Dr. Philip Turner: It’s Time to Get Real

from Stand Firm by Matt Kennedy

from here

It would appear that precedent now means nothing. Yet, Anglican polity has functioned for years because of deference to precedent. Now, however, the Communion is confronted with a meeting of the Primates called by the Archbishop of Canterbury at which the Primates, ignoring precedent altogether, hand over enhanced authority to the Archbishop. When added to the following factors, the actions of the Dublin meeting leave the Anglican Communion with no means to sustain communion across provincial borders:

(1) the unwillingness of the Archbishop of Canterbury to allow either The Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada to suffer any consequences for their disregard of the requests of all four of the Instruments of Communion and so ignore his own statements by appointing TEC members to ecumenical commissions as well as a Canadian bishop who has been instrumental in formally authorizing same-sex blessings in her diocese
(2) the failure of the last Lambeth Conference either to represent the episcopal voice of the communion or offer it any instruction and
(3) the debacle of the last meeting of the ACC in Jamaica and the ACC’s controversial new constitution.

What was a communion is no longer a communion. It is now something else on top of which sits an Archbishop of Canterbury who claims novel authority yet does not enjoy the confidence of those provinces in which the majority of Anglicans reside...more