So the Kigali conference of the Global South has managed to muster at most 20 primates (probably less) apparently willing to tell the Episcopal Church where to get off. Now, as I've noted before, the number actually needed to expel the Episcopal Church (or the Church of Canada) from the Anglican Communion is 26: a two-thirds majority of the 38 primates being required to amend the membership schedule of the Anglican Consultative Council. Even of those less than twenty a few might develop cold feet when it actually comes to a vote.
So, not having the votes, they are resorting to bluster and threats. They will absent themselves from the next Primates' Meeting unless by some feat of ecclesiastical legerdemain a rump-or-shadow Primate for disaffected Americans is sent along with the real Primate of the Episcopal Church (by then) ++Katharine Jefferts Schori. Given his past reluctance to do such irregular things, I cannot imagine +++Rowan will provide for this. So the way is paved for a grand salon de refusées consisting mostly of those who would refuse to sit in the same room with the real Primate of TEC. The door is set to open for a grand departure.
Meanwhile, shifting alliance and allegiance in the AMiA and ACN, as well as questions of "who really speaks for the Global South in the US" have begun to trickle onto the blogosphere, and members of the Windsor Report drafting team check in with their assessment of how well (or not) TEC did in "compliance" with the suggestions, recommendations, and urgings of the Windsor Report. (I'm sorry, but "Windsor Compliance" always makes me think of Mrs. Wallace Simpson and the abdication of a British monarch...)
So we continue to live in interesting times. What will the Global South's failure to muster sufficient support for its agenda lead to? What will the splintering of the American dissenter movement produce, or fail to produce? Has enough rope been provided?
&mdash Tobias Haller
These are interesting times indeed. These are some of my thoughts about what some of the players might be thinking.
ReplyDeleteABC: Mmm, the pebble in my shoe from parts of the global south is becoming more irritating than the pebbles from TEC and Church of Canada. I think I will invite everyone to Lambeth. At least TEC and CofC want to remain in communion. Whoever comes, comes, whoever doesn?t, doesn?t.
Akinola: If Jefferts Schori is invited to Lambeth, I am not going. If Rowan won?t do his job, I will do it for him. ?or maybe start my own Anglican Communion.
Presiding Bishop Elect: A bishop to represent the network people at Lambeth? I don?t think so!
Network bishops: Do we really want to get our marching orders from Akinola? What if he finds himself outside Anglican Communion? Where are we then?
LEAC: Time to send out our cadre of locusts to clandestinely infiltrate the parishes throughout the land to create confusion and dissention.
Martyn Minns: I feel lonely.
Yes Tobias, there is sufficient rope and they have thus far put it to good use.
-frank