Kigali Count Out or Handwriting on the Wall

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