Joint Standing Committee of Primates and ACC

November 26, 2008

Reports are out today suggesting that the meeting underway of this select group of primates (including ours) and leaders of the Anglican Consultative Council might take some kind of action against the Province of the Southern Cone (such as asking them to refrain from being voting members at some future meetings rather as was done with Canada and TEC) for their role in seeking to undermine the polity of TEC. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5232937.ece There is no rumor that this will be extended to Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. The two conservative primates on the committee have declined to attend the meeting. I wouldn’t hold my breath that there will be any action taken, or at least any action that really makes a difference in where we are headed. The underlying challenge of a more or less formal schism is that there a number of churches, --most notably the C of E who have significant leadership who would want to go with the GAFCON crowd. This will make for a really tricky situation for an established church, but could open up some really fruitful missionary fields for expressions of Anglicanism not tied up with the incredibly top-heavy and top-down structures of the C of E in which major issues for clergy seeking positions are questions like ‘will you wear vestments?’ This sense that there is a potentially exciting mission field in England can be held by conservatives and liberals alike.