“I was side lined” says Bishop of Egypt as he quits top body: CEN 2.05.10 p 6.

The President Bishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East has quit the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, stating he has no faith in its integrity.

In a withering critique released on Jan 30, the Bishop of Egypt Dr. Mouneer Anis said that after having served for three years on the Standing Committee he had come to the belief that his continued presence had “no value whatsoever and my voice is like a useless cry in the wilderness.”

The Bishop of Egypt’s defection comes as a blow to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, who had counted on Dr. Anis as one of his few remaining allies among the global south coalition of primates.

Dr. Williams had attempted to dissuade Dr. Anis from quitting the standing committee after Dr. Anis gave voice to his concerns following its December meeting. He pleaded with Dr. Anis to stand fast, sources close to the Egyptian bishop told The Church of England Newspaper, arguing the Anglican Covenant would soon answer his concerns.

However, Dr. Anis’ Jan 30 letter branding the processes and structures Dr. Williams set in place as flawed, comes as a public rebuke to the archbishop, which further isolates Canterbury from the non-Western primates of the Communion.

In his five page letter, Dr. Anis stated the Standing Committee was usurping authority not properly granted to it. It had “continually questioned the authority of the other Instruments of Communion, especially the Primates Meeting and the Lambeth Conference,” and had ignored the recommendations of the Windsor Report and the Primates’ 2005 and 2007 meetings concerning the Episcopal Church. It engaged in a pointless tartuffery that offered “no effective challenge to the ongoing revisions” of the US Church.

Dr. Anis noted that while there were “many good aspects” to the Covenant, he had a number of reservations about its utility in resolving the issues before the Communion. He also objected to the twisting of the “Listening Process” mentioned in Lambeth Resolution 1.10 from a call to “minister pastorally and sensitively” to those with a homosexual orientation, to pro-gay agitprop.

“It seems as if the aim of the Listening Process is to convince traditional Anglicans, especially in the Global South, that homosexual practice is acceptable,” he said.

Dr. Anis also had grave reservations about the staff of the Anglican Consultative Council’s London office. The non-Western Anglican world had no “sense of ownership” of its work and agenda, he said. This would only change if the “provinces feel that they own the ACO, and it is not an office in the UK that tries to run the Communion in its own Western way.”

Despite his misgivings over the structures and the new roles for the instruments of unity imposed on the Anglican Communion in the past few years, Dr. Anis was optimistic about the future, noting that those churches that upheld the “traditional Anglican faith are growing very fast.”

American ACC delegate Dr. Ian Douglas, the bishop-elect of the Connecticut told CEN he was “saddened that Bishop Mouneer has chosen to resign from the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. I respect Bishop Mouneer and I have found him to be a faithful friend and brother in Christ in the many different ways we have worked alongside each other over the years. I will miss his contributions to the Standing Committee and we will be less without him.”

On Feb 1 Dr Williams released a statement saying “Bishop Mouneer has made an important contribution to the work of the Standing Committee, for which I am deeply grateful. I regret his decision to stand down but will continue to welcome his active engagement with the life of the Communion and the challenges we face together.”

Originally elected to the West Asia seat on the primates’ standing committee at the 2007 Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam, Dr. Anis’ resignation should give the seat to the alternate elected for West Asia at that meeting: Bishop Alexander Malik, the Moderator of the Church of Pakistan. However Bishop Malik has since stepped down as Moderator leaving the seat vacant until a successor is elected at the next primates meeting.