From The Living Church:
02/28/2007
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A split was averted in the final hour when a compromise solution brokered by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola gave traditionalists the doctrinal standards they desired, while permitting a temporary structural latitude that allows all parties to remain part of the Communion’s conversation, for at least eight more months.
While the presenting issue was homosexuality and The Episcopal Church, the heart of the debate on the closing day of the meeting in Dar es Salaam was theological and dealt with the nature of truth and unity: Unity in truth against truth found in unity.
Work on the communiqué began on the first evening of the conference. Archbishop Williams appointed Archbishop Ian Ernest of the Indian Ocean, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Australia, Archbishop John Chew of South East Asia, Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies and ACC deputy general secretary Gregory Cameron to the team, tasking them with encapsulating the primates’ consensus views in a single document.
While Archbishop Williams appointed first-time participant Archbishop Ernest as chairman of the committee, sources familiar with the deliberations reported that Archbishop Gomez was the guiding hand behind the document’s construction.
The high point in the meeting for The Episcopal Church came with the presentation of a report authored by a sub-group of the joint primates-Anglican Consultative Council standing committee and chaired by Archbishop Williams. It concluded the 75th General Convention had responded substantively to two of the three requests of the Windsor Report, and advocated a moderate course of action toward the American church.
The report’s unexpected conclusions were met with skepticism, several primates told a reporter for The Living Church. Completed six months earlier, the failure of Archbishop Williams to distribute the report ahead of the meeting caused it to be discounted, and its influence faded as the meeting progressed.
From the start the drafting committee sought to synthesize the views of roughly three disparate camps among the primates -- a task further complicated by the presence of 14 new primates among the 35 present. Six primates were broadly sympathetic to the trajectory taken by The Episcopal Church. A second group of 12-16 primates, collectively known as the Global South coalition, were strongly opposed to the actions of The Episcopal Church, while the remainder followed the lead of Archbishop Williams in rejecting the course taken by The Episcopal Church, but unwilling to take harsh action.
Boundaries within these blocs were also fairly fluid and differences in churchmanship led to disparate views on how to proceed.
On the afternoon of the first day of the meeting, the primates heard presentations from the Rt. Rev. D. Bruce MacPherson, Bishop of Western Louisiana and president of the Presiding Bishop’s Council of Advice, followed by the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh and moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, and the Rt. Rev. C. Christopher Epting, Presiding Bishop’s deputy for ecumenical and interfaith affairs. The extracurricular session closed with a presentation from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.
Gathered in a semi-circle facing the American bishops in the chapel area of the conference center, the primates listened for an hour and then spent two hours questioning the four Americans. Participants at the meeting told TLC bishops MacPherson and Duncan restated requests made to the primates in January by the Camp Allen group of bishops, while bishops Epting and Jefferts Schori discussed the polity and procedures behind the 75th General Convention’s response to the Windsor Report.
Bishop Jefferts Schori was pressed by one primate to explain why the U.S. church had changed its name from the “Episcopal Church in the United States of America” to “The Episcopal Church.” The Presiding Bishop’s response, that the name change reflected the multinational character of the province, while an accurate description of events from an American perspective, jarred a number of primates who heard in the Presiding Bishop’s response echoes of “American empire.”
Staking out a claim to be “The Episcopal Church” of the Anglican Communion, when there were also Episcopal churches in Scotland, Brazil, the Philippines, Jerusalem and the Middle East, Rwanda, Sudan and Spain, was not well received, one centrist primate said. It was an “extraordinarily parochial” move for The Episcopal Church to have made given the international church and political climate, he said.
Arguments about the polity of The Episcopal Church proffered by the Presiding Bishop did not sway the meeting either, a point acknowledged by Bishop Jefferts Schori in her presentation at the Episcopal Church Center following her return to New York City.
In a letter to Archbishop Williams sent before the meeting, Archbishop Akinola argued that “protocol” should not be elevated above doctrine. This argument was repeated in the primates’ deliberations along with a counter argument proffered by one Global South primate that the failure to observe protocol lay with the 74th General Convention for having affirmed the election of the Bishop of New Hampshire without first addressing the canonical and doctrinal issues at play.
In deliberations spread over Friday and Saturday, the ground began to fall away from under The Episcopal Church as the debate shifted toward a discussion of what must be done, with the Global South favoring immediate action against a plea for continued deliberation. By Saturday evening the drafting committee had completed its work and unanimously agreed upon a communiqué to present to the entire group.
Illness prevented Archbishop Akinola from joining the primates’ Sunday excursion to Zanzibar. However, he was able to craft an addendum to the communiqué which he presented to the primates upon their return that evening.
The Sunday service in Zanzibar put a face upon the primates’ divisions with no group photo, no con-celebration of the Eucharist, and six primates refusing to receive the sacrament with Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori. When the primates returned to business on Monday morning, the meeting’s final day, all signs pointed to an impasse with the Global South coalition refusing to endorse the joint communiqué.
As negotiations intensified, the consensus swung away from Archbishop Williams’ soft approach toward the Global South’s demands for a clear and unambiguous response from the U.S. The dynamic within the meeting shifted further as two of The Episcopal Church’s strongest supporters -- Archbishops Mauricio Andrade of Brazil and Njongonkulu Ndungane of Southern Africa -- had departed, leaving 33 primates to complete the final document.
Over several grueling sessions, marked at one point by tears and raised voices, negotiations over the language of the document continued throughout Monday, forcing the cancellation of a press conference several times. Outside the meeting, reporters and lobbyists received mixed signals on the deliberations.
Unlike the 2005 meeting in Northern Ireland, where access was strictly limited but information flowed freely, in Tanzania the primates kept their own counsel with little news leaking out. The self-imposed media blackout even extended to the ACC staff members, who occasionally visited the press side of the hotel to find out what was happening in the meeting.
When the primates broke at 8:30 p.m. for a gala dinner, they were at an impasse. Sources told TLC that Archbishop Akinola was holding out for stronger language and for protections for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori was also uncertain as to whether she had the authority to bind the American church or had the political capital to bring the House of Bishops along with her.
The two-church solution proposed by the Global South at the start of the meeting had been softened to a church within a church structure with a primate-led Pastoral Council exercising de facto jurisdiction on behalf of Bishop Jefferts Schori. The Global South’s call for an immediate expulsion of The Episcopal Church had been softened to an eight-month reprieve.
Language that at one time spoke to the Church of England and the issue of civil partnerships was dropped as the primates adopted an American focus for the document.
Negotiations resumed after dinner and Archbishop Akinola was finally brought on board after he was given assurances protecting CANA. The final report was delivered to the press at 11 p.m., by a haggard Archbishop Williams.
(The Rev.) George Conger
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