Orombi's letter to Canterbury, sour grapes and bitter gripes.

Archbishop Orombi of Uganda has seen fit to write the Archbishop of Canterbury, with copies to all the Primates in the Anglican Communion. Copies are all over the Anglican blogsphere. It is a remarkable letter, filled with sour grapes and bitter gripes. Here is a bit of a running commentary on the letter. Archbishop Orombi's words are in purple (of course) and mine in red.

In February I read with great interest Bishop Mouneer Anis’ letter of resignation from the Joint Standing Committee. I am grateful for his clarity and honesty. He has verbalized very well what many of us havethought and felt, and inspired me to write, as well.

As you know from our private conversations, I have absented myself forprincipled reasons from all meetings of the Joint Standing Committeesince our Primates meeting in Dar es Salaam in 2007.

The "principled reasons" have not at all been clear. At the 2009 meeting of the ACC there was an attempt to seat the Rev. Phillip Ashey as a member of the Church of Uganda representation. The Joint Standing Committee refused to admit him. Archbishop Orombi was not present for that discussion because not present for the ACC meeting itself. His reason for not being there?

Episcopal Cafe reported, "When asked why he was not present for the meeting, Archbishop Orombisaid, “I am speaking at the New Wine conference in the north of Englandat the same time the ACC is meeting. This speaking engagement has beenin my diary for a long time. It was an unavoidable conflict. I regretthat my alternate to the Primates Standing Committee, ArchbishopJustice Akrofi of West Africa, was also not able to attend.”

That sounds like calendar conflict, not principle. It appears that he had some sort of calendar conflict with the Global South Primates meeting in Barbados this well as well.

The first meeting of the Joint Standing Committee was later that year in New Orleans. At our Primates meeting in February 2007, we made certain requests of the Episcopal Church. In our Dar es Salaam communiqué we did not envision interference in the American House ofBishops while they were considering our requests. For me to participatein a meeting in New Orleans before the 30th September deadline would have violated our hard-won agreement in Dar es Salaam and would have been another case of undermining our instruments of communion. My desire to uphold our Dar es Salaam communiqué was intended to strengthen our instruments of communion so we would be able to mature into an even more effective global communionof the Church of Jesus Christ than in the past.

Orombi was clear that he would not attend the meeting in New Orleans, that is true.

Subsequent meetings of the Joint Standing Committee have included the Primate of the Episcopal Church (TEC) and other members of TEC,who are the very ones who have pushed the Anglican Communion into thissustained crisis. How can we expect the gross violators of BiblicalTruth to sanction their own discipline when they believe they have donenothing wrong and further insist that their revisionist theology is actually the substance of Anglicanism?

We might presume then that Archbishop Orombi is here claiming that (i) only the right thinking can belong to the Joint Standing Committee, (ii) that TEC leaders are "gross voilators of Biblical Truth" and thus clearly unrighteous, and (iii) that somehow TEC is arguing that its theology is the "substance of Anglicanism." Points two and three are outrageous. Point one is the point of contention that will come up again later in his letter.

We have only to note the recent election and confirmation of an active Lesbian as a Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles to realize that TEC has no interest in “gracious restraint,” let alone a moratorium on the things that have brought us to this point of collapse. It is now impossible to regard their earlier words of “regret” as a serious gesture of reconcilia- tion with the rest of the Communion.

The phrase here is "active Lesbian", not "partnered Lesbian" or other descriptors, no, "active Lesbian." What, may we ask, is a "non-active" Lesbian? Celibate? Dead? There is no possibility of gracious response here, no possibility of a way of talking about a relationship of committed love and care for another.

The phrase "gracious restraint" appears here. "TEC has no interest in 'gracious restraint.'" Well, as I have said before, asking someone else to graciously restrain from action while at the same time saying "there will be consequences," is perhaps asking nicely while the big sticks are just behind the back, ready to whack. The statements of regret voiced by TEC were not lies, they were regrets for the difficulties raised by actions taken that we believed we were called to take.

Together with Bishop Mouneer, I am equally concerned, as you know, about the shift in the balance of powers among the Instruments of Communion. It was the Primates in 2003 who requested the Lambeth Commission on Communion that ultimately produced the Windsor Report at our meeting in Dromantine. That “hermeneutic,” however, has been obscured by the leadership at St. Andrew’s House who somehow created something we never envisioned called the “Windsor Process.” Report. It was the Primates who received the in 2005. It was the Primates, through our Dromantine Communique, who presented the appropriate “hermeneutic” through which to read the Windsor Report.

Archbishop Orombi sees a power shift away from the Primates to some mishmash of people called at one time or another the "Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACCOrombi believes bishops and bishops alone, and in this case Primates alone, ought to determine matters in the Anglican Communion.

The Windsor Report was not a “process.” It was a Report, commissioned by thePrimates and received by the Primates. The Primates made specific and clear requests of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. When TEC, particularly, did not clearly answer our questions, we gave them more time in 2007 to clarify their position.

Suddenly, though, after the 2007 Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam,the Primates no longer had a role to play in the very process they had begun. The process was mysteriously transferred to the Anglican Consultative Council and, more particularly, to the Joint StandingCommittee. The Joint Standing Committee has now evolved into the“Standing Committee.” Some suggest that it is the Standing Committee“of the Anglican Communion.”

There is, however, no “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion”The Standing Committee has never been approved in its present form bythe Primates Meeting or the Lambeth Conference. Rather, it was adopted by itself, with your approval and the approval of the ACC.The fact that five Primates are included in no way represents ourAnglican understanding of the role of Primates as metropolitan bishopsof their provinces.

There you have it. The Archbishop wants The Primates to exercise final authority in the Communion. And he wants the Windsor Report to be not a process of engagement or even a set of recommendations, but a report which if accepted and adopted by the Primates becomes binding on the Communion.

Anglicanism is a church of Bishops and, at its best, is conciliar inits governance. The grave crisis before us as a Communion is both a matter of faith as well as order. Matters of faith and order are the domain of Bishops. In a Communion the size of the Anglican Communion,it is unwieldy to think of gathering all the Bishops of the Communion together more frequently than the current pattern of every ten years.That is why the Lambeth Conference in 1998 resolved that the Primates Meeting should be able to “exercisean enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral andpastoral matters.” (Resolution III.6).

Matters of faith and order are NOT "the domain of Bishops. They are matters for the whole church, the whole of the baptized. And, by the way, "offering guidance" is a far cry from possessing a "domain."

What has emerged, however, is the Standing Committee being given“enhanced responsibility” and the Primates being given “diminished responsibility,” even in regard to a process begun by them. Indeed,this Standing Committee has granted itself supreme authority over Covenant discipline in the latest draft. Under these circumstances, it has not been possible for me to participate in meetings of the Joint Standing Committee that has taken upon itself authority it has not been given.

The Archbishop has a bad track record regarding Primates meetings, both in the Anglican Communion and among his own subgroup, the Global South Primates. Perhaps there are other reasons for not attending than righteous purity.

Accordingly, I stand with my brother Primate, Bishop Mouneer Anis, in his courageous decision to resign from the Standing Committee. Many of us are in a state of resignation as we see how the Communion is moving away further and further into darkness, especially since the Primates’ meeting in Dar es Salaam.

It is this paragraph that led a number of writers to assume the Archbishop was stepping down from the Standing Committee. Apparently he has not done so, but rather is in solidarity (but not reality) with Bishop Anis. Note, now the emergence of the "darkness" image. Now, the argument turns from mere critique of power shifts to the deeper crisis of impending doom.

Your Grace, I have urged you in the past, and I will urge you again.There is an urgent need for a meeting of the Primates to continuesorting out the crisis that is before us, especially given the upcomingconsecration of a Lesbian as Bishop in America. The Primates Meeting isthe only Instrument that has been given authority to act, and it canact if you will call us together.

The Primates Meeting has no authority to act. Where does the Archbishop believe that authority has been given?

The agenda for that meeting should be set by the Primates themselves at the meeting, and not by any other staff in advance of the meeting. I reiterate this point because you will recall our cordial December 2008 meeting with you, Chris Smith, and the other GAFCON Primates in Canterbury where we discussed the agenda for the Primates meeting to take place in Alexandria the following month. None of our submissions were included in the agenda. Likewise, at the beginning of the January 2009 Primates meeting I was asked to present a position paper on the effect of the crisis in the Communion from our perspective, but I was not informed in advance, so I did not come prepared. Yet, other presenters, including TEC and Canada, were given prior information and came very prepared. I have never received a formal written apology about that incident, and it has caused me to wonder if there are two standards at work in how a Primate is treated.

The distrust of staff, particularly if that staff has slighted any of the Primates in the process of establishing an agenda for the meetings or papers for such meetings, is understandable. But if such an agenda includes taking on authority which in no wise has been agreed upon by the churches represented at the table, the only solution would be to disband the meeting.

Finally, the meeting should not include the Primates of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada who are proceeding with unbiblicalpractices that contradict the faith of Anglicanism. We cannot carry onwith business as usual until order is brought out of this chaos.

And there you have it: Archbishop Orombi wants to meet, exclude TEC and ACoC Primates, and take on an agenda to bring order out of chaos and light in the darkness.

This letter is a sham and a shame. It is full of sour and bitter comments and is meant to feed into the Global South agenda at the GS Primates meeting and then later at the Global South Encounter IV. The object of this letter is to serve notice that the GS Primates are not going to put up with the English running the show, the Americans and Canadians being there, and the staff arranging things. No, having named the problem - the reduction of the assumed authority of the Primates in favor of the Joint Standing Committee - and the immediate need for the Primates to regain that domain, the Archbishop is demanding the Primates take the lead.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has several choices: to ignore Orombi, to give in to his demands and call a special meeting of all the Primates, or to call a meeting of just those who are pure enough for Orombi and friends. Actually, he has another - to never call a meeting of the Primates again. Primate's meetings were a nice idea - that they might get together and share concerns for the good of the Communion. But they are the context for argument managed from the sidelines. They are no instrument for unity now, and may never be again.