Interesting that Archbishop Akrofi of West Africa, Orombi's alternate, has resigned, but Phillipa Amabale, a lay rep from West Africa has not.

It is also interesting that, some sideline criticism notwithstanding, the Joint Committee seems prepared at first blush to receive Bishop Douglas in his membership without comment.

Marshall Scott

However she was appointed, it gladdens me to see that Janet Trisk+ is now on the standing committee. I studied under Janet+ when she was the academic dean of the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown, South Africa. She is a strong advocate of the oppressed in Southern Africa, and I learned much about the process and efficacy of contextual theology from her.

Some of you may remember that it was Janet's+ maneuvering at a previous meeting of the ACC that managed to get part IV of the proposed covenant "detached" for a further round of consideration. Not sure if that has done any good in the long run, but it was a valiant effort to attempt a change in the tone of the final document.

Jason Cox

It's all rather confusing. The ACC has a constitution that calls for the ACC to "appoint" a Standing Committee, and by-laws that say that vacancies are filled by appointment of the Standing Committee. The Standing Committee includes the 5 primates who are members of the Standing Committee of the Primates -- and those primates are also ex officio members of the ACC. There's no official constitution for the Primates, so there's no indication of how their members of the Standing Committee are chosen.

My quote of the week: "A growing ecumenical theological consensus affirms the trinitarian understanding of God as the basis for ecclesial life, which is why church unity cannot be reduced to an issue of organizational structure." From the Romanian Orthodox theologian Ion Bria, in the "The Liturgy after the Liturgy."

There's no official constitution for the Primates, so there's no indication of how their members of the Standing Committee are chosen.

It has been reported before that the primates of an area or region choose one of themselves to the Standing committee. That is why it is reported that +Katharine's response to the ABC's private letter requesting that she stand down from the Standing Committee was that he had no authority to make such a request as she had been chosen by the primates of the Americas to the Committee.

Mathew Davies' article in ENS is required reading. For instance, it retraces the Orombi saga recalling that his office said that his letter in support of Anis was not a resignation letter. This begs the question, has the ABC decided to interpret the letter as a resignation to deny Orombi the opportunity to continue to not attend meetings?

Further, Davies does us the service of listing the membership of the Standing Committee. If you go the the Anglican Communion Office website, or elsewhere of the AC website you will search in vain for that information. The standing committee has no web presence. How peculiar an institution.

Over at T19, Noll (who has very close ties to Orombi) points out "Article 3.6.5 reads: A Trustee-Member’s term of office automatically terminates if he or she: is absent without the permission of the Trustee-Members from two successive ordinary meetings and a majority of the Trustee-Members resolve that his or her office be vacated.”