The Primates Meeting of 2011 has now ended. 15 of the 38 Primates stayed away. A slight majority attended. Much conversation occurred, structures were clarified, and no action was taken with respect to The Episcopal Church. Let me say this a bit differently. Previous meetings of the Primates Meeting called for and received the Windsor Report and passed motions calling for repentance from The Episcopal Church for tearing the fabric of Communion. The Anglican Consultative Council called for the adoption of the Anglican Covenant and for a moratorium on Same Sex Blessings and the ordination to the Episcopate of people in committed same sex relationships. This is the first meeting of the Primates since The Episcopal Church ordained another Bishop in a same sex relationship and saw one of their bishop’s marry two women clergy in his cathedral. None of these facts were dealt with in this most recent meeting of the Primates.
An inattention to results is one of the dysfunctions of a team that Patrick Lencioni identifies in his book Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Inattention to results is what happens when a group makes a decision and then fails to follow up on results. When this happens it is clear that there is now weight behind a group’s decisions. If a decision is not followed up on trust is undermined and finally lost. In this case it means that the Primate’s Meetings are now irrelevant within the life of the Anglican Communion. At least for the time being. There is a lack of trust among the Primates. This time 15 Primates declined to attend the Primate’s Meeting. Their absence was noted in passing. It is likely that real change will only take place when a majority of Primates refuse to attend or Archbishop Rowan Williams retires.
The immediate future of The Anglican Communion is muddy indeed. The same holds true for the Anglican Consultative Council. I think The Anglican Curmudgeon is correct when he writes
The takeover of the Instruments of Communion by ECUSA, aided and abetted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is now complete. Anything of substance was carefully avoided at Lambeth 2008; the proposed Covenant itself was derailed at ACC-14 in Jamaica, and then carefully defanged by the newly reorganized Standing Committee; and now the Primates’ Meeting has let itself descend into irrelevance — with the primates of the churches having most of the Anglican Communion’s membership absenting themselves, and refusing to prop up the pretense of normalcy any longer.
I do believe the Anglican Communion will recover from this time in the wilderness, but it will not happen soon. This is a very sad day for the church.
