OK, so the Windsor Report on saving the Anglican communion is out, and the spin is on.
John Shelby Spong (Newark Ret.) has, of course, to weigh in, heedless of the total lack of regard anyone in the Anglican Communion has for his views anymore. Earth to The Times: perhaps next time you could ask someone with a clue-- say, Lord Carey?
Conservatives outside the communion naturally denounced the report; for instance, there's this denuciad from the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion. To this sort of response, I can only reply, "well, um, yeah, you've already bailed out, so you've already taken the advice of the report." Or in the immortal words of Kevin Henkes, "Thank you for sharing, Victoria. Now put your head down."
The person whose opinion matters the most, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, has issued an essentially dismissive response. He and the other African bishops will be meeting next week; I can only imagine that their joint response will similarly negative. American conservative bishops and organizations also expressed disappointment with the (in their opinion) mild recommendations of the report. Various of the more moderate liberals are calling for that most modern of Anglican solutions, More Process. (Sorry, fellas: stalling isn't going to help.) Our friends at EDS have come up with this helpful guide for helping you to avoid reading the report and noticing that it's written in reasonably plain English.
And the people who caused all the trouble in the first place? They are unrepentant.
I'd like to think that the Most Rev. Frank Griswold, in issuing his statement, is simply clueless about the fact that he doesn't speak for his church anymore. Alas, I must believe that the presiding bishop is nothing more than a tool of the radical liberals. What the report asks is mostly a small thing, yet Griswold, Chane, and various other bishops and dioceses who pushed Robinson to the fore can't bring themselves to do anything that the report asks them to do.
A lot of conservatives have said that the report doesn't have any teeth (or have made cracks about dentures). I think this is incorrect. The last paragraph essentially says, "If these things can't be done, there's no hope for the communion as it stands." Therefore, Eames & Co. have in essence prepared the groundwork for the division of the communion. The important question now, as I see it, is where the divisions fall.
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Since the Bishops who promised to listen to the experience of gay people (a promise they made in the very sexuality resolution of Lambeth 1998) were making a lying promise, and since Uganda is now about to discipline one of its bishops for actually saying he will listen to gay people seriously, I don't think it's all so one sided about "the people who caused all the trouble in the first place."
I'm tired of hearing people say that treating me as an equal human being is "causing trouble", and that the people who want to kick me and kill me are not.
The people causing trouble are the people who are lying, with Akinola at the front of the list.
Meanwhile, the Episcopal Church did consult with the rest of the Anglican Communion. Consultation and listening do not require agreement. We have listened and seriously considered. Anyone who heard the debates in GC in 2003 couldn't think otherwise. Listen is not the same as obey; consult is not the same as ask for permission.
And we have no obligation to obey those who lie to us, or to ask them for permission when they are busy trying to have us killed.
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