A primary question that must be asked is what has kept the Communion together for so long. The answer is, I believe, institutional loyalty. While everyone knows you don't need to go through Canterbury to get to Jesus, it is hard to break filial ties with someone you have loved for nearly 100 years. Case in point: Many years ago I visited the Diocese of Sokoto in Northwest Nigeria. The bishop entertained us, and in his office was a large portrait behind his desk of the first CMS British missionary who brought the Gospel to his people. Nigerians don't soon forget those who brought the Good News to them, so one can imagine the importance of these historic ties. But the question now is, in light of what has subsequently transpired in the Communion, why the loyalty? Faithfulness to Jesus and the Gospel trumps such loyalty where apostasy is concerned.

An enormous sea change has occurred in the life of the Anglican Communion--a change of tsunami-like proportions.

In 2003, the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly homosexual priest to the episcopacy in the person of Gene Robinson. This caused more than 200,000 Episcopalians to flee TEC over the following ten years. For the Global South, it was the final straw, and the ACNA was born out this dissent. 120,000 Anglicans and 31 dioceses later, the North American Anglican denomination is going strong.

In 2007, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the issues were laid out in the open, and the Episcopal Church was called to repentance and given a deadline of September 30th to drop the lawsuits that they were pursuing and to return to the teaching, faith, and practice of historic Anglicanism. This never happened. The deadline was re-interpreted by Archbishop Rowan Williams as not an actual deadline, and the discipline was eviscerated by his sending out the invitations to the Lambeth Conference before the Episcopal Church had addressed the Primates' conditions. It was a duplicity that the orthodox Anglican Primates never forgot. A third of them refused to attend the 2008 Lambeth Conference. GAFCON was born at the same time.

Fast forward to 2015, and once again we are at a divide in the Anglican road. The lawsuits and depositions facing those who are fleeing TEC continue. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori has spent more than $40 million dollars on lawyers to maintain this pressure, relying on a "litigate till they capitulate" strategy. It is not working, but the expenditures continue even as TEC seems to be losing the property wars in five dioceses.

This past week, the GAFCON primates met in Cairo with Archbishop Justin Welby, who had just flown in from the U.S., where he was warmly greeted by not one but three U. S. Presiding Bishops at the re-opening of a destroyed chapel on the grounds of Virginia Theological Seminary. (A photo of the four of them standing together along with Dean Ian Markham of the Seminary spoke volumes.)

In Cairo, Welby met with the orthodox wing (no, they are not fundamentalists) of the Anglican Communion, who are clearly the numerical majority in the Communion. In fact, four African provinces--Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda--make up more than 70% of the Communion. Notably absent was the primate of the largest province in the Communion, the Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh of Nigeria, whose 20 million member province is the largest and most influential. His absence spoke volumes.

Also present by invitation was ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach. The purpose of his invitation was to show that he was a legitimate Anglican archbishop in the eyes of the GAFCON primates. In Cairo, he was declared an "official partner" of the Global South with both voice and vote, and he participated fully in the meeting. This is welcome news indeed for North American Anglicans who have felt ostracized, ignored, demeaned, and humiliated by the TEC bishops.

It should be noted that not all Global South archbishops are on board with GAFCON, but all GAFCON archbishops are members of the Global South.

Also present for the occasion was Bishop John Chew, Global South Steering Committee member and former archbishop of Singapore. He has never been fully on board with GAFCON and fought strenuously to keep the Communion together when Archbishop Rowan Williams was ABC. I was told he worked assiduously behind the scenes in Cairo to make sure Welby was not offended by the appearance of Archbishop Beach and that the GAFCON primates would not put a gun to Welby's head with a "take it or leave it" approach to the ABC's call to Canterbury in January.

Archbishop Foley Beach told VOL that Welby shook his hand "and treated me with respect and Christian fidelity."

However, Welby did not publicly recognize Beach as a fellow Anglican archbishop and made no indication that he would recognize him in Canterbury next year.

Furthermore, a story that I wrote (it has had nearly 5,000 hits) said that the first item on the agenda in Canterbury would be the discipline of The Episcopal Church (and presumably the Anglican Church of Canada). This apparently is not true now. The first item on the agenda will be to discuss what is actually going to be on the agenda.

It is apparent that Welby has no interest whatsoever in disciplining TEC and the ACoC for their departure from the faith, and he will work to keep everyone at the table.

He might reflect on whether history is on his side in that regard. What Welby is doing is trying to square the circle, as if Athanasius had tried to harmonize orthodoxy and Arianism. They are simply incompatible--like oil and water.

Furthermore, any attempt to broker the ACNA into the Communion would require the green light from the Anglican Communion Office held by Secretary General Josiah Fearon, and that will never happen. Fearon's predecessor, Kenneth Kearon, would never allow "two integrities" to exist on the same (North American) soil for a number of reasons. First, as a liberal, he hated the ACNA. Secondly, he realized that TEC drops nearly $1 million a year on the ACO to keep it afloat. Former ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan knew that and never applied for admittance.

The communique issued by the Primates in Cairo publicly rebuked The Episcopal Church for their unilateral decisions taken by the last General Convention of the Episcopal Church (TEC) to redefine marriage and to accept same-sex marriages (Resolutions A036 and A054). The Primates stated, "We see these latest resolutions as a clear departure from not only the accepted traditional teaching of the Anglican Communion, but also from that of the one Holy, Universal, and Apostolic Church, which upholds the scriptural view of marriage between one man and one woman. (Lambeth Resolution 1:10, 1998.)"

However, there is still a loyalty to Lambeth that is incomprehensible in an age of cultural and theological diversity. The mantra that one doesn't need to go through Canterbury to get to Jesus is true, but the power of the club still holds fast, and no one wants to be left outside with their faces pressed to the window looking in. So where is the courage of the Global South in confronting Welby regarding the apostasies of TEC and the ACoC?

The crux for Welby is surely whether he wants to be faithful to Jesus and the Gospel, or to a fictional church unity. TEC preaches "another gospel" and is what St. Paul called "accursed" (Gal. 1: 6--9). For Welby to accommodate it is a direct contradiction of his evangelistic/Alpha/HTB allegiance. Will compromising the gospel, betraying Jesus, and weakening the faith be a faithful response to the Communion?

Will Welby come loaded in January with professional reconcilers and "facilitators" to smooth the way in the hopes that faux reconciliation can be worked out to "save" the Communion? How can that possibly work? St. Paul's admonition still stands. TEC and the ACoC preaches "another gospel" that is no gospel at all.

Even supposing Beach is allowed to stay for the full duration and is not politely told to leave after the first day, should all the orthodox players stay for the entirety of the meeting, raising clear biblical reasons why this should be rejected?

"But . . . there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction (2 Peter 2:1).

For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough(2 Cor. 11:4).

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him (Titus 3:10)."

Furthermore, will Welby heed the call of Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz, who is on record saying that Archbishop Beach would only be there at the beginning and then would be dismissed, allowing other more important issues to be put on the table--like climate change?

The crux of the matter for the Global South leaders is courage. If they fudge now, after all they have said and been through at one primatial gathering after another, they will only betray their lingering colonial subservience and weaken their professed public stands by showing them up as toothless statements. Now is not the time to back down. Now is the time for clarity and action.

A FEDERATION?

One other possibility is a "federation" model for global Anglicanism. Could or would the archbishops recognize that the Anglican Communion is now over? Could a loose federation of provinces held together by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the locus and hub of the wheel, with each spoke (the provinces) recognizing him as their filial leader but not each other, be a way forward? They meet together but do not speak or take communion together (this actually happened at at least one Primatial gathering in Dromantine).

As Michael Brown noted in the Guardian, "This effectively abandons any claim to respect provincial interdependence (not to mention any doctrinal or ethical basis for unity which is clearly so important for many of the provinces whether in terms of the Jerusalem Declaration or the broader wording in Section One of the Covenant). Instead it gives unfettered freedom to provincial autonomy on the basis that we must all simply 'agree to disagree', thereby put the past divisions behind us, and then, it is argued, still continue to meet together when gathered by Canterbury and maintain the bonds which have held us together and are so vital for many provinces in their difficult contexts."

Under this new paradigm, the archbishops would speak only through the ABC but never to each other. What will not work is the status quo. However a federation still does not address the underlying theological and ecclesiological issues that have had the warring parties at each other's throats for more than two decades. It has always been about how we understand the faith once for all delivered to the saints and that does not included pluriform truths.

Archbishop Welby, the Global South archbishops, and Archbishop Beach must all now critically examine their actions before the Lord and before history. This is not a time for prevarication. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada are both lost causes, and they are slowly but surely dying. This is the judgement of God.

It will require enormous courage from Welby to stand firm on Scripture as he faces an openly rebellious Communion. Will he fully recognize and embrace Archbishop Foley Beach? Will he discipline TEC and the ACoC in January in Canterbury? We await his actions and his answer.

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