Archbishop of Canterbury's control over Anglicans 'is ending'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Archbishop of Canterbury's control over Anglicans 'is ending'*
By Martin Beckford
Religious Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:49AM BST 21/06/2008
The Archbishop of Canterbury's control over the worldwide Anglican
Communion is ending as the balance of power shifts to developing
countries, according to a leading conservative.
The Rt Rev Robert Duncan, the Bishop of Pittsburgh, echoed the words of
other traditionalists who have warned this week that the church is
"disintegrating" and faces a historic split over homosexuality and
same-sex unions.
Speaking at a breakaway summit in Jerusalem, he said all Anglicans face
the choice of remaining true to Scripture or following liberals on a
road to "disunity and destruction".
Bishop Duncan claimed the "crisis" over sexuality called for a new
settlement of Anglicanism similar to that which formed the current
church in the Reformation.
He said the new church would not be British or Western, based around the
Archbishop of Canterbury, but would be "post-colonial" and would be
driven mainly by the Global South - Africa, Asia and South America.
In a speech delivered to leaders of the Gafcon conference, Bishop Duncan
said: "We who are gathered here recognise that the Reformation
settlement of Anglicanism has disintegrated.
"We know that we are at a turning point in Anglican history, a place
where two roads diverge."
He said those in the Episcopal Church of America have "wilfully chosen"
the wrong road by ordaining the first openly homosexual bishop, the Rt
Rev Gene Robinson, in 2003.
Bishop Duncan said this had led to a "collapse" of the old Anglicanism
which needs to be replaced with a "Global (Post-Colonial) Settlement of
Anglicanism".
"The role first played by the English Parliament, and successively by
the Lambeth Conference and the Primates Meeting, cannot be dispensed
with in any coherent future for Anglicanism.
"What emerges as an ecclesiological structure, we may be sure, will be
neither British nor Western."
He said a meeting of African bishops in 2004 showed how Anglicanism had
to develop.
"The inexorable shift of power from Britain and the West to the Global
South cannot be stopped," he said.
Bishop Duncan said the new "global" communion, which will be worked on
at Gafcon, will include discussions on an Anglican "covenant" which
would give leaders the power to discipline or even expel churches which
go against their teachings on sexuality.
As The Daily Telegraph reported, one of the leading figures at Gafcon,
Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Primate of Nigeria, has stated in a
conference document that "there is no longer any hope for a unified
Communion" because of divisions over homosexual clergy and same-sex unions.
The booklet, supported by the heads of key African churches including
Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda, who represent almost half of Anglican
worshippers, is to be discussed in a week-long conference of more than
1,000 Anglican leaders in Jerusalem next week.