Why Women Bishops in Kenya Could Be Important in ACNA

As Anglican Unscripted has reported, a diocese in the Anglican Church of Kenya has elected a woman to be the Bishop of said diocese.  The culprit diocese has been something of a pain to the Archbishop of Kenya and to orthodox Anglicans there.  (Hmm, reminds me of a certain diocese in the Anglican Church in North America.)  It is not certain at this time that the Archbishop will recognize the new bishop.  I will defer to Kevin and George for further details.  It’s probably fair to say it’s a mess.

So why do I or anyone in ACNA care about this mess in Kenya?  Well, we place a high value on our relationship with GAFCON, a confederation of orthodox Anglicans mainly from the Global South that includes the Anglican Church of Kenya and ACNA as well.  And there is supposed to be a moratorium on women bishops in GAFCON.  In ACNA, women bishops are prohibited in our Constitution and Canons.  There has been two women bishops before in GAFCON that I am aware of.  But this is the first diocesan bishop.

To give an idea how important this breach in the moratorium could be to ACNA, I will give some condensed and oversimplified history.  After the consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003 – and long before for many of us traditional Anglicans – The Episcopal Church was a no-go jurisdiction due to her brazen apostasies.  But part of our catholicity is we know we are part of something bigger than ourselves, and we want our structures and formal relationships to reflect that.  Some thirty years ago, I saw a sign for an “Independent Episcopal Church” around Paris, Texas; we don’t want that although some have been compelled to do that for a short time.

After 2003, as a stop gap, many of us put ourselves under orthodox Anglican bishops from the Global South.  But several of these bishops eventually let it be known, mostly in private but quite clearly, that they soon wished to be in communion with one orthodox Anglican entity in the United States.  They did not desire to sort through an alphabet soup of jurisdictions.  I know bishops of my Reformed Episcopal Church were politely told that if we wished to continue our formal relationship with the Church of Nigeria, we would have to join a new orthodox Anglican province once it was formed.

This very understandable and even godly encouragement from Global South bishops (who soon formed GAFCON in 2008) was one factor behind us joining ACNA when it was formed in 2009.  We valued our global relationships with orthodox Anglicans and wished to retain them as much as possible.

However, there was an outstanding difficult issue in the formation of ACNA and of GAFCON as well – women’s ordination.  No, I am not going to explain why here, but us traditionalists do not recognize the Holy Orders of women.  For many of us, it is a communion-breaking innovation.  So both sides of this issue had to flex for ACNA to be formed.  The compromise was that it would be up to dioceses whether to ordain women as priests or not, and dioceses who did not ordain women were not obligated to recognize women priests. Further, and most relevant to the current situation, no diocese would ordain a woman as bishop.  This is important as us Anglicans see the office of bishop as a focus of unity in the church.  To not recognize the validity of a bishop is a communion breaker; it is practically the definition of breaking communion. 

Up to recently, GAFCON’s practices on women’s ordination were similar but less formal: different provinces had different policies but women were not to be made bishops until there was a consensus accepting that.

I’ve glossed over a lot of history here.  My erudite readers are welcome to add or correct in the comments.  But I think you see the problems with now three women bishops being in GAFCON.  A big reason many of us traditionalists compromised and joined ACNA was to retain our relationships with those who now form GAFCON.  But what if we can no longer be in communion in GAFCON due to a proliferation of women bishops?

That would be one less reason for us to remain in ACNA.  I don’t want this post to become of litany of grievances, but some of us, even people like me who were excited at the formation of ACNA, have very mixed feelings about ACNA today.  If our relationship with GAFCON is no longer a desirable or even feasible part of the ACNA package, that would make remaining in ACNA itself that much less desirable.

We traditionalists in ACNA do not expect perfect polity; we would not have joined ACNA if we did.  And I know of no one getting ready to leave over this matter.  But we do have our limits.  Many of us have already left churches and suffered loss when those limits were violated before.  And women bishops in GAFCON could become one more test of those already strained limits if this is not dealt with in a timely fashion.