A Message from Canon Ashey

Canon Ashey Troubling questions about the Anglican Alliance and Trinity Wall Street Dear Friends in Christ, This week I wrote an article for our weekly International Update about last week's meeting of the Anglican Alliance in Nairobi, Kenya.  The Anglican Alliance is an international initiative headed by the Anglican Communion Office in London that attempts to coordinate Anglicans' efforts at economic development, relief aid and advocacy. The recent meeting in Kenya focused on micro-finance, which is a means of extending credit, usually in the form of small loans with no collateral, to nontraditional borrowers such as poor but aspiring entrepreneurs in rural or undeveloped areas. Microenterprise development is a very valuable activity, pioneered in the Anglican Communion by the Five Talents organization, which was launched at the Lambeth Conference in 1998. I spoke with Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of Kenya, who attended the meeting. ++Eliud Wabukala is the spiritual head of millions of Anglican followers of Jesus Christ, one of the largest churches within the Anglican Communion, and Chair of the global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and its Primates Council.  When I asked him for his reflections on the meeting, he sent me the following written comment: "In the tradition of African hospitality, last week I welcomed to Nairobi members of the Anglican Alliance Economic Empowerment workshop and those, coincidentally, attending a seminar on a similar theme at the Fairview Hotel, sponsored by TEC's Trinity Wall Street. In my remarks to both groups I made it clear that all that we do in humanitarian work must have witness to the gospel at its heart.    Unfortunately, the institutions of the Anglican Communion are not able to reflect a common vision of the gospel and we must ensure that our zeal to combat material poverty does not blind us to the spiritual poverty of those who do not know Christ as Lord and Saviour. Our unity as a Communion cannot be built on making economic empowerment an end in itself."   - Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Primate of Kenya In my article for our International Update, I raised questions about the Anglican Alliance's choice not to articulate a common vision of the gospel as the basis for works of justice and mercy.  As Archbishop Wabukala notes, this reflects a deeper failure of the institutions of the Anglican Communion at present to address the spiritual poverty of those who do not yet know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. I further addressed the issue in this week's Anglican Perspective video. But today I would like to raise a different question:  Why is the Anglican Alliance meeting at the same time and in the same proximity as a meeting sponsored by TEC's Trinity Wall Street?  This is a very troubling question because of the possible linkage of an official agency of the Anglican Communion with the theological agenda of TEC-especially since that agenda is significantly fostered through grants and relationships with Trinity Wall Street. As a British observer has noted, "A recent item in Episcopal News about a speech in New York by Sally Keeble, the Director of the Anglican Alliance, is very instructive: '...it's going to be bureaucracy light," she said, with a very small staff in London and regional facilitators in the southern regions of the communion who will have "a very direct relationship" with existing agencies such as Episcopal Relief & Development.' Bearing in mind that a number of orthodox African provinces have taken a costly and principled decision not to take funds from Episcopal Relief & Development [or Trinity Wall Street] as a ministry of TEC, the attempt to set up 'very direct' relationships with the Global South is a thinly disguised attempt to hold the Lambeth-based Communion together through grants rather than gospel." Is it merely a coincidence that the Anglican Alliance and Trinity Wall Street were meeting at the same time, and in the same proximity?  Or is it the case that The Anglican Alliance is acting as a kind of "gatekeeper" for potential beneficiaries of Trinity Wall Street (and perhaps even Episcopal Relief and Development)?  Is this merely a coincidence, or is it a silent partnership with TEC to educate Anglicans in the Global South with a false gospel through grants instead of the divinely inspired word of God? We can certainly hope and pray that is not the case.  Faith without works is dead (James 2:16), and we can certainly praise the efforts of the Anglican Alliance and others to address the material poverty of the poor, the homeless, the naked, the prisoner, the oppressed, the sick and the suffering.  Such ministry is at the very heart of what Jesus himself proclaimed (Luke 4:16-21).   But it is very troubling that at the same time the Anglican Alliance confesses it cannot yet come up with a shared Biblical vision for works of justice and mercy-a Biblical vision which is obvious to most Anglicans in the Global South-the Anglican Alliance seems to be partnering with TEC, a church in the Anglican Communion whose leadership and theology have long since abandoned their faith in the divine inspiration of God's word, the Bible, in favor of progressive revelation. Without a robust, shared Biblical vision and theology for works of justice and mercy, all we have to fall back on are secular gospels of good works apart from the person and power of Jesus Christ to address the whole person, spiritual as well as material poverty. This would explain why the UN's Millennium Development Goals are mentioned more often than the name of Jesus Christ by the Presiding Bishop of TEC when she encourages her flock to do good works. The Rev. Canon Chris Sugden wrote, "The secular NGOs and the United Nations have become the new missionary societies. They have a gospel of secular development and secular human rights.  This is being pressed ever harder on the vulnerable nations of the Global South. The Primate of Nigeria called for the UN organisations to leave Nigeria if they continued to undermine sexual morality with their approach to HIV/AIDS. The Anglican Church of Nigeria DIVCCON conference of 2011 rebuked the British Prime Minister for suggesting that western aid would be linked to the adoption of a western understanding of human rights." Archbishop Wabukala put his finger exactly on the challenge for Anglicans today: "Our unity as a Communion cannot be built on making economic empowerment an end in itself... all that we do in humanitarian work must have witness to the gospel at its heart."  When Anglicans give away their confidence in the Bible as the divinely inspired fountainhead of doing works of justice and mercy (Mic.6:8), then they place themselves at the mercy of secular elites and their shifting ideologies-especially in the more developed nations-whose notions of justice and mercy are nothing but moving targets, far from God and incapable of transforming the human heart and spirit.  Our Anglican identity is based not only on what we do together, but what we believe and confess together about Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior of all, and the only healer of every dimension of poverty. Yours in Christ, Phil+ The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey Chief Operating and Development Officer, American Anglican Council