Simon Sarmiento has his usual excellent round-up over on Thinking Anglicans. I am not gong to reproduce it all, having committed to light blogging this weekend. But I want to call special attention to Julia Duin’s story from today’s Washington Times in which the Rev. Jonathan Jennings, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s press secretary says this about the election of the Rev. Martyn Minns as a bishop in the Church of Nigeria:
“This is not a welcome development. It’s neither timely nor constructive. It further complicates an already complex situation.”
Meanwhile, I continue to feel that the conservatives in our church have become skillful in getting the media to do thier bidding. My hat is off to them.
There are scads of “schism” stories out there occassioned by these recent requests for ALPO (alternative primatial oversight.) None of them really explain what ALPO is, or what it would accomplish, or why the Archbishop of Canterbury would do what the Windsor Report reprimands other Anglican primates for doing: crossing boundaries and laying claim to disgruntled people in other provinces.
None of the stories I read today mention that the Archbishop of Canterbury has no authority to intervene in the internal affairs of other Anglican province, and that he has said so on many occasions. They don’t point out that in offering ALPO to these dioceses he would be setting a precedent that would make many other provinces extremely nervous. (If you offer ALPO to disgruntled Americans, on what grounds would you refuse it to northern Ugandans or gay Nigerians?) They just say that this is further evidence of blah, blah, blah.
Is it? It depends on the Archbishop’s response, and none of us knows what that will be. .But if he turns these requests down (which to me seems the stronger possibility) then nothing about the reality of situation has changed very much. But the perception that the Church is coming apart–Get out while you still can!–has been intensified by these reports.
The media keeps coming into our house to cover the mess it is in, knocking over the lamps and then citing the broken light bulbs as evidence of poor housekeeping.