|
 |
 |
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
A Global Strategy The Dromantine Retreat and Conference Center , a 19th Italianate mansion sits in stony isolation on a hilltop outside Newry , Northern Ireland . The center is home to a Catholic seminary, but it played host to a distinctively Protestant drama in February 2005. For five days, the Primates of the Anglican Communion assembled in its meagerly-furnished meeting rooms to determine whether the 77-million member body could be preserved despite bitter disagreements over homosexuality. For the previous 15 months, the leaders of several conservative Episcopal organizations had been working secretly with their allies among the primates to remove the Episcopal Church from the Communion for consecrating a gay man with a male partner as bishop and permitting the blessing of same-sex relationships. Failing that, they aimed to establish a parallel American province for Episcopalians who differed with their Church on the nature of same-sex relationships. At the Dromantine conference, the Americans and their international allies collaborated with an unprecedented openness, in an attempt to force Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to take a harder line against the Episcopal Church. Among the primates who backed this effort were Peter Akinola of Nigeria , Henry Orombi of Uganda and Gregory Venables of Argentina . Working with them were the leaders of the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Communion Network, the Ekklesia Society and the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Those groups, backed by five politically conservative U.S. foundations, and Howard F. Ahmanson, a benefactor of numerous conservative ballot initiatives, candidates and think tanks, had been cultivating relationships with evangelical leaders in the developing world since the mid-1990s. But at Dromantine, the Americans' role as the principal strategists for the movement against their church came into focus. During the conference, American and British church activists took rooms in Newry and kept in contact with the primates, who were ostensibly meeting in private sessions. Among the activists were the Rev. Canon David Anderson, president of the AAC; the Rev. Canon Bill Atwood, general secretary of Ekklesia; Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh , moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, and Diane Knippers, president of the IRD. "Conservative American and British activists, and the press corps, quickly found that Dromantine's security guards were not a formidable obstacle to gaining access to the Primates, and would kindly . pass notes to Primates if asked," wrote the Rev. George Conger in the Church of England Newspaper . "Car traffic into Dromantine . was busy throughout the week as conservative activists would take primates off-campus from the centre to dine and strategise." Inside the gates at Dromantine, the atmosphere was unusually tense. Several primates who opposed the Episcopal Church's position on homosexual relationships had refused to attend the Eucharist with the church's primate, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. Griswold became angry when the primates assembled for a meeting and found on their tables a document alleging various abuses of conservative Episcopal clergy and congregations by liberal bishops that Griswold said could only have been prepared by American activist. "I spoke very frankly about where these pieces of paper came from, and why are these people down the road in constant communication with various of you, and whose agenda is this?" he later told Deborah Caldwell of Beliefnet. "Who is determining our agenda?" The agenda Leaders of the conservative wing of the Church have worked since at least the 1990s to develop international alliances; those efforts first bore fruit at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, where the bishops in attendance passed a resolution declaring that physical intimacy between members of the same sex was incompatible with Scripture. However, their efforts took on added significance during the crisis precipitated by the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire November 2, 2003. The backlash against the Episcopal Church provided an opening for its adversaries to attempt to remove it from the Anglican Communion. The church's removal would have diminished its stature, and its membership, as 10 dioceses and several dozen parishes had expressed a desire to break with the church and remain within the communion. In addition, without the generally liberal voice of the Episcopal Church, the Communion would take on a more theologically conservative cast. The crisis also created an opportunity for several influential primates in the developing world who wanted to move the Communion, composed of autonomous provinces, toward the centralized curial form of government advocated by the authors of the Ekklesia Society-sponsored publication To Mend the Net . American conservatives responded with a two-pronged strategy: pressuring Williams to expel the Episcopal Church and replace it with Duncan 's Network, while arguing that crisis required the primates to exercise authority that the Communion had never granted them. Conservative leaders agreed on their strategy at a meeting in London on November 20, 2003 . In attendance were Duncan, several American conservatives and several primates sympathetic to their cause. According to Duncan's notes, those present secretly agreed that the primates who supported the Network would announce their support to Williams, urge him to recognize the Network as the true expression of Anglicanism in the United States, and "Tell Rowan that if he will not recognize the Network they will separate from him." Network leaders asked the primates to inform Williams that "in the present crisis the issue of boundaries is suspended," meaning that bishops could claim the right to minister uninvited in one another's provinces and dioceses. The Network also requested that the primates refuse to recognize any bishop who had participated in Robinson's consecration. This, in effect, would have rendered 13 American sees, including the Diocese of Washington, as vacant. Network leaders also asked that Duncan be regarded as Griswold's equal at all international gatherings. In addition, Duncan 's notes say: "We commit to the guerilla warfare of the next year." The notes came to light a year later, when two parishes in the Diocese of Pittsburgh sued Duncan and other diocesan officials, alleging that they planned to claim ownership of property held in trust for the national church. The suit was settled out of court in October 2005, but not before several memos and emails circulated among leaders of the AAC, the IRD and the Network appeared on the Web site of the Allegheny County ( Pa. ) prothonotary's office. The Network soon learned that Williams would not recognize it as an independent Anglican entity. Just three weeks after the London meeting, A. Hugo Blankenship, a Network lawyer, e-mailed Duncan saying that one of Williams's top aides, "simply won't listen to anything but our staying in ECUSA [the Episcopal Church, U. S. A. ] ..We did not feel it wise to warn him how close ABC [the Archbishop of Canterbury] may be coming to losing the Communion, especially if a number of Primates or Provinces recognize the Network. I personally don't see much chance the ABC will recognize the Network at this time. Perhaps that changes if pressure within the Communion builds up." Duncan and the AAC maintained publicly that they were working to "realign" the Anglican Communion from within the Episcopal Church. But on January 14, 2004 , The Washington Post published a story headlined, "Plan to Supplant Episcopal Church USA Is Revealed." "Alternative oversight" The article was based on a letter from the Rev. Geoff Chapman, rector of St. Stephen's, Sewickley-one of the larger parishes in Duncan 's diocese-who said he was responding to an inquiry on behalf of the AAC and its "Bishops Committee on Adequate Episcopal Oversight." The letter, dated December 28, 2003 , was leaked to Post reporter Alan Cooperman. In the letter, Chapman wrote that the AAC's "ultimate goal is a realignment of Anglicanism on North American soil" resulting in a "replacement jurisdiction." He added that conservatives would "seek to retain ownership of our property as we move into this realignment." A parish interested in "alternative oversight" should declare its relationship with its diocesan Bishop "severely damaged" as a result of Robinson's consecration, Chapman wrote, and state that it now looked to "one of the Primates or an AAC orthodox Bishop for their 'primary pastoral leadership.'" Episcopal bishops who claimed authority over a parish in another bishop's diocese would be vulnerable to prosecution under canon law. However, Chapman wrote, "we do have non-geographical oversight available from 'offshore' Bishops, and retired Bishops." If "adequate settlements" were not within reach by "some yet to be determined moment, probably in 2004," he added, "a faithful disobedience of canon law on a widespread basis may be necessary." Chapman's letter, which had also been leaked to Religion News Service and The Guardian in London , ignited controversy in the church. The AAC's opponents said it made conservatives' true intentions known. while its defenders argued that Chapman's letter represented the thoughts of only one man, that there was nothing new in letter, that the AAC was interested only in alternative oversight for beleaguered conservative parishes, and that the affair was unworthy of the media attention it had received. One person who disagreed with this assessment was Judge Joseph M. James of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. In pre-trial proceedings in Calvary v. Duncan , he characterized the Chapman letter as the "smoking gun" that proved Duncan 's intentions. The concept of "offshore oversight" for conservative Episcopal parishes was developed further in a March 3, 2004 , memo to "Ekklesia Society primates and bishops" and leaders of the Network by Canon Alison Barfoot. It was occasioned, Barfoot wrote, by conservations with Atwood, John Guernsey of the Network and Martyn Minns of the AAC. Barfoot, formerly co-rector at Christ Church in Overland Park , Kansas , had recently been appointed an assistant to Orombi, primate of the province of Uganda . An ally of Duncan's, Orombi had broken off relations with the Episcopal Church in December 2003. In the memo, Barfoot outlined a three-step plan for removing parishes from the oversight of Episcopal bishops and placing them under the oversight of an "offshore" bishop who would then delegate his authority over that parish to the Network. If a parish did not already have a relationship with an offshore bishop, Barfoot suggested, the Ekklesia Society could arrange a match. While primates such as Orombi and Venables were willing to allow their bishops to claim authority over Episcopal parishes and property, Akinola made a bolder stroke, announcing in early October 2004 that he planned to form his own church in the United States . During a press conference at Truro Church, with Minns, Truro's rector at his side, Akinola explained that the Convocation of Nigerian Churches in North America was intended as a refuge for Nigerians immigrants in the United States, but added that Episcopalians who opposed the consecration of Gene Robinson would not be turned away. Akinola said that he had discussed his ideas for the convocation with Williams, and that Williams suggested he pursue it in partnership with the Network. But Williams quickly released a statement saying that he had never approved of the idea of convocation, but had suggested that Akinola pursue his pastoral aims through the Network. Into this chaotic atmosphere, the Windsor Report on Communion was released on October 18, 2004. Windsor and its aftermath The report had been written by the Lambeth Commission on Communion, which had been formed by Williams and the primates, at an emergency meeting a year earlier. Its membership was theologically and geographically diverse. Its charge was to point a path away from schism without revisiting the issue of sexual morality, but rather by focusing on issues of governance and authority. In the days before the report was released, conservative newspapers and Web sites were alive with reports that the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada would have to either reverse their positions on homosexuality or force expulsion from the Communion. But the report proved a great disappointment to the Network and its allies. The commission chastised the Episcopal Church and called for an expression of regret and a moratorium on the future consecration of gay bishops. But it also chided bishops and primates who had authorized or participated in boundary crossings, and asked that they, too, express regret, and refrain from such actions in the future. Crossing diocesan and provincial boundaries "goes not only against traditional and often-repeated Anglican practice (as reaffirmed most recently by, for example, resolutions at Lambeth 1988 and 1998), but also against some of the longest-standing regulations of the early undivided church," the report said. The commission also dealt a blow to the Network, recommending against the creation of a separate province within the United States. Akinola called the report condescending, while Duncan declared that the process of realignment was "already well begun no matter what the report says." None of the Anglican Communion's instruments of unity [see sidebar] possess the canonical authority either to require compliance with the recommendations of the report, or to evaluate whether compliance had been achieved. But the Primates and the more broadly representative Anglican Consultative Council could attempt to shape the way it was interpreted. The council is a body of some 80 members. It includes clergy and lay people, and is considered less theologically conservative than the Primates meeting. But the council did not meet until June 2005, while the primates met in Dromantine in February. Before that meeting, Akinola and the leaders of some of the larger African provinces had made it clear to Williams, Archbishop Robin Eames of Ireland, who had chaired the Lambeth Commission and others that if issues raised by the report were not resolved to their liking, they were willing to leave the Communion, thus radically reducing its membership and its global reach. The African provinces, and those in other parts of the developing world are poor, and have traditionally relied on aid from elsewhere in the Communion to survive. But conservative Episcopalians had begun to build the financial networks that they said could sustain the African churches if they left the Communion. The tension-riddled Dromantine meeting produced a communiqué more to conservatives' liking than the Windsor Report. It reaffirmed the call for a moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops, softened the criticism of the border crossing primates-who nonetheless agreed not to "initiate" any new border crossings-and requested that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada send their delegates to the next meeting of the consultative council as observers, rather than as voting members. The primates also asked that the two churches to explain to the council how they had arrived at their decisions regarding same-sex relationships. On the night before the communiqué was presented at a press conference, a number of primates left the resort to attend a celebratory dinner hosted by Akinola and paid for by the American conservatives. Williams had striven to hold the meeting together, but he remonstrated with these primates when they returned. The United States and Canada accepted the Primates' requests, each withholding their three voting delegates in an attempt to demonstrate that they sought reconciliation within the Communion. Conservatives used the numerical advantage this provided to get the council to affirm the Dromantine communiqué by a two vote margin with four abstentions. The chair of the Anglican Consultative Council, Bishop John Paterson of Auckland, later apologized to the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church for the way it had been treated, and said that the primates, as one instrument of unity, should not have attempted to dictate terms to another. In the Windsor Report and the Dromantine communiqué, leaders of the communion acknowledged that the Episcopal Church's response would be neither official nor complete until approved by its triennial General Convention. The Convention meets in Columbus, Ohio for two weeks beginning in mid-June. There it will consider a number of resolutions drafted in response to the report. Whether its response is deemed satisfactory by enough in the communion may determine whether Episcopal bishops are invited to the next meeting of the Lambeth Conference in 2008. And whether Episcopal bishops are invited may determine whether their adversaries stage a boycott. Whose piper? Whose tune? Since conservative Episcopalians' highly visible role at Dromantine, leaders of the Communion have begun to ask whether they and their financial backers such as Howard F Ahmanson, Jr., are the real power behind a movement that claims to draw its strength from Africa and Asia . In an interview last October, Eames said that he was "quite certain" that African bishops were being offered money to cut their ties with the Episcopal Church. "Is it the might of finance that will influence a theological outlook, and then that outlook come to dominate the Communion?" he said. "It raises a serious question for me: what is the real nature of their faith and their Anglicanism? It is certainly different from mine." Akinola responded in an open letter to Eames on Oct. 16. "If you have any evidence of such financial inducements I challenge you, in the name of God, to reveal them or make a public apology to your brother Primates in the Global South for this damaging and irresponsible smear," he wrote. Eames replied a few days later, saying: "I categorically state I have never believed that any financial offer was accepted by any of those who represent the Global South on any other than terms of Christian outreach." While Akinola was chastising Eames, however, Canon Akintunde Popoola, director of communications for the Church of Nigeria , was defending the practice that Eames had decried. On the popular Thinking Anglicans Web site, he wrote: "For years, wealthy ECUSA churches like Trinity Wall Street bankroll churches in developing countries (and dare I say even the Communion) with no eyeballs raised. Some 'poor churches' feel it is immoral to collect money from those they do not agree with. Those that agree with the position of the poor are coming to their aid and some guys feel that is not moral. "Before such statements are made, Leaders should consider what the poor are receiving and what they are missing. Which is greater?" In late October, a number of primates from the Global South released a letter that was sharply critical of Williams, who had recently addressed them at a conference in Cairo . Several of the primates sought to distance themselves from the letter, and in the process, provided another glimpse of American advisors prodding southern primates to do their bidding. In a message to the Church Times , Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of South Africa, whose name did not appear on the letter, wrote that his delegate at the meeting, Bishop Johannes Seoka had "found himself excluded from meetings, including those at which the letter was discussed - despite the presence, it appeared, of others who were neither Primates nor, indeed, from the Global South." In November 2005, Duncan hosted a conference in Pittsburgh at which a bishop from Venables' province ordained clergy to work under his authority in the Dioceses of Maryland and Washington. At the conference, Akinola told an audience of 2,500: "Many of you have one leg in ECUSA and one leg in the Network. With that, my friends, comes disaster. While that remains, you can't have our support. Because, you see, as we speak here, we have all broken communion with ECUSA. If you want Global South to partner with you, you must let us know exactly where you stand. Are you ECUSA? Or are you Network? Which one?"
|
|
||||||||||
