Church of the Word
DIANE KNIPPERS ON PRIMATES MEETING

IRD President Diane Knippers Reports on the Anglican Primates Meeting in Ireland

The Institute on Religion and Democracy President Diane Knippers writes from Northern Ireland where she attended the closing press conference for the meeting of Anglican primates and also consulted with orthodox primates, as well as reform leaders from the U.S. and England. Here are her preliminary observations:

February 26, 2005
Newry, Northern Ireland

The February 2005 communique of the Primates moved the Anglican Communion, slowly and inexorably, toward division.

Leaders among the primates of the Global South assert that division has already occurred. But they want to offer the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada ample time to reconsider their abandonment of church teaching.

The Primates affirmed the October 2004 Windsor report and commended its recommendations for strengthening the Communion, including a proposed Anglican Covenant. The Primates went further than the Windsor report in two important respects:

1. While providing a waiting period for the North American church to consider their responses to the Windsor Report, the Primates took steps to remove official North American representation on the Anglican Communion's executive body, the Anglican Consultative Council. This "voluntary withdrawal" is to last until the 2008 Lambeth Council. But several primates also noted that the 2006 General Convention of the Episcopal Church would no doubt reveal ECUSA's definitive response to Windsor.

2. The Primates did not affirm the Windsor Report's commendation of DEPO, a woefully inadequate provision of alternative oversight for U.S. congregations in theological conflict with their bishops. While they agreed to limit further unilateral "cross-boundary interventions," they recommended that the Archbishop of Canterbury appoint, "as a matter urgency," a new panel of reference that would "supervise the adequacy of pastoral provisions made by any churches."

Several of the primates from the Global South attended this primates' meeting thinking it was likely to be their last. However, their resolve to remain within the Anglican Communion -- and to force out the North American churches if necessary -- was strengthened. The leaders of the Global South are learning to work together and, as a block, are effectively proving their new political muscle. Their ability to capture the agenda of this meeting is a primary example of a new day. The refusal of many to share communion with the primates of the United States and Canada illustrates the depth of the division and their resolve.

From the point of view of church history, Global Anglicanism is moving with dispatch toward resolution of the crisis and, indeed, toward global realignment. From the point of view of orthodox Anglicans in North America, held captive in churches that propagate false teaching, the pace is agonizingly slow and inadequate.

What will happen in the Episcopal Church now? I have no doubt that many of the ECUSA laity and even the clergy will simply not feel a call to continued struggle and will leave Anglicanism entirely. This, for many, will be an honorable, honest, and necessary choice.

Others have a vision for a new unified orthodox Anglican witness in North America, one that could re-unite mainstream Anglicans outside ECUSA with the remaining orthodox within. Building visible unity among these orthodox elements is a necessary pre-condition for eventual recognition by the Anglican Communion, when ECUSA will no longer claim the exclusive Anglican franchise for the United States.

Building this new church -- strong, healthy, unified, mission-minded, and growing -- and building it, for now, both within and without the dying structures of the Episcopal Church is our most urgent task.

This article comes from the Institute on Religion and Democracy
http://www.ird-renew.org/

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