Reconfiguring the Anglican Communion
(Staff) WHEN the Church of England passed a motion in early February to allow prayers of blessing for same-sex couples, it sent shock waves around the globe and set in motion calls from other Primates that the Archbishop of Canterbury no longer be recognized as the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion and that the Communion itself be reconfigured or “reset.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury is a figurehead who does not exercise authority in Anglican provinces outside of the Church of England. Each national or regional church is fully independent under the leadership of its own primate.
All the provinces are autonomous and free to make their own decisions in their own ways–guided by recommendations from what are known as “the four Instruments of Communion”: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council.
Since there is no binding authority in the Communion, the three international bodies are vehicles for consultation and persuasion–and much debate. In the last 15 years three theologically conservative African provinces (Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda) have boycotted most of these gatherings.
Interestingly the first speaker at the English Synod before the vote was a guest, a Global South Primate, the Archbishop of the Province of Alexandria, Dr Samy Fawzy Shehata, who affirmed his backing for traditional Anglican teaching, including Resolution 1.10 from the 1998 Lambeth Conference.*
The Church today could not claim to understand Jesus’s teaching better than the apostles of the early Church, he said, and blessing same-sex unions would cross a line and alienate 75 per cent of the Anglican Communion. “Please, please, do not surrender your unique position as the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion.”
The Motion is careful to refer to the blessing of a couple, rather than of the relationship itself. While some see this as a meaningful distinction, many others, including a large portion of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, understand the blessing of the union itself to be implicit in these proposed prayers. These prayers of blessing are then seen as a depature from historic biblical faith.
GSFA response
This concern was most clearly expressed by The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) in its statement on Feb. 20 which was signed by some GSFA primates, including Shehata and nine other primates of Global South provinces (South Sudan, Chile, Primate of Indian Ocean, Congo, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Uganda, Sudan, Melanesia) plus Archbishop Foley Beach of the Anglican Church in North America (which includes the Anglican Network in Canada) and the primate of the GAFCON-affiliated Anglican Church in Brazil.
The Church of England, the GSFA statement said, “has departed from the historic faith passed down from the Apostles by this innovation in the liturgies of the Church and her pastoral practice [and] has disqualified herself from leading the Communion as the historic ‘Mother’ Church. Indeed, the Church of England has chosen to break communion with those provinces who remain faithful to the historic biblical faith expressed in the Anglican formularies … and applied to the matter of marriage and sexuality in Lambeth Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
“The GSFA is no longer able to recognize the present Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Hon & Most Rev’d Justin Welby, as the ‘first among equals’ leader of the global Communion,” the archbishops continue, adding that they believe leadership of the Communion has now passed to “the orthodox primates.” The GSFA pledges “to provide primatial and episcopal oversight to orthodox dioceses and networks of Anglican churches who indicate their need and who consult with us.”
Their statement defines ‘orthodox’ provinces as “those which hold to the plain and authoritative teaching of holy Scripture as historically understood.”
The GSFA define “revisionist” provinces as “those who take a liberal view on the interpretation of holy Scripture and introduce new and innovative doctrines that do not agree with the plain teaching of Scripture as historically understood by the Church.”
The GSFA move had been signaled by a statement issued by Archbishop Justin Badi, GSFA chairman and primate of South Sudan, just after the Church of England General Synod’s vote, which said that the decision had “impaired communion” between the Church of England and orthodox provinces, and that Abp Welby’s role in advocating for the motion caused the group “to question his fitness to lead what is still a largely orthodox worldwide communion.”
Interestingly the GSFA is not advocating abandoning the Anglican Communion but rather reconfiguring, renewing and reforming it.
Recently the former Archbishop of Alexandria, the Most Rev. Mouneer Anis of Egypt, argued that the leader of the Church of England should no longer automatically be the leader of the Anglican world but instead be selected by the primates from among their ranks.
GSFA said that they “look forward to collaborating with Primates and bishops in the GAFCON movement and other orthodox Anglican groupings to work out the shape and nature of our common life together.”
Differentiation project
The GSFA statement rejects as too little, too late a multi-year project on “good differentiation” that the Anglican Consultative Council commissioned Feb. 14 from the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order (IASCUFO), the communion’s main doctrinal working group. “We do not accept the view that we can still ‘walk together’ with the revisionist provinces.”
The Chair of IASCUFO, Bp Graham Tomlin from the Church of England, said that the differentiation project acknowledges “the reality of a fractured, impaired communion” but looks towards “walking together, for a while maybe at a distance” but looks forward “to that day when we will realise the full unity which is the gift and the invitation of Christ to us. . .
“The project is about how we learn to give each other space, not how we learn to force one another to do things that we don’t want to do, but to give each other space within a wider structure that holds together the whole of the Communion while we navigate these times that we’re in right now.”
Canadian Communion Partner Bishop Joey Royal, Suffragan in the Diocese of the Arctic, is a member of IASCUFO.
One member of the Anglican Consultative Council, Abp Maimbo Mndolwa, the Primate of Tanzania, said that the term “differentiation” needed to be defined; and said that the member churches (provinces) of the Anglican Communion should have a say over any new structures.
Welby offers to step aside
While GSFA felt that there is a “leadership crisis” so did Welby himself. In a press conference before the Church of England’s Synod vote, Welby said that while he was “really pleased” with the proposal of offering same-sex couples a church blessing, he would not personally conduct such blessings.
“Because of my pastoral care and responsibility of being a focus of unity for the whole communion … I will not personally use them in order not to compromise that pastoral care,” he told reporters.
But that did not reassure many across the Anglican Communion.
A week later, speaking at the opening ceremony of the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Accra, Ghana on Feb. 12, Welby stated “I will not cling to place or position as an Instrument of Communion.”
His concession came the day before twelve of the primates affiliated with GSFA met to draft a united response to the Church of England’s Synod vote.
Welby said:
“I will not cling to place or position. I hold it very lightly, provided that the other Instruments of Communion choose the new shape, that we are not dictated to by people, blackmailed, bribed to do what others want us to do, but that we act in good conscience before God seeking a judge that is not for our power, but exists for the new world with its extraordinary and terrifying threats. To proclaim Christ and turn our opportunities into realities to bless the world. That is the test.
“We are in a true world crisis, in which global south although economically poorer is in many ways richer in culture and community.
“A crisis, as we all know, is a moment of decision and the churches and the Communion must listen to the Holy Spirit. And while doctrine and actions are called to be the same, always the Five Marks [evangelism, discipleship, service, social transformation and care of Creation], the [Lambeth] Quadrilateral, those are our foundations.
“The Instruments may change. Sin is to be condemned. We are to seek Christ and to obey.
Welby continued: “…we are deeply in disagreement, not through lack of integrity, corruption, lying or surrendering to the culture but because we do interpret Scripture differently, we understand the work of the Spirit differently, and we look at these things with different cultural lenses. And are therefore all always wrong to some degree.”
Lambeth Palace issued a response to GFSA’s statement confirming that “structures are always able to change with the times,” but no “changes to the formal structures of the Anglican Communion can be made unless they are agreed upon by the Instruments of Communion.”
Bp Anthony Poggo, the Anglican Communion’s Secretary General, later responded with what he called two corrections to the GSFA statement. “The leadership of the Church of England has assured us that they have not changed their doctrine of marriage, nor have they introduced liturgy to bless same-sex relationships. To do so would require a different synodical process than that followed so far. Rather, the Church of England’s General Synod, meeting earlier this month, has endorsed the proposal that prayers can be used to invoke God’s blessings on people…Of course, this does not resolve other questions that have been raised about the clarity and wisdom of the proposals, upon which I will not comment.”
Poggo’s statement also said that he was “glad to read the pledge of the primates in their letter that they ‘will not walk away from the Communion that has so richly blessed us and for whose faithfulness to God and His word our forebears have paid a costly price,’” and promised to contact them soon for further conversation.
Poggo added that Welby had requested that he organize a Primates’ Meeting “in the near future,” with an agenda to include “discussing the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Communion.”
It remains to be seen how this will all play out but certainly February 2023 saw the Anglican Communion seriously shaken up.
For the full GSFA statement see: www.thegsfa.org
The Church of England Evangelical Council has produced a fine video critiquing the Feb. 7 General Synod vote: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO3nsDInDiQ TAP
* Resolution 1.10 on Human Sexuality, “while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation …” The Resolution also states that the Lambeth Conference “cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same-sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same-gender unions.”
The Four Instruments of Communion
The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian body in the world, after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox, and has more than 85 million members in more than 165 countries. There are 41 provinces plus five extra-provincial areas.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is traditionally seen by the Anglican Communion of churches as their spiritual leader, a focus of unity, recognised as primus inter pares (“first among equals”), but does not exercise authority in Anglican provinces outside of the Church of England. He is the Primate of All England and Diocesan Bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury.
The Lambeth Conference (first held in 1867) is the oldest international consultation. It is a forum for bishops of the Communion to reinforce unity and collegiality, to discuss matters of mutual concern, and to pass resolutions intended to act as guideposts. It is held roughly every ten years and invitation is by the archbishop of Canterbury. The most recent Lambeth Conference was held in Canterbury in 2022.
The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) (which first met in 1971) was created by a 1968 Lambeth Conference resolution, and meets usually at three-year intervals. The council consists of representative bishops, other clergy and laity chosen by the 41 provinces. The ACC seeks to serve the needs of member churches. The most recent (ACC-18) was in Accra, Ghana in mid-Feb., 2023. The current chair is the Most Rev’d Dr Paul Kwong of Hong Kong. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the president the ACC.
The ACC has a permanent secretariat, the Anglican Communion Office, of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is president. The Secretariat is based in London, England to support Anglicans and Episcopalians worldwide and to carry out any requests from the Instruments of Communion. TAP
TIMELINE
1867 Anglican Communion founded in London during the first Lambeth Conference
1888 Lambeth Conference agrees on Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral
1971 Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) founded
1979 First Primates’ Meeting
1994 Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) founded
1998 Lambeth passes Resolution 1.10
2008 Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) meets first in Jerusalem
2008 Lambeth conference meets; approximately ¼ of bishops boycott the gathering
July 2022 Most recent Lambeth Conference (Nigeria, Rwanda & Uganda boycott it)
Feb. 9 2023 Church of England Synod passes motion to bless people in same-sex unions
Feb.12-20 Anglican Consultative Council forms committee to explore ‘good differentiation’
Feb. 12 Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby offers to step aside
Feb. 20 GSFA statement issued
Feb. 21 Lambeth Palace responds to GSFA statement
Apr. 17 GAFCON to meet in Kigali, Rwanda
June 27 – July 2 Anglican Church of Canada General Synod in Calgary
May 28-31 2024 GSFA Assembly in Cairo
Spring 2024 Next Primates’ Meeting in Rome. (May be brought forward.)
