John Rucyahana’s October 25th letter provoked a response from another AMiA founding father, retired Archbishop Moses Tay of Singapore. Tay emailed Rucyahana on October 27, “…saying that he believed it to be clear that a spirit of rebellion and lawlessness was at work – beyond and beneath legitimate human concerns, procedures, and rationalizations. He then listed for Bishop John “other spirits” that he believed were at work – e.g. the spirit of accusation and the spirit of offense.” Tay was clearly in Murphy’s camp and was attributing opposition to his proposal to evil spirits.
On October 25 George Conger had called Cynthia Brust and requested confirmation of a source’s claim that the Anglican Mission Council of Bishops had met the week before and decided to break their relationship with the Anglican Province of Rwanda. Brust told Conger “…that the information was not correct and that the source was misinformed.”1 In light of the fact that Kolini and Murphy had decided to leave Rwanda this reassurance from the press officer was very dubious.
If Bishop Murphy responded to either of the letters to him from late October, I am not aware of it. Any hope Murphy might have had of controlling the process was about to vanish because of two events fueled by new methods of communication. The first was an episode of Anglican Unscripted, a show on the YouTube channel of AnglicanTV Ministries, where Kevin Kallsen and George Conger talked to each other about the Anglican Communion’s news of the week. On November 2, Episode 16 of the show featured Conger and Kallsen citing several sources reporting on discord coming from Pawley’s Island between Rwanda and Bishop Murphy. They attributed this to Murphy supporting women’s ordination and wanting to appoint bishops without Rwandan intervention. Conger stated that the AMiA was looking to pull out of Rwanda. Kallsen stated that they had originally heard about this story because of discord amongst the AMiA bishops, because some of them wanted to join ACNA if AMiA was going to leave Rwanda. The AMiA was said to be seeking a Primate from another Global South church or Archbishop Kolini as their oversight. The leaks to Kallsen and Conger did not come from the Washington D.C. clergy.2 The YouTube episode provided a hazy, partial view of what was occurring, but it was a bombshell to the watching Anglican world that was not aware of discord within AMiA.
The AMiA’s press office responded swiftly to the YouTube episode. The Director of Communications the Rev. Cynthia Brust emailed out a response on November 3rd that painted a picture of a collaborative effort with Rwanda and blamed websites and blogs for causing confusion. The press release said, “Bishop Chuck Murphy enjoys a positive, honest, open and collaborative relationship with Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje and the House of Bishops of Rwanda. As was communicated to Mr. Conger, discussions about the possibility of formalizing what has long been the stated vision of the AM’s functioning as a missionary society, is simply that – a possibility being discussed that represents a consistent trajectory. Remaining connected to Rwanda remains a high value in these conversations, and we have no reason to believe this would change. Mr. Kallsen’s and Mr. Conger’s claims otherwise are untrue.” The press release concluded by asking Conger and Kallsen for a retraction of their story.
However, that same evening a second explosive event called into question everything that the AMiA had just claimed in its press release. The second major event of November 3rd was the release of a paper written by three AMiA clergy from the Washington D.C. area. Before looking at the paper and how it was published online, a description of their background is in order. The three priests were Dan Claire, Chuck Colson, and Tommy Hinson. In a prototypical AMiA story, Rev. Claire had moved to D.C. in 1999 and eventually started the Church of the Resurrection. Claire had been working for Reformed Theological Seminary in D.C. as well as their distance learning campus. He was briefly the AMiA’s Executive Director of Leadership Development and handled clergy credentialing. In 2007 Resurrection planted the Church of the Advent in Columbia Heights with Tommy Hinson as the rector. In 2009 Resurrection planted again, starting the Church of the Ascension in Arlington Virginia with Chuck Colson as the pastor.
These D.C. churches were part of The Apostles’ Mission Network of the AMiA, which consisted of churches in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington D.C. with Terrell Glenn as their bishop. The D.C. clergy were Reformed, against women’s ordination, not charismatic, and had a general distaste towards both the existing large conservative Episcopalian churches in the area like Truro and The Falls Church, as well as towards large swaths of the AMiA. Claire told me that the AMiA was full of pirates who would end up slicing each other’s throats. The Presbyter’s Meeting was the final straw for them, because as their paper put it “…hundreds of conversations are taking place—without the leadership—in secret behind closed doors. It’s a tense and uncertain time for many in the AMiA.”
Before the Presbyter’s Retreat I had written a highly critical blog post about AMiA based on the scheduled lineup for the forthcoming Winter Conference. My post referenced the D.C. clergy. Dan Claire saw it and asked me to edit it to remove the reference to D.C. He told me, “If we come back with certainty that AMiA is dead, I’ll happily encourage you to change it back.”
On the morning of November 3 my pastor Chuck Colson told me about an article that he and two other clergy from D.C. were writing. Late that evening, he sent me their completed paper, titled Is the AMiA’s New “Missionary Society” Structure the Best Way Forward?3 He told me to “…feel free to distribute as you see fit. It may be helpful to connect with the Anglophiles out there in the blogosphere. It seems that there was some misinformation today, so may be good to get it straight.” The D.C. clergy had vetted the paper with several people and they felt like they had charitably represented Murphy’s proposal in Part 1 of the paper.
I realized that this was going to be big news in Anglican circles, so I confirmed with him that he did not mind public distribution of the paper and he responded “nope, fire away. we want to make it available. we were more factual than anything with a few pointed questions.” I posted the paper on my blog around 10 PM as well as sending it to David Virtue and others. Virtue was close to AMiA leadership at that time, and he responded to me, “I am told by AMIA leaders this is only ONE side of the story and not accurate. I am waiting for clarification.”
What did the paper say? It described the Murphy/Donlon presentation at the Presbyter’s Retreat in detail, as I have repeated in these posts. Then it moved to critique and questions about the path Bishop Murphy was proposing. This section of critique follows:
- The proposed structure doesn’t resolve the AMiA’s ecclesiastical vulnerability.
In his presentation, the Chairman emphasized that the AMiA remains at risk as long as it is a personal prelature of the Rwandan archbishop. He described how Abp Yong’s successor, Abp Chew, refused to endorse the AMiA, thereby leaving sponsorship solely to Rwanda. He then argued that the new system would resolve this vulnerability by providing stability through a presumably less fickle College of Consultors. Yet we learned during the Q&A session that a missionary society would have still require some kind of sponsorship by one or another Anglican province, both for the sake of clergy credentialing, as well as for the society’s “voluntary submission” to provincial canons. In other words, a missionary society will still require the blessing of a province, whether Rwanda or somewhere else. If, on the other hand, the AMiA were to become a missionary jurisdiction of the Province of Rwanda, it would no longer have this vulnerability. The latter alternative appears to be an obvious and relatively simple solution. Why isn’t the Chairman considering it?
2.The proposed structure doesn’t resolve the financial questions.
It does bring an end to the AMiA’s formal relationship with Rwanda, thereby concluding the self-imposed obligation of tithing to the province. Will the AMiA no longer make major contributions to the seminary and provincial operations? Is this good? What about Bp Alexis’ call for a reckoning of AMiA money sent to Rwanda? Agreed, it is unfortunate that his letter was distributed publicly outside the Rwandan House of Bishops. But in Alexis’ defense, the AMiA’s national office has not been forthcoming with this information. As one of the two senior Rwandan bishops, Alexis has long supported the AMiA and is arguably more familiar with the AMiA than any of his peers, given his recent two-year residency at Church of the Apostles, in Columbia, SC. Should his request for transparency be so quickly dismissed as the actions of a “knucklehead”?
The clear implication of the 10/10/10 stewardship policy always has been that the AMiA regularly tithes to the Province of Rwanda in the same way that individuals regularly tithe to their parishes, and parishes regularly tithe to the AMiA. But in his presentation Bp Murphy indicated that this was a false assumption, because in fact the AMiA has given to Rwanda on an irregular basis as needs have been expressed. This then raises several questions: Has all of AMiA’s money designated for Rwanda been sent? If so, who or what were the recipients? Who made the disbursement decisions?
During the past four years the national office has consistently rebuffed all efforts by individuals and congregations to obtain an accounting for AMiA tithes to Rwanda, suggesting that it is wrong for us to seek such information. The national office’s answer has been one of theological principle: whenever we give, we no longer have any say regarding how our gift should be used, and therefore we have no right to ask Rwanda to account for AMiA tithes. However, this seems inconsistent with the national office’s dealings with Rwanda. It has apparently given to Rwanda in response to stated needs, controlling precisely how and where the money was spent, rather than as a regular tithe. Why then hasn’t there been greater transparency, both for the Rwandan bishops and for AMiA congregations?
3.The proposed structure doesn’t preclude “reverse colonialism” either.
The Chairman coined this term in response to efforts by the Rwandan House of Bishops to provide to the AMiA increased oversight, particularly with regard to finances and the selection of senior leadership. Is this, as Bp Murphy said, truly a “bad idea,” one that is “missiologically crazy and practically foolish”? Or is this precisely what the AMiA needs, and in fact the very sort of oversight most people in the AMiA thought the House of Bishops has been providing the organization all along? For many years, the AMiA website and its promotional literature stated that the Anglican Mission “enjoys the oversight of Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda and the Rwandan House of Bishops.” Thus, the national office went to great lengths to make sure that all of the Rwandan bishops attended the annual winter conference. No one ever complained about reverse colonialism then. But since 2007, with the advent of new canons and the personal prelature language, oversight by the House of Bishops has been edited out of AMiA documentation. Now that some of the bishops wish to exercise the oversight they were long reported to have, why is the Chairman proposing a way to dissolve formal ties with the Province?
4. The proposed structure perpetuates a top-heavy polity.
One of the greatest weaknesses of the AMiA is that, practically speaking, the Chairman is the sole decision- maker. While on paper Bp Murphy remains under the authority of Abp Rwaje, the Rwandan primate is nevertheless “22 hours away by air in the heart of Africa.” Meanwhile, the national officers all work for the Chairman, the missionary bishops function effectively as his suffragans, and there is no regular college of presbyters. In short, the AMiA’s current polity is extremely top-heavy. Our biggest concern with the proposed structure is that it codifies the Chairman’s unilateral leadership. It’s a fresh coat of paint on the old wineskin of the national office. Instead of an ecclesiology grounded in Holy Scripture and classical Anglican tradition, it is a monocracy legitimized by parachurch precedents. The architect of the proposal, Kevin Donlon, describes his role as telling the Chairman what he can and cannot do according to canon law. During the retreat he explained his understanding of the discipline of canon law in the traditional Roman Catholic sense: that not only is there Holy Scripture, but also natural law, from which ecclesiastical canon law is derived. In other words, in this framework, canon law does not flow out of Scripture, but runs parallel to it. Classical Anglicanism, on the other hand, understands canon law to be derived from and subordinate to Scripture (cf. Article 34). Here’s the problem: the Chairman’s canon lawyer has tailor-made a structure that fits existing AMiA hierarchy not on the basis of Scripture or classical Anglican tradition. Rather, the structure is modeled after historical parachurch ministries primarily found in Roman Catholic tradition. If one must consistently resort to Roman Catholic terminology and analogies to communicate ecclesial structure, then it should come as no surprise if the end result is a Roman Catholic ecclesiology. Where are the biblical theologians advising the Chairman regarding better alternatives with more ancient, biblical historical precedents? Where are the historians recommending the checks and balances of Anglican episcopacy since the Reformation?
In spite of the top-heavy design, the Chairman’s proposal might possibly work if he welcomed input from the rank and file and made improvements in response to feedback. Yet such is not the case. Only questions for clarification are permitted.
In fact, throughout the Presbyter’s Retreat participants were reminded that people who disagree with the national office have the freedom to leave and find a new affiliation. Here are a few examples of what was said during the presentations:
· Those who are uncomfortable with the AMiA’s “two integrities” concerning women’s ordination are free to find a new home.
· Those who would prefer to establish diocesan structures should look elsewhere.
· The Chairman may confer with the missionary bishops or other clergy, but it is for advice and not a vote. Those who desire a more conciliar system should join a different organization.
We believe that the health of any organization depends upon open channels of communication. When this does not happen, or when disagreement and concern amongst the membership are characterized as a rejection of spiritual authority, dysfunction inevitably arises. We would not counsel marriages in this way. We would not lead our churches in this way. Why then does the AMiA operate in such a manner? We need clear, fair processes for corporately engaging the issues and challenges all organizations inevitably face. When major changes happen without any formal process involving open communication, the foundations of the movement are shaken.
One of the looming challenges for the AMiA is leadership succession in the national office. Since 2006, the Chairman’s retirement date has been continually just a couple of years away. Perpetual presidency is an African tradition that the AMiA should not emulate, yet no plan for succession has been included in the Chairman’s proposal. In view of how important decisions have been made in the AMiA in recent years, we have every reason to expect that the Chairman will choose his own successor without giving any voice to AMiA membership. Missional software requires ecclesial hardware; without the development of institutions to carry forward vision and values, movements die. The AMiA has an extraordinary opportunity to model an episcopal polity that is equitable and appropriately represents the people it serves. The healthy checks and balances between vestry and clergy at the parish level could be reproduced in networks and within the national leadership in such a way as to provide valuable feedback and accountability without undermining spiritual authority. With such a great opportunity to model something robust and different before a watching world, why press forward instead with a monocratic government that will inevitably fail within the first generation? Such a consolidation of power within one ecclesiastical office betrays classical Anglicanism.
5.The proposed structure prioritizes the national office over the local parish.
For the past three years, the single greatest issue facing the AMiA has been limited financial resources. Instead of a reduction in the size and scope of the national office, personnel and initiatives have increased. Meanwhile, resources that were formerly distributed to the networks for church planting have decreased by 80%. And once again, there has been no forum for parishes and clergy to challenge the national office to tighten its own belt by undertaking austerity measures.
The Chairman’s presentation made no mention of this issue, nor did his proposal offer any hope for a solution. Instead, it promoted his office as the primary missionary unit of the AMiA (cf. AMiA Charter. Art. 7, Sec. 1). Kevin Donlon explained, “The Apparatus [i.e. the Chairman’s Office] is the heart and arms of the mission. Lose the Apparatus and all you have left is the body. You can stand around and sing songs, but you can’t really ‘do’ anything.”
We believe that the greatest strength of the AMiA, as for any church planting movement since the days of Paul, is not its national office, but its local congregations. The best way forward will buttress, rather than detract, from parish life and mission. We need a proposal that will trim the girth of the national office, and put more resources in the hands of the missionary bishops, their networks, and especially the local churches.
6. The proposed structure risks harming our relationships in the broader Anglican world.
How will people both inside and outside the AMiA respond when it becomes public knowledge that the AMiA is not embedded in the canons of Rwanda and actually could have dual citizenship in the ACNA, despite earlier statements to the contrary? We fear that the move to establish a missionary order independent of the ACNA will only breed further alienation and animosity, when we should be “making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3). It appears to be a step toward further sectarianism, rather than greater unity. Why not take this opportunity to seek rapprochement and a more robust friendship with our brothers and sisters in the ACNA?
Conclusion
The Anglican Mission in its current form is a hierarchy in search of a polity. We believe that this proposal in its current form is hardly the best way forward, as it fails to solve any of the AMiA’s most pressing concerns. The simplest solution is for the AMiA to become a missionary jurisdiction of the Province of Rwanda. But doing so would bring an end to the current structures and lead to a polity that is significantly more collegial and conciliar, particularly among the Chairman’s episcopal peers. From all appearances, this option is not even under consideration. Why not? Why have recent efforts by the Rwandan House of Bishops to oversee the AMiA met such fierce resistance? As primate, Abp Rwaje has every right to put this option back on the table and to lead the Mission into a new season of greater transparency, episcopal collegiality, and missional empowerment for the local church. We’re praying for this outcome, and remain hopeful for the future of the Anglican Mission under the oversight of the Church of Rwanda.
- AMiA press release. ↩︎
- Since the presentation had been given earlier to the AMiA bishops and the network leaders, the leaks logically came from them or those around them. ↩︎
- Stand Firm, a well-known Anglican blog at the time, became the focal point of comments on every side of the AMiA issue. It was in a comment there that the D.C. document was first referred to as “The Washington Statement” a moniker that stuck. http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/sf/page/28022/comment-sf/#470669 ↩︎
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