Who are they trying to convince, with this avalanche of paper ?

I have read The Road to Lambeth. It starts:

“The Anglican Communion is at a crossroads. The idea of a crossroads – a meeting and parting of two ways – is woven into the fabric of Scripture. The people of Israel is confronted with the choice of ways – the way of the Covenant or the way of idolatry”

Now this is very creative exegesis. “Crisis” is a Greek, a Hellenist concept, not a Biblical one. In the Bible there is always one Way – a narrow one – but Idolatry is n e v e r presented as “a way”. That is later European “classical”-inspired theology: Hercules at the parting ways; the lady Lust and the lady Virtue. Not in the Bible.

The Road to Lambeth is a remarkable piece, not only for its creative exegesis, but for its Absolutist thought-frame, Kairos, Crisis, Breaking point, Crossroads….

It’s now or never (how they must l o a t h e Dr Rowan!).

Read it carefully! There are 2 points: Might is Right and the legacy of Colonialism; the bitterness of being trampled upon.

There are flashes of lucidity: “Our African churches are asked to divert funds from much needed work of evangelization and charity to a 3-week meeting which has no authority and which is blatantly ignored by “autonomous” member churches.”

There is also a sub-text: Abuse of Power (s t a t e d in “prune their personnel”).

Abuse of Power is well known from all churches (and I repeat: a l l churches).

And there is Timidity, the slight Error of not actually talking with those Christian Sisters and Brothers with whom one is in disagreement, but issuing Communiqués instead.

Section IV of the education task force includes this: "We also propose that each province establish within their dioceses active boards that can monitor situations of conflict and facilitate conflict resolutions and management, as well as proactively work for the creation of an environment that promotes social transformations."

It will be interesting to see how they handle conflict with "unworthies" such as GLBTs and also conflict with other religions and philosophical streams. The challenge will be to see if their think tank becomes an insular propoganda machine or a genuine platform for growth and maturity.

I was reading some other stuff around the net, and some scriptural Christians are frightened that they will lose their identity in the wash of pluralism. In a healthy diverse environment, there is no problem with their specialised niche. Ideally it would be good if they can be true to their vision, but accept that others are more "open" to "the other" and to trust God to attend to their souls rather than trying to impose salvation upon them.

If they can refrain from trying to impose their specialisation on the balance of the environment, then co-habitation is possible.

This is a careful document, what I would regard as “A Very British Coup”.

Its authority comes from the claim that these Primates “represent” the overwhelming majority of Anglicans in the world.
It judges the existing structures of the Anglican Communion as unable to govern effectively without the standing committee of the GS and promotes this body into the heart of all further decision making and governance.
The Covenant idea promoted in the Windsor Report was immediately leapt on by the GS and the “Covenant of Understanding” that was produced by CAPAC in the summer of 2005 gave us a taste of what was to come.

This is the direction my Archbishop Dr Barry Morgan obviously had in mind addressing our Governing Body earlier this week when he said:
"I do not know whether the Communion will ultimately hold together or not. If it fractures, it will not be a simple matter of just one province not recognising another but parishes and diocese within provinces allying themselves with like-minded parishes and dioceses in other provinces. In other words the fault lines will run through provinces as well as between them."
Archbishop Barry goes on to advocate the establishment of a covenant for the Anglican Communion “setting out our mutual inter-dependence”, but warns against
"the kind of covenant that some people want – a kind of prescriptive one, setting up an inter-provincial constitution that would set out theological boundaries and perimeters for individual provinces in both belief and behaviour, policed by a central curia of the primates or Archbishop of Canterbury ...that would cut at the root of the Anglican Communion as it has been traditionally understood with to my mind, disastrous consequences."

I'd ask my fellow Episcopalians to scroll down past the insults to our own Church and read the threats against the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which the future of this Communion can be read.

We have just a few months to wait now. We will all wake up one morning soon to discover that ++Akinola and a handful of CAPA members, along with six or seven American bishops, have formed their own Communion. And then the bullies and schismatics will be gone, and the Churches of the Communion can begin to heal.

Martin Reynolds --

If Simon will permit a personal comment on my part (which I do believe does concern these Global South documents) -- it seems obvious to me that the "consequences" that Archbishop Morgan describes as "disastrous" are precisely what these Global South leaders want.

My difficulty is that I see no way both to avoid these consequences & simultaneously witness to the truth.

The Presiding Bishop elect of TEC – Katharine Jefferts Schori should not be too disheartened by the lack of welcome she is promised at the next Anglican Primates meeting in Tanzania on February 14th – if she wants to get the boys to welcome her with hearts and flowers she just has to take a few tips from the Rowan Williams book.

She has made a good start – throwing her weight behind the last minute resolution at the American General Convention blocking the ordination of any more partnered gay bishops. All she has to do now is follow the example of the Archbishop of Canterbury and she may yet become as “orthodox” as her gender can allow.

It would help if an American diocese does soon elect a partnered gay priest – preferably one of her long standing friends – after a short period of support she should humiliate them utterly and refuse to go forward with the ordination.

Then in a few carefully managed interviews she should make clear that while she had once fully embraced lesbian and gay partnered people in the church and even ordained them and written positively about them – now she regards this as a “private matter” and she realises that her thoughts and actions had not gathered much support.

Finally (for the sake of unity) she should repudiate any commitment to celebrating same-sex partnerships and call on the Episcopal Church to consider a moratorium on such liturgical events. The transformation is complete and the Valentine’s Day massacre of the liberals is averted.

Prior Aelred, given I too don't see a way of avoiding this unless we simply submit to a totalitarian absolutist faith (perhaps the Pope should redirect his comments to these folks including his own bishops in Nigeria), it seems to me its time to start sketching out a vision for what it means and looks like to nurture folks through the breach. Do you have suggestions? I think we need to move beyond a crisis mentality, and perhaps by hearing from the religious and those whom we call spiritual directors, we can begin to shift our vision?

Yes, the great and glaring failures of much of these new (yet how deeply familiar sounding) prounouncements is their failure to engage, openly, generously, in an invitation to customary historic Anglican mutual inquiry - open, open, open, open, open, open, open, open - through best practices of scripture reading, abstract and applied reason (including the consistently neglected empirical research parts), and comprehensive discernments of tradition as open to a coexisting variety of approaches/legacy resources. (Yet again, open.)

Eveything is two-sided, exclusively. There is nothing but right in one closed frame, the authors', and nothing but wrong in any other (closed or open, dim or bright) frame(s) from whomever else who could possibly be part of a global society.

Alas. Even if these sorts of intiatives do accomplish the much desired split in the worldwide communion, they do not as likely lead forward as they ever do promise us. Totalitarian movements always proclaim that they are at least on God's side, if not God de facto; but they never, ever, so far have delivered on their promise to save us from the worst in ourselves, without externalizing the inner splits into outside policing that writes large the unresolved problems.

I hear Saint Carl Jung whispering, Called or uncalled, God is here. Even when we are most committed to splitting.

(Martin -- I assume sarcasm is being used here)

*Christopher --
Well, we need to stop thinking in terms of winning & losing & more in terms of reaching out to all who need help, without demanding that they meet certain criteria -- the MDGs are certainly good here (although they will likely be swamped by Malthus like the last Green Revolution) but there is certainly a danger of them becoming "cheap grace."
To embark on this path is to seek to undergo detoxification -- seeking a love beyond our control, for the God of Jesus Christ who gives life rather than death.
But this course demands that we live in the resurrection, not acquiescing in injustice. That we refuse to allow any people to be treated as mere objects & reject the common assumption (in our own hearts as well) that might makes right. That we not longer consent to a vision of life that is reduced to the market values of life consisting of nothing but buying and selling. And that we no longer follow any religious leaders who present these attitudes & actions as if there were the will of God.
Sorry to go on so long being impractical.

Fr Prior
I see two issues –
1. The plan to create a world-wide denomination from the Anglican Communion.
2. The huge growth in areas of the world where Calvinism is the dominant force within Anglicanism.

I think it fair to say that when the ACC responded to the Virginia Report http://www.anglicancommunion.org/documents/virginia/english/chapter6.html back in 1999 http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/acnsarchive/acns1800/acns1890.html , they voiced many of the problems we are grappling with today.
The Virginia Report deserved the rough ride it received at the ACC (the arguments on “reason” in the Ratzinger context are interesting), and while it was “shelved” its central analysis of the power vacuums that exist within our Communion were accurate.
It asked penetrating questions about how the structures relate, and made it clear how these loose arrangements were vulnerable.
Many on the ACC viewed such “untidiness” as part of the essential character of our Church and the attempt to resolve these discordances would recast our church into – well, something else!
It’s interesting that at that time the Primates Group was “reluctant” to exercise the “enhanced” responsibility that Lambeth had thrust upon it - they no longer feel such reluctance and the power vacuums are being filled and our church is being transformed – hence the attempted take-over by the Primates of the ACC.
The underlying principle of the Virginia Report was to strengthen the centre, increase the staff of the ACO and Lambeth Palace etc – but what is happening is that the changes are being put in place without strengthening the central curia. This has allowed the power blocks to develop and the attempts to by-pass/over-rule the central authority.
And so we come to the second issue – as the Anglican Communion becomes something different – The Windsor Church (I like to call it) – the “burgeoning churches” of the Calvinist school are only willing to play along if they set the essential character of the new denomination.
They happily set aside those parts of the Windsor report meant to constrain them determined to seize the soul of the Windsor Church. Haste is their ally, they perceive the centre is weak and strike.
Will they succeed in forcing the pace and achieving their goals or will the centre hold and Rowan gets his way for the longer game?
All agree that control of the Covenant process is key, my Primate has put down a marker (at last!) – We shall now see how it plays.

Sarcasm? Fr Prior!
How I wish it were .......

'Krisis' means judgement. I can scarcely think of a more Biblical concept.

"'Krisis' means judgement..."

The link between the noun Krisis and the verb Krinomai is Dividing in the sense of Analysis; taking things apart.

So Krinomai is not Hitting your Neighbour on the Head with a Club, but Taking things apart, Analysis.

;=)

Martin Reynolds --
I concur completely with your analysis, but I am not interested in playing the power game & I think that the leadership of TEC isn't either -- Akinola doesn't want us & increasingly we don't want to be associated with him either (& not only because it means being controlled by him) -- if it were a matter of provinces chosing, the formality of the schism would be rather simple. But the fault lines are far more complex than that. Eight dioceses here have asked for ALPO & yet they all include people who want to remain in TEC (& the national church leadership has let these people down -- in the case of San Joaquin, Quincy & Ft Worth, very badly for a generation) -- there are gay Anglicans in Nigeria who, rather than being given the pastoral support commended by Lambeth 10, are threatened with imprisonment (which is usually fatal before the 14 year sentence is completed) -- there are Anglicans in Southeast Asia who do not want to be part of an exclusively Pentecostal church (speaking in tongues is a requirement for ordination), & on & on. Who is going to minister to people in need when their own church leadership persecutes them?
I very much like your archbishop & pray for him & his new responsibilities. I liked his predecessor as well. Whatever happened to him?

"speaking in tongues is a requirement for ordination"

What!?!?!?! How is this in any way Anglican?

Concepts from a book by Erich Fromm keep crawling into my imagination ready comments posted here. There's a recurring theme many of us have noticed. The book, Escape From Freedom comes from Fromm's experience with the totalitarianism of the Nazi's and the willingness of a populace to give away their freedom in favor of an authoritarian dictator. I can't help noticing how rigid authoritarians rely on crisis as their breeding ground for fomenting a need for their services. It worked in the US when 9/11 was a believable crisis. Will it work on us with the gay issue? How much of the Church of England will fall for it? How willing are we to throw our judgement away to the boisterous noise of an African hoard? And what will be the consequence if we do?