What part if any does social justice have in the Gospel?
Surely it is true
The gospel is the promise of right relationship with God by no doing of our own, is peace and joy and fullness in Jesus Christ crucified and raised from the dead, who is present to us and for us here and now in the Word proclaimed in the reading/preaching and received in, with, and under the bread and wine. Jesus Christ himself is the Good News!
That is, the good news is not just a bunch of words and movements--as a promise might be viewed made on its own--but an actual presence"here and now" of God in Christ through the Spirit, or "peace and joy and fullness in Jesus Christ". So we can say the real person of Jesus himself is the Gospel. I hope that much is not controversial.
But then, what follows? Can we--should we--say that social justice is distinct from the Gospel, an effect of it rather than an item contituting it? No.
This is true as well, I should think:
When what is good for the community is not also good for an entire organ thereof, what we have identified as good as such for the community then is also somehow sinful and certainly not the fullness of God's gospel and will.
That is, a dualism between the good of the church and social justice is false; at least this is how I read Christopher.
So, to pick on Derek a little, I think this is off the mark:
But our preaching and our teaching becomes disoriented if somehow the logical corollary becomes the focus and the central thesis from which it proceeds is obscured. The Church’s primary responsibility is the proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel, then the works of mercy that flow from this revelation. To preach the works alone, or to assume that the connection between the faith and the works is obvious and need not be said is to risk corruption of the Gospel with which we have been entrusted.
The primary responsibility of the church is not preaching and proclaiming alone, of course, but sacramental--the very existence of the church is bound up with the Eucharist and Baptism. Works do not merely flow from the sacraments of the church; they constitute them. Without works, there could not be any material signs of grace. This is implied too by the Offering which formally begins the Eucharist, as distinct from the Proclamation of the Word. It is the very works of the congregation, and through these works their very lives, that are sanctified and brought into the real presence of Christ--and the Father more importantly--through the Eucharist. Hence we can speak meaningfully of a sending at the end of the Eucharistic liturgy that has the real presence of Christ continue with us outside the building and in the secular world. Or what is much the same, the church continues to exist throughout the rest of the week. We should see the action of the Eucharist and the rest of our lives as a whole.
But injustice is inconsistent with the real presence of Christ. This is not a matter merely of our moral response to the Gospel. The kerygma/didache distinction is more rational than real;
worship without justice is worthless. Hence we pass the peace before beginning the Eucharist proper, and confess our sins, begging forgiveness. Surely if discerning the body--the presence of God--is a precondition of receiving the Body and Blood of our Savior, and this discernment requires repentance, we should beware of putting injustice out of mind. Receiving in faith--entering into the real presence--is impossible without repentance; presumption to the contrary is sin. Without desiring justice in the liturgy of the Eucharist, there is no actual Eucharist. It is strange then to separate them; it would seem better to see justice as partially constituting the reception of the Eucharist; call it "infused" or "imparted" justice: no matter.
For any sin is social injustice, and any righteousness social justice. In addition to any human or mortal sinned against, we are always in the presence of the Holy, Holy, Holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It has been a clear implication of the doctrine of the church from its earliest days that any sin is at least sin among at least four persons, and at least between the sinner and God. Or: sin always affects communion, our being with God in three persons. It is incoherent to see the quality of communion apart from Holy Communion, and thus to see justice as apart from the Gospel.
More From Williams
Does Archbishop Williams' clarification via Lambeth Palace do anything to remove the perception some have that he is holding the Communion up to the fire of a very strange doctrine?
No; the key point he made earlier is left intact here: the diocese is the basic unit of the church, and the province is a convenience of great practical significance, but no necessity. In effect, the clarification underlines his key point by indicating it was not an unintended accident that came out in the letter to Howe, but is instead a settled view held with conviction.
Note this strong language from the clarification; it claims the original letter voiced
a response reiterating [a]a basic presupposition of [b]what the Archbishop believes to be [c]the theology of the Church.
Well, we are right to suspect the letter to Howe draws on his ecclesiology (and his ecclesiology is "the" ecclesiology ?!?); [c] confirms this. Moreover, the letter is based on basic presuppositions (from [a]) of his ecclesiology. Basicality is a slippery notion, but in this context it is not encouraging. That is, one might have thought that Williams might be open to the plausibility of other, contrary views more in the line of normative Anglican tradition; apparently he is not. His judgement here is a settled matter, a matter of basic premises from which one would start.
But note too that this is acknowledged (in [b]) to be the Archbishop's own opinion, his personal doxa, a private judgement. It is not said to be the opinion of the CoE, the AC, the ACC, the Primates, the Church universal, or any formal, communal eccesial entity. That is in tension, to say the least, with other claims made in the clarification: more on that later.
Recall when he once showed great reluctance to act while taking private and controversial opinions as premises--namely those permissive toward same sex unions. Then he claimed that duty to his office precluded it--as a point of catholic churchmanship even. He distinguished between the offices of a prophet and bishop. Those were the days! Days gone by. Apparently those fine distinctions hold no longer, or else they are being applied with curious--even aggressive--selectivity, as he now is ready to act on a private understanding of the church manifestly contrary to what had been the principal cluster of mainstream Anglican views.
His selectivity with principle is aggressive because in these two statements he adds considerable momentum to the separatist movement by validating their basic strategy. He implies the national church is a convenient, but expendable, abstraction whose dioceses--identity intact--can be reorganized into new provinces or new ecclesial entities as it pleases them and the rest of the Communion. If that isn't a green light to Fort Worth and others, what is?
Thus the clarification notes
The primary point was that – theologically and sacramentally speaking – a priest is related in the first place to his/her bishop directly, not through the structure of the national church; that structure serves the dioceses. The diocese is more than a ‘local branch’ of a national organisation.
There is little common ground here with the notion that dioceses are creatures of the provinces of which they are a part, unable to exist on their own apart from them, or in principle unable to secede with their identity intact. Satisfying "is a member of the Episcopal Church" is neat-o but accidental.
That may come as news to some deacons, priests and bishops, who might think they have some ground for allegiance to the national church over and above the diocese. No; it follows, there is no national church for Williams, except in a secondary and derivative sense.
Again, the clarification notes,
[d] The provincial structure is significant, not least for the administration of a uniform canon law and a range of practical functions; Dr Williams is not encouraging anyone to ignore this, [e] simply to understand the theological priorities which have been articulated in a number of ecumenical agreements, and [f] in the light of this not to increase the level of confusion and fragmentation in the church.
Part [d] reiterates Williams' key point with force. The significance of the province is merely instrumental; it is not a church in itself. It has administrative and practical functions that are important--and that is it. Period.
Thus, what might be meant by "fragmentation of the church" in [f]? On my reading of Williams, "church" there does not refer to "The Episcopal Church". There is no such church according to him. Its primary referent is the communion of dioceses, where communion of provinces is apparently taken merely to supervene on the relationship of the dioceses.
Finally, part [e] worries me. I have said a couple of times now that Williams' understanding of the church is not ours: not in the mainstream of normative Anglican tradition. It is private, I claimed, and suspect enough on that account alone. However, he seems to think it is not private. It is rather, he claims, the position on the nature of the church we have committed ourselves to apart from this controversy in ecumenical conversation. Is that right?
No; the key point he made earlier is left intact here: the diocese is the basic unit of the church, and the province is a convenience of great practical significance, but no necessity. In effect, the clarification underlines his key point by indicating it was not an unintended accident that came out in the letter to Howe, but is instead a settled view held with conviction.
Note this strong language from the clarification; it claims the original letter voiced
a response reiterating [a]a basic presupposition of [b]what the Archbishop believes to be [c]the theology of the Church.
Well, we are right to suspect the letter to Howe draws on his ecclesiology (and his ecclesiology is "the" ecclesiology ?!?); [c] confirms this. Moreover, the letter is based on basic presuppositions (from [a]) of his ecclesiology. Basicality is a slippery notion, but in this context it is not encouraging. That is, one might have thought that Williams might be open to the plausibility of other, contrary views more in the line of normative Anglican tradition; apparently he is not. His judgement here is a settled matter, a matter of basic premises from which one would start.
But note too that this is acknowledged (in [b]) to be the Archbishop's own opinion, his personal doxa, a private judgement. It is not said to be the opinion of the CoE, the AC, the ACC, the Primates, the Church universal, or any formal, communal eccesial entity. That is in tension, to say the least, with other claims made in the clarification: more on that later.
Recall when he once showed great reluctance to act while taking private and controversial opinions as premises--namely those permissive toward same sex unions. Then he claimed that duty to his office precluded it--as a point of catholic churchmanship even. He distinguished between the offices of a prophet and bishop. Those were the days! Days gone by. Apparently those fine distinctions hold no longer, or else they are being applied with curious--even aggressive--selectivity, as he now is ready to act on a private understanding of the church manifestly contrary to what had been the principal cluster of mainstream Anglican views.
His selectivity with principle is aggressive because in these two statements he adds considerable momentum to the separatist movement by validating their basic strategy. He implies the national church is a convenient, but expendable, abstraction whose dioceses--identity intact--can be reorganized into new provinces or new ecclesial entities as it pleases them and the rest of the Communion. If that isn't a green light to Fort Worth and others, what is?
Thus the clarification notes
The primary point was that – theologically and sacramentally speaking – a priest is related in the first place to his/her bishop directly, not through the structure of the national church; that structure serves the dioceses. The diocese is more than a ‘local branch’ of a national organisation.
There is little common ground here with the notion that dioceses are creatures of the provinces of which they are a part, unable to exist on their own apart from them, or in principle unable to secede with their identity intact. Satisfying "is a member of the Episcopal Church" is neat-o but accidental.
That may come as news to some deacons, priests and bishops, who might think they have some ground for allegiance to the national church over and above the diocese. No; it follows, there is no national church for Williams, except in a secondary and derivative sense.
Again, the clarification notes,
[d] The provincial structure is significant, not least for the administration of a uniform canon law and a range of practical functions; Dr Williams is not encouraging anyone to ignore this, [e] simply to understand the theological priorities which have been articulated in a number of ecumenical agreements, and [f] in the light of this not to increase the level of confusion and fragmentation in the church.
Part [d] reiterates Williams' key point with force. The significance of the province is merely instrumental; it is not a church in itself. It has administrative and practical functions that are important--and that is it. Period.
Thus, what might be meant by "fragmentation of the church" in [f]? On my reading of Williams, "church" there does not refer to "The Episcopal Church". There is no such church according to him. Its primary referent is the communion of dioceses, where communion of provinces is apparently taken merely to supervene on the relationship of the dioceses.
Finally, part [e] worries me. I have said a couple of times now that Williams' understanding of the church is not ours: not in the mainstream of normative Anglican tradition. It is private, I claimed, and suspect enough on that account alone. However, he seems to think it is not private. It is rather, he claims, the position on the nature of the church we have committed ourselves to apart from this controversy in ecumenical conversation. Is that right?
A Glimpse into Williams' Ecclesiology
This letter from Archbishop Williams to Bishop Howe of Central Florida has been making the rounds recently with good reason--it is quite a remarkable fragment of ecclesiological thinking.
There is absolutely no question that it will serve to foment fragmentation and division, encouraging those dioceses like Pittsburgh and Fort Worth that wish to leave TEC intact to "get a move on". Williams' idea seems to be that Iker could take Fort Worth out of the Episcopal Church and remain in communion with the See of Canterbury, but a mere parish like Christ Church in Georgia or Truro in Virginia could not do so. I presume this explains why he has been reluctant to extend Lambeth invitations to Minns et al--the issue is not Carey's precedent so much as a more theologically substantive point.
Of course I would like to think I share ground with Williams here. Perhaps we agree that there is something fundamentally disordered about a parish without its bishop withdrawing from one diocese to join another; provided the bishop remains a bishop, it is impossible. The parish priest is a priest only at the behest of his or her bishop, and this is a matter of the parish priest being a priest. Thus, while Williams might not have a problem with Minns being a bishop, he might well have a problem with his claim to Lambeth attendance as a bishop of anything. He isn't a bishop of what was Truro parish anyhow. Then what exactly is he a bishop of?
The matter is different when one considers Bishop Iker taking the Diocese of Fort Worth out of the Episcopal Church. Ater all, for the time being Iker remains a bishop of a diocese.
Williams seems to me, in my limited knowledge, to be following Zizioulas here, a la "Being and Communion". The bishop of a diocese is the basic ecclesial unit on which provinces supervene--the provinces being no more than epiphenomena of their diocesan bases. For the bishop is the necessary precondition for the performance of the essential act of Christian being, namely the Eucharist. Thus we can say where the bishop is, there the church is, as if the church were instantiated wherever a bishop presided, and its "where" was the diocese.
Thus, there is no fundamental block to a province cobbled together of dioceses from England, the US, and Canada; there is no fundamental incoherence in a province continually changing its diocesan membership. The province is simply not necessary for the being of the diocese, and the Archbishop or Presiding Bishop is not at all to the provincial bishop as the bisho pis to the priest and deacon.
This is a very high ecclesiology, I think, and it portends a good deal of near-term chaos--if not long-term anarchy--but to his credit Williams appears ready to take a stand and let the dioceses fall where they may while watching provinces simply evaporate and reform like steam on a window. I had thought Williams was led by a need to keep the Church of England together; it seems I was wrong, as the CoE is just another epiphenomenal province. Consistency would require acknowledging that dioceses of the CoE could form provinces with dioceses of TEC. What might stop them? Tradition, legal problems, potential disestablishment perhaps: who knows?
Property issues are quite beside the point when we are talking the being of bishops and their dioceses. If Iker or Duncan were to leave TEC without property, it would be irrelevant to their standing as bishops of dioceses in communion with Canterbury.
Taking all this into consideration, it is clear what the Episcopal Church should do. It is clear that Bishop Iker cannot just take Fort Worth out of TEC ad hoc; he must, by his diocese's own rules, follow a process that takes time. When the process is completed--legitimately completed--there is no serious theological bar to his leaving TEC with Fort Worth--and of course remaining Anglican in good standing. If his fellow Episcopalian bishops do not like this prospect, there seems to be just one option. Secular law will not help. They will have to remove him and others like him from their positions as bishops of their respective dioceses. And they had better get moving; that process will take time to complete as well. Deposed, Iker and the others would have the status of a Minns: hovering in an ecclesial limbo. And faithful Episcopalians in Fort Worth and elsewhere will be safe.
There is absolutely no question that it will serve to foment fragmentation and division, encouraging those dioceses like Pittsburgh and Fort Worth that wish to leave TEC intact to "get a move on". Williams' idea seems to be that Iker could take Fort Worth out of the Episcopal Church and remain in communion with the See of Canterbury, but a mere parish like Christ Church in Georgia or Truro in Virginia could not do so. I presume this explains why he has been reluctant to extend Lambeth invitations to Minns et al--the issue is not Carey's precedent so much as a more theologically substantive point.
Of course I would like to think I share ground with Williams here. Perhaps we agree that there is something fundamentally disordered about a parish without its bishop withdrawing from one diocese to join another; provided the bishop remains a bishop, it is impossible. The parish priest is a priest only at the behest of his or her bishop, and this is a matter of the parish priest being a priest. Thus, while Williams might not have a problem with Minns being a bishop, he might well have a problem with his claim to Lambeth attendance as a bishop of anything. He isn't a bishop of what was Truro parish anyhow. Then what exactly is he a bishop of?
The matter is different when one considers Bishop Iker taking the Diocese of Fort Worth out of the Episcopal Church. Ater all, for the time being Iker remains a bishop of a diocese.
Williams seems to me, in my limited knowledge, to be following Zizioulas here, a la "Being and Communion". The bishop of a diocese is the basic ecclesial unit on which provinces supervene--the provinces being no more than epiphenomena of their diocesan bases. For the bishop is the necessary precondition for the performance of the essential act of Christian being, namely the Eucharist. Thus we can say where the bishop is, there the church is, as if the church were instantiated wherever a bishop presided, and its "where" was the diocese.
Thus, there is no fundamental block to a province cobbled together of dioceses from England, the US, and Canada; there is no fundamental incoherence in a province continually changing its diocesan membership. The province is simply not necessary for the being of the diocese, and the Archbishop or Presiding Bishop is not at all to the provincial bishop as the bisho pis to the priest and deacon.
This is a very high ecclesiology, I think, and it portends a good deal of near-term chaos--if not long-term anarchy--but to his credit Williams appears ready to take a stand and let the dioceses fall where they may while watching provinces simply evaporate and reform like steam on a window. I had thought Williams was led by a need to keep the Church of England together; it seems I was wrong, as the CoE is just another epiphenomenal province. Consistency would require acknowledging that dioceses of the CoE could form provinces with dioceses of TEC. What might stop them? Tradition, legal problems, potential disestablishment perhaps: who knows?
Property issues are quite beside the point when we are talking the being of bishops and their dioceses. If Iker or Duncan were to leave TEC without property, it would be irrelevant to their standing as bishops of dioceses in communion with Canterbury.
Taking all this into consideration, it is clear what the Episcopal Church should do. It is clear that Bishop Iker cannot just take Fort Worth out of TEC ad hoc; he must, by his diocese's own rules, follow a process that takes time. When the process is completed--legitimately completed--there is no serious theological bar to his leaving TEC with Fort Worth--and of course remaining Anglican in good standing. If his fellow Episcopalian bishops do not like this prospect, there seems to be just one option. Secular law will not help. They will have to remove him and others like him from their positions as bishops of their respective dioceses. And they had better get moving; that process will take time to complete as well. Deposed, Iker and the others would have the status of a Minns: hovering in an ecclesial limbo. And faithful Episcopalians in Fort Worth and elsewhere will be safe.
More Encouraging News
This report from Edgar Ruddock about CAPA is good and quite suggestive; The Lead has excerpts.
The issue has become like poisonous tar--touch it and it will not shake free, and in the meantime it will prove lethal.
For instance, the CAPA meeting was full of interesting stuff, but what conversational implicature gets carries in by this tiny, relatively modest tidbit:
We are united in our conviction that the Lord of the Church is calling upon Africa once again to contend for the ‘faith once and for all delivered to the saints’.
That's political churchbabble, where a good, prima facie biblical thought gets twisted out of recognition to do duty in the service of something else difficult to discern having to do with property, the IRD, and American neoconservatism/ fundamentalism.
And then you wonder if that was the real point and living heart of the CAPA document, for which all the other stuff is just window dressing; i.e. all the energy and eros truly suffuses the property and poltical questions.
The issue has become like poisonous tar--touch it and it will not shake free, and in the meantime it will prove lethal.
For instance, the CAPA meeting was full of interesting stuff, but what conversational implicature gets carries in by this tiny, relatively modest tidbit:
We are united in our conviction that the Lord of the Church is calling upon Africa once again to contend for the ‘faith once and for all delivered to the saints’.
That's political churchbabble, where a good, prima facie biblical thought gets twisted out of recognition to do duty in the service of something else difficult to discern having to do with property, the IRD, and American neoconservatism/ fundamentalism.
And then you wonder if that was the real point and living heart of the CAPA document, for which all the other stuff is just window dressing; i.e. all the energy and eros truly suffuses the property and poltical questions.
The Big Push?
Is this the beginning, or the high-water mark, of the pressure being put on Williams and the Anglican Communion to change course and do something severe to the Episcopal Church?
We have Bishop Nazir Ali applying pressure by threatening not to attend Lambeth, Archbishop Jensen calling for a new Anglican communion, Archbishop Orombi chiming in, and the CAPA provinces issuing their own condemnation--all this admidst similarly placed conservative voices and other lesser lights like David Anderson raising their voices too. That's alot of noise.
But note a few things that might be significant:
(1) These big guns are employing big hyperbole unhelpful to any effort to calm the situation, get parties back to the table, and work anything out. The hyperbole--in many cases obviously false but inflammatory stuff like the claims TEC is abandoning the AC or is ignoring the Primates--signals (a) that what is actually the case needs to be inflated and exaggerated if the Separatist cause is to maintain momentum--the truth is not enough, and (b) these big guns are set in their path, and are interested in moving full-steam ahead somewhere special. They aren't interested any longer in the Windsor Process. Having lost control of its vector, they are ready to try something new.
(2) The new thing that the Spirit is working (I say this with conscious irony) among the Separatists is going forward regardless of whether a split can be engineered in the Church of England. Things are in the works that will not be unwrought; they could be unwrought, efforts could be recalled of course. But they will not be. For instance, Fort Worth is signalling now, apart from any credible threat of fracture in the CoE, that it is abandoning the communion of the Episcopal Church as soon as it can--at least it will give it a sincere try. And we may well see "Global South" provinces trying to poach Episcopal provinces. Duncan is going ahead with his CCCP scheme. It is all very risky, in that they may find themselves out in the cold, having merely enlarged the unhappy Anglican continuum. Part of the Global South gospel, however, is that it is worth the risk. That's news.
(3) I would have thought the news that whole provinces were wagering their full being as church on a risky scheme was big news, and that there was no way they would even have put such a process in motion considering the stakes unless the fix was in and in their favor. But I am willing to bet while the fix is indeed in, it runs against them. Reform's call for a split in the CoE was a dud. If it had not been a dud, things would look very good for the Separatist project. But so far, a split in the CoE looks remote. Sure, there are very unhappy Extremists in the CoE in rather high places who would have happily gone with a split, but for the moment more reasonable voices have held the line. As a result, the note of unity has prevailed--for the moment--and there is no credible threat of a split in the CoE.
As long as there is no credible threat of a split in the CoE, a split in the AC is tolerable. One could say a split in the AC was inevitable anyway, with TEC or else some of the GS being removed in time. Given that fact, the question was which party? The parting of some of the GS has the profound advantage that it can be engineered by the GS itself--they seem all too happy to follow Jensen's advice.
They may waffle; we may see them fail to leave, and there may be more wrangling over whether their American novelties count as Anglican in the normal sense or in some diminished sense. That would be an even better outcome for TEC I think, though the wrangling might be unpleasant. Given how the GS has gummed up the Windsor Process, they are unlikely to be credible partners in how it goes forward even if they stay. For there will always remain a question, given what they have said already about leaving: should we give them what they want in this process, given that they are not serious about the process and they very well may leave instead of seeing it through? That is, there is a good case to be made now that ANY compromise with the GS is stupidly self-defeating, given that they have let all know near and far that they are Quitters at heart relative to the Windsor Process.
Thus, whether they leave soon for a new communion of their own devising, or waffle and wrangle some more--and it seems to me this type of pressure will continue as long as it can be ginned up by the usual suspects--this is the high-water mark. The big bombs yet to fall--Fort Worth and others trying to leave--will not yield the hoped for results, separation and replacement, because there isn't sufficient support in the CoE, as that would require being willing to split the CoE: the quitters becoming disestablished. The big bombs will fall in all likelihood, and there will be a big crash, but that will not qualitatively shift the situation.
We have Bishop Nazir Ali applying pressure by threatening not to attend Lambeth, Archbishop Jensen calling for a new Anglican communion, Archbishop Orombi chiming in, and the CAPA provinces issuing their own condemnation--all this admidst similarly placed conservative voices and other lesser lights like David Anderson raising their voices too. That's alot of noise.
But note a few things that might be significant:
(1) These big guns are employing big hyperbole unhelpful to any effort to calm the situation, get parties back to the table, and work anything out. The hyperbole--in many cases obviously false but inflammatory stuff like the claims TEC is abandoning the AC or is ignoring the Primates--signals (a) that what is actually the case needs to be inflated and exaggerated if the Separatist cause is to maintain momentum--the truth is not enough, and (b) these big guns are set in their path, and are interested in moving full-steam ahead somewhere special. They aren't interested any longer in the Windsor Process. Having lost control of its vector, they are ready to try something new.
(2) The new thing that the Spirit is working (I say this with conscious irony) among the Separatists is going forward regardless of whether a split can be engineered in the Church of England. Things are in the works that will not be unwrought; they could be unwrought, efforts could be recalled of course. But they will not be. For instance, Fort Worth is signalling now, apart from any credible threat of fracture in the CoE, that it is abandoning the communion of the Episcopal Church as soon as it can--at least it will give it a sincere try. And we may well see "Global South" provinces trying to poach Episcopal provinces. Duncan is going ahead with his CCCP scheme. It is all very risky, in that they may find themselves out in the cold, having merely enlarged the unhappy Anglican continuum. Part of the Global South gospel, however, is that it is worth the risk. That's news.
(3) I would have thought the news that whole provinces were wagering their full being as church on a risky scheme was big news, and that there was no way they would even have put such a process in motion considering the stakes unless the fix was in and in their favor. But I am willing to bet while the fix is indeed in, it runs against them. Reform's call for a split in the CoE was a dud. If it had not been a dud, things would look very good for the Separatist project. But so far, a split in the CoE looks remote. Sure, there are very unhappy Extremists in the CoE in rather high places who would have happily gone with a split, but for the moment more reasonable voices have held the line. As a result, the note of unity has prevailed--for the moment--and there is no credible threat of a split in the CoE.
As long as there is no credible threat of a split in the CoE, a split in the AC is tolerable. One could say a split in the AC was inevitable anyway, with TEC or else some of the GS being removed in time. Given that fact, the question was which party? The parting of some of the GS has the profound advantage that it can be engineered by the GS itself--they seem all too happy to follow Jensen's advice.
They may waffle; we may see them fail to leave, and there may be more wrangling over whether their American novelties count as Anglican in the normal sense or in some diminished sense. That would be an even better outcome for TEC I think, though the wrangling might be unpleasant. Given how the GS has gummed up the Windsor Process, they are unlikely to be credible partners in how it goes forward even if they stay. For there will always remain a question, given what they have said already about leaving: should we give them what they want in this process, given that they are not serious about the process and they very well may leave instead of seeing it through? That is, there is a good case to be made now that ANY compromise with the GS is stupidly self-defeating, given that they have let all know near and far that they are Quitters at heart relative to the Windsor Process.
Thus, whether they leave soon for a new communion of their own devising, or waffle and wrangle some more--and it seems to me this type of pressure will continue as long as it can be ginned up by the usual suspects--this is the high-water mark. The big bombs yet to fall--Fort Worth and others trying to leave--will not yield the hoped for results, separation and replacement, because there isn't sufficient support in the CoE, as that would require being willing to split the CoE: the quitters becoming disestablished. The big bombs will fall in all likelihood, and there will be a big crash, but that will not qualitatively shift the situation.
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