Credibility of Stand Firm no longer in doubt

Baby Blue has written a post titled, “Credibility of the Anglican Communion Standing Committee openly questioned.” She lauds the work of Sarah Hey of Stand Firm who she says "bats it right out of the park" (This btw is considered here in the USA to be a good thing.) 

I must confess that while I look in on Stand Firm fairly regularly it is with increasing sadness. SF is stuck in a miserable place. Having determined that all is rotten in Episcopal Church land it spins its wheels in the rot and rarely has anything worth noting. 

However, BabyBlue seems to thing there is news there worth noting. She begins by referencing the essay's attention given to an Anglican Communion office Q and A item:

"Q. I have heard it said that some churches get more votes than others. Why is that?

In the Council as a whole, those churches with the highest number of churchgoers may send a bishop, a priest or deacon and a lay representative to the ACC; churches in the middle category by number of churchgoers send a priest or deacon and a lay person, and the smaller churches send one representative, preferably a lay person. But it does not follow that the larger churches are over-represented on the Standing Committee – several members of the present Standing Committee were elected by the plenary Council from the representatives of the smallest churches, and the Chair is from a Province in the middle-sized category."

BabyBlue then rhetorically asks, "And what does Sarah say?"

"This is patently false.

First of all, note the clever shimmy at the words "But it does not follow that the larger churches are over-represented . . . "

That, of course, is not at all the issue. So the answer begins with a lie -- that the larger churches are the ones that receive more representatives to the ACC -- and then continues on with a spin following the lie, implying that the concerning issue is that "the larger churches are over-represented."

The issue of concern is that the larger churches -- the ones that the ACO does not like -- are under represented, not that they are over-represented. The ACO well knows this. What a sham and a disgrace. Have they no shame? Do they imagine that nobody reads their propaganda and smiles over their attempts?

Really. This is ridiculous. It's brazen. It's public. And it's noted by more and more people. Do they really think that they can get away with this kind of contemptible pravdaesque rhetoric forever?"

Sarah Hey could have gotten it right had she not slipped in the mud.  

The Q and A misspoke. It says, "In the Council as a whole, those churches with the highest number of churchgoers may send a bishop, a priest or deacon and a lay representative to the ACC  (and so on).."  The fact is it is not the churches with the highest number of churchgoers, but the largest membership, that determines who gets 3, 2 or 1 member on ACC.  This is, of course an interesting point because if the measurement were in terms of churchgoers we would be hard pressed to know just who fit where.  The counting is pretty accurate in some of the churches, so we know the membership is much larger than the churchgoers. It is always larger, of course, but in some churches there is a higher percentage of membership actually in church. And then in other provinces we just don't know. Some have reported the same numbers for many years, some have very little idea as to the relationship between church attendance and actual members in church.  So the numbers are determined by claimed body count.

Ah well, Sarah says, "this is patently false."  "This" refers we gather not to the numbers, but to something seemingly more sinister and nasty. "The issue of concern is that the larger churches -- the ones that the ACO does not like -- are under represented, not that they are over-represented. The ACO well knows this. 

What a sham and a disgrace. Have they no shame? Do they imagine that nobody reads their propaganda and smiles over their attempts?" 

Perhaps Sarah might remember that people are elected to the Standing Committee by two paths, election from among the Primates by region of 5 persons and election of 7 persons from the ACC from among its own members, and when there are vacancies by appointment.  (See Section 7 of the Constitution of the ACC).  

But somehow she believes that the Standing Committee under represents the Provinces that are the largest but unliked by the ACO.  She concludes with a wonderful rant: " Really. This is ridiculous. It's brazen. It's public. And it's noted by more and more people. Do they really think that they can get away with this kind of contemptible pravdaesque rhetoric forever?"

Who knows what led the Q and A response to include, "But it does not follow that the larger churches are over-represented on the Standing Committee."  It may have been spin, but I doubt very much if it was "that the larger churches -- the ones that the ACO does not like -- are under represented, not that they are over-represented. The ACO well knows this." 

She wants to make the ACO the evil ones, contemptible, pravaesque, etc. But she is off the mark.

The Q and A answer, for all its faults was making a rather simple point:  Churches with 3 representatives did not necessarily receive more places on the Standing Committee than did Churches with 2 or 1 representatives on the ACC.   And the reason for this is both factual and constitutional. Factual because the origins of the current membership of the Standing Committee is larger churches.  There would have been one more, of course if the Archbishop of Uganda had not resigned.

More to the point, the constitutional issue is that persons are on the Standing Committee not because they represent any particular church. They are there because they are chosen from among two already existing groups of candidates - the Primates and the members of the ACC. They do not represent their home church, rather while they carry their own perspectives, they are expected to represent their body (Primates or ACC) as members of Anglican Communion bodies.

The Hey essay is just a rant, and not a very good one at that.  (Although I must say I admire the end sentence.)

The credibility of Stand Firm is no longer in doubt (not that there was much before). This was a rant unworthy of the considerable skills of the writer, and unworthy of the praise heaped upon it.

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Here is the breakdown of Standing Committee "origins" in terms of churches:

* Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (chair) 3

* Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Australia 3

* Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church 3

* Archbishop Barry Morgan of Wales 2

* Bishop Paul Sarker of Bangladesh 1

* Bishop James Tengatenga of Central Africa (ACC chair) 2

* Canon Elizabeth Paver of England (ACC vice chair) 3

* Bishop Ian Douglas of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church 3

* Anthony Fitchett of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia 2

* Dato Stanley Isaacs of the Province of South East Asia 1

* Philippa Amable of West Africa 1

* Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe of Ceylon (extra)

* The Rev. Canon Janet Trisk of South Africa 3

Excluding the Chair, the Archbishop of Canterbury, there are on the Standing Committee: 

4 persons from Provinces having 3 representatives to ACC

3 persons from Provinces having 2 representatives to ACC

3 persons from Provinces having 1 representative to ACC + one extra.

The breakdown of numbers of churches in each group in ACC representation is :3 reps, 10, 2 reps, 11, 1 rep 17

There are then  4/10, 3/11, 4/17 

The weight towards the larger churches includes the fact that there are two persons from the Episcopal Church at this time. That is an accident of current election from among the two groups, the ACC and the Primates. It is neither build in or controlled by the ACO or any other office.  The members who have resigned would not have changed the balance by much.