From the American Anglican Council via Stand Firm (I had to cut around the pictures from the AAC since they didn't reproduce here). ed.

Episcopal Church Dominates Communion's Standing Committee

BY ROBERT H. LUNDY, EDITOR

The Anglican Communion's Standing Committee met in London from July 23-27 for what proved to be a telling event. As the meeting progressed and information from sources inside and outside the meeting emerged, the dominance of biblical revisionists and Episcopal Church allies within the committee was made clearer and clearer.

Before the meeting began, the orthodox voice and witness on the committee had already been diminished by the resignations of the Bishop of Iran, Azad Marshall, and the Archbishop of West Africa, Justice Akrofi. These two resignations from the 14-member group only compounded the effect of the earlier resignations of Archbishops Henry Orombi (Uganda) in December, 2009 and Mouneer Anis (Jerusalem and the Middle East) in February of this year. These resignations were not the only concerns going into this meeting.

At its last meeting in December of 2009, the Standing Committee violated its own constitution in electing a priest, the Rev. Canon Janet Trisk (South Africa), as a replacement for a lay representative to the committee.

The Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) and others openly asked whether or not the Standing Committee would rectify this violation of their canons by re-selecting a suitable lay representative. Also, it was not lost on the ACI that Canon Trisk at the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Jamaica in 2009 supported, along with TEC, leaving out the enforcement section of the proposed Anglican Covenant.

Other concerns included whether or not the Standing Committee would allow TEC Bishop Ian Douglas (pictured above right) to represent the ACC on the Standing Committee. The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, a diocese that allows the blessing of same-sex unions, elected Douglas earlier this year as their next bishop. Upon changing his clerical orders from priest to bishop, Douglas had to resign his position as a priest representative to the ACC. After Bishop Douglas's resignation, TEC Executive Council re-elected him to be their bishop representative to the ACC-as opposed to what he once was, a priest representative. As with Trisk's

appointment, the ACI and others raised concerns that allowing Bishop Douglas on the Standing Committee violated the committee's own constitution.

In an attempt to answer these concerns, after the meeting's first day ended, the Anglican Communion News Service sent out a daily bulletin. The report noted that TEC's Executive Council had appointed Bishop Douglas to fill the vacant TEC bishop seat and that it was "within its constitutional powers." However, the concerns raised were not over TEC's ability to appoint a new bishop representative to the ACC but rather over whether or not this new representative, Bishop Douglas, could go on to represent the ACC on the Standing Committee.

As to concerns about Canon Trisk's appointment, the Standing Committee's legal advisor, John Rees, informed them that at the time they appointed Trisk, a priest, to fill a lay order seat, the committee had in fact violated its own constitution which required a person of the same order to be selected. However, the advisor went on to say that since that appointment, the ACC's new constitution had taken effect and that they now had the ability to select a new representative regardless of their order. Shortly after that, the committee re-elected Canon Trisk as a representative and welcomed her into the meeting as she was waiting outside the doors for the formality to finish.

In a courageous stand, one of the few orthodox voices remaining on the Standing Committee, Dato' Stanley Isaacs of the Church of South East Asia, addressed The Episcopal Church's consecration of a non-celibate lesbian as bishop and proposed that the province be separated from the Communion. Claiming that such separation would "inhibit dialogue" over sexuality and other issues, the committee, which included the Archbishop of Canterbury, overwhelmingly voted against the proposal. The issue resurfaced on the meeting's final day and, according to the Anglican Communion News Service, several members opposed the idea of restricting TEC's place on the committee.

As the meeting ended and the dominance of TEC allies on the SCAC was realized, the words of Bishop Azad Marshall in his resignation letter to the Standing Committee, which was publically leaked on July 5, seemed even more true: "Indeed it became abundantly clear to me that the Anglican Communion had ceased to be a representative body of non-Western churches. Its main concern was how to maintain a relationship with TEC and other churches...who have repeatedly defied the communion's stand on human sexuality." †