Canary in the Coal Mine: The Episcopal Church

GJ - Canaries were once used in coal mines to warn the workers of methane and carbon monoxide. If the canary started to sway on its perch, or died, the miners left immediately. Today the Episcopal Church is serving as a similar warning to other denominations. All the Leftist, apostate political stunts described below are familiar to Lutherans - or should be. ELCA is already dissolving slowly, while apostate leaders cling to the ruinous doctrines, policies, and perverse disciplinary actions of the Episcopal leaders. The LCMS, WELS, and ELS are no different. See the commentary below on the worldwide situation of Episcopalians.

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Mirage in the Diplomat's Mind: the Myth of the Vibrant Western Anglican Church

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
11/5/2007

The Rev. Frederick Quinn, an American diplomat and Episcopal priest, believes that the current fractious nature of the Anglican Communion can be blamed on a narrow group of Global South primates including Peter Akinola (Nigeria) and Drexel Gomez (West Indies) who do not represent the breadth and depth of religion in Africa. Scripturally and structurally, it mirrors the remnants of a colonial church tradition, one where African bishops rigidly follow in the footsteps of a departed generation of autocratic British mentors, he said.

Quinn said the current Anglican Communion food fight is symptomatic of wider tensions produced by religious globalization. He described the myth of the "Global South" as a mirage in the desert.

"Global South" implies a monolithic body when, in reality, the group's membership appears to be porous, driven by a small number of special interest advocates primarily in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and their American franchise holders. Membership and financial data about the group is as difficult to come by as that of a corporation registered in the Cayman Islands. . The organization projects a billboard slogan -- North-South divide. Northern churches are cold, dwindling in numbers, and ignore the Bible. In contrast, the growing South is energetic, biblically correct, and the home of judges ready to declare what is acceptable practice throughout the Anglican Communion.

This slick North-South divide is no more accurate than numerous other discredited religious clash-of-civilization comparisons that have appeared and disappeared during recent centuries. Amartya Sen, the Pakistani-born Nobel-Prize-winning author, has warned about the dangers of such distorted religious reductionism. "The hope of harmony in the contemporary world lies to a great extent in a clearer understanding of the pluralities of human identity, and in the appreciation that they cut across each other and work against a sharp separation along one single hardened line of impenetrable division." (Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence, The Illusion of Destiny (New York: Norton, 2006), xiv.)

The Rev. Quinn clearly understands neither the theology of the Global South nor what separates them from the West.

First of all, the gospel came to African through two groups - The Church Missionary Society (Evangelical) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (Anglo-Catholic). These two groups divided up Africa and other areas of the world. Akinola (Nigeria) is a product of Evangelicalism, and Gomez (who is not African but Caribbean) is a product of the Anglo-Catholic movement. Both men are gospel driven. Theologically the Global South is monolithic. It is driven by the gospel which they will never compromise.

Four things drive them: The authority of Scripture, a gospel that changes peoples lives, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and cultural particularities embedded in worship that makes it distinctively African or Caribbean, but not necessarily Western.

The so called "rigid positions" of Akinola and Gomez are fictitious. First of all, these two men do not see eye to eye about the Anglican Communion itself. Akinola is ready to take his province out of the Anglican Communion while Gomez is not. In fact, Gomez made it clear to this writer that all the archbishops and bishops of the Anglican Communion should go to Lambeth next year so that the liberals could not try and reverse Resolution 1:10 passed in 1998. At this point in time, with an emerging ecclesial structure in North America that could lead to a full blown orthodox province, Akinola and his CAPA bishops just might blow off the present Anglican Communion altogether. A current Nigerian newspaper report says that Akinola and his province are seriously weighing whether or not they will boycott the Lambeth Conference next year. Akinola has called for a postponement of Lambeth to allow for a cooling off. Rowan Williams has rejected that option.

The possibility that the Province of Nigeria might leave the Anglican Communion was raised recently by Bishop Benjamin Kwashi of Jos (Nigeria), who told an Anglican audience in London that Nigeria must forget about Britain and the US. He pointedly referenced the fact that his primate, Peter Akinola, has the full backing of his Synod against gay unions and does not act alone. He then said, "If the Anglican Communion thought its problems would end with the demise of Akinola, they were wrong. We have looked to them in the past as the church from where the gospel came to us. But the evidence now suggests that they have turned the gospel upside down and that it is Britain that needs our help."

Perhaps the Rev. Quinn did not read that story.

Quinn said the Anglican Global South faction and their American supporters have missed an opportunity to draw on the rich contributions of the African American religious ethos, Pentecostal, liberation and other post-colonial theologies. Asian, Latin American and African Christians have been in the forefront of developing such forms of religious expression linking eternal truths with local settings and cultures.

Here again he is talking nonsense. Orthodox African Anglicans hold the same theology as African Americans (Baptists), Pentecostals and others, when it comes to their doctrine of salvation. Where they differ is that the Global South is distinctively Anglican, and being gospel driven is the fastest growing Protestant denomination in the Global South. Is Quinn asking them to give up their distinctively Anglican ethos for something else? In that case, they would not be Anglican.

Allow me to add a personal note here. More than 25 years ago, I worked as an associate pastor of a 1,000 member black church in NJ. I was the token white male. The service ran two hours each Sunday. The music was joyful and upbeat, the preaching biblical (and at least 40 minutes in length), the plate was passed around three times, and each service ended with an altar call. Fast forward to Eastern Nigeria. I am sitting in a church on Sunday morning. It is 9 am. The service lasts for six hours. There are three massed choirs. There are hour-long sermons from Scripture - biblical exegesis with practical application. The plate is not passed. You get up out of your seat and dance your way down the aisle and put your offering in a large basket. There are altar calls. This service is three times longer than an African-American service and six times longer than a regular white service.

The difference between Global South Anglicanism and Western Anglicanism is not primarily one of culture or worship styles. It is theological. It is the authority of Scripture from whence comes their views of sexuality, while it is Western Anglicanism, with its innovations, that has gone off the rails on faith and morals. Quinn has it all wrong. Cultural differences certainly, but the Book of Common Prayer and Scripture are at the heart of everything. To put it another way, Uganda Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi is just as home in my Episcopal parish in Paoli, PA,as my rector would be in the cathedral in Kampala. In fact, Archbishop Orombi taught us a couple of things about African worship that stick with me to this day.

"Nigeria's Akinola does not represent the rich, creative possibilities of African Christianity," writes Quinn. He cites one example: "In February 2006 Muslim-Christian riots broke out again in Nigeria. Akinola's widely circulated response said, 'May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly on violence in this nation.' As then president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, he added, if intimidation by Islamic fundamentalists continued, "CAN may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue.

"On June 19, 2007, Nigerians voted him (72 to 33) out of the presidency of the umbrella group representing more than 50 million Nigerian Christians, the Nigerian press reported. Akinola's abrasive style had cost him support, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Nigeria was drafted to replace him. In what was traditionally an automatic vote to make the outgoing leader vice president, the Association's 300-member general assembly similarly rejected Akinola. Nigerians cited his rigidity and intransigence toward Muslims as reasons why new leadership was needed."

Let us unscramble this. Akinola can be tough. His style is certainly "abrasive," but he is not stupid and he has the full backing of 18 million Nigerian Anglicans and his House of Bishops. His being voted out of CAN was as much a political act as say the transference of power in any American denomination, or changes of leadership within the NCC or WCC. This is not unique to Nigeria. Even presuming Akinola's style of leadership is tough, unyielding and arrogant, he is still far less arrogant than half the tyrannical revisionist bishops in the American House of Bishops, men and women who are doing their best to eviscerate the orthodox and wipe them out of the Episcopal Church! One has only to read endless VOL stories on how Charles E. Bennison ran the Diocese of PA for more than a decade. Quinn doesn't know the meaning of ecclesiastical white western Episcopal tyranny!

Being rejected by any body of persons is essentially a political act. It is not a reflection of their theology or the health of the church, which in Akinola's case is the healthiest province in the entire Anglican Communion and is growing at a fast clip. He already has 18 million plus members and plans to double that in three years. By contrast, the TEC, the CofE, the Anglican Church in Canada, the Anglican Church in Australia, and New Zealand put together might be the equivalent of three or four of his largest dioceses. And he has 18 archbishops!

Quinn talks about a conflict of interest over the drafting of an Anglican Covenant, and says Gomez should withdraw himself from the Design Group. Why? So Western Anglican liberals would have a clean sweep and write a Covenant to meet the pansexual needs of the US, Canada, England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, leaving out the fastest growing segment of Anglican Christianity, namely the Global South! Quinn talks about "a balanced, even-handed document". My God! What sort of even-handed document do you think the Anglican Consultative Council would produce if they had their way! The Africans, the Global South, the Southern Cone, orthodox Anglicans in Australia, the US would be left totally out in the cold, their voices would never be heard. The liberals, whose provinces are slowly withering and dying, would rule the day and literally force schism on the whole Anglican Communion, a schism that has already begun with the election of the homoerotic Gene Robinson to Bishop of New Hampshire.

No, the truth of the matter is that Quinn has it all wrong. Dead wrong. It is the theological and moral innovations of western pan-Anglicanism that is driving the whole Anglican Communion to the brink of schism, not Akinola, Gomez, Venables, Jensen or Duncan.

Quinn can spin it all he wants, but population growth numbers do widely favor the South, and the "southern" countries so-called "diversity of religious expressions" is more in his mind than in reality. There are no theological and moral differences between Akinola and Robert Duncan Bishop of Pittsburgh. Their worship style might reflect different cultures, but they are exactly on the same Prayer Book and Biblical page .

Quinn should know this as he watches the Episcopal Church break up over the next few months. American Episcopal dioceses are seeking ecclesiastical shelter from the very African provinces he mocks.

Quinn's day is done. So long as the spiritually deadening effects of homosexual practice continues to haunt the Anglican Communion then it is finished, because underneath that moral issue lies the authority of Scripture, the redeeming power of the gospel. Now that is a sword worth falling on and dying for.