Conservative Primates Open the Way for Action Against 'Liberal' Provinces
Episcopal News Service. December 15, 1999 [99-188]
(ENS) A group of conservative primates agreed at a mid-November meeting in Kampala, Uganda, to voice their dismay at the Primates' Meeting scheduled in March in Lisbon, Portugal at what they see as some province's rejection of Anglican orthodoxy.
In a statement following the meeting, held from November 16 through 18, the primates said, "We will carefully document and commend a proposal to this meeting in Portugal which, we believe, will address the problems in our Communion caused by misuse of provincial autonomy and innovations exceeding the limits of our Anglican diversity. In this we will be acting upon Resolution III.6(b) Lambeth '98."
That resolution asks that the Primates' Meeting assume responsibility for intervening "in cases of exceptional emergency" in provinces unable to resolve problems on their own and for giving guidelines on the limits of diversity in submitting to the authority of Holy Scripture and loyalty to Anglican "tradition and formularies."
The primates said they would seek agreement on and the progressive implementation of measures to "ensure a return to historic standards for ordination, moral and marriage disciplines where in our communion these have been notoriously breached." The primates have now met twice to discuss the problems they feel have been caused by liberals in the U.S., Canada and Scotland.
Rejecting for now a bid by First Promise, a group working to see that conservative Anglicans gain their own bishops, the primates nonetheless said, "We hear and understand what you have told us about examples of abandonment of Anglican teaching, discipline and practices in the provinces from which you come. We share your distress on account of the damage and harmful results of these increasingly serious developments."
Further, they assured conservatives "that among us are those ready to respond to specific and urgent situations which may arise in the months before the Primates' Meeting...Parishes and clergy under threat because of their loyalty to the Gospel and to Anglican standards must be supported and we will play our part in such support."
They did not say what actions they might take.
Bishop James Stanton of Dallas, head of the American Anglican Council and an observer at the Kampala meeting, asked the primates there not to take precipitate action, according to a report in the Church Times, the weekly newspaper of the Church of England.
The newspaper quoted him as saying, "First Promise were eager to get on with alternative jurisdiction. Our position has been that while we believe there are great difficulties in ECUSA, particularly with some liberal bishops running roughshod over their people, we felt that whatever actions taken had to be in unison. What Lambeth called for was action by the primates as a whole."
He said all plans were based on goodwill and, according to the newspaper, argued that the American bishops were eager to support Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, who was working to ensure a time of jubilee in the American church.
Attending the Kampala meeting were primates of Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, Burundi, South East Asia, Tanzania, the Southern Cone of America, and representatives of the Sudan and Kenya.