UPDATED on 9 May
Continued from here.
Difficulties in the final business session of the meeting are reported by both our regular sources:
Read both accounts to try to understand what happened.
The closing press conference could not be live streamed due to technical difficulties. A recording of it was made, and can be viewed here. However, at present this recording appears to have no sound.
Update
Andrew Atherstone has published his account of the meeting: What really happened at the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC 17)?
Do read all of this.
Wow, sounds like a lot of drama! It’s really great that ACC-17 lifts up the part of Lambeth 1.10 that involves recognizing us as children of God and promises to listen to us. And that provinces from countries that violate the human rights of LGBTQ+ will be a part of the discussion. It was touching that they could move through the differences to a point where Bishop Wawera and Bishop Konieczny both felt that it had been worked out gracefully.
It’s also good to lift up all marginalized people. Our salvation and well being are interdependent.
Was the preamble accepted or rejected?
On a careful reading of the articles, one could assume that the original preamble was accepted in a revised form.
Interesting to see Welby’s dishonest non-apology: “where I have made mistakes I apologise” includes “I didn’t make mistakes, so I’m not apologising, but I would if I had”. And it reads like that is his intent this time: something that can be spin as an apology, but is a dog-whistle “but not really” to his conservative friends.
And he’s not apologising for the debacle of not inviting people, he’s apologising for getting caught and people being upset (subtext: wrongly). If this is what leadership and moral courage look like, it’s a pretty low hurdle to get over.
Actually, my reading is that his words can just as easily – and in some quarters will be – taken as apologising for inviting bishops in same sex marriages.
Yes, it was one of those “apologies” that can be read just about any way. My most generous view is that he really is at a loss. This whole bit of inviting gay bishops but not their spouses can only be viewed as a compromise by people who don’t view us LGBTQ+ as people, people who would be hurt (most especially the children of LGBTQ+ couples). We’re not people but objects that can be bartered. I wish that the anti-gay archbishops could see that this is also how we treat the poor and treating us with dignity is a step… Read more »
Agreed—suggests he must have made a mistake but doesn’t say what it was!
Archbishop Welby continues to perfect the “non-apology apology” as an ecclesiastical art form:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/rev-jules-gomes-the-church-of-england-masters-the-non-apology/
I’m still trying to make progress on the invitation to read both accounts to understand what happened here… Maybe the most disturbing thing, though, is that attempt by Dr Andrew Atherstone to set up a committee to decide what is and what is not OK to believe as an Anglican. It could so easily have gone through – inquisition, anyone? – but for the switch from ‘verbal consent’ to a count, at which point quite a high proportion of abstentions kicked in: “The resolution was judged to have been accepted by general, verbal consent, but Bishop Konieczny, supported by more… Read more »
The suggestion that LGBTI Christians can be ‘welcomed’ but not ‘included’… I just realised that comes from the same Dr Andrew Atherstone who was one of the signatories to the letter from ‘Concerned Anglicans’ to the bishops of Oxford diocese, https://www.oxforddef.co.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=225135 That letter offered a ‘warm welcome’ to LGBTI Christians but suggested it was right to exclude them from receiving baptism or communion, and from leadership roles. On my reading, it also supported excluding anyone who even ‘advocated’ ‘lifestyles that are not consistent with New Testament teaching’. That’s such a ‘warm’ welcome… Does re-reading the letter suggest Dr Atherstone was… Read more »
The Church of England may have done it (better or worse), but the ACC’s scope is the whole Anglican Communion and it hasn’t been done throughout the communion and there isn’t an inventory of what has been done. It needs to be done.
And wasnt’ the Atherstone proposed motion just another way of trying to sneak “the Covenant” in through the back door?
But does it need to be done? SCs cost the C of E a lot of money and (at least partly because of the nature of the events) had no outcome. And don’t seem to have moved anything in any direction.
Yes indeed, good for the bishop of Oklahoma! Thank you for making that connection between Atherstone and that hideous letter.
What a peculiar letter. Whatever one’s views on LGBT people in the church, what possible grounds could there be for limiting the participation of intersex individuals? Is this actually a view anyone holds?
This resolution from Andrew Atherstone was, according to the Church Times report, welcomed by Justin: “Archbishop Welby welcomed the resolution”. If the intention of Andrew’s last-minute resolution was to try to initiate a process for what was and was not allowed in the Anglican Communion – sounds like the controversial ‘Anglican Covenant’ all over again – and if as Bishop Konieczny suggested, this process might be used to decide who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’ of the Communion… then it would be interesting to know why Justin ‘welcomed’ it. Because Justin’s not naïve and his welcome of such a move might… Read more »
With the greatest regret, I have to ask: Hasn’t the ACC has outlived its usefulness? The only issue in reviewing the proceedings on which it seems to make a difference is safeguarding, and coordinating communion efforts, which could be done by a committee or individual in the ACO.
The ACC is the only one of the four so-called Instruments of Communion that has any lay representation.
So no, it has not outlived its usefulness—as we have just seen, when it did not kowtow to Welby but rather discussed his disinvitations formally. Which is exactly what he told the press earlier it could not do.
Political scientists would call this “checks and balances.” Very useful!
The ACC has made a vitally necessary contribution to Safeguarding in the Church: https://aco.org/media/347007/acc17-safe-church-commission-guidelines.pdf For example: ACC Guidelines – Section 2 – Page 15. “Procedures to determine the truth of allegations in complaints. “Where there are complaints against church workers, accountability requires procedures to decide fairly upon the truth of the allegations. These procedures need to be made known within the province…. Many years may pass before some complainants, particularly those who were abused as a child, are ready to make a complaint. The passing of time since the abuse is alleged to have occurred should normally not be a… Read more »
Agreed Richard. Let’s hope this work is taken up in all Provinces.
I have considerable sympathy with this Jeremy, but worry about an ecclesial structure where one instrument holds another to account for how invitations are issued to the spouses of members of a third instrument (which has no binding authority) … where in all this does anything actually happen?
“Ecclesial structure”?
Here’s a big hint: the Anglican Communion is not a unitary church. So do not go looking for structure—and Primates, do not try to impose anything of the kind.
Such concern for “walking together,” without any apparent concern for where we’re heading!
Andrew Atherstone’s account of the meeting is generally fair. He fails to register tht ACC worship follows the pattern of the host and the HKSKH follows Common Worship in a more literal way than most C of E Churches – certainly evangelical ones. He also betrays an ignorance of Anglican worship across much of Africa that is often extremely traditional and, in my experience, rarely has extempore prayer and hands raised. I think he is confusing African American worship. What is revealing is his surprise at the African response to a very mild motion proposed by Bishop Ed and amended… Read more »