By: Ed Beavan.
THE WORLDWIDE Anglican Communion lurched a step closer to schism after the Episcopal Church questioned the authority of the Primates as it announced a rejection of the plan put forward in their Communiqué earlier this year.
Releasing a statement following the meeting of The Episcopal Church’s (TEC's) Executive Council in New Jersey, it backed the House of Bishops’ rejection of a proposal for a Pastoral Council for traditionalist parishes who oppose the Church’s liberal line on homosexuality.
The Primates had called for a moratorium on the consecration of practising gay clergy in the Episcopal Church at their meeting in Tanzania in February, giving them a deadline of September 30 to respond.
In the statement, the Council said the requests of the Primates were of a nature that can only be dealt with by their General Convention, and challenged the authority of the Primates to intervene.
It said: “We question the authority of the Primates to impose deadlines and demands upon any of the churches of the Anglican Communion or to prescribe the relationships within any of the other instruments of our common life, including the Anglican Consultative Council.”
It added that the Church strongly affirmed the desire ‘to be in the fullest possible relationship with our Anglican sisters and brothers’, and promised to continue in a listening process with the rest of the Communion.
The statement concluded: “We have received from the House of Bishops of our Church a request to decline to participate in the proposed Pastoral Scheme; with an explanation for the reasons our bishops believe that the scheme is ill-advised.
“We agree with the bishops’ assessment including the conclusion that to participate in the scheme would violate our Constitution and Canons.
“We thus decline to participate in the Pastoral Scheme and respectfully ask our Presiding Bishop not to take any of the actions asked of her by this scheme “We affirm the pledge of the bishops to ‘continue to work to find ways of meeting the pastoral concerns of the Primates that are compatible with our own polity and canons’.”
Responding to the announcement, the Rev Dr Chris Sugden, Executive Secretary of the Anglican Mainstream group, criticised the Episcopal Church for rejecting the Primates’ authority.
He said: “When the authority of the Primates was introduced at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 to deal with the issues in Rwanda, everybody agreed.
“But now something that was regarded as acceptable when dealing with Africans is not acceptable to the Americans. It sniffs of racism.
“They are saying the Primates are not representative of them, but the Primates do represent each of their provinces, yet the Americans are forcing their polity on others.”
Relations between the Episcopal Church and the rest of the Communion were further strained earlier this week when the Church of Kenya announced it is to consecrate the Rev Canon Bill Atwood as a missionary Bishop for the United States, following the Episcopal Church’s rejection of the Pastoral Council.
He will become a Bishop of the North American Anglican Coalition, and the third missionary Bishop in the US along with CANA Bishop Martyn Minns, and AMiA Bishop Chuck Murphy, and will oversee around 200 congregations.
Speaking after the Executive Council’s meeting, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said the situation was ‘neither a go-back-to-the-drawing board or a complete rejection’ of the Communiqué, but added she would not cede her canonical authority. The Council also took a hard line on dioceses which have sought to change their constitutions to bypass the Church’s authority, passing a resolution declaring their actions ‘null and void."
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