Muted response to Archbishop’s call for caution

Via the AAC Weekly Update:

April 22nd, 2010

By George Conger, Church of England Newspaper

The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged patience and forbearance upon Church leaders attending the Fourth Global South to South Encounter in Singapore, asking them not to take any hasty decisions over the future of the Anglican Communion.

However, the reception accorded to Dr Rowan Williams’ pleas for restraint from the leaders of the evangelical wing of the Communion was muted, with no applause or outward show of appreciation from the delegates at the close of his address. For most of those present, his words were too little, too late.

Delegates tell The Church of England Newspaper that Dr Williams has exhausted his political and personal capital with the overseas Church in the wake of successive disappointments in his leadership over the past few years. While the Global South continues to honour the office, Dr Williams’ stock has reached a nadir with many of those present.


In a video address broadcast on April 20 at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Singapore to the 150 archbishops, bishops, clergy and lay leaders gathered from 20 provinces of the Communion, Dr Williams conceded that the American and Canadian Churches were a source of turmoil within the Communion.

There was “tension within our Anglican family – a brokenness and a tension that has been made still more acute by recent decisions in some of our Provinces,” he said, adding that the “election and consecration of Mary Glasspool in Los Angeles” was of concern.

“All of us share the concern that in this decision and action the Episcopal Church has deepened the divide between itself and the rest of the Anglican family,” he said. There would be action, he said, stating “and as I speak to you now, I am in discussion with a number of people around the world about what consequences might follow from that decision, and how we express the sense that most Anglicans will want to express, that this decision cannot speak for our common mind.”

However, he urged the Global South leader to stay on-side and proceed with caution. “But I hope also in your thinking about this and in your reacting to it, you’ll bear in mind that there are no quick solutions for the wounds of the Body of Christ,” he said.

“It is the work of the Spirit that heals the Body of Christ, not the plans or the statements of any group, or any person, or any instrument of communion.”

“Naturally we seek to minimize the damage, to heal the hurts, to strengthen our mission, to make sure that it goes forward with integrity and conviction. Naturally, there are decisions that have to be taken,” he said, adding that “we must all share in a sense of repentance and willingness to be renewed by the Spirit”.

Dr Williams urged those present to endorse and participate in the Anglican Covenant process, arguing that it was the best way forward under the current circumstances.

Supporters of the Archbishop’s approach in Singapore understood him to say that patience was not an absence of a response. Time would allow the American Church to come to its own decision that it did not want to be part of the Anglican Communion, one bishop explained in an email to The Church of England Newspaper.

However, other leaders, including former Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola, told the conference that the time for talk was done, and action was needed now to ensure the Communion’s survival.

A participant in the Third South to South Conference in Egypt in 2005, Dr Williams had been expected to attend the Singapore meeting. However, last month his office informed the planning committee that he would not be attending the meeting do to calendar conflicts. Were he free to attend, however, Dr Williams would have missed the first three days of the five-day gathering due the fallout from the Iceland volcano.

Uganda’s Archbishop Henry Orombi, one of the key speakers and organisers of the meeting, is not present at the meeting as he was in London when the volcano’s ash closed British airspace.