As the GAFCON statement just released should make clear, the result is neither. The threat to leave has become a promise to stay, but life for Rowan Williams and the Episcopal Church will be anything but conflict-free.
As I've written repeatedly throughout this crisis - the latest just the other day - Rowan Williams has compounded the Anglican Communion's core problem - of having no clear power structures or chains of command - by his studied refusal to exert what little authority his office enjoyed. His clumsy and ill-advised attempts, when he made them at all, only exacerbated the confusion and ambiguity.
The revisionist wing of the communion, led by 815 and the ACO, and abetted by the ABC's almost pathological desire for stasis, rushed into this vacuum and plowed ahead with their "prophetic" agenda: Deliberate foot-dragging on its response to Windsor, in-your-face nominations to the office of bishop of partnered homosexuals, Gene Robinson's "wedding" and the full-court California press for gay marriages, just to name a few. We've cataloged thousands of other examples, large and small, over the years here at Stand Firm.
While revisionists attempt to portray provincial border-crossings by foreign primates as transgressions of an equal order, that is hardly the case. Such interventions are responses to a crisis: Rescue operations, as it were, not first-strike options such as the revisionists have launched. That said, though, they are quite similar to revisionist actions in the sense that they would not be happening - perhaps not at all, but certainly not to the extent they are - had Rowan Williams not abdicated what power he did have by his inaction - and incoherent actions - over these past few years, and in the process created such a gaping power vacuum in the communion in the first place.
Despite indications before it got started that it might devolve into incoherence and chaos, the leaders of GAFCON have - against all odds - coalesced into a remarkably unified front, and issued a far more firm and substantial statement than probably anyone would have guessed they would.
It is probably accurate to say that, in a major way, the Anglican Communion just changed.
The change represented by this statement, and the structural remedies outlined in it, are not perfect by any means, and neither will this be the last important change in this crisis by any means. Perhaps most significant is that the international orthodox leadership is no longer content to huddle together and ask the archbishop for relief. They are creating their own relief. In announcing a new and potentially far-reaching structural response to the needs of the orthodox in North America, they have finally lost patience with the ABC's refusal to exhibit coherent leadership. They are themselves entering the vacuum into which the revisionists have been rushing these past several years, and putting their own facts on the ground.
Will this improve the situation immediately for orthodox Anglicans in North America? No. There is no question about whether this a magic bullet; it is not. There is much work to be done. It may be that the primates and bishops who have taken this dramatic step - as well as those of us foot-soldiers here in the rank and file, on whom so much of the plan's success or failure depends - are planting the seed of a tree under whose shade we will never sit. We must all be aware of that, and come to terms each in his own way with the fact that we may just now be embarking on the real crusade to save this church. We've said for the last two or three years around here: The real struggle has yet to begin. Things will get harder before they get easier. Gird yourself for the future, or resign yourself to being beat down by challenges and setbacks.
Will the primates and bishops who produced this state stand by it, in the lonely and difficult years to come? Will there be enough orthodox lay people in the pews who will (and are able) to rally to it? What difference, if any, will it make for the many orthodox Episcopalians in "moderate" diocese, whose bishops have raised inaction to an art form?
Let us take a moment to give thanks to God for the hard work done and hard choices made by GAFCON's leaders; and after that, let us be humble in this small victory and remain vigilant in our humility as we go about the hard work of building on it. Once again, we find ourselves in uncharted territory, and we are literally making new rules as we go. The staying power of this new initiative - whether it translates into real and enduring change and reform in the communion - will of course turn on whether it is God's will, but we have work to do, too. We have to act boldly, but not arrogantly. We have to be thankful for our blessings, but not let it become an expression of vengeance against our opponents. The more this initiative is defined on its own merits; on what it is, not what it is not; on who it helps, not who it angers or frustrates, the more successful we can expect it to be.
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Comments:
The other thread got hijacked, so I’ll raise my question here.
Will the new North American Province include churches that are also members of TEC (in the ACN)? How the heck is that going to work?