Friday, May 04, 2012

We should elect our chair, say Primates

THE Primates of Nigeria and Kenya suggested this week that the Archbishop of Canterbury should no longer chair the Primates’ Meeting. 

The chairman should instead be elected by the Primates themselves, they said.
 
The Archbishop of Nigeria, the Most Revd Nicholas Okoh, and the Archbishop of Kenya, Dr Eliud Wabukala, suggested the idea at a press briefing on Monday, shortly before the start of a leadership conference of the Fellow­ship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) at St Mark’s, Battersea Rise, in London.

 A spokesman for the FCA said that dele­gates from about 30 countries were at­tending the conference, representing about 55 million “of all churchgoing Anglicans”. 

Archbishop Okoh said: “My thought is that it will be better to have an Archbishop [of Canterbury] who is respected, honoured, for historical reasons, but that the Anglican Com­munion eventually should think about organ­ising itself around a chairman, who will have a tenured office, of four or five years, and then hand over to another person.” 

He continued: “It seems that the Church of England is not carrying along everybody in the Communion, and that is why you can see there is a crisis; if we will solve the problem, we have to change the system.” 

Archbishop Okoh noted the way that the Commonwealth now elects its leadership. 

“It is the same thing; the Church of independent countries — no longer the British Empire — must make some changes. It is not something that should remain permanent that the Arch­bishop of Canterbury, whether he understands the dynamics in Africa or not, remains the chair, and whatever he says, whether it works or not, is an order.” 

The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, who was chairing the press briefing, sought to clarify that the Primates were suggesting the election of a chairman of the Primates’ Meeting, not “some sort of super-leader of the Anglican Communion. . . We’re not talking about a chairman of the Anglican Com­mun-ion, but a chairman of the Primates’ Council, and one therefore able to gather the Primates.” 

Asked if any Primate, such as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US, would be eligible to stand as chairman, Dr Wabukala said that the position should be open to “those who subscribe to what the Anglican Communion stands for”. 

Asked to elaborate further, he said that the Jerusalem Declaration, which was drawn up at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem in 2008, “captures exactly what almost every­body is looking for”. 

When asked about Primates who would not endorse the Declara­tion, Dr Wabukala said: “That means self-exclusion. It’s not a covenant to sign to ex­clude you, but it is the faith that people pro­fess to which you may not be comfortable.” 

He went on: “Of course, the fact that one [chair­man] is elected, that means he is ac­cepted by all of us.” 

Spokespeople for Lambeth Palace and the Anglican Communion Office both declined to comment on the idea suggested by the two Primates. 

The two Primates’ Meeting was set up in 1978 by Archbishop Donald Coggan, and has met regularly since, each time at the initiation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

The Primates also announced plans for a second meeting of GAFCON, which will take place in May next year, at a venue that is as yet unspecified. 

A statement from the FCA said that the meeting would be “a dynamic force for restating the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of revisionist attempts to change basic doc­trines, and turn Christianity merely into a movement for social betterment”.

Dr Jensen said that GAFCON 2 “reflects something about the new state of the Com­munion”. 

He said that the Lambeth Conference was “premised on the 19th-century sailing ships, bringing together once every ten years”. 

He said that the Lambeth Conference was “just bishops”, whereas GAFCON was “for all in the Church”.