AMiA Collapse 15

The AMiA–or at least its leadership–were free of Rwanda, but they were in no man’s land. Bishop Murphy had misjudged the situation badly. He was not ready to go with a landing place for AMiA outside of Rwanda, so there must have been a lot of work on trying to find one ASAP. He had misjudged the attitude of many clergy and laypeople inside AMiA who thought that with the creation of ACNA, logically AMiA would more and more integrate into it until the two were one. The need for what Archbishop Duncan called “lifeboats” was over, so why persist with an entirely separate staff, organization, set of bishops, canons, and so on? Also, it was unseemly to have retired Archbishops governing an organization that was rebelling against the very Provinces they used to rule! The sense of “one bishop, one diocese” and of retired bishops fading away was totally violated by these actions. As Archbishop Duncan later put it, “when an Archbishop ceases to be Archbishop, he ceases to interfere in the life of his province.”¹ Practically, although AMiA had been heavily funded by money from Pawleys Island, the Apostles Network represented approximately 50% of their revenue, so losing it entirely was also a heavy blow.

After the resignations, clergy had to scramble to figure out what was going on, what their current status was, and what they and their parishes should do in the future. On December 6, the Rev. Chip Edgar at Church of the Apostles in Columbia, SC sent an email to clergy with his opinion regarding affiliation and credentials:

1. Our orders are held in Rwanda. All of us are clergy of PEAR, not of AMiA. The AMiA is an ecclesial structure established through the primatial vicar to carry out the mandates and mission of the primate. It is not our ordaining body nor our place of canonical residence.
2. No churches exist canonically within the AMiA. Our churches are ecclesially seated in Rwanda. 
3. In fact, unless we opt out of Rwanda into the AMiA, we are no longer a part of the AMiA.
4. No bishop who resigned from the Church of Rwanda has canonical  authority over us.  They certainly can dismantle the structural system of the AMiA, but canonically, they have no authority over us or our churches. We are seated in the church of Rwanda.
5. Therefore those who have left the church of Rwanda by resignation are the one who have departed ecclesially. They are, in terms of Anglican structures, floating without a home. They actually have no churches: the churches do not reside with the bishop but in the province. Unless a church opts OUT of Rwanda it is in Rwanda. It cannot be in the AMiA (as a missionary society) without opting out of Rwanda.
6. Therefore, churches that join the AMiA as a missionary society depart from the Anglican structure of Rwanda. Unless the AMiA somehow finds itself seated within a recognized province, it is no longer ecclesiastically Anglican.
7. It is up to ++Rwaje to create forms and systems for the effective oversight of the churches in the US. All (formerly AMiA?) churches are technically under his oversight until they opt out.
8. Point: we are safe under the oversight of Rwanda. It is not whether or not we consider ourselves to be, or they consider us to be. We are seated in Rwanda. We don’t have to do anything. 

Rev. Edgar’s take on the situation was well-reasoned, sound, and ultimately proved to be correct. In my own parish we were told, “The status of congregations affiliated with the AMiA is unclear for a number of reasons, including varied by‐laws from parish to parish, poor record keeping, and imprecise definitions in the canons of both the Church of Rwanda and the AMiA. For this reason, it falls to every parish to declare whether they prefer to remain under the spiritual oversight of the Province of Rwanda, or to follow Bp Murphy and his colleagues in the AMiA.”²

On Murphy’s side of the conflict, Canadian AMiA Bishop Silag Ng wrote on his blog, “I am not talking about who’s right and who’s wrong here but I want each one of you to take the message of Psalm 101 into your heart that we need to be careful to digest this sad news. We need to fast and pray to discern God’s will for our future journey…In a letter I send to all clergy yesterday to deliver this news I call for a seven days fasting and prayers starting today.”³ According to Dan Claire, Ng was “…loyal to Tay & Yong and I understand very happy to be out from under Rwandan oversight.” Silas also sent an email which continued to blame the press for forcing the AMiA’s hand in leaving Rwanda:

Over the past week or so there have been a number of communications that have been received by the Bishops in the Anglican Mission from the House of Bishops in Rwanda. These communications are a culmination of several months worth of exchanges that have been out of character with the historic relationship that we have enjoyed with the HOB of Rwanda. They have, however, come to capture an attitude emanating from the HOB in Rwanda that has been unsettling, at best, for those of us who are Bishops in the Mission.

The most challenging aspect of these recent exchanges (and, again, this is out of character with the relationship we have enjoyed during the preceding ten years) has been the lack of opportunity for our Council of Bishops to respond to their requests before they have made these private communications public through the web and the press.

This pattern culminated yesterday in an article on the web that is both substantively inaccurate and destructive of the trust between the HOB of Rwanda and our Council of Bishops, as it once again made public private communications that we had not had an opportunity to respond to.

You will note that as of yesterday afternoon I, along with all the Mission’s Bishops except Bishop Barnum, have resigned from the House of Bishops of Rwanda. I have attached the letter of resignation from our House of Bishops to Archbishop Rwaje for your information. I will let that letter speak for itself.

There, of course, will be questions that need to answered, conversations to be had, and reconciliation pursued where appropriate. I am deeply appreciative of the relationship that we have enjoyed over the past ten years and remarkably disappointed by the events that have led us to this day.

According to my rector, around the 6th or 7th of December Bishop Murphy was attempting to get Archbishop Duncan to be the seated Primate he needed for the Mission Society! I haven’t seen this discussed elsewhere, but what a twist that would have been. The AMiA also responded in the press to the recent events seeking to calm nerves and tell their side of the story. On December 7th, Press Officer Cindy Brust spoke to Christianity Today and said,  “It’s just a difference of opinion in the way Rwanda wanted to move forward and what the Anglican Mission felt like God was leading us to do.” What she said was understated, but certainly true. She also affirmed that AMiA “…has every intention of remaining a part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The association will seek a group of retired archbishops to serve as a college of consultors and connect to an undetermined Anglican province.”⁴

Also on the 7th Bishop Barnum spoke to Archbishop Rwaje for the first time since the resignations. “I apologized to him that we were unwilling to comply with his godly admonition. I apologized for the insulting words of the past months – none which hurt more than the phrase “reverse colonialism” (implying AMIA wasn’t going to be controlled by Africa) – and then for the hurtful comparison of being compared to the Egyptian nation.”⁵ Perhaps this call was to take the first steps in sorting out how to guide the congregations left in the lurch by the resignations?

Because so much was happening at the same time, I’ll end this post here before turning to the large subject of money, which AMiA addressed publicly in the following days of 2011.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB6C_nfIKHI accessed 15 August 26. ↩︎
2. “Is It Time to Break Away from the Anglican Province of Rwanda?” 14 Dec. 2011. Unpublished confidential report from Church of the Ascension, Arlington, VA. ↩︎
3. https://bishopsilas.blogspot.com/2011/12/day-840-amia-left-rwanda-two-days-ago.html accessed 15 August 26. ↩︎
4. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/decemberweb-only/leavingrwanda.html?start=2 accessed 18 August 26. ↩︎
5. Barnum, First Steps Toward Reconciliation And Why I Decided to Stay in Rwanda. ↩︎