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News from Off: National & International News of Interest in South Carolina
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Briefly ...
Shocking House of Bishop Report on Property Disputes is Leaked. (May 10, 2007) Click here to find out what it said.
South Africa's Primate Questions the Direction of the Anglican Communion and the Primates' Power (May 15, 2007) Click here to read his comments in full.
Are right-wing groups correct when they say the Episcopal Church has lost a million members? Not really. See an analysis of how data collection, demographics, and definitions of "members" has changed over the years. Click here to view report.
Is the Anglican Communion Dying? Rowan Williams seems incapable of holding together the Anglican Communion in the face of intolerance by his angry and bitter US conservatives and Global South Primates. Williams takes a vacation instead of meeting with increasingly united American bishops. Canadian Primate Andrew Hutchison speaks for many in lamenting the ABC's "indecisiveness". Read it all (4/10/2007)
Thinking Anglicans is an excellent site for the latest news stories from around the Anglican Communion, including the Episcopal Church. Click here to view the latest.
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Scroll down to read the following stories...
1. Strident Africans & Ultra Right American Allies Speed Disintegration of Anglican Bonds of Affection; Controversy over 2008 Lambeth Conference May Be the End of the Communion (August 22, 2007)
2. Loss of Episcopal Church's Funding Would Devastate the Anglican Communion; Africans Whose Primates are Attacking the US have the Most to Lose. (New York Times 3/19/07)
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1. Strident Africans and American Allies Speed Disintegration of Anglican 'Bonds of Affection' (August 22, 2007) by SC Episcopalians and Episcopal News Service
This summer's Lambeth Conference could be the end of the Communion as dissenters decry exclusion of Mimms and others irregularly consecrated; Others refuse to go because of heterosexual-only policy
Tutu urges ABC to "Invite Everyone"
The unprecedented refusal of many bishops in the worldwide Anglican Communion to accept invitations to the 2008 Lambeth Conference may be the beginning of the end of the worldwide body as it has been constituted for nearly 150 years.
This summer would-be participants at the venerable once-in-a-decade conclave of Anglican leaders found themselves at loggerheads over the apparent decision of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to exclude both irregularly consecrated rightwing bishops and the legitimately consecrated Bishop of New Hampshire, who is gay.
Led by the angry and confrontational African Archbishop Peter Akinola, so-called "Global South" bishops are refusing to accept their invitations because the ABC does not want to invite Akinola's Bishop in America, Martyn Mimms. Equally outraged American bishops are refusing to attend if Williams follows through on his decision to exclude New Hampshire's Bishop Robinson.
The apparent collapse of the Communion's historic 'bonds of affection' has been fueled by repeated challenges to Williams' authority over the last three years by the headstrong Akinola, who leads the increasingly-influential Biblical literalists.
Williams has proven to be a somewhat inept leader of the Communion, and appears to be unable to derail Akinola's campaign to have the Episcopal Church expelled. The Episcopal Church provides roughly one-third of the Communion's annual funding. The loss of the Episcopalians, along with their sister province in Canada, would be devastating to worldwide Anglicanism.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu stepped into the fray over the 2008 Lambeth Conference, appealing to Williams to invite all bishops, "even those irregularly consecrated or actively gay."
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate's plea came in a letter to the present Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, in which he also called on all Anglican bishops to be "more welcoming and inclusive of one another."
"Our Communion has always been characterized by its comprehensiveness, its inclusiveness, its catholicity," he said. "...we are really family, held together not so much by law as by bonds of affection. There is no family that is unanimous on every single subject."
The Lambeth Conference is to be held July 16-August 4, 2008 at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. About 880 invitations have been sent out to serving diocesan, suffragan and assisting bishops.
Williams' decision to withhold a small number of invitations was made public May 22, 2007.
Robinson became the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion when he was consecrated in November 2004. Minns was installed as head of CANA on May 5, a move that has been criticized by some as being divisive and in clear violation of the nearly-defunct Windsor Report that was to provide a roadmap forward to Anglican unity.
On May 4, Williams wrote to Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola, a leading critic of the Episcopal Church, asking him to cancel his plans to visit the United States and install Minns.
Williams has said he intends to explore how Robinson might be present as a guest to the Lambeth Conference, but he is not contemplating inviting Minns.
In recent months, some Global South Anglican leaders have indicated that they may boycott the Lambeth Conference on the grounds that Williams has invited bishops from the Episcopal Church who supported Robinson's election and consecration.
"In a world where difference has led to alienation and even bloody conflict, the Church is God's agent to demonstrate that unity in diversity is in fact the law of life," Tutu said in his letter to Ndungane. "...We are most like God when we are welcoming and when we are as inclusive as possible, when we have broken down all middle walls of partition."
Tutu was elected Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986 and was a leading opponent to the country's apartheid regime until 1994. Like his successor Ndungane, Tutu has been a staunch supporter of equal rights for homosexuals and advocated for an Anglican Communion that is inclusive of all people regardless of sexuality.
"Our Lord is weeping to see our Communion tearing itself apart on the issue of human sexuality when the world for which he died is ravaged by poverty, disease, war and corruption," Tutu said. "I beg you all in our Lord's name agree to disagree, argue, debate, disagree, but do all this as members of one family."
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2. Loss of Episcopal Church's Funding Would Devastate the Anglican Communion; African Primates Attacking the TEC have the Most to Lose (New York Times 3/19/07) Click here to read it all.
Exclusion of the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion would be far more devastating to the Communion than the Episcopal Church. Episcopalians provide nearly one-third of the operating budget of the Anglican Communion in addition to millions it pours into social and economic projects in so-called Global South provinces, according to the New York Times.
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