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| Bishop Drexel Gomez*, Jamaica and West Indies/retired, Chairperson/Designer of The Anglican Covenant |
Reflection: Bishop Gomez* and his Anglican Covenant
warnings and intentions, September, 2008
HERE
¨In the most recent
St. Andrews Draft of the covenant, provinces would pledge to uphold historic Christian faith inherited by Anglicanism and to promote and proclaim the Biblically-based Gospel through mission.
Signers of the covenant, Gomez* explained, are called on to pledge themselves to the understanding that the Anglican Communion requires mutual accountability among provinces and that the constitutional autonomy of provinces exists within a larger framework of communion that sets limits on that autonomy.
The covenant also would provide a mechanism or process by which provinces, once they have signed the covenant, could be determined to have violated the covenant and, thus, to be deemed to have removed themselves from the Communion.
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| Is the St. Andrews/Anglican Covenant anti-Anglican? |
Gomez* noted that there is a distinct minority of bishops who oppose the covenant as being anti-Anglican. “They don’t want anything that even appears to be putting up barriers to exclusion.”
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| Presiding Bishop Kathryn Jefferts Schori, Primate of the Episcopal Church |
One reporter at the press conference noted that TEC
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in an online briefing following Lambeth that a majority of bishops at Lambeth claimed the second draft was too
punitive and legalistic.
“
That’s not true,” Gomez* said. A number of bishops, but not a majority, felt the language was too legalistic [and complicated] in the appendix,” which he said was drawn up principally by Professor Norman Doe. “We have already determined that we are going to rework the appendix.”
And he asserted that
“no one I think who is objective can claim that the St. Andrew’s draft is punitive. What it says is if you
sign up for the covenant and you break your word, then you are really removing yourself.”
He acknowledged that a couple of bishops have said to him and publicly that
“no matter what you do, you’re still supposed to be in the Anglican Communion.”
“One bishop from Canada used the analogy of the family. Once you belong to the family, you belong [forever],” Gomez* recalled. “
But in many families, you remain in the family but you can’t stay in the house because your presence in the home is a bad example to other young people, and so you are forced to move out because what you are doing is an offense to the integrity of the family.”
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| deposed, Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh now head of the ACNA (not recognized by The Archbishop of Canterbury or The Anglican Communion ACC) |
North American Province? Gomez* was asked how a new orthodox North American province might affect the covenant process.
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| Schismatic ¨North American Anglican¨ Gafcon cluster (not recognized by The Archbishop of Canterbury or The Anglican Communion ACC)- |
He said that
Global South Anglican leaders meeting a few years ago in Kigali, Rwanda, felt that “eventually there has to be some arrangement for North America to deal with the realities of the situation.”
The Global South at the time avoided the idea that it would be another province, he asserted.
‘We couched the language deliberately in a vague way, because at the time, we didn’t give any serious consideration to the form that structure would take.”
But after June’s Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON),
“it’s quite clear that there’s a movement that is going to be pressing that line of argument,” Gomez* said.
What happens if a new North American province emerges?
“
Even if you went with some form of a structure for North America, if it is kept within the bounds of ‘GAFCON’, that would at least hold it in a place in which it can relate to the rest of the Communion,” the Archbishop said.
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| The ACNA ¨Irregular¨ Bishops are not recognized by the Anglican Communion or recognized by The Archbishop of Canterbury or the ACC |
He said a potential new North American province could sign onto the covenant and petition the ACC to be admitted as a province in the Communion.
Short of a change in membership in the ACC, though, he thought it unlikely that the ACC would admit the province.
Gomez* was asked whether or not the
Global South, in signing onto the covenant, might set as a condition that something be worked out in North America.
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| Dr. Rowan Williams, engaging in ¨very serious discussions¨ with Global South Bishops and their non-Anglican Communion associates/representatives, August 2010, Entebbe, Uganda |
“Yes,” Gomez* indicated, “and I think we will have to have some very serious discussions with the Global South representatives.”
· Thanks to Flickr Photo Sharing
· Thanks to Bishop Gomez, Chair, Anglican Covenant Design Group
· Thanks to Robert England
· Thanks to American Anglican Council
· Thanks to Wikipedia
· Thanks to Virtue Online
· Thanks to All Africa
Archbishop Drexel Gomez, Chairperson of The Anglican Covenant has a long history of ¨
pursuing his own moral, political and social agendas¨
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| More about bishop Drexel Gomez and his ¨siren song of culture¨ tactic |
* In October 2003
Archbishop Gomez was appointed to the Lambeth Commission on Communion by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams. The Commission produced the Report of the Lambeth Commission on Communion (also known as The Windsor Report and the Eames Report), published in October 2004.
In August 2007,
Archbishop Gomez was the main preacher at a service where several Anglican Archbishops consecrated two American priests as bishops despite the opposition of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. He accused the U.S. church of
"aggressive revisionist theology" and
¨teaching lies.¨
HERE
*Nairobi — August 31, 2007--¨
The Anglican Church in Kenya yesterday ordained two bishops who will be sent to the United States to minister to its flock following differences over homosexuality.
Heads of 11 provinces of the church from around the world attended the colourful four-hour ceremony presided over by ACK Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi at Nairobi's All Saints Cathedral. Nineteen Kenyan Anglican bishops also attended the ceremony.¨
Drexel Gomez, Archbishop West Indies, gave the Sermon.
HERE
“Anglicanism – one of the most vibrant and unstable expressions of Christianity within the world” March 30, 2007, +Drexel Gomez
¨...One of the problems that has been faced as the Communion has developed is its lack of an explicitly stated self-understanding of what it means to be Anglican and what it means to recognize others as Anglican and live in interdependent, mutually accountable communion with one another as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Reflecting the British constitution, the Anglican Communion has functioned on the basis of unwritten conventions and gentlemens agreements, a sense that one could always recognize a good Anglican and a good Anglican always behaved in certain ways. That mutual recognition may have been guided by a reference to the classic formularies for some or by the pattern of common worship as expressed in the Prayer Book and its various adaptations around the Communion. The great strength of encouraging national churches to adapt to their own context has led we now realize to a situation where although there exist many common principles of canon law for the internal ordering of provinces there is a lack of agreed and stated principles of what it means to be interdependent and to take part in and respect common counsel with ones fellow Anglicans.
In addressing this challenge and enabling the articulation of who we are and what we wish to become as a worldwide communion of churches committed to interdependent mission, the work of the
Covenant Design Group is already making significant progress. As the report of the first meeting notes...¨
HERE
¨...The rampant individualism and selfishness of Western culture was the greatest single threat to the faith. Believers must surrender their lives to God and be faithful to him, rather than pursue their own moral, political or social agendas. The Church faces “the challenge of discernment and commitment” as it entered the 21st century, he said, urging the bishops to hold fast to the faith once delivered, and not succumb to the siren song of culture...¨
The senior serving Primate of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Gomez was elected Bishop of Barbados in 1972 and was translated to the Diocese of Nassau and the Bahamas in 1995, and
elected Archbishop and Primate of the West Indies in 1999. He will retire at the end of this year. The Bishop of Barbados, the Rt Rev John Holder praised Archbishop Gomez for his constancy and faithfulness. He had been at the “heart of the fight” in the Anglican Communion’s battles over doctrine and discipline and had offered “outstanding leadership as the church wrestled and searched for a way forward.”Archbishop Gomez’s labours amidst a
“difficult, contentious and painful” fight to hold the church together had ensured that future generations “could call themselves Anglicans.”
HERE
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