Source:  Anglican Mainstream

February 4, 2010

By Andrew Carey, CEN

Just when it seemed that the Anglican Communion was being bored out of existence something interesting happens.

President Bishop Mouneer Anis of Jerusalem and the Middle East resigned from the increasingly important ‘Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion’ expressing frustration that his presence had “no value whatsoever”. In his letter of resignation he explains that the Committee had no will to carry through the Windsor Proposals, maintaining the status quo rather than acting upon the logic and trajectory of the Windsor proposals.

For Bishop Anis, one of the more measured and moderate Global South leaders, to come to this conclusion is a shocking thing indeed. It throws the whole post-Windsor strategy into confusion and challenges the legitimacy of recent developments in the Communion which have empowered a cavalier bureaucracy and undermined any possibility of reconciliation.

After the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson the Windsor Report provided a clear strategy for resolving the crisis. Firstly, it provided a means of discipline whereby Canadian and American Bishops who had created the crisis by blessing same-sex relationships and supporting the consecration of a practising gay bishop could be disciplined. This was through an invitation to absent themselves from the Instruments of the Anglican Communion. A need for some kind of alternative provision for traditionalists in North America was also recognised. The Covenant, regarded now as the only show in town, was a development further down the line which could resolve future crises.

Instead, the Archbishop of Canterbury invited all of TEC and Canadian Bishops to the Lambeth Conference, excluding bizarrely and insultingly only Bishop Gene Robinson and Mugabe’s crony, Bishop Nolbert Kunonga (formerly of Harare).

This deepened the divisions and undermined the Windsor process. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was even elected to the Standing Committee of the Primates Meeting, giving her a seat on the now all-important Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. . .

Read the entire article here. 

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