From Anglican Mainstream:
Questions to Bishop Bob Duncan -1: on what could happen in the UK, the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Windsor Continuation Group
October 19th, 2008
The first questions to Bishop Bob Duncan at his press conference covered the following:
Rev James Rosenthal: A question about whether there would be a continuing propensity to split.
Answer: The history for 40 years in the States has been a splintering history. Since 2003, first with the coming together of the Anglican Communion Network which was 10 dioceses out of the 100s that came together to stand for the traditional faith once delivered, we have actually drawn back together. The reason there was so much splintering is that the Episcopal Church began in the nineteen seventies to use its power and its force for purposes of coercion. The very first thing we saw was in the adoption of the book of Common Prayer in 1979. Every parish simply had to abandon the 1928 book and its predecessors and the first set of fractures were over that force and coercion. Some of the so-called continuing churches broke because of the form of liturgy. Then the ordination of women was first permissive and then by 1997 was coercive so that they were sending teams to each diocese – all of that produced more and more fracture. I think what we have done together to actually agree that in the words of Lambeth 1988, that there are two integrities. That is what the Communion has said at its best. That is certainly how the church in Africa operates: the respect of the East Africa churches ( who ordain women) for the West Africa churches ( who do not) is immense and the issue of the ordination of women does not divide. It is not considered to be a first order issue. If it is a salvation issue then it divides the church. If it is a matter of ecclesiology then it is possible to respect one another. But we never actually experienced respect from the other side.
As I followed the debate in synod over there would be provision made for the traditionalists following the ordination of women [to the episcopate], with senior bishop after senior bishop putting forward one alternative after another and finally the Bishop of Durham at the end suggesting that the house adjourn to consider this overnight, is exactly a replay of how things happened in the US. This juggernaut which builds up a head of steam – its going to achieve its new end and it simply crushes its opposition. Your process began to look like our process. Your Lambeth began to look like our House of Bishops. The change in the podium at Lambeth 2008 from the podium in 1998: [at Lambeth 2008] the only speaker was the Archbishop of Canterbury, no other primate was in any significant role or gave a significant address. This is precisely how it was done in the States.
I am not predicting - I am just warning that it could. When the church is rooted in scripture it always has the freedom to debate what the scriptures mean. When you begin to come out from under scripture, the only way you can guarantee your point of view is to enforce it.
What happened in the States for many of us is that we held back. We believed that the Church could never become like this. If you had told me when I was ordained 36 years ago that I could be deposed for holding what I always held, I would have said “That is nonsense. A Church in this tradition would never do such a thing. It might not be ready to take on in any serious way a Jim Pike or a Jack Spong or those who illegally brought on the ordination of women, but it would never do that to me.” That was my insight 36 years ago. We see things differently now. So do not stand back, do not hold back. Don’t think it won’t happen here. It masquerades as liberality but it is illiberal in the extreme. It is in fact a kind of totalitarian political agenda: that is to say you will do it our way or you will at best be silent or at worst we will banish you. Wake up. Test whether what is being done reflects biblical truth or the Catholic heritage. Is it what the church has always said or is it something new. And why must it be controlled? Why do you have to control the press at Lambeth? Why do you have to exclude? Why in what would have been at a recent meeting of the House of Bishops, there would have been at another time a great debate. I have been told by senior bishops that while the Bishop of Durham raised my deposition in the States as a sign of what was happening, there was no debate about it. That’s not the Church of England that I have known. It is certainly not the Episcopal Church as it was a generation ago.
A question whether he has got the Archbishop of Canterbury’s attention. Has the Archbishop failed to stand up for Bishop Duncan?
Answer: I maintain regular contact with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I have tried in the last five years never to surprise him. He is certainly aware of my presence here in the United Kingdom. He is informed about our situation. He is attempting to lead in what are clearly uncharted times. I think the institutions of the Anglican Communion are in a season of real re-evaluation. I think he has not found it possible, in terms of what he believes the limitation of his office are, to have done the things that actually would have secured the role of his office over the long haul of the 21st century. This is not an office which in terms of the life of the Anglican Communion for the future is going to look anything like it did for the previous century.
If you look at 20th century secular politics, in a moment of extraordinary crisis a leader can often go beyond the boundaries of what has been commended to him in terms of the exercise of his office or precedent. Franklin Roosevelt in the States at the time of the Great Depression went way beyond what any president had ever done in restructuring the government. The Supreme Court some years later found that some of the things he had done were unconstitutional. But the people stood with it because it was what the nation needed to be brought out of its trouble. The Anglican Communion in the last decade has been in crisis. Some leaders might have gone beyond precedent and might have gone beyond what their legal adviser said they could or could not do, and I suspect the communion would have followed. And the precedent would have been established. But that is not the direction it has gone. So what it means is that a different kind of instrument of unity ( and I have written on this before) is likely to emerge. The British period of Anglicanism is coming to an end. I lament that. But we are living through it. Just like the American period in international relations is coming to an end.
Simon Sarmiento: If Archbishop John Chew was to run the Pastoral Forum, would that mean that you would be more sympathetic to it?
Answer: The Windsor Continuation Group, without consulting with any of us who are affected by the decisions which it has been asked to make, really represents a response that – was it the Panel of Reference? – what in the last five years? What is new about the Windsor Continuation Group? What is new about our situation is that I have been deposed by the Episcopal Church in an act that the world sees as an outrage. How would we be repatriated in that church? What I wrote to the Windsor Continuation Group – my commitment has been to work with the structures but not to entrust all authority to those structures. The proposal for some kind of holding exercise whose aim was to put these dioceses and congregations that are under provinces that are under Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda as well as the Southern Cone, back into the Episcopal Church was a bridge too far. It was something that none of the people were any more open to. My position has not changed.
We will continue to talk with Clive Handford and the leadership there. Obviously John Chew weighed in about my deposition. I spoke with him after it and he was just shocked by it. All of these things make those processes less likely not more likely.
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