Andrew Brown: The Anglican Communion is Dead

 Andrew Brown’s Guardian blog offers a provocatively titled essay, “It started as a split over gay clergy. But now the Anglican Communion is dead.” That title is a bit of an exaggeration; Brown’s point is better captured in his opening sentence: “What, you gave a schism and nobody came?” He argues that people in the Church of England—laypeople, anyway—are quite indifferent to GAFCON and the Anglican Mission in England.

I was particularly interested in this paragraph:

They [conservatives] feel they are part of the global, “orthodox” mainstream of Christianity. But almost the only decisive act of Rowan Williams’ time in office was the rejection, by a clear majority of committed churchgoers, of his “covenant”–a plan to bind the Church of England into the structures of the rest of the Anglican Communion. No one here wants to be told what to do by the Church of Nigeria, however many Anglicans there are there and however sincerely they seem to hate gay people.

From my vantage point in the United States, I cannot be sure that Brown is reading public opinion correctly, but I suspect he is. I certainly hope he is.

Wakefield diocese commentary

Andrew Brown from the Guardian reports:

The latest crop of side links in the blog have some fascinating things there, to which I don't have time to do justice. Perhaps the most important, or newsy, is the decision by the diocese of Wakefield to reject the proposed Anglican Covenant. If this is repeated across the rest of the Church of England's 44 dioceses, it will mark the final, crushing failure of Rowan Williams' foreign policy. Good riddance, too, say I. Although the general synod voted in favour of this, that was largely out of sympathy for the Archbishop, and to show that they at least take him seriously even if no one else now does. Out in the diocesan synods there is no sympathy vote and the whole absurd and cumbersome structure is considered on its merits.

And from Lesley's Blog:

I am both amazed and delighted that the Anglican Covenant was defeated in Wakefield. Some of us spent time scrabbling to get information about what happened. I didn't even know that the debate was happening. Some dioceses have lots of people who are part of our 'No Anglican Covenant' campaign, but Wakefield is certainly not one of them. I will have to visit the town when I am better to pay tribute, it has now been dubbed 'Wakeful'.

Read the rest HERE.