A post-Canterbury, post-Lambeth Anglicanism?

Bishop David Anderson raises an interesting question in his weekly newsletter for the American Anglican Council

"With the increasingly worrisome behavior of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a question is now being heard among the orthodox Anglicans: "What would a post-Canterbury/Lambeth Anglicanism look like?" Embodied in this question is "What would hold us together, what or who would center us, globally, in an organizational and incarnational manner?" It is understood that the spiritual center is Jesus Christ, of course. But where would we look for an orthodox and vital 'first among equals?' I don't have the answer, lest you thought I was setting you up for one scheme or another, but the question needs to be asked now, pondered and prayed through, because unless there is a miraculous change in Lambeth Palace's leadership, the question will grow more relevant week by week."

Well, the question has been out there for some time and the feelers are out. The Moderator of the Network, and now the Common Cause Partnership, has pretty well discounted the future relevance of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Global South Steering Committee has increasingly seen Lambeth as irrelevant and is moving to hold what is increasingly seen as an alternative to Lambeth with leadership provided by bible-belt Africa Primates.

So Bishop Anderson is now putting it out there for the chewing. What would a post-Canterbury, post-Lambeth, Anglicanism look like?

Well, it would be what I have called Anglican Communion II. In my article "Is the Anglican Communion as we know it....a commonwealth in cyberspace?" I suggest that that the dissenters want to do is replace one set of elite ecclesiastical types with an other. The new elites might bring new burdens not so easy to bear, but only those who go there will know.

There have been plenty of candidates for the new Primate to be first among equals. Indeed there are candidates for whatever arises in North America as the united so-called "orthodox" Anglicanism etc. There is no end of advisers ready in the background to make the world safe for really really true Anglicanism.