IT'S OFFICIAL (AGAIN):

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA
IS  NOT IN
THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

The primates of the Anglican Communion have adjourned their meeting of 2-6 October 2017, in Canterbury. On Oct. 6, they issued an official communiqué, available here . It contained this paragraph:

It was confirmed that the Anglican Church of North America is not a Province of the Anglican Communion. We recognised that those in ACNA should be treated with love as fellow Christians.

This rejected the aspiration of ACNA as an Anglican "province" and gave de facto confirmation that the Episcopal Church is the one and only province of the Anglican Communion in the United States.

33 of the 39 primates of the Anglican Communion attended the conference. Three boycotted the meeting in protest of the presence of the Americans: Uganda, Nigeria, and Rwanda, the three hardest-line provinces opposing equal rights for homosexual persons. Three other primates were absent for other reasons. This means that a majority of the GAFCON/Global South primates were present. At this point, we cannot know the role of these primates in the meeting, but obviously the majority of Anglican primates approved of the communiqué. 

Actually, the primates had rejected the ACNA in their "gathering" of January 2016. At that time, GAFCON/Global South abandoned the ACNA, with Foley Beach present. They said if the ACNA wanted to join the Anglican Communion, it would have to go through the Anglican Consultative Council, but at the same time they discouraged the ACC from admitting ACNA. When the ACC met in Lusaka in April of 2016, there was no mention of ACNA. Meanwhile, the Jan. 2016 gathering issued "consequences" (punishments) for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada. These were roundly ignored by the ACC. The consequences were inconsequential.

The primates' meeting of this week slapped the same "consequences" on the Episcopal Church of Scotland because of its support of same-sex marriage. However, enforcement of such was left up to the Archbishop of Canterbury: The Archbishop of Canterbury will take steps within his authority to implement this agreement. In fact, the ABC has no authority to intervene in any province of the AC. He is only a figure-head.

As a strike against the ongoing ultra-conservative incursions into progressive Anglican provinces, the communiqué strongly denounced unauthorized invasions by Anglican bishops into other dioceses. This was clearly a reprimand of the GAFCON/Global South coalition cross-border interventions that have been going on since the year 2000 and have gained strength in view of the rise of pro-homosexual policies in the North American and European provinces.

In general, the primates reaffirmed their unity while admitting differences: In our last meeting in January 2016 we made a clear decision to walk together while acknowledging the distance that exists in our relationships due to deep differences in understanding on same-sex marriage. We endorsed this approach, which we will continue with renewed commitment.

It was also interesting to note what the communiqué did not say. It did not mention the "consequences" for the Americans and Canadians. The consequences (sanctions, or punishments), of 2016, had a term of three years which means they remain on the books until the year 2019. The meeting this week ignored the earlier "consequences" for the Americans and Canadians.

In sum, the Anglican Communion, and the Archbishop of Canterbury have won another victory for union. The crisis of schism in the Anglican Communion, that came to a head in January of 2016, has passed. The GAFCON/Global South Anglican sub-set has failed to split the Communion into two groups, fundamentalist-leaning (anti-homosexual rights) and progressive (pro-homosexual rights). In effect, the Anglican Communion has reaffirmed its historic nature as 39 independent churches, each left to decide its own policies and procedures. The ultra-conservatives' 20-year effort to recreate the Communion into a fundamentalist-leaning confessional church has failed. I think we have to give a lot of credit for this to Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This year, the independent Diocese of South Carolina joined the ACNA. The leaders of the diocese repeatedly called the ACNA "Anglican" and a "province." No doubt, many of their followers believe they are in a province of the Anglican Communion. This is not true. Such a notion has now been officially refuted, once and for all, by the Anglican Communion. The Diocese of South Carolina is not in the Anglican Communion and has no prospect of ever being in the AC. This is something the communicants of DSC need to consider as 13,000 of them, in 29 parishes, will soon face the choice of returning to the Anglican Communion or remaining adrift at sea.