What did Bishop Duncan say? The Received Text

On Friday Matt Kennedy over at Stand Firm typed away at his computer,and got down what he could of an address by Bishop Duncan, Moderator of the Common Cause Partnership, the Network, and Bishop of Pittsburgh. Bishop Duncan was speaking to the Mere Anglicanism conference in South Carolina.

Matt Kennedy, who works hard to get things down verbatim, made it clear that this was done on the fly and might not be complete. Here is his comment, "This is my live-blog of Bishop Duncan's very important address. Read it carefully. He said that he did not have a text, so this is it. Remember it is live-not memorex."

So, let us grant that this is indeed not a tape of the talk. None the less Matt has a fine mind, a good ear and types like crazy. So I am prone to trust what he got, knowing he may not have gotten it all.

In the middle of the talk Bishop Duncan said this about not having a text:

"I’ve found that everything I write is used in a way it should not. So there is no text."

Meaning I gather that without a written text Matt's efforts to get a verbatim is, if necessary, deniable.

Actually that is too bad. The received text has Bishop Duncan saying some interesting things. BabyBlue has offered an opinion on some of what the Bishop might have said and I would suppose she shares my sense that Matt was getting it down pretty well.

So with two such fine realignment and or dissenter folk producing and then commenting on the received word, I suppose it is in order to make some observations as well.

Bishop Duncan in the Received Text (BDRT) recites a fascinating account of what he calls the disintegration of the Anglicanism that was the result of the Elizabethan Settlement. It's worth the read. I think he has got it wrong, but more on that later. First a rather odd snippet from the BDRT:

"The Elizabethan Settlement produced two great streams that are engaged in mortal combat. The first stream is white, western, and progressive, used to the system. The settlement created the modern world, in fact, and it is white, it is western, and it believes in progress. It actually also produced the Global South: Brown, southern, and traditional. Most of us would identify with that second stream today. That is new."

Bishop Duncan may identify with the second stream, but - he's not brown, he's not southern, and he's not traditional. He is white, he is from points north, and he is in his own interesting way radical. He may well be a companion to people in the second stream, but he is not of that stream and never can be.

Now the BDRT admits that all this business about the Elizabethan Settlement is a bit vague. BDRT reads, "these two realities, these two parts of Anglicanism, western progressive and southern traditional, again vast oversimplifications, these two worlds, are no longer coexisting under the settlement. For Mere Anglicanism to survive a new settlement is required."

Hear the BDRT gets the conclusion right: the two worlds - the progressive and the traditional "are no longer coexisting" under the same roof. I think we need to read that conclusion as a useful thing. I don't think he gets the precondition, the "settlement" right.

The BDRT makes assumptions about Anglicanism as it has existed in the framework of a community of churches larger than the Church of England that simply have never been true.
The CofE may have been able to go forward on the basis of the Elizabethan Settlement, but it did not hold for very long. By the time new Anglican Provinces developed that Settlement had been broken in England and never engaged completely elsewhere. Furthermore, the BDRT layout of the elements of that Settlement are questionable. I leave it to the reader to find out where.

But, to the BDRT credit, there is reference at the last to an interesting comment purportedly made by Dr. V. Samuels. "Dr. Samuels said that what it is that must emerge before Anglicanism can go on and progress is what will be the equivalent of the Elizabethan settlement, a Post Colonial Settlement."

The Anglican Communion that we currently have (AC I) will go on. Lambeth will take place, seven hundred out of 850 (more or less) bishops have indicated they will be there. This is a world wide fellowship of churches. It will continue to work on ways to make common cause for the mission of the church.

It appears that a new form of Anglican world-wide entity is emerging, call it AC II or the Global Anglican Communion - a world wide church - is in the making. This new AC may or may not emerge... there are lots of broken fragments and it is hard to see how they will be gathered.

The BDRT seems to consider all this part of disintegration, with a further end down the road that gathers the fragments up again in a "Post Colonial Settlement."

My sense is the post-Colonial Settlement is so unlike the Elizabethan Settlement as to be simply a different sort of thing. The post-Colonial Settlement will have to do with coming to grips with the way in which the various peoples of Christ have committed cultural and spiritual genocide, often by the accident of being carriers of culture as well as faith, and have used one another to great effect in the acquisition of positions of power and influence in Anglican Land and in the world. In this sort of settlement there are none of us clean, and no manner of identification with those we think are the good, the underdog, the persecuted or unloved will give us any wiggle-room.

My sense is the BDRT's hope for a post-Colonial settlement in Anglicanism is to be held as a major piece in the life of all of us in Anglican Land.

GAFCON, Anglican Communion II, AKA The Global Anglican Communion, and a renewed rigor in weeding out heresy and tightening the head bands against progressive thinking, etc, is no step towards that end. Those are steps backwards.

Noll proposes Global Anglican Church.

Stephen Noll, Vice Chancellor, Uganda Christian University, has produced a think piece for the GAFCON Theological Resource Team. For the reader who does not know what GAFCON stands for, it stands for "Global Anglican Future Conference," an event planned for June this year, a month prior to Lambeth, supposedly meeting in Jerusalem. For a meaty article on GAFCON's doings, see Graham Kings article in Fulcrum.

Noll's article, titled "The Global Anglican Communion and Anglican Orthodoxy," can be read HERE.

GAFCON is a mess, but it an important mess. The meeting is supposedly to be held in Jerusalem, but that seems more and more to be unwise. They didn't think to ask the Bishop in Jerusalem or for the Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East. More, it now appears that the Bishop of Jerusalem is dealing with such grave internal problems in that diocese that a massive influx of bishops and retainers from around the communion would be disastrous. An important contribution to understanding what is going on in that diocese can be found HERE.

GAFCON is also the place of sharpest signal from the bible-belt of Africa and those, particularly in the US, who support and sometimes guide the swing away from Canterbury and Lambeth to some other center of unity. The energy formerly bubbling in the Global South Anglican group is now being sucked dry by the more pointedly schismatic GAFCON crowd.

Stephen Noll is a primary contributor to GAFCON's Theological group and there is reason to read his article, for it reveals quite a bit about the 'future' being contemplated by the GAFCON leadership.

Here are several items from his article which are of particular interest:

"The need to define or describe Anglican orthodoxy today has an urgency about it, because of the actions of the Episcopal Church (TEC) and other Provinces of the Communion in blessing homosexuality against the clear teaching of Scripture, the historic Church and the Resolution of the Lambeth Conference 1998. Although this issue has dominated discussions, it is clear that it is symptomatic of a larger abandonment of biblical teaching and authority on fundamental matters of the faith. The fact that Bishop John Spong, a man who has denied virtually every article of the Christian faith, continues a bishop in good standing in TEC, while orthodox bishops are threatened with deposition for their witness speaks for itself."

There is the accusation and the reason why there is the need for a redefinition - not of words but of community: the actions of TEC..against the clear teaching of Scripture, the historic Church and the Lambeth Conference...abandonment of biblical teaching and authority... the good standing of Bishop Spong while orthodox bishops are threatened with deposition.

Stephen may be in Uganda, but his face points West.

"... let me suggest for strategic and tactical reasons that a statement of Anglican orthodoxy keep in close touch with the idea of a Covenant. Strategically the idea of a Covenant is a good one. The Quadrilateral itself was a kind of preamble to Anglican orthodoxy for the emerging Communion. Going back even further, one might suggest that the Articles of Religion were part of an Anglican Covenant before there was a Communion, as Thomas Cranmer intended the Articles to form the basis for an ecumenical consensus among the churches of the Reformation.

The idea of an Anglican Covenant is also relevant in the present political context of the Communion. Those attending the Global Anglican Future Conference should maintain ties with those orthodox leaders who are working on the Communion Covenant. It seems unlikely that a final Covenant from Canterbury, filtered now through the Anglican Consultative Council, will be sufficiently crisp to deal with the present crisis. However, the opportunity may arise herafter to negotiate an ecumenical Anglican Covenant that will serve as a means of warding off heresy and will chart the future of orthodox Anglicanism."

Noll signals here his idea that a Covenant, probably not that produced "from Canterbury," will provide a way to "negotiate an ecumenical Anglican Covenant that will serve as a means of warding off heresy and will chart the future of orthodox Anglicanism." He is proposing to GAFCON that the Covenant needs to be drawn in such a way as to exclude members of the current Anglican Communion who are heretical and to include churches "outside" normal Anglican Communion venues.

Just how this exclusion and inclusion will take place begins to be sketched out in Noll's description of a new form for the historic episcopate on an international level. He writes,

"This pattern of episcopal governance can function at the level of worldwide Anglicanism. This will involve reform, though not total rejection, of the current Instruments of Unity, including the following elements:

• A synod of bishops should meet regularly (decennially) and have authority to address matters of doctrine, discipline and mission.
• An executive body of Primates should be authorized to carry out the will of the synod in between meetings.
• A presiding Primate should serve as a focus of unity. Canterbury or another historic see could function as a locus of unity as well. However, such a Primate should be elected by the synod of bishops.
• A secretariat should assist these Instruments, with accountability to all. The current Anglican Consultative Council and Anglican Communion Office have failed to function in this way.

In one sense, this polity is not far removed from the “Instruments of Unity” that have evolved of late in the historic Anglican Communion. The likeness may be deceptive: a diseased body may look like a healthy body, at least in the earlier stages of the illness. I am saying that the fault is not with the outward form of the Anglican Communion but with the doctrinal deviation from its apostolic and Reformation origins. Orthodoxy by its very nature must identify and renounce heresy and discipline false teachers, as a last resort, expel them. If the Canterbury-based Anglican Communion continues to tolerate heresy in its midst and welcome false teachers to its councils, then the day will come when an orthodox assembly must break communion with Canterbury and set up alternative structures. Since the trend-lines seem to doom the current Communion to endless compromise or worse, the sooner the shadow structures begin take form the better." (bold and highlights mine).

GAFCON is presented with a clear proposal for a worldwide church governed by a council of bishops with an elected head. Noll presents the case for a future Global Anglican Communion that breaks with Canterbury and calls for it sooner rather than later. One supposes he means this June.

He signs off with these words,

"I believe that if the Global South churches and their allies will take bold action at this time, we shall see a new reformation in the Anglican tradition, one which reflects the movement of the Spirit of God in our day....Brothers and sisters, remember Lot’s wife. The present order is passing away. Behold the Global Anglican Communion is coming."

GAFCON, if it take in the spirit of Stephen Noll's charge, is bent on becoming a Global Church complete with an adequately empowered inquisition for ferreting out heresy, ready to lift up Bishop Duncan and smash down Bishop Spong, ready to declare the United States mission territory for this new Church, making covenant with such churches as it chooses and dismiss the idea of an Anglican Communion covenant as it might arise out of the current order.

Another leader of the GAFCON pack is The Rev. Dr. Chris Sugden, who believes what is going on is not schism but revolution. I believe it is neither. While it appears schismatic and sounds revolutionary it is in reality an attempt to set up a new world wide church taking as many of the people, goods and endowments of the existing Anglican Provinces as possible and declaring those areas where Provinces have not joined open territory. And at the last they will attempt to take our good name - the name Anglican.

GAFCON is the first international conference of usurpation.

There is no reason in the world for Anglicans - people in churches part of the Anglican Communion - need to put up with this.