The right wing blinks first

A response to this hatchet job is found in the next post below. ed.

from The Lead by Jim Naughton

Mouneer Anis, Primate of Egypt has resigned from the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council, and urged others to do the same.

His resignation coincides with the release of a typically verbose missive from the Anglican Communion Institute in which the four guys with a Web site urge the following:

"But since there is no body currently recognized, either by the Instruments or the Churches of the Communion, as authorized to exercise the responsibilities of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion in coordinating the implementation of the Covenant, we think it is necessary and appropriate for the covenanting Churches themselves to fulfill this task initially by convening a provisional committee drawn from the Primates and ACC representatives of Churches that adopt the Covenant to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant within the Churches and dioceses wishing to participate."

Anyone who watched Archbishop Anis be led around by British and American handlers at the Lambeth Conference, saw him read statements they had prepared for them, and watched them prompt him when he forgot his lines, knows that he does nothing without coordinating with the Western right. So what we've got here is a concerted effort to undermine not just the Covenant process, but the quasi-governing structures of the Anglican Communion by a right wing party that has begun to fear that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada will never be punished for treating gay and lesbian Christians like human beings. Hence, their desperation.

Many Episcopalians have been critical of the Covenant, but they've never advocated anything as radical as what Anis and the ACI have called for tonight.