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New Primates Standing Committee Reveals Liberal Bias. Token Conservative Elected from Sudan
Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul was not present in Dublin at Primates meeting. He opposes TEC's gay agenda
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
February 17, 2011
The following Primates were elected as members of the Primates' Standing Committee at the recent Primates' Meeting in Dublin, Ireland, and have agreed to serve for a period of three years.
From Africa, Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul Yak (Sudan) was elected, but he was not in Dublin for his election. At the 2008 Lambeth Conference the Sudanese leader held an impromptu press conference at which time he excoriated The Episcopal Church for ordaining a homosexual to the episcopacy.
The alternate is the liberal leaning Burundi Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi who told me he was there to represent Global South interests because a third of the archbishops, mostly Global South, were not. Later, he told Ruth Gledhillof The Times (London) that the 38 warring provinces should learn to get on with each other, because of Jesus' command to "love your neighbor."
Archbishop Ntahoturi said: "The Anglican Communion is our communion. We have a share. We have a place in that communion.... The Anglican Church of Burundi recognizes there are problems in the Communion. The Communion is a family. When children disagree on certain issues, you do not separate. You meet and discuss those issues together." He said the boycott was not against The Episcopal Church, but because previous decisions of the Primates' Council had not implemented. "For us in Burundi, we say some decisions take some time to implement." He supports the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
For sheer hubris, Central, North, South Americas and the Caribbean are being represented by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of The Episcopal Church with the alternate Archbishop John Holder (West Indies).
Jefferts Schori no more represents the Southern Cone and Archbishop Hector "Tito" Zavala or his predecessor, Archbishop Gregory Venables, than Manchester United represents Real Madrid. Mrs. Jefferts Schori might speak for Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz and some, but not all Central American dioceses. She certainly does not speak for the vast majority of Anglicans in the Southern Cone. This is to make an already ludicrous situation into a first class mockery.
The new West Indies Archbishop John Holder is also not cut from the same cloth as his predecessor, Archbishop Drexel Gomez. Holder was in Dublin. Gomez, the architect of the Covenant, would certainly not have been there. The bishop who was supposed to have been the next archbishop of the West Indies was Bishop Errol Brooks of the Anglican Diocese of the North Eastern Caribbean and Aruba. He had been given the nod by Archbishop Gomez, but internal politics lost him the votes. The Caribbean is largely Anglo-Catholic in its ecclesiastical orientation. It will be interesting to observe how he plays out with the ultra liberal archbishops who now dominate the Primates Council and the Anglican Consultative Council
Europe Bishop David Chillingworth (Scotland) was chosen. He is a thorough going liberal. His alternate Archbishop Alan Harper (Ireland) is also solidly liberal. Both will represent the liberal/revisionist wing of Anglicanism. They will not speak for the Global South.
Middle East and West Asia Bishop Samuel Azariah (Pakistan) and alternate Bishop Paul Sarker (Bangladesh) can best be described as orthodox, but moderates who won't rock the boat types. They both attended Dublin so one cannot say they are on board with the vast Global South.
South East Asia and Oceania Archbishop Paul Kwong (Hong Kong) and alternate Archbishop Winston Halapua (Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia) are also both liberals. The only orthodox voice in this region is South East Asia Archbishop John Chew. He did not attend Dublin.
The Dublin Primates' meeting marks one more step along the road which is slowly but surely seeing the Anglican Communion evolve into two distinct groupings. As Episcopal attorney A. S. Haley observes "...The takeover of the Instruments of Communion by ECUSA, aided and abetted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is now complete."
If the official Lambeth institutions are no longer worth fighting for, should orthodox Anglicans now simply let history take its course and get on with evangelism where they can and hope for the best? I believe not, because the Dublin meeting makes explicit a theological shift which is even more significant than the predictable institutional changes made to enhance Lambeth's control, such as the establishment of a Primates' Standing Committee. The essential common interest of Rowan Williams and ECUSA/TEC becomes clear, whatever their differences over the pace of change, in the closing paragraph of the Dublin Primates' statement where they affirm that "In our common life in Christ we are passionately committed to journeying together in honest conversation".
Writes Anglican commentator Charles Raven,"We might well ask ourselves what sort of Communion we are in when the chief passion of the Archbishop of Canterbury and those still willing to work with him is for "conversation". Why this preoccupation with interminable and inward looking dialogue? What about a passion for reaching the lost, for faithful teaching and preaching, for the glory and honor of Jesus Christ?
"However sincere or even passionate the Primates may feel themselves to be, this is actually 'dishonest conversation', which displaces the gospel and is spiritually dangerous. Fundamentally, this is because 'conversing' has come to replace 'confessing'."
In his book "Shadow Gospel", Raven demonstrates how Rowan Williams' methodology amounts to a sophisticated redefinition of orthodoxy as a process of dialogue rather than faithfulness to a deposit of faith with its associated church order and morality.
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