.

According to public records the primary funder of the Center for Excellence for Sexual Health is the Ford Foundation, which gave Morehouse a $3m grant to start the programme. The Ford Foundation, the ACC charges, is a well-known combatant in the US’s culture wars, and has denounced traditionalist views on sexual morality.

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By Greg Griffith, Stand Firm

Ultimately, the responsibility of what to do about this falls on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. He has the most questions to answer of anyone. He has staked the future of the communion on "keeping everyone at the table" through this "Continuing Indaba" process. And as it stands now, he has as an overseer of the organization that secured funding for it, an ordained minister who believes that Jesus approved of grown men having sex with boys.

By Ralinda B  Gregor, AAC

The next stage of the Anglican Communion’s attempt to resolve its differences over theology, sexuality and the authority of scripture will involve more "listening processes," but this time those processes will be paid for by a retired Episcopal priest who advocates same-sex blessings. The money given by the Episcopal priest will be monitored by a group of sex "experts" who advocate a vision of sexual freedom and "justice" that bears little resemblance to mainstream Christian doctrine or tradition, and at least one of these "experts" believes that pornography, bestiality, and multiple sex partners are not inherently harmful or wrong. Working quietly in the background is a foundation advocating sexual and reproductive health "rights" and charting a strategy to increase the voice and influence of progressive religious groups in the public sphere.

The Listening Process, also known as the "Continuing Indaba Project," was announced last month at the Kingston, Jamaica meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council after a briefing by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Anglican Communion Office (ACO). The staff of the ACO, under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, announced that a $1.5 million gift was given to fund this project-a gift 2-3 times the size of any previous gift received by the Anglican Communion Office for its work, and at a time when financial reports concede diminishing giving and reserves for the troubled Communion. The delegates to the Anglican Consultative Council were told that the money was coming from a grant through the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

After subsequent questioning at press conferences, it turns out that the Satcher Institute is not the source of the $1.5 million dollars.

So where did the money come from? The Rev. Marta Weeks, a retired Episcopal priest from the diocese of Southeast Florida, has donated $1.5 million to fund the entire project through 2011. Weeks and her late husband have supported a wide variety of causes and educational institutions. As noteworthy as her gifts are, her beliefs on the issues the Anglican Communion is dealing with are even more significant. In January of 2000, she signed the Religious Declaration on Sexuality, Morality, Justice, and Healing which calls for a "sexual ethic focused on personal relationships and social justice rather than particular sexual acts. All persons have the right and responsibility to lead sexual lives that express love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent, and pleasure." This sexual ethic "applies to all persons, without regard to sex, gender, color, age, bodily condition, marital status, or sexual orientation." It calls for "full inclusion of women and sexual minorities in congregational life, including their ordination and the blessing of same sex unions" as well as "a faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment." [emphasis added]

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From The Living Church

The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary of the Anglican Consultative Council, is on the short list of candidates being considered for the position of secretary general of the World Council of Churches.

During the primates’ meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, in February, The Living Church learned that Canon Kearon had been nominated for the post, and had the endorsement of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to succeed the Rev. Samuel Kobia of Kenya.

The WCC’s general secretary serves as the ecumenical organization’s chief executive officer, as a spokesman for its council, and is responsible for promoting the strategic vision of the Geneva-based ecumenical organization.

The general secretary will be elected at the WCC’s Central Committee meeting Aug. 26- Sept. 2. Fr. Kobia announced last year he would not seek a second term of office.

On June 3 the Catholic Information Service of Africa reported that the five other finalists for the post included the Rev. Daryl Balia of the South African Methodist Church; the Rev. Robert Anderson of the Church of Scotland; the Rev. Fernando Enns of the Brazilian Mennonite Chu rch; the Rev. Seon Won Park of the Korean Presbyterian Church; and the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit of the Church of Norway. Official confirmation of the short list could not be made, however.

(The Rev.) George Conger
 

From ACI

A transcript of the proceedings at ACC-14 on May 8, 2009, when the Council voted in conflicting ways on key votes, raises the important question of how many of its members, including officers and proponents of key amendments, understood what they were actually voting on when they narrowly passed an amendment intended to open Section 4 of the Anglican Communion Covenant to “possible revision.”

The source of the confusion arose from multiple attempts by a minority of members generally opposed to the covenant to derail Section 4, a key section. Their first attempt was a resolution, Resolution A, that would have removed Section 4 and sent the Covenant to the provinces without that section. Resolution A had been debated and was pending before the Council when it broke for lunch. Even supporters of the efforts of The Episcopal Church to remove this section acknowledged at the lunch break that the tide was against The Episcopal Church. (The post acknowledging this has since been removed from the website where it was posted.)

Following lunch, a new tactic was unveiled. Duplicative resolutions and amendments were presented to the members, at first simultaneously and later sequentially, to defeat or delay Section 4. But Resolution A had already been introduced by the Chairman of the Resolutions Committee as the proposed vehicle for making the key decision on whether or not Section 4 should be included in the text that would go to the provinces. And when Resolution A was finally put to a vote, it was voted down overwhelmingly. Indeed, after that vote, the Chairman of the Resolutions Committee noted that despite confusion on the multiple other amendments and resolutions, Resolution A was understood:

I should thank the house for the debate on the principle of whether we want Part 4 in the Covenant or not and I think until we got confused before lunch we actually had quite a straightforward debate on that issue, and I thank the house for that.

Thus, the position of the Council on the necessity of keeping Section 4 was properly debated and decisively expressed.

As Chairman Fitchett suggested, the confusion grew worse after a lunch break when Archbishop Aspinall of Australia tried to introduce into the middle of the debate new language variously characterized as a new resolution and as an amendment to one or more pending resolutions. The resolution that was still pending when debate resumed after the lunch break was Resolution A. But without first voting on Resolution A, the members began debating the Aspinall proposal. Some members quickly objected.

First, Stanley Isaacs of Southeast Asia objected to the consideration of Archbishop Aspinall’s new proposal, referred to both as an “amendment” and “Resolution C”, while the original Resolution A was still being debated:

So I don’t see how we can, we can, we are going in circles.   We really are going in circles.   Let us not play around.   I think we are playing around with the bulk.

Archbishop Aspinall – I thank you for your attempt, I am quite sure you are sincerely trying to make an attempt to try and find a way out….Personally Bishop Chairman I would like to suggest- let us just try and get ourselves going. I would like to propose that Resolution A be now put to a vote. Let us just vote on it and if that is carried, then we will just have to look at the next resolution. Thank you very much.

The Chairman, Bishop John Paterson of New Zealand, rejected this request and characterized the Aspinall proposal as an “amendment.” Although not clearly stated, he apparently meant as an amendment to the pending Resolution A because that would have been the basis for allowing debate on the amendment to continue:

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