So, it’s not about schism, they said repeatedly as GAFCON got underway, and as it wraps up, one emerging line of thought is that it certainly isn’t about schism, nor is it about homosexuality nor even about holding fast to scripture: It’s about power. George Pitcher, writing in the Telegraph, opines that some bishops might be feeling a bit duped at this point if they thought otherwise:
It is simply about where the locus of Anglican authority should reside. And it is driven by a post-colonial political imperative; the West has used and abused the Global South and now it’s pay-back time.
In this worldview, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is a “relic” (Canon Samuel’s word) of old empire, who must be replaced, presumably by the likes of Archbishop Akinola, who has come within a hair-trigger of saying that Muslim Nigerian violence against Christians will be met in kind.
This presumes that Dr Williams is a political leader to be overthrown by an official opposition. He is nothing of the sort.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is primus inter pares in the worldwide Anglican Communion, holding together (or trying to) a loose federation of global churches, often at odds with one another but on a common journey.
Nor is Gafcon an official opposition. It is an unholy alliance of Anglican interests that want to replace post-reformational dialogue and mutual tolerance with an authoritarian catechistic power that dictates from its centre what it means to be an Anglican.
And it’s an unholy alliance because African primates are at once complaining about American imperialism in their continent, while taking American protestant fundamentalists (and their money) into the Gafcon cause.
Read it here.