For What Can We Be Thankful?

Commentary by Robin G. Jordan

At the recent African Anglican Bishops Conference representatives of Trinity Episcopal Church, Wall Street, showed up without an invitation. According to these representatives, Trinity has had a change of heart. It will provide financial aid to any interested African church, no strings attached. What accounts for this shift in policy, this new attitude of altruism on the part of Trinity—a movement of the Holy Spirit? Or something more sinister? What do police and district attorneys warn the public about con artists? If the offer sounds too good to be true, it is not! What does Trinity and the Episcopal Church USA gain from giving money to those African provinces willing to take it. Revisionists in the ECUSA have long held the belief that while the African bishops will loudly protest revisionist doctrinal innovations, the Africans will eventually acquiesce to these innovations "We are the wealthiest church in the Anglican Communion," they say, "The African churches need our money. The whole Communion needs our money." The motive behind Trinity’s change of heart would appear to be to encourage African dependence upon American money. Some African churches like Burundi have displayed a willingness to accept that money. The revisionist strategy is to drive a wedge between the African provinces and to win support for their cause among the African bishops.

This strategy has worked with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who is dependent upon money from the ECUSA to run his office and to fund his pet projects. He has demonstrated that he has no qualms about accepting funds from 815 or slipping across the Atlantic to raise funds in the United States. While Williams might claim that no impropriety is involved in his acceptance of money from the ECUSA or fund-raising in this country, what he is doing has the appearance of impropriety. The political scandals of the last two decades have taught Americans that those who wish to lead us must not only avoid improper conduct but the appearance of that conduct. It is also hard to imagine that the ready availability of money from these sources does not have some kind of influence upon Williams’ thinking and his attitude toward the ECUSA. Money has the power to corrupt.

Williams, it must be noted, while he is not as direct in promoting revisionist views, shares those views with the American revisionist bishops. He is a leader of the Affirming Catholic movement in the Church of England. He has published essays advocating homosexual relationships. He himself has ordained to the priesthood a gay man without investigating whether this man was celibate. An oversight? Or indifference? Williams signed off on the controversial appointment of a leading Church of England "gay rights" advocate Jeffrey Johns, a gay man of questionable celibacy, as the bishop of Reading. He later asked Johns, an Affirming Catholic movement leader and long-time friend, to step down when news of the appointment elicited a strong adverse reaction from Oxford evangelicals. He gave his approval to the subsequent appointment of Johns as dean of St. Albans, itself a controversial appointment. After calling an extraordinary meeting of the Anglican primates in response to the reaction of global South Anglicans to the election and confirmation of a non-celibate gay man as the bishop of New Hampshire, he forced Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola to receive communion with ECUSA Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, threatening to not meet with Akinola and the other global South bishops who did not want to receive communion with Griswold. Griswold, after signing a document in which he agreed with the other primates that the consecration of V. Gene Robinson should not proceed, flew home to preside over that consecration, claiming that it was expected of him. Rather than take disciplinary action against the ECUSA as mandated by Scripture, Williams appointed the Lambeth Commission on Communion under the chairmanship of the Bishop of Amargh Robin Eames, a revisionist. This commission produced the toothless Windsor Report, a report which both revisionist and orthodox Anglicans have rejected. Williams also failed to attend the historic first African Anglican Bishops Conference even though he had been invited to this conference on two occasions by the conference organizers and the conference itself had been planned for at least a year. He claimed that he was too busy and sent a representative in his place. Williams barely escaped a vote of censure at the African Anglican Bishops Conference over what the African bishops viewed as a deliberate snub. Williams clearly has lost the trust of many Anglican evangelicals in the ECUSA and the Church of England and that of many global South Anglicans. Without this trust he cannot expect them to follow his leadership.

The growing pressure in the Church of England for a liberal Archbishop of York to replace the outgoing David Hope does not bode well for a successful resolution of the present crisis in the Anglican Communion. The appointment of a liberal to that see is likely to further alienate the Anglican evangelicals and the global South Anglicans, the two largest groups in the Anglican Communion. It may lead to the further withholding of funds from the Church of England by evangelical parishes. The global South Anglican provinces can be expected to re-evaluate their ties with the Church of England.

The February Primates Meeting is being held in Ireland. As one commentator David Virtue has pointed out, this is Robin Eames’ home turf. In a recent commentary Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat, he writes, "…this writer knows, from history, that African Archbishops will never offend the Primate of a country whose hospitality they are enjoying. That is culturally unacceptable. Will they politely decline and quietly leave when the Eucharist is passed to them? One can only admire the brilliance and the gall of the Anglican Consultative Council mandarins that pulled this one off." [1]

This meeting is doomed from the outset. Nothing of merit can be expected to come out of it. In the meantime the ECUSA revisionist representative on the Lambeth Commission, Mark Dyer, is claiming that nothing is wrong in the ECUSA. The South African revisionist representative on the Commission is claiming that the Anglican Communion is in the process of reception in regards to the blessing of same-sex unions and "gay marriage". In the Anglican Church of Canada the House of Bishops have adopted a scheme of episcopal oversight for dissenting parishes that treats the wide-spread blessing of same-sex relationships in that church as a foregone conclusion. The Diocese of New Westminster has announced that a seventh parish will begin blessing same-sex partnerships. In the ECUSA revisionist bishops continue to ordain non-celibate homosexuals and to authorize same-sex blessings. A number of these bishops have commissioned rites for these blessings.

While the orthodox are often accused by the revisionists of being power-hungry and seeking to engineer a take-over of the ECUSA, such accusations seem to be designed to draw attention away from the ongoing efforts of the revisionist in this direction. Having gained control of most of the ECUSA dioceses, the revisionists are seeking to consolidate their control of these dioceses while endeavoring to gain control of those that are divided or outside their sphere of influence. Via Media, a church-wide network of revisionist clergy and lay persons and their corporatist allies, portraying itself as a "Grassroots movement," has been involved in efforts to replace outgoing bishops in a number of dioceses with revisionists or those sympathetic to the revisionist cause and to reverse the actions of diocesan conventions repudiating the actions of the 2003 General Convention, withholding funds from the national church, and affiliating the diocese with the Anglican Communion Network. Orthodox clergy and congregations have been prohibited from joining orthodox bodies like the American Anglican Council and the Anglican Communion Network by revisionist bishops. A number of orthodox clergy and congregations have sought the oversight of orthodox global South bishops and are involved in litigation over parish property. A number have chosen to leave the property behind and to minister without it. The revisionists show no sign of reversing course. The ECUSA House of Bishops is preparing a defense of its confirmation and consecration of Gene Robinson. The revisionists see themselves as champions of marginalized groups in the Anglican Communion, spearheading much needed progressive reforms in that body. Those who reject their views on solid Biblical grounds they dismiss as motivated by prejudice and homophobia. While often accusing the orthodox of arrogance, their claims of intellectual and moral superiority betray their own arrogant attitude.

A wealthy American church trying to buy the support of poor African provinces.
A liberal Archbishop of Canterbury who cannot be trusted.

Growing pressure for a liberal Archbishop of York.

The relentless revisionist assault upon orthodox Anglicans in the ECUSA.

A toothless report.

Leading African bishops too polite to take strong measures.

For what then can orthodox Anglicans in the ECUSA and outside that church be thankful?

We can be thankful for orthodox global South primates like the Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola, Archbishop of Rwanda Emmanuel Kolini, Archbishop of Uganda Henry Orombi, and Archbishop of South East Asia Yong Ping Chung who have come to the aid of embattled orthodox Anglicans in the ECUSA.

We can be thankful for orthodox Anglican bishops like John Rodgers, T. J. Johnston, Chuck Murphy, Bill Wantland, and Bob Duncan who have stood in the gap.

We can be thankful for the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins and the new life which is ours by faith in him.

We can be thankful for the words of the Bible and the sacrament of the Holy Communion, by which our faith is quickened and strengthened.

We can be thankful for the discovery that a church is not a building but a group of faithful Christians walking together in Christ, united by his Holy Spirit, and committed to the Great Commission.

We can be thankful for those brothers and sisters in Christ of other denominations who have offered us their sanctuaries for our worship, who have provided us with encouragement and practical help in innumerable ways.

We can be thankful for the adventure of sharing Christ with others, the challenge of being on the front lines in the advancement of God’s Kingdom. We can be thankful for the fresh purpose God has given to our lives. We can be thankful for the sense of fulfillment we experience when we are carrying out the Great Commission, reaching the lost for the Lord and making disciples of them.

We can be thankful for the spiritual growth that comes with being a Great Commission Christian. We can be thankful for the revitalized Scripture reading—the "fresh glimpses into God’s character and truth," the growing intimacy with God. We can be thankful for the renewed prayer life and the heart-felt worship. We can be thankful for our heightened awareness of our need for personal purity. We can be thankful for the fresh insights we have received into how our church can help us grow; how our church may need to change in order to become more up-to-date, efficient and productive; and how our church needs to hold onto abiding truths.

We can be thankful for our strengthened confidence in our beliefs. We can be thankful for the growing ability to articulate our faith. We can be thankful for the "enduring investments" that we are making in heaven.

We can be thankful for the honor of being God’s agents, of speaking on His behalf, of being His ambassadors. [2]

We can be thankful for the sudden awakening from our spiritual lethargy. We can be thankful for the adversities in which we find ourselves, which God has permitted in our lives so that we can become fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ--Great Commission Christians. We may loose our 200 year old church buildings but we will gain the Kingdom of God!

O Lord, we give you thanks for all your gifts to us. Especially we give you thanks for the gift of a new life in Your Son. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

End Notes:
1. David Virtue, Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat (VirtueOnline: November 2004)
2. Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg, Becoming a Contagious Christian (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 1994) 26-36