From the American Anglican Council:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
The American Anglican Council is pleased to release "Communion Governance: The Role and Future of the Historic Episcopate and the Anglican Communion Covenant," by the Rev. Dr. Stephen Noll, Vice-Chancellor of Uganda Christian University. His essay is characterized by meticulous research into the history of Communion Governance, the history of the role of bishops meeting in council together at Lambeth and through the Primates' Meetings, the history of other Instruments of governance (such as the Anglican Consultative Council), and the relative merits of three different models of governance: pure autonomy, executive bureaucracy (with an enhanced role for the See of Canterbury), and the conciliar authority of bishops. Noll reaches the following conclusions with regard to the Anglican Communion Covenant:
1. The conclusion of this essay is that the one matter of principle that cannot be abandoned without abandoning our particular catholic and Anglican heritage is the responsibility of the ordained and bishops in council in particular, to rule and adjudicate matters of Communion doctrine and discipline.
2. If this is true, then the Lambeth Conference and the Primates' Meeting (with the Archbishop of Canterbury presiding as primus inter pares) must be seen as the primary organs to deal with articulation of the faith, as happened at Lambeth 1998, and with breaches of the faith, as has not happened since then.
3. There must be only one track: those who adopt the Covenant are members of the Communion; those who do not adopt it are not. Bp. Mouneer Anis is right: when a sufficient number of Provinces have adopted the Covenant, the ACC and its Standing Committee should stand down and be constituted solely from Covenant-keeping Provinces. (pp. 48-49)
As Dr. Noll observes, the crisis in the Anglican Communion is above all a crisis of truth-the truth of the gospel and the open denial of that truth. The manifest failure of the Communion Instruments to exercise discipline in the face of the overt heterodoxy of TEC and its proxies has brought Communion governance to an unprecedented crisis point. Noll writes:
The method of the present essay is to review the failure of Communion governance, especially since 1998, and to ask whether the problem has to do with the persons in leadership or with the constitutional order itself. I shall argue that bishops-in-council - the Lambeth Conference and the Primates' Meeting - who are the guardians of Communion doctrine and discipline, have exercised uneven authority to date but are the proper instrument to restore order to the Communion. Finally, I ask whether the Anglican Communion Covenant can be an effective part of a reformation of Communion governance.
I describe the performance of the Global South bishops and Primates in Communion governance as a tide which has ebbed and flowed over recent years. In particular, they have risen to the occasion in crises at Lambeth 1998 and again in 2003 with the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson but then have seen their influence subside after the immediate crisis has passed. I argue that their diminished status may become permanent, with the most recent top-down reordering of Communion structures, unless they stand firm for a conciliar role under an effective Covenant" (page 2)
You can read the entire essay (it is well worth the read!) here.
(http://www.americananglican.org/assets/News-and-Commentary-Files/2010/03-2010/COMMUNION-GOVERNANCE.pdf)
Dr. Noll's essay has up-to-the-minute relevance in the light of Presiding Bishop Mouneer Anis's resignation from the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion for its role in marginalizing the role of the Primates in Communion governance. Primates are the proper body to deal with matters of Communion doctrine and discipline. As a matter of biblical precedent and early church tradition, bishops met with apostolic authority to settle disputes in the church. This was reaffirmed in The Virginia Report (1997) which recognized "the inherent authority" of the Primates meeting together as chief pastors. Dr. Noll promotes the model of conciliar governance because "it involves common consent to an agreed upon deposit of faith and worship and mutual submission of elders in the Spirit." (p.29) And what is that common deposit of faith?
In the case of the Anglican Communion, the common deposit of faith is summarized in the Lambeth Quadrilateral (looking outward to other traditions) and the Thirty-Nine Articles and Book of Common Prayer (looking inward to those in our own tradition). Likewise, a formulary such as the Articles carries the weight of having stood the test of time in an historical tradition. Occasions arise, however, where the church must address new issues either with a one-off injunction like Lambeth Resolution I.10 on Human Sexuality or with a new statement of faith, like the Jerusalem Declaration. And all are to be continually tested for their conformity to the Scripture (Acts 17:11). (1) Citing Dr. Ephraim Radner, Noll observes that the guarantee of mutual submission to the Holy Spirit lies not in structures but rather in the character of the bishops meeting in council-and specifically whether the council bears the same "Holy Spirit holiness" as the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. (pp. 30-31)
It may be said of the Anglican Communion today: "The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint" (Isaiah 1:5). Even the Archbishop of Canterbury himself has warned of the possible demise of the Communion as a functioning entity. (2) Unfortunately, the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have exacerbated the crisis by shifting the power center of Communion governance from the Primates to the ACC Secretariat and its Standing Committee. Noll raises some important questions that must be addressed:
Why and how has the biblical, apostolic and historic role of the Primates been diminished and marginalized by the Anglican Communion bureaucracy? What role has the Archbishop of Canterbury himself played in marginalizing the Primates, and to what end?
Why were the recommendations of the Windsor Report ignored-recommendations that the Primates take a leading role in drafting the Anglican Covenant?
Likewise, why has the role of the Primates in overseeing the Covenant been replaced by that of "The Standing Committee"?
By what authority did the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACC Joint Standing Committee establish itself as "The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion (SCAC)," with responsibility to oversee the Covenant? And what is to prevent the new SCAC from becoming a "Fifth Instrument" of disunity?
What "relational consequences" can the SCAC impose on those who breach the Covenant?
Why have the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACC consistently ignored the consequences recommended for those who breach Communion discipline and order-such as reduction to observer status, the establishment of a parallel jurisdiction, and provision for a new jurisdiction and communion suspension of the intransigent body- outlined by retired Archbishops Drexel Gomez and Maurice Sinclair in their essay "To Mend the Net"?
And the most important question of all: Why not do the Anglican Communion Covenant right by replacing the role of the ACC and the Archbishop of Canterbury's "ersatz Standing Committee" with that of the Covenanting Primates and the Lambeth Conference in overseeing the Covenant? Authority should be placed in the hands of Covenant-affirming churches. TEC and its proxies should be excluded from the governing bodies of the Communion-for the sake of Communion order and our ecumenical relationships.
Dr. Noll's essay is a breath of fresh air in our deliberations over the Covenant and the future of the Anglican Communion. This essay establishes a robust ecclesiology and model for governance that will sustain the Anglican Communion in the years ahead. We hope and pray that it will inform the prayerful deliberations of the Primates of the Global South as they prepare to discuss the adoption of the Anglican Communion Covenant and the future of Communion governance.
In Christ,
The Rev. Phil Ashey,
Chief Operating and Development Officer,
American Anglican Council
Communion Governance - PDF Version
Communion Governance - Online Version
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Footnotes
(1)For the role of the Articles in shaping the biblical ethos of Anglicanism, see Ashley Null, "The Thirty-Nine Articles and Reformation Anglicanism," The Janani Luwum Lecture at Uganda Christian University (2006).
(2) In his closing Presidential Address at ACC-14, Rowan Williams described the meeting as a "glorious failure"; see http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2009/5/11/ACNS4625.
This email was produced by:
The American Anglican Council
www.AmericanAnglican.org
770-414-1515
800-914-2000
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