Southern Cone heading south

Looks like action is about to be taken against Greg Venables and the Southern Cone for sheltering no fewer than four TEC conservative bishops and their flocks, the latest being Jack Iker and Forth Worth. See our news report summing up the latest. I understand that the Joint Standing Committee meeting in London this week, from which significantly Egypt's Mouneer Anis and Uganda's Henry Orombi are absent, is to discuss suspending Southern Cone's voting rights from the upcoming Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Jamaica next May. As long-standing readers will recall, this is what happened to TEC, then Ecusa, at the last ACC meeting in Nottingham in 2005. This is not so much a 'booting out' but should be regarded as a punishment, I am told. Meanwhile, it seems highly probable that TEC and Canada are to be rewarded for their restraint by being given a full seat back at the table again in May.

So what does this mean for the Anglican Communion and, for English readers, the Church of England? Graham Kings of Fulcrum has a useful take in his Advent address, also with lots of links to helpful background on all of this.

Regarding the Church of England, the recent 'acrimony' at the close of the National Evangelical Council, as The Church Times put it, when officers failed to secure a vote backing Gafcon's Jerusalem statement, suggests the majority of evangelicals here are not ready for the kind of splits we are seeing in the US. The picture above is from Gafcon.  Some of those in Jerusalem were also at the council meeting at All Souls, Langham Place. However, as anyone could pay their £15 at the door, go in and then vote, the decisions at the meeting cannot necessarily be taken as representative of any particular group.

Kings notes that there are two emerging evangelical streams in the US: the Common Cause Partnership which is clearly separating, with the formation of a new province expected shortly, and the Communion Conservatives strategy more focused on reform from within. I've always believed that even the most conservative members of Reform in England would in the end be more likely to go with the latter. From its beginnings, Reform's strategy was always to work from within.

One of the many tragedies of all this is just how rich the lawyers in the US are going to get as the inevitable property battles now escalate.

If you want more detail on events leading up to this, go to Thinking Anglicans and Anglican Mainstream. George Conger's report for Religious Intelligence on Bishop Jack Iker's inhibition is also useful.

Update: Archbishop Mouneer is absent because he was doing a consecration that clashed with the meeting. He has written to Archbishop Rowan with his views on the agenda for the next Primates' Meeting. That is where the crucial decisions will be made. If the Primates agree on action against the Southern Cone, conservatives are saying, then full-blown schism is inevitable. A conservative source says: 'Martyn Minns, David Anderson, Bob Duncan and Greg Venables are not separating from the Anglican Communion. They have never said they are and are doing all they can to remain with the Anglican Communion despite all that TEC are doing which is unchecked by the Anglican Communion leadership.'

Comments

[j]

Hello Kate, come and talk about the moral effects of sudden poverty with us on the Pray G-D thread instead.

[Kate]

Dear Ruth

Since you appear to have deemed it 'politic' to delete my 'right of reply' to David Smith on 'Obama and the Gay Bishop: 'Three Private Meetings'! I would request, if it is not too much trouble, you also delete ALL David Smith's post of 2nd December on that thread, ostensibly addressed to Geoffrey Smith. Please delete, from:

"Kate is implacably hostile to me. There is nothing I can say – not even the tiniest, most innocuous thing – that she can’t find something in to criticise, attack, and abuse."

all the way through to the penultimate sentence of the last paragraph i.e. "in fighting against people who I am sure have wrongly judged and discriminated against the whole person who is her much-loved and gifted son."

Weasel words indeed; summarising a hostile and malicious post.

As a 'reasonable person', I will remind you of your agreement to 'delete', if David Smith posts further vicious denigration on the nature of my family, or persists in reference to my son.

[George Parr]

"May I 'second' the request by J Pearce" Kate.

I support this too Ruth. And despite the continual dreary references, I am also sure that, since your newspaper would also be liable, you are not going to allow posts with truly libellous content. So, in the unlikely event that anything I write seems contentious in this respect please snip it.

[Kate]

Dear Ruth

May I 'second' the request by J Pearce:

"... an informal rule of editing to reprimand or [snip] contributors who explicitly refer to other posters children in a detrimental manner, or as a means of attacking them indirectly?"

I have responded (in kind) and would - since the intended damage is already done - claim that 'right of reply' on 'Obama and the Gay Bishop: 'Three Private Meetings'.

However, David Smith has, in repeatedly attacking me through my son over several threads, exhibited malice aforethought and a personal venom, which is both shocking and defamatory since he can produce no verifiable evidence for any of his judgements. I quote:

"She is this way because, at root, she is the mother of a son who practises homosex, and because of two things I have said:

1. Homosex is wrong.

2. It is a known fact that a common and major and cause of rejection by men of heterosexual intimacy for homosexual intimacy (and sex) is the rejection of the opposite sex, as modelled by their mother, as desirable and trustworthy for safe intimacy." (D Smith 2nd Dec 2008)

The latter is deliberately duplicitous; Smith's "known fact" has been refuted by all reputable scientific and medical research.

It is surely notable that ONLY David Smith claims some dubious religious 'right' of commenting obsessively on the fact that my son is gay.

I would be grateful, if, in future, ALL reference to my family, be deleted from David Smith posts.

(rg writes: good point i will do this and please if i miss something let me know.)

[J Pearce]

Ruth,

I would just like to take this opportunity to point out how unpleasant it is when others attack you through your family.

Can I suggest you make it an informal rule of editing to reprimand or [snip] contributors who explicitly refer to other posters children in a detrimental manner, or as a means of attacking them indirectly?

Or failing that, can you just publish their email addresses, so we can find them and have a few words…?

I don't have a prayer list though. I have a s**t list. They're similar, in that they are both lists. That’s probably where the similarities end, though...

[David]

Well, looks like nothing is going to be "done" by the ACC-P-JC...

It would have been rather ironic if, after the body of Bishops had been indaba'd into inaction at Lambeth, the even more disproprtionatley unrepresentative JC had been seen as the appropriate authoritative vehicle for taking action against the Southern Cone!

ps I know folk will argue that it is a constituted representative body, but it is incredibly disproportionate. Surely too much so for making authoritative decisions, or even discussing them!

[Kate]

Dear Ruth

You are an exemplar of grace, dignity - and true Christian charity.

The skin crawls, even as the mind boggles, to imagine the deluded woman-hating 'Mari' or "liberal" 'Jenny', in charge of this blog!!

Recommended bedtime reading for all dystopian harbingers of Hell on earth: 'The Handmaid's Tale' (Margaret Atwood, 1985).

[Mari]

Libelous? LMAO! Methinks that Ruth takes her "freeman of the city" nonenses far too literally, that it somehow confers others, less free. If anyone wonders how people all those hundreds of years ago, thought it acceptable to enslave others, Ruth is a prime example.

Ruth, take out some history books, hopefully not ones subjected to your style of revision and spend some time reading. I believe you will find that drones like you never were served well by the despotic regimes they helped bring to power.

(rg writes: I'm still praying for you Mari.)

[ElizabethR]

"What is the difference between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Jesus Christ?" RA

We know where one lives but not the other? So should the Archbishop give up his wordly things and move out - makes sense!

"Truly Archbishop of Canterbury? I think not."

No of course not. Well you probably know. Who is he then? Come to think of it, who are you? When my grandmother kept on like this we bought her a budgie to talk to!

[Theo Dexter]

Ruth

Sorry you have been treated this way.

My prayers are for you and your family.

Every Blessing

[ElizabethR]

Oops, very nasty thread. Some of these people may be screwy - keep out of here Elizabeth...

Prayer list? Buy a gun!

[David Cohen]

RIW

If you want to wage war on the Church of England, you could at least get your facts straight.

Rick

Likewise.

It's the episcopal church which is facing financial meltdown. Perhaps JS is in town to ask for a loan?

[Mari]

Ruth, given that you're a parent, you should know that one's behavior, both good and bad is emulated by one's children. Given that you treat the faith, and rights of others so cavalierly, your [snip]

You can act as smugly as you like [snip]

(rg writes: I have deleted your deeply unpleasant and possibly libellous comments about me, my son and my parents. In addition, I have added you to my prayer list.)

[Rick Arllen]

She who has the gold makes the rules. He who needs the gold makes himself her sock puppet.

+Rowan presides over a, quite literally, bankrupt church. He needs infustions of cash from TEC to do nearly anything that wants doing. With the CoE boasting ~25 million baptised members, less than a million sit in the pews on a given Sunday. That is an attendance rate of less than 5% and reflective of a huge 'who cares' factor. This situation is the very definition of bankruptcy - financial and institutional.

What is the difference between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Jesus Christ? When He was driven to the desert to be tempted after 40 days and nights, Jesus Christ clearly, solidly and resolutely rejected Satan's offer worldly things. +Rowan on the other hand is pictured smiling grandly seated next to .....

Mrs. Schori says, "Jump!" and +Rowan askes, "How high?" on the way up.

Lackey. Boot lick. Serf. Yes.

Truly Archbishop of Canterbury? I think not.

[Robert Ian Williams]

Faithful people...who take with them diocesan property which belongs to the national Church, as Bishop Iker swore on affidavit in the 1990s! Something which no Souhern Baptist Conservative Texas Judge will be able to riddle around.

Faithful people who follow a version of Anglicanism invented in the nineteenth century and now make common cause with other Anglicans who preach another Gospel and discount the sacramental claims of Anglo-Catholicism, and advocate lay presidency and apprived diaconal administration!

Faithful people who accept divorce and re-marriage and contraception ( originallay condemned within Anglicanism )and then claim the liberals are immoral and revisonists!

Faihful people who want to join a province where female ordiantion of presbyters will be permitted.

Faithful Christians who want to remain in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in the paper today sitting next to the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, who is going to take them to the cleaners!

It makes no sense. Anthony Trollope couldn't have written a better novel.

[Kate]

Mari: "She also had the gall to steal and sell tribal lands that were never church property."

Could we have verifiable evidence for this allegation?

[sound]

Seriously. You write for the Times, not the Sun.

Alas, the Times has become as sensationalist as The Sun was 20 years ago.
Having heard Abp Venables interviewed several times over the last few years, he seems to be very much less than Anglican in his theology and ecclesiology, and is far closer to some independent churches.

(rg writes: I am not a good enough journalist to write for The Sun. I read it on the underground on my way to work this morning. What a wonderful time that was. It makes me giggle and makes me think about serious issues all at once. I never fail to be impressed by its integrity. The standard of writing is one I aspire to. Whenever I feel in the need of a lesson in how to write, I pick up The Sun and read it. I am advising my journalism students at City University where I have started some part-time tutoring to do the same.)

[Mari]

Shouldn't the ABoC suspend himself, since he didn't implement Dar?

[Mari]

BTW, Ms. Gledhill should consider the fact that it's TEC who is spending millions on lawyers to persecute churches and their members, merely so Jefferts-Schori can steal their properties and sell them to stuff her coffers. She also had the gall to steal and sell tribal lands that were never church property. But then again, TEC represents the same mindset that interpreted scripture to excuse slavery.

[Lapinbizarre]

Excellent idea, Bishop Iker. Hope they go with it.

[Mari]

Being asked to voluntarily withdraw is not a suspension.

Then again, in Rowan Williams worldview, his investing church funds, betting against British funds, seeking to profit from increasing poverty and suffering is acceptable. If anyone is wondering why church attendance has shrunk, it's because Williams' moral relativism and lack of substance is a turn off.

[Peter Kirk]

Since TEC has NOT shown restraint by not pursuing legal action, as required by a Primate's Meeting, it is they at least as much as the Southern Cone who should face further disciplinary action.

[Oriscus]

Um, TEC and ACCanada's voting rights in the ACC were never suspended, they were invited to voluntarily withdraw, which they did, and were reproached for even daring to show up in Nottingham to answer questions and to present their reports re SSB's and +VGR.

We should all be very surprised indeed if El Cono Sur were required to do more than listen quietly to people read very strongly worded memoranda about them at the next meeting of the ACC.

Seriously. You write for the Times, not the Sun.

(rg writes: i am afraid this story would not get even a single line in The Sun, never mind the pages and pages that The Times has devoted to it over the past few years. And even if voting rights were suspended voluntarily, rather in the same way that Jeffrey John 'voluntarily' withdrew from Reading, the end result was that they were suspended.)

[Robert Ian Williams]

I think TEC and Anglican Church of Canada have retrained themselves wonderfully, in not naming Southern Cone in their legal cases. Could you imagine a major Corporation, not suing another Corporation, which had taken their or offices under their " care."

I think the cross borderers have got off lightly...

[Bishop Iker]

Yes! Let's deprive all of these border crossers of a vote at ACC! But don't stop with the Southern Cone. Go after Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, SE Asia, and Nigeria as well. How dare them minister to faithful people in the apostate TEC!

+JLI

[robroy]

An important post from Chancellor at SF which reminds readers, first of all, that the TEC withdrawal was requested voluntarily:

---

Take a deep breath, folks. This story is way overblown. No one is going to be able to deprive the Southern Cone of a voice and vote at the next ACC meeting.

1. First, as to membership. The ACC Constitution provides that the PSC is a member, and Art. 3 requires, as we know by now, a two-thirds vote of all the Primates “to alter or add to the schedule” of membership. No matter how much TEC and its allies might wish it, they are not going to be able to kick the PSC off the membership schedule.

2. Next, as to vote. Section 6.1 of the ACC Guidelines states: “Only members of the council shall be entitled to vote on business before the council.” Section 7.2 provides: “The Council may at any time with the consent of the Standing Committee revoke, amend, or supplement these guidelines or any part of them for the better conduct of the business of the council.” I doubt whether the power to “revoke, amend or supplement” would include the power to deprive a duly constituted member of its right to vote---remember that at Nottingham in 2005, the Primates had made only a request of TEC and ACoC that they “voluntarily withdraw” their representatives from the Council.

So the most that will happen is that a majority of the Primates might make such a request, and ++Venables can politely decline to do as they request.

I think what happened is that TEC and ACoC were just asking ++Rowan to let ++Venables have a little of the medicine they were handed in 2005, and the request was leaked by someone who wanted it leaked to hit the news cycle before the meeting in Wheaton next week.

[Mari]

Ms. Gledhill's information is incorrect, TEC was NEVER suspended, I'd appreciate learning her source for such a claim?

It's not border crossing for the Southern Cone to take under their wings, dioceses, etc.. that have withdrawn from TEC and seek affiliation within the Anglican communion.

BTW, neither TEC US or their Canadian counterpart have kept the moratoria, they have been publically stating that they plan to violate it, most recently several American and Canadian bishops stating that they were going to appoint non-celibate homosexual bishops.

When is the ABoC going to address the harassment and persecution of traditional Christians in TEC, and when is he going to speak out against the death threats made against Bishop Nazir-Ali and people who have converted to Christianity from Islam.. or doesn't he care?

(rg writes: my source for that info was myself! i as at the meeting in notts where tec's voting rights had been suspended. how can you say that didn't happen?)

[pendennis88]

Well, interesting, if true. I suppose this may make sure that things come to a bit of a head at the primate's meeting.

I've always said that the global south will not leave the Anglican Communion, they will have to be kicked out. It now looks like TEC is maneuvering to do just that. If TEC can swing such a thing, I think that Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, et al, will likely treat any final action against Southern Cone as being equally taken against them, and there would be the formal schism. Two-thirds of the Anglican Communion, gone just like that. Oh, the rejoicing there would be in New York. Champagne corks popping on Second Avenue. Though, of course, it is not a done deal yet.

Curious that the JSC may suddenly find that it has the power to punish the orthodox after all these years, when they said no one could do anything to discipline TEC.

And it is sad that the Archbishop of Canterbury has lead the communion to this point.

[Neil]

Ruth if your source is right, this course of action will have exactly the same effect as the timing and manner of the attempted deposition of Bob Duncan.

[Fr Michael Gollop SSC]

You may find this is just a carefully placed piece of "disinformation" - our ecclesiastical rulers are not above testing the water in such ways after all. Up to now I've never thought of the liberals in the Anglican Communion as stupid, but, in the year which has seen the formation of GAFCON and the various successions in the U.S., for the ACC to "discipline" the Southern Cone may well prove to be the last straw for many in the Communion and provoke a much wider and even more open division than already exists. Or are they so convinced that God and the trajectory of history are on their side that they now don't care about the consequences?

[P. Dangwer]

Archbishop Venebles is a true leader within Anglicanism. He speaks with clarity for for the good news of Jesus Christ.
Very different from the creepy double speak coming from ECUSA TEC and Fulcrum.

[David Cohen]

I am sure Bishop Venables is trembling at the fearful prospect proposed by The Times.

[Fr Mark]

This is the problem: hardline Conservative Evangelicals talk the Puritan talk, but at the end of the day, stay with the kudos that sheltering under the aegis of this broad Church gives them. They know that, outside the Anglican Church, they are merely a few random ranters, whereas within it, unfortunately, they have savoured the joys of domineering power over the meek. Very Christian it all is.

[Fr. Van Windsor]

RG: Thank you for this. Finally a positive action towards TEC, and TEC read in a more positive light (though I don't know how much "restraint" we've actually shown)...I have been reading some opinions that say it is the Primates who make the decision who is in communion with the Anglican Communion, and not so much the Archbishop of Canterbury...is that correct?