The Telegraph's list of the 50 most influential people in the Anglican Communion is coming out in five daily installments. Today we get names 31-40.
31 Barry Morgan - Archbishop of Wales
32 Jane Williams - theologian
33 Philip Giddings - convener of Anglican Mainstream
34 Susan Russell - Integrity, USA
35 Paul Handley - editor, Church Times
36 Kendal Harmon - blogger
37 Bob Duncan - Bishop of Pittsburgh
38 Michael Poon - Singapore theologian
39 Ian Earnest - Primate of the Indian Ocean, Chairman of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA)
40 Kathy Grieb - Episcopal Church theologian,
Wednesday's winners were
41 Jamie Calloway - vicar of Trinity Wall Street
42 Davis Mac-Iyalla - Changing Attitude, Nigeria
43 Chris Sugden - director of Anglican Mainstream
44 Esther Mombo - Dean of St Paul’s theological college, Kenya
45 Marily McCord Adams - Regius professor of divinity, Oxford University
46 Simon Sarmiento - blogger
47 Tom Butler - Bishop of Southwark
48 June Osborne - Dean of Salisbury
49 Norman Doe - Anglican lawyer
50 Ephraim Radner - Wycliffe Theological College Toronto, theologian.
Congrats to todays winners. May you be forever young.
Meanwhile the stats are these :
Male 14, Female 6; US 6, UK 10, other 4; Bps. 3.
I don't know if any are any good at the high jump.
7/10/2008
22 comments:
OK... Comments, gripes, etc welcomed, but with some cautions and one rule:
Cautions: Calling people fools, idiots, etc, will be reason to bounce your comment. Keeping in mind that in the struggles it is difficult enough to try to respect opponents, we should at least try.
Rule: PLEASE DO NOT SIGN OFF AS ANONYMOUS: BEGIN OR END THE MESSAGE WITH A NAME - ANY NAME. ANONYMOUS commentary will be cut.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
45 MarilyN McCord Adams - ReGius professor of divinity, Oxford University?
ReplyDeleteDrumroll:
ReplyDeleteThe most influencial persons in the Anglican Communion are....THE BISHOPS of NORTH AMERICA!
TEC and Canada together comprise only 3.6% of the membership of the 20 largest provinces of the Anglican Communion, and yet combined they have 27.5% of the total 682 bishops going to Lambeth. Our North American bishops oversee less people than anybody else in the Anglican Communion - and by sheer density have a disproportionately aggressive voice and influence in our world Church.
Short-cut: People who represent less than 4% of the Anglican Communion are making up just over 25% of the voices at Lambeth.
POWAH! Colonialism lives!
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Robin Williams. :P
ReplyDeleteColonialism, Allen, lives in the likes of Henry Orombi who accepts substantial sums of money from Radical Right "Orthodox" interests ($200,000+ by his own estimate, and that was a year back) to spout the kind of corrosive garbage detailed in the immediately adjacent "drama queen" thread. THAT, Allen, is living Colonialism.
ReplyDeleteThe communion is run by mostly white people it seems.
ReplyDeleteAllen's figures are correct - after a fashion.
ReplyDeleteIF you use average Sunday attendance for North America and use reported membership figures and / or census data for everywhere else, then Allen's figures are correct.
As they say, figures lie and . . . you know the rest.
Oh, come now, Allen, is it really fair to talk about the total number of bishops *going* to Lambeth when so many other bishops haven chosen *not* to go? Nigeria and Uganda claim millions and millions of Anglicans (of course, see malcom's note about attendance), and it's their own choice if they choose to sit out Lambeth. You can't blame the US for being overrepresented if the underrepresented choose to elect fewer bishops or send none.
ReplyDeleteOh dear, Bob Duncan can't be too happy about being outranked by Susan Russell, can he?
ReplyDeleteLapinbizarre,
ReplyDeleteI'll concede your position. Let's just take Nigeria and Uganda out of the picture entirely as though they are nil. Let's pretend that Orombi and Akinola are out and forget it. As one can see these men do not make up the entire Communion or even a significant majority of it anymore than Chane or Bruno. This, however doesn't change the facts about disproportionate power.
TEC and ACC are disproportionately self-important and influencial. The growth portions of the Anglican Communion have bishops who oversee MANY times more people than your average North American bishop. Examples abound in North America of bishops who frequently leave their own dioceses and fly the country and world looking to be heard or to see something interesting while their diocese rots from inattentiveness. Surf the diocesan websites and note how many bishops have left for a pre-Lambeth romp. Nothing much happening at home.
So...the smallest, least growing dioceses and provinces in North America get more attention and claim more power than those dioceses elsewhere in the world that make up the majority of the Communion. As units the North American dioceses are mainly self-negligent or confused and unproductive, constantly reinventing for survival, and cutting corners - all the while telling the majority what it's all about to be the Church. Even KJS was somewhat worried (see ENS) that the North Americans (about 27% at Lambeth) would be too overwhelming to the majority.
Some Massahs, huh?
Archbishop Jensen is certainly doing his bit, Obadiahslope.
ReplyDeleteWayward,
ReplyDeleteMy main point is that North American bishops have it made in world representation with the percentages stacked in North America's favor. For example (Using 2006's Stats):
TEC had 2,320,506 members and 145 bishops (1 bishop for every 16,003 people). Compare that to Southern Africa who had 2,300,000 members and just 30 bishops. Or the Sudan with 4,500,000 members and just 45 bishops. Canada only had 641,845 members yet they had 42 bishops. Also note who is growing and declining with these trends.
KJS just noted on ENS that she hoped that the North Americans wouldn't be too daunting a presence at Lambeth - making up about a quarter of the body. Well, the polity of North America will ensure that there will certainly be many more bishops per ratio than the majority of Anglicans elsewhere. If you are afraid of it...you would seek to change it, at least out of a justice perspective. Bet it will never happen.
Allen, how in the world can you accuse North Americans telling other people "what it's all about to be the church" - when the real situation is exactly the opposite?
ReplyDeleteNorth Americans aren't telling anybody how and what to do about anything; it's the GAFCON crowd that's doing all the bossing around.
Your point about "disproportionate power" is, I grant, correct - as applied to this poll. Which is coming out of the media England, in case you haven't noticed, and what does it really matter to anybody anyway? It has no meaning when it comes to what happens in the Anglican Communion.
Is the Telegraph brave enough to put MadPriest in the top ten?
ReplyDeleteMany of us have seen the easy-to-follow "Bishops per Province" chart that Kendall Harmon posted yesterday lunchtime, Allen. It starts with the fantasy figure of 25,000,000 Anglicans in England and heads into the unverifiable, to put it politely, figures claimed by certain Central African provinces.
ReplyDelete".... all the while telling the majority what it's all about to be the Church." Sure, Allen. Windsor? Dar es Salaam? Gafcon?
lapinbiazarre,
ReplyDeleteIf, as you say, the figures of the chart are fantasy, then surely that includes the figures of TEC and ACC, right? Those two bodies could only be smaller if the trend is to inflate figures for prestige. That makes my point all the more. North America is a speck of Anglicanism, and yet shrieks and shoves with such unembarrassed gall, that I'm sure that others get the point: "we're more important, so we know more...we hope you catch up.."
Prior to GAFCON, prior to Windsor, prior to es Salaam, prior to Lambeth 1.10, you could easily trace the audacious and arrogant independence of loud North American bishops as they made individual policies for "their" dioceses on everything, including SSBs. Heard of Los Angeles lately? How about the Diocese of El Camino Real? The bishop there just started allowing SSBs by stating:
"...you may have a civil ceremony conducted by someone other than an Episcopal clergyperson, followed by a blessing of that union (which could surely include a Eucharist) by an Episcopal priest."
"I have decided upon the new guidelines in light of the current climate in our diocese and the national church as a whole..."
The rationale?
"These guidelines are not a tremendous change from our previous guidelines, but rather an addition that helps us live into a new reality. As the national church proceeds toward full sacramental inclusion, so shall our diocese".
This is what North America has been dishing up and calling "Anglican" for many years.
"New realities" mainly dictated by North American culture and revisionist theological scholarship.
"I have decided..." "OUR diocesan convention..." Bishops and dioceses being a rule unto themselves without General Convention approval or the Communion in collaboration.
Is it any wonder that the majority of the Communion is drawn to form resolutions, pleadings, and acts of desperation?
When the smoke clears about 10 years from now, it will be North America that will be on the outside looking in. But, apparently that's OK. Some of our brightest in TEC have no problem with joining the UCC's downward malaise.
Allen, you're right, we have a disproprtionate number of bishops at Lambeth, and while it wouldn't be the full quarter you decry if everyone showed up, it would still be disproprtionate. I don't dispute that, but what's keeping Southern Africa, Sudan, or Canada from electing/appointing more bishops? They could have the presence if they wanted it.
ReplyDeleteI would also suggest an overreaction when you write, "Note how many bishops have left for a pre-Lambeth romp." Yes, because England, Scotland, and Wales have asked them to via their "Hospitality Initiative". Are we really to be mad at out bishops for accepting this cultural invitation?
Dear Wayward,
ReplyDeleteWhat's to stop the rest of the Communion from following North America's trend of "overbishopfication"?
Modesty? Good work habits? Effective ministry? Hard-core dedicated parish clergy in unbelievably challenging contexts (even without a great pension and healthcare negotiation)? Belief in communal collaboration and input vs. "top down"?
Whatever it is, it gets better growth and results for them than our way does for us.
The POINT, Allen, is that in statistical anaylsis, you need to compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges.
ReplyDeleteThis particular "conservative" slander is predicated on using different types of statistics for different provinces. For the Global South churches, it uses the unverified numbers they supply. For the Church of England, it appears to use census data. For North America, it uses some arbitrary number provided by agenda-ridden right wing hacks, loosely based on average sunday attendamce data.
Compare reported membership figures across the board and that would be valid (with the proviso that, for many provinces, the numbers are unverified).
Compare census data across the board and that would be valid.
Compare average Sunday attendance across the board and that would be valid.
Cherry-picking the numbers which advance an agenda is not valid. In fact, it is entirely dishonest - like most of the "conservative" apologetics I've read.
Even more to the point, it's inarguable that the numerical proportion of U.S/Canadian bishops has been going down, for some time now, as other provinces have grown, and created more bishops.
ReplyDeleteTEC and the AngChCanada were instrumental in founding the Anglican Communion, Allen (when there weren't autonomous national churches in MOST of the world). It's natural that the AC would have started out w/ an over-weighting of North American bishops---which has properly diminished over time. Quit turning this into some (pseudo-racist) conspiracy!
goran...got it. Mistake from Ruth.
ReplyDeleteI said the English 25,000,000 figure is fantasy, Allen, not that "the figures of the chart are fantasy".
ReplyDeleteAllen, I think that you look for controversy and things about which to be snarky. Even if no controversy exists.
ReplyDeleteOne of the key Anglican identities is that we have bishops. We embrace the episcopate, "locally interpreted." Here in Mexico we have but five bishops, all diocesan, for our five dioceses. Economically, we cannot afford more. We cannot afford what we have. We are a tiny Christian minority in a geographically large nation.
In the central African nations they appear to have many Anglicans. They are not wealthy nations. They have the number of dioceses and bishops that they can afford.
The US & Canada likewise. They have the number of dioceses and bishops as has seemed prudent, based on geographic need and/or economic ability. Falling church demographics perhaps will change that number, whether by design or attrition.
I think you see a controversy where none exists. There has never been a bishop competition in the AC. Each province has the number of bishops that it has. There is nothing more to it than that. So called "overbishopfication" is an issue your have created from whole cloth. I think so that you can continue with your constant and relentless harangue of unhappiness and disgust against your own province.
And it certainly has nothing to do with the actual topic of this thread, Fr. Mark reporting on some UK newspaper's opinion of who are the 50 most influential Anglicans.
It seems to me, that if you could devote but half of the energy that you expend in ranting & raving from internalized provincial self-hate in this Quixote-esque jousting at windmills, on making the lives of those around you better, your life would be filled with immense joy and the Realm of God that much closer to reality.