[the annoucement of the Consecrations of our USA men by two foreign primates
on USA territory has given me much food for thought...please read on.]

Anglican Corporate Identity

Although lip service may be rendered to the catholic doctrine of “the bishop
as the center of unity,” the dominant model in the Episcopal Church – as in
most of the Anglican Communion – seems to be that a diocese is an accredited
subsidiary or franchise of the Anglican/Episcopal Corporate Identity. It
has been said that “what the recent Lambeth Conference [1998] showed was
that all bishops are prepared to respect all other bishops as the chief
executives of the diocese in which they operate, and to acknowledge those
dioceses as accredited subsidiaries or franchises of the Anglican corporate
identity in the area in which they operate – irrespective of [holy] orders
and in some cases of doctrine.”

This approach allows for the possibility of “a flying bishop” from another
franchise to visit an unhappy congregation in a franchise only if the local
chief executive officer [bishop] agrees. A visit without permission is to
fly against the might of corporate Anglicanism.

And since the franchise is for a geographical area there can be no
possibility [in theory] of parallel jurisdictions or parallel franchises
[but there is in Europe with the British and the American dioceses not yet
united].

As the ECUSA pursues the corporate franchise model it has to relate to an
ever more complex Anglican family and context. For example:

1. It chooses to ignore the presence of congregations of the Church of South
India (a province of the Anglican Communion) in its franchise area. These
congregations are technically intruders who are in competition with the
local franchise and who are visited by their own C E O from India.

2. It does now know yet how to handle the case of Fort Worth’s Bishop Jack
Iker’s spiritual adoption of a rebellious parish in the territory of Jane
Dixon, acting bishop of Washington DC.

3. It protests vehemently to corporate headquarters (Lambeth Palace & George
Carey) against the existence of the Anglican Mission in America, the
involvement of two Primates in it and the consecration of (in all) six
bishops, four actually ordained on American territory! To ordain two in
Singapore was bad but to ordain four on American territory is horrific!

4. It appears not to notice the existence of a variety of Continuing
Anglican Churches along with the Reformed Episcopal Church, which compete
for members from the same territory, and which already have over 50,000
members.

5. It has a much stronger canonical [legal] relation to the Evangelical
Lutheran Church than it does to the member Churches of the Anglican
Communion. In fact it has no canonical relation to its neighboring
franchises – the West Indies and Canada

What all this means is that the expression, Anglican Communion of Churches,
has little solid meaning in the USA; and what usually is the case in the USA
becomes the case in the world a little later – as the franchise of McDonald’
s illustrates. Practically speaking there are in the USA three major and
different claims to being the true Anglican Way -- the ECUSA, the Anglican
Mission in America & the Continuing Churches. And the latter already have
their “Traditional Anglican Communion” an international fellowship of
jurisdictions which is growing. Though they have not used the name
“Communion” the AMiA also seems to have created an embryonic Communion
involving S E Asia, Rwanda & the USA (three Continents!).

Perhaps the unity of the Anglican Communion is now permanently fractured.
Even as the place of the British Monarch diminished as the Empire gave way
to the Commonwealth, so it seems the place of the Archbishop of Canterbury
has diminished and will continue to do so in the Anglican family[ies] as
impaired, broken and no communion strategies become more common. Ironically,
this all occurs as George of Canterbury presses the case of [institutional]
unity and sees schism as a major sin.

Maybe the failure of the Primates at Kanuga in 2001 to take heed to the
contents of the book, To Mend the Net, and begin to discipline erring
Provinces, particularly the ECUSA, will be remembered as the most important
[but not only] factor in the obvious and serious beginnings of the falling
apart of the Anglican Communion of Churches. It seems probable that what
has happened in the USA will be repeated in different ways and under
different conditions in other places as the disintegration of the Anglican
world proceeds.

I hope that I am wrong in this prediction. I hope that those whom God has
placed in positions of authority and influence will act in positive ways.
I shall do what I can do to preserve the Anglican Communion in truth and
charity and good order. But humanly speaking I am pessimistic about the
future of the Anglican Way as a united, international jurisdiction of the
one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

The Rev’d Dr Peter Toon June 18 2001