wfn.org | ACC CRITIQUES THE VIRGINIA REPORT

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

ACNS 1888 · 18 September 1999 · Dundee [ACC-11/22]
ACC CRITIQUES THE VIRGINIA REPORT
Following three sessions of explanation of the Virginia Report from Bishop
Mark Dyer, one of its authors, members of the Anglican Consultative Council,
meeting in Dundee, Scotland engaged in a evening forum of open discussion
and response to what they had heard. Their comments may indicate that the
task given to the Primates of the Anglican Communion by the Lambeth
Conference may face some problems. The Primates were requested in Lambeth
Resolution III.8 "to initiate and monitor a decade of study in each Province
on the report, and in particular on 'whether effective communion, at all
levels, does not require appropriate instruments, with due safeguards, not
only for legislation, but also for oversight' as well as on the issue of a
universal ministry in the service of Christian unity."
"We've just had three sessions of theological hard-sell." said Robert Tong
from Australia. "Are we going to have a similar hard-sell of The Gift of
Authority?" he asked, referring to the forthcoming two sessions planned for
that document.
He was joined by other voices reacting to the amount of time devoted to the
topic, with some saying they would have benefited from receiving a critique
of the Virginia Report alongside such a forceful promotion of its main
themes and proposals. One member suggested that the three sessions indicated
a strong sense of defensiveness of the "instruments of communion and unity',
that is, the Primates' Meeting, the Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Council itself.
"I'm grateful for the sessions, but I too felt somewhat snowed, and I felt
that a critique was lacking," the Very Rev John Moses, Dean of St Paul's
Cathedral, London, who is one of the members from England, said. "It
contains two contrasting trends, one which is centralising and hierarchical,
and another which is synodical and is characterised of life in all our
provinces. But the Virginia Report could be used as an instrument to
increase the curialisation drift of the Anglican Communion," he said.
Dean Moses also warned that the Virginia Report should not be regarded as a
sacrosanct document, for its theological base is Trinitarian and it
therefore reflects the theological starting-point of our age. "But," he
said, "in previous decades the Church started from a Christological
starting-point, and future decades may well see the Cosmic Christ as the
base theological model."
The Most Revd Richard Holloway, Primus of Scotland said the Virginia Report
gave far more cause for concern for the Church than his own recent book on a
"godless morality." He said that the ACC was one of the few structured
vehicles in Anglicanism that might resist the tendency in the Report to
increase the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates and the
episcopate in general. He said he felt anxiety against some of its trends,
for the bishops "are servants at best of a Church that is self-governing."
Concerns raised over the Virginia Report were not limited to the perceived
slide into curacy. Some delegates wondered how all the time spent on inner
workings of the church relate to the pains of the wider world. The Revd
Winston Halapua from the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and
Polynesia stated that he is convinced "the Anglican Communion will be better
in heaven, let us instead talk about mission outside the Anglican Communion.
We have not seen issues of poverty and ethnic cleansing addressed in this
agenda." The Most Revd Glauco Soares de Lima, Primate of the Episcopal
Church of Brazil, said he was concerned about the ongoing colonialism
between countries and churches in the North and those in the South. "The
Report is a sign of a still colonial mind, even in the structures
described." he said.
The fact that the Anglican Consultative Council was willing to engage the
hard questions of both the process and substance of the Virginia Report,
when given the opportunity, led some to say "the ACC has really come of
age."
Communications Team
ACC-11
Ian Douglas, Margaret Rodgers, Jim Rosenthal, Manasseh Zindo