Concerns are expressed over Indaba group manipulation: CEN 11.14.08 p 7.

The Archbishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East has welcomed Dr. Rowan Williams’ decision to hold the 2009 Primates Meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, telling The Church of England Newspaper the witness of Egypt’s embattled Christians in the face of persecution can serve to strengthen the Anglican Communion.

While the agenda and locale remain to be settled, the Bishop of Egypt, Dr. Mouneer Anis said he was proud to be able to host the conference. However, suggestions by the Archbishop of Canterbury that he would use the Indaba process to manage the Primates’ Meeting has prompted private scorn from the primates contacted by CEN, and public criticism from Evangelical and Anglo-Catholics unhappy with the manipulation and management of the Indaba process at Lambeth.

“I want [the primates] to see, to feel the history of the Church as they walk through Alexandria,” Dr. Anis said on Nov 11. For in Alexandria one “steps in the blood of the saints shed in obedience to the faith, a faith that has been watered by the blood of the martyrs,” he said.

At least 35 of the Communion’s 38 Primates, along with the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu are expected to be present for the Jan 31 to Feb 5 meeting. The Archbishops of the West Indies and Melanesia, the Most Rev. Drexel Gomez and the Most Rev. Ellison Pogo retire in December, and their successors have not yet been named, while a successor to Archbishop Bernard Malango of Central Africa has yet to be appointed. Archbishops Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Henry Orombi of Uganda, Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, and Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya who boycotted the 2008 Lambeth Conference are expected to attend the Alexandria meeting.

Dr. Anis told CEN a detailed agenda for the meeting had not been shared with the primates. However, he hoped time would be set aside for the archbishops to meet with Egyptian Christians, including the Coptic Patriarch, Pope Shenouda III. He would be “happy to meet the primates” Dr. Anis noted, as “I know [Shenouda] loves the Anglican Church.”

“He speaks to me always that we need to keep our orthodoxy” in the Anglican Communion, Dr. Anis said, noting that “a man like that deserves to be listened to as the successor of St. Mark.”

Egypt’s Christians, numbering some 8 million are the largest Christian minority in the Middle East and have been under considerable pressure from Islamic fundamentalists in recent years. Egypt’s Christians had “survived many challenges,” Dr. Anis said, yet had been “schooled to faithfulness” through persecution and oppression.

While details of the meeting have yet to be disclosed the primates, in his Aug 26 letter to the Anglican bishops after Lambeth, Dr. Williams said he might apply the Indaba process, of guided small group discussions, at the Primates Meeting.

“Many participants [at Lambeth] believed that the Indaba method, while not designed to achieve final decisions, was such a necessary aspect of understanding what the questions might be that they expressed the desire to see the method used more widely — and to continue among themselves the conversations begun in Canterbury,” Dr. Williams said.

“This is an important steer for the meetings of the Primates and the ACC which will be taking place in the first half of next year, and I shall be seeking to identify the resources we shall need in order to take forward some of the proposals about our structures and methods.”

However, traditionalist leaders have balked at Dr. Williams’ suggestion that the Indaba process be used in the more intimate surroundings of the primates’ meetings, as their experience with the Indaba process at Lambeth was not as rosy as Dr. Williams had painted it.

A number of evangelical bishops at Lambeth questioned the integrity of the Indaba process. At Lambeth the bishops were divided into groups of 8 for morning Bible studies. These groups were then reformed into mid morning Indaba groups of 40, where a set series of questions was presented to the bishops for discussion and each bishops allotted two minutes to respond. The bishops’ observations were then gathered by “listeners”—appointed by the Lambeth Conference organizing committee from among nominees submitted by the Indaba groups—who were tasked with recording the perspectives offered.

The process was open to manipulation, the Bishop of Tasmania, the Rt. Rev. John Harrower noted. Writing to his diocese after Lambeth, he stated “one of the saddest moments of the Conference for me personally occurred in our Indaba when a bishop spoke earnestly of his views on same sex issues with a brief and solemn conclusion.”

“Some minutes after I saw him surreptitiously pass a sheaf of the [Episcopal Church] briefing notes to the [Episcopal] bishop seated in front of him.” Before leaving for Lambeth, each of the American bishops had been given a set of “talking points” by the national church in New York.

Bishop Harrower’s American colleague “had parroted one of the ‘sample narratives’. I wanted to shout and to cry. Any idea of transparency and trust through Indaba had been tragically thrown in our face. Set piece parroting surreptitiously orchestrated was poisoning our communion. God have mercy on us! Although I spoke to our Indaba facilitator of this privately we, as an Indaba group and Conference, had neither the wit nor the will to address our hiddenness,” he said.

Anglo-Catholic Bishop Jack Iker of Fort Worth told CEN his experience of the Indaba groups was equally problematic. In his group, Bishop Iker reported that the bishops became frustrated at the regimentation of the conference and its avoidance of discussion of the presenting issues before the Communion.

Members of his Indaba group asked Bishop Iker to speak to the estrangement of his diocese from the national Episcopal Church’s leadership. After Bishop Iker spoke, the Bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania, the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe, rose and told the Indaba group that Bishop Iker had exaggerated the divisions within the Episcopal Church.

In reading the summary of the Indaba discussions the next day, Bishop Iker found his portion of the exchange did not appear in the conference record. Bishop Iker asked the head of his Indaba group how he could ensure that his remarks could make be included in the daily report. He was told to either put his remarks in writing or to speak during the plenary session of the conference.

Rebuffed in his first attempt to address the Conference due to the number of bishops wanting to speak, Bishop Iker was successful in his second try, and told the bishops at Lambeth of the difficulties his diocese faced. He then handed a copy of the remarks to a member of the Indaba editing team, the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, Bishop of Rhode Island, for submission into the conference record.

“The next day nothing I said from the floor” had been included in the daily report. “I waited another day,” Bishop Iker noted, and when my concerns failed to appear” he stated he approached Bishop Wolf to ask for an explanation.

Bishop Iker said he was told by Bishop Wolf “we decided that your comments should be given to the Windsor Continuation Group.” No further action was taken by the conference in reporting Bishop Iker’s Indaba remarks.

“I tried to get my concerns recorded [at Lambeth] in the three ways” dictated by the Indaba process. “I think [the Lambeth Conference organizers] controlled what went to the group” through their management of the conference bureaucracy, Bishop Iker charged—apparently stifling dissent in order to achieve a predetermined end.

Following an Indaba process where “no decisions are made” and “all viewpoints have the same merit” at the primates meeting would not serve the Communion well, he charged. Using Indaba in Alexandria would be “catastrophic” Bishop Iker said.