__
The first church council, held by apostles and elders in Jerusalem,
prohibited sexual irregularity.
__
As detailed in the article below, the less authoritative gathering of
Anglican Primates managed to take minimal actions against an
outrageous breach of Christian, biblical and innate natural morality.
__
Failings in morality are not unaccompanied by failings in
spirituality and biblical teaching. The last Primate of the offending
province exhibited rather obvious departures from “the faith once
delivered to the saints”.
__
Interestingly, an organized movement toward repentance and correction
began in Jerusalem in 2008, at the first Global
Anglican Future Conference. Some of the fruits pf the Jerusalem
Declaration have become evident this week in Canterbury.
__
God moves, not with haste, but with deliberate speed. His judgments
are true and sure and eternal.
On
the Death of the Anglican Communion
At
Stand
Firm – Faith among the Ruins
[/] January 15, 2016 [/] A.
S. Haley
[Has great blog and links as Anglican
Curmudgeon]
[/] http://j.mp/0AnglicanDeath
or http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/32092
[N.B.
Full copy of text below, but many useful internal links may be found
in the original linked above.]
My
prediction about the sun setting on the breakup of the Anglican
Communion is coming true, even as I write before the final session of
the primates gathered at Canterbury.
Enough
has leaked from the gathering to be able to form a picture of what
went on. The Archbishop of Canterbury and his staff had tried to
direct the progress of the group’s deliberations by resorting to a
standby from ++Justin Welby’s corporate days: the RAND-developed
group facilitation mechanism known as the “Delphi Technique.”
That
technique tries to direct an outcome by strictly controlling
dissenting voices, and channeling them into increasingly ignorable
“minority views”, with the object of developing a so-called
“consensus” that in reality represents the carefully-preserved
majority thread. The attendees are divided into small discussion
groups which do not communicate with each other until after the
supposed group “consensus” is announced by the facilitators,
based solely on the carefully selected “majority” views in each
mini-group.
This
manipulation was too much for one Primate, Archbishop Stanley Ntgali
of Uganda. He decided to leave the gathering on its second day, and
explained his reasons in an announcement that castigated Canterbury’s
manipulation of the discussion process.
It
turns out that many of the other Primates attending were new to the
game, and had little understanding of the divisive steps taken by
ECUSA in 2003 with the consecration of Bishop V. Gene Robinson,
contrary to the expressed wishes of the Primates then in office.
These newer Primates were also put off by the manipulative Delphi
process directed by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s staff.
The
departure of Archbishop Ntgali served to galvanize their awareness of
what was at stake, and they began to listen to their GAFCON
colleagues more closely. In the course of events that followed, the
Delphi process appears to have been scrapped, or else completely
bypassed, and the GAFCON Primates and a clear majority of their
colleagues reached a consensus that the Episcopal Church (USA), with
its adoption of same-sex marriage rites at General Convention 2015,
had gone too far.
An
agreement evolved that would require ECUSA’s suspension from
Communion-related activities for three years. This would give ECUSA a
sporting chance to decide in its General Convention (to be held in
2018) that it really did not mean to go against the majority of the
Anglican provinces in approving same-sex church weddings that
blasphemed the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and substituted same-sex
love as a model for the relation between Christ and His Church.
With
the primate of Canada (Archbishop Fred Hiltz) remonstrating that his
church had not gone so far (at least, not until its next General
Synod later this year), the primates decided to extend their sanction
at this point only to ECUSA, and to leave the Anglican Church of
Canada to its future deliberations.
Presiding
Bishop Michael Curry protested that his church was trying only to be
faithful to the Holy Scriptures as its leaders perceived them, but
the clear voice of the Bible in opposition to same-sex concourse
(whether in or out of so-called “marriage”) spoke louder than his
protests. As a result, Presiding Bishop Curry will have to explain to
his House of Bishops (and to General Convention in 2018) that they
could face further sanctions—even permanent expulsion—from the
Anglican Communion if ECUSA continues openly to contravene the sense
of the Anglican Communion embodied in Resolution 1.10 of the 1998
Lambeth Conference.
The
reaction to the Primates’ sanctions among Episcopalians committed
to that church’s revisionist agenda was overwhelmingly negative, as
might be expected. An announcement of the Primates’ Statement
posted at Episcopal Café garnered more than 100 comments as of this
writing—most of them derisive and derogatory. There were many calls
to cut off the Episcopal Church (USA)‘s subsidy to the Anglican
Communion Office—as though ECUSA should withhold its money from
those who dissent from it, while expecting its own dissenting members
to voluntarily surrender their churches and bank accounts in lieu of
being sued for them. (The double standard of liberals—“one rule
for me, another for thee”—marks them every time.)
So
what will come of the Primates Meeting 2016, and of the Anglican
Communion as a whole?
First
of all, note that Archbishop Foley Beach of ACNA remained a
participant to the end. This fact alone serves as a marker that the
new Anglican Communion—however it evolves in the years to come—will
no longer be limited as the old one was, particularly if ECUSA ceases
to play a significant role.
Second,
note that the Primates, in and of themselves, were not gathered as
one of the Communion’s Instruments of Communion; nor does the
Primates Meeting alone control the membership list of provinces in
the Anglican Communion. ECUSA accordingly could, if it dared, simply
ignore their “sanctions”, and show up as usual at Communion
gatherings, and insist on its right to participation and to vote. But
that would be a highly provocative stance to take, and might result
only in more formal sanctions applied properly and unanimously.
That
said, if we assume that ECUSA will voluntarily withdraw from
participating in votes on the Communion’s “doctrine or polity”
for a period at least three years, the principal consequence will be
that ECUSA cannot vote on whether its suspension will be continued
before that three-year period is up. Its General Convention will meet
July 2018 in Austin, Texas—and it is completely predictable that
the legislation passed by that body will not backtrack from anything
that has gone before, but will probably exacerbate the differences
between it and the majority of the Communion. The Primates who voted
for a three-year sanction will be presented with a fait accompli, and
they could well vote to make ECUSA’s suspension from the Communion
permanent as a result.
This
development will strongly depend on whether the GAFCON and Global
South Primates build and maintain their connection with the Primates
from the rest of the Communion over the succeeding three years. But
there will be another factor at play, namely, the amount of money
which ECUSA and its wealthier dioceses and parishes spread around in
the Communion during that same period.
The
old saw about the Communion used to go something like this: “The
Africans pray, the Americans pay, and the British make the rules.”
It now appears that the British alone no longer make the rules, and
that the Americans are already not paying as much as they did before.
(The Africans, it may safely be said, have never stopped praying.)
The latest statement from the Anglican Communion Office shows (see
the last page of the link) that ECUSA has paid through 2014 less than
half of what was requested (£204,772 of £538,280). Thus the
withdrawal of all funds by ECUSA may turn out not to be the decisive
step that many Episcopalians conceive it to be.
What
is certain is that in three years, the Anglican Communion will not be
what it is now, nor anything like what it was in 2003: the Episcopal
Church (USA) has already seen to that. If the recent sanctions
provoke ECUSA to amend the Preamble to its Constitution, and to cease
proclaiming itself as “a constituent member of the Anglican
Communion”, both the Communion and ECUSA would be the better for
it.
ECUSA
as a former Anglican province has long since decided to walk apart
from its fellow Anglican provinces, in its single-minded elevation of
human justice over God’s justice as expressed in unequivocal Holy
Scriptures. It is time to stop the pretense that it remains willing
to be “in communion” with the See of Canterbury—at least, so
long as Canterbury remains faithful to Lambeth 1.10, and especially
if ECUSA withdraws its financial support (as, in all honesty, it
should once it withdraws its membership). Let it find its new
communion partners among those who likewise think the Holy Spirit is
doing a “new thing” among them, and let the test of Gamaliel
(Acts 5:34-39) decide who, ultimately, is in the right.
The
Anglican Communion is dead. Long live the Anglican Communion!
And
thanks be to God.
I2C
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