Dublin primates meeting marks an ‘end to the communion as we know it’: The Church of England Newspaper, Feb 4, 2011 p 1.

The primates in Dublin

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

A meeting of the leaders of 23 of the Communion’s 38 provinces has produced a draft agreement diminishing the primates’ role as an instrument of unity for the Anglican Communion.  The primates meeting is to be restructured into a pan-Anglican fellowship for conversation, with a goal of “acknowledging diversity and giving space for difference” within the church, according to a ‘working document’ released at the close of the Jan 24-30 meeting in Dublin.

The reforms put forward by Dr. Williams and the Dublin primates have abandoned the calls for discipline and good order made by the primates since the 1997 Jerusalem meeting, conceding there is not political will to take action against the Episcopal Church.  It also follows upon the revamping of the Lambeth Conference as a teaching instrument for bishops in 2008, the controversial 2009 ACC meeting that torpedoed the Anglican Covenant process, and the creation in questionable circumstances of an all powerful Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion last year.

Dr. Williams has now effectively gathered the authority once held by other instruments of the communion into his own hands, and into those of a London-based bureaucracy.

The bulk of the meeting was spent in preparing the working document on the purpose and authority of the primates meeting and their standing committee.  “By God’s grace we strive to express,” the document states, “unity in diversity which is the Spirit’s work among the churches of the communion and the community of primates.”

The Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church told a press conference at the close of the meeting, “what we have been doing is rebuilding our relationships,” seeking to come together as a “communion of independent churches.”

The Dublin primates prepared public and private letters on a range of issues: gender-based violence, the persecution of Christians in Pakistan, political instability on the Korean peninsula, Zimbabwe, political instability in Egypt, government travel restrictions imposed by Israel on the Bishop in Jerusalem, and the independence referendum in the Sudan.

Letters on problems of climate change, Haiti and the murder of a gay rights activist in Uganda were also released by the gathering.  Members of the primates standing committee were also elected, though their names were not made public.

Dr. Williams acknowledged the absence of 15 primates, noting a candle had been lit for them in the conference centre chapel.  However, no  “meeting can allow itself to be shaped wholly by the people who are not there,” he said.

“The fact remains that two-thirds of the body of primates was present and something like three -quarters, possibly a little more, expressed their willingness to be present but were unable for one reason or another. That means that two-thirds of the primates at least wish to continue to meet and wish to continue the conversations they’ve begun,” Dr. Williams said.

A spokesman for the Gafcon movement told The Church of England Newspaper that it was unlikely the primates affiliated with the conservative reform movement would comment on the meeting.  Each archbishop made his own decision whether or not to attend, the spokesman explained, and there is no common response yet to what took place in Dublin.

A senior Global South leader told CEN, the Dublin meeting was “irrelevant” to several of the absent primates.  “It doesn’t mean a thing to them,” he noted.

As Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Williams’ sole power lay in his ability to call meetings of the church.  Lambeth and now Dublin has shown he has lost this “moral authority” as his invitations now go unanswered, the bishop noted.  Dr. Williams cannot now claim that he speaks for a majority of Anglicans, he said.

The former Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, Dr. Phillip Turner of the Anglican Communion Institute told CEN he was disappointed by the reports produced by the meeting.  “Here we have reports on both the function and the organization of the Primates meeting that neither locate as an aspect of ecclesiology the office and role of a primate within a communion of churches nor speak of how the meeting and its standing committee are to address a province or diocese within the communion whose actions other Provinces do not recognize as in accord with scripture.”

“These reports are theologically vacuous,” Dean Turner said. “Sadly, they only display the fact that this Instrument has become dysfunctional.  It has become dysfunctional because neither the Primates as a group nor the Primate who is primus inter pares were willing and able to address the actions” of the North American churches.

The “fabric” of the communion remains torn “because of a failure in leadership,” he said, noting that the “communion as we have known it is gone.”

In its place the Dublin primates have adopted an ecclesiology where “we are all friendly and we do good works, but we need not share commonly recognized forms of belief and practice,” Dean Turner said.