Lesbian bishops - a response from the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans

The presenting symptom of the current difficulties in worldwide Anglicanism is the willingness of the Episcopal Church in the USA (TEC) and the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) to consecrate persons in same-sex partnerships as bishops (Gene Robinson 2003, Mary Glasspool 2010), and to authorise rites for the blessing of same-sex unions in church.  These actions have brought to the surface deep-seated disagreements throughout the Communion about theology, the place of scripture, our relationship with wider society and so on. It has also highlighted the inadequacy of the Communion’s structures for dealing with such deep-seated disagreements. The proposed Anglican Covenant is (or should one say "was"?) an attempt late in the day to provide a more adequate structure.

If you want to know where we are now and what the "conservative" side thinks, you could hardly do better than read the open letter written by Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda to Archbishop Rowan Williams on April 10th this year explaining his absence from the Joint Standing Committee (of the Communion). Alongside it, read the letter of Archbishop Ian Ernest of the Indian Ocean to Archbishop Rowan on April 13th expressing the same stand. Both letters have been posted on a number of websites including Anglican Mainstream and Stand Firm.

Archbishop Orombi has an interesting analysis of our problems. He argues that whenever Bishops and Primates have met together (particularly at Dromantine in 2005 and at Dar-es-Salaam in 2007) they have consistently upheld the traditional understanding of scripture on the presenting issue of sexuality. They have also consistently resolved that TEC and ACoC should first be urged to hold back from actions which strain the bonds of affection in the Communion, and then be disciplined when they have shown themselves unwilling to do so.

TEC has not held back, so why has none of the Bishops’ and Primates’ resolutions been turned into action?  Because, Archbishop Orombi suggests, they have been undermined.  Since the summer of 2007, and without anything being formally discussed, responsibility has been shifted from the Primates and Bishops towards other bodies, notably the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and the Joint Standing Committee – which has now transformed itself into the self-styled ‘Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion’.

These bodies are more sympathetic to TEC and ACoC: indeed Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori of TEC and other members of that church are members of the Standing Committee. Archbishop Orombi asks pertinently: "How can we expect the gross violators of Biblical Truth to sanction their own discipline when they believe they have done nothing wrong and further insist that their revisionist theology is actually the substance of Anglicanism?"

Archbishop Ernest wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury: "You have yourself been amazingly patient with TEC." One of the big guessing games is to work out what lies behind Canterbury’s amazing patience with the American church. Well-disposed observers see it as a principled determination to keep all sides in dialogue. The problem for the Archbishop of Canterbury is that this strategy of patience can be interpreted very differently. Critics point to a gulf between the Archbishop’s words (sometimes guardedly critical of TEC) and his actions (consistently protective of TEC). In a statement issued in June 2006, Archbishop Williams said, with regard to the unilateral actions of TEC: "No member Church can make significant decisions unilaterally and still expect this to make no difference to how it is regarded in the fellowship" and "actions have consequences".

An increasing number of critics are pointing out that, four years on, and with further unilateral actions to TEC’s credit, we have seen no consequences following for the American church. It seems that TEC has discovered precisely that it can make unilateral decisions, and its actions have absolutely no practical consequences for them.

Writing in the May 2010 issue of Evangelicals Now, Chris Sugden has clarified this kind of criticism by identifying three specific points at which Archbishop Williams’ intervention has deflected the purpose of the Primates and offered protection to TEC: "reneging on the agreements at Dromantine [2005] (so that TEC was present at the ACC in Nottingham), inviting the consecrators of Gene Robinson to Lambeth [2007] (in advance of the conclusion of the Dar-es-Salaam timetable), and undermining the debate at the ACC in Jamaica [2009] which would have mandated a covenant with sanctions."

Some commentators see a division emerging between a relational and a confessional Communion. The relational Communion emphasises, as Archbishop Williams does, the desire to keep in fellowship with one another, whatever our differences. After all, people ask, haven’t Anglicans of different stripes always just rubbed along together? However, the recent Anglican Global South to South Encounter in Singapore (April 19th-23rd 2010) pointed out in its final communiqué that TEC and ACoC have set themselves "on a course that contradicts the plain teaching of the Holy Scriptures on matters so fundamental that they affect the very salvation of those involved." To carry on as though nothing has changed would be in effect to concede that the matters in dispute are merely secondary.

Many Evangelicals will warm to the confessional approach emerging from GAFCON (the Global Anglican Future Conference held in Jerusalem in June 2008), expressed through the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and given substance in the Global South to South Encounter. But we are in the Church in Wales, which is still held together by relational bonds, and whose theological centre of gravity may be closer to TEC than to the Global South. There could be difficult times ahead.

Written by EFCW executive member Will Strange and taken from the May 2010 edition of EFCW's newsletter Bwletin

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Note: The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans was established following the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) held in Jerusalem in June 2008. GAFCON expressed its conclusions in the Jerusalem Declaration. A commentary on the Declaration is also available called Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today.