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TechnoratiIn a plea for unity, the Archbishop of Canterbury has told conservative Anglicans establishing a separate fellowship within the Anglican Communion to “think very carefully about the risks entailed.”
(Photo: AP Images / Judi Bottoni, FILE)In this Friday Sept. 21, 2007 file picture, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, left, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, walk into a press conference in New Orleans. Anglican theological conservatives from around the world are convening a strategy summit starting Wednesday, June 18, 2008 as the global Anglican Communion splinters over Scripture, salvation and homosexuality.
Conservative Anglicans wrapped up the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem on Sunday with a statement affirming their desire to remain within the Anglican Communion but within the structure of a new fellowship headed by a council of bishops. Anglicanism was not, the statement added, “determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
In a statement issued in response on Monday, Dr. Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, said that the final statement from GAFCON leaders contained “much that is positive and encouraging” about their priorities and that the vast majority of Anglicans shared their “tenets of orthodoxy.”
He also addressed concerns over the uniqueness of Christ and the “absolute imperative” of evangelism, stating they were “not in dispute in the common life of the Communion.”
Williams warned, however, that GAFCON’s proposals were “problematic in all sorts of ways.”
“A ‘Primates’ Council’ which consists only of a self-selected group from among the Primates of the Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion,” he stated. “And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries is fraught with difficulties, both theological and practical.”
U.S. Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori lamented the GAFCON statement. "Anglicanism has always been broader than some find comfortable. This statement does not represent the end of Anglicanism, merely another chapter in a centuries-old struggle for dominance by those who consider themselves the only true believers."
In recent years, bishops from the Global South have provided leadership to parishes in North America that have split from The Episcopal Church – the U.S. branch of Anglicanism – over the U.S. denomination's liberal drift from Scripture and Anglican tradition. GAFCON leaders said on Sunday that they would continue to offer alternative pastoral oversight to breakaway congregations within the Communion’s liberal member churches.
Williams warned that exercising episcopal or primatial authority over huge geographical and cultural divides would result in an “obvious strain."
He added, “[H]ow is effective discipline to be maintained in a situation of overlapping and competing jurisdictions?”
While Williams urged fellow Anglicans not to “impute selfish or malicious motives” to those seeking alternative oversight, he said that the issue of discerning genuine theological grievances was “becoming very serious.”
“How is a bishop or primate in another continent able to discriminate effectively between a genuine crisis of pastoral relationship and theological integrity, and a situation where there are underlying non-theological motivations at work?” he asked. He pointed to interventions in dioceses with “unquestionably orthodox” leadership not because of theological differences but personal or administrative disagreements.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said the solution to the challenges was “not to dismiss the existing structures of the Communion.” Continue »
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