A new presidential position for running the Communion? Can't we go a decade without cooking up some new position or grouping of positions of power at the top end of the WWAC? They never seem to stay within the limits of the power given them at the start - Lambeth, the Primates Meetings, the ACC/ACO. My first concern would be that this one, too, would start off with a benign sounding job description, and shortly start to amass as much power as possible. My second concern is that it would provide the opportunity for a power grab on the part of the Global South. Someone like ++Sentamu would be bad enough as the AoC - having someone like ++Okoh as President of the WWAC would be a disaster.

Given the resounding success that the Anglican Communion has been in bringing unity to the church and in settling grievances between Anglicans worldwide, perhaps the size of the job might be a better indicator that the Anglican Communion, as an idea and an organization, is too big, too unwieldy and too ill-defined to justify the drain it is on resources. We Anglicans have commonalities that transcend politics, and shared mission, tradition and an enviable worldwide communion. Is it really necessary to have an organization, a bureaucracy in which we are made to come together in ways which strain and exceed the bounds of our commonalities and the bonds of our affections? Do we need a bureaucracy in which to act out strife that eclipses our strengths? Should the Anglican Communion really be so much work in the first place?

In one version of this article (I think I saw it at Kiwianglo), Mouneer Anis is already all over this, talking about a person with the power to "enforce" the "decisions" of the Primates Meeting.

If Rowan had stuck to doing his Communion job (ie, to be Primus inter Pares, to invite bishops to Lambeth and to chair a few meetings), he might have found it a little less impossible. Instead he conducted himself like a Pope writ small - which is not and was never part of the job.

We don't need any other "President" of the Anglican Communion. We need the Primus inter Pares to stop making the job into something it's not.

(And note that Canon Kearon is equally misguided in his talk of the "decision making bodies." There are exactly zero "decision making bodies" in the Anglican Communion. Apart from decisions related to their internal functioning (ie, where shall we meet next time), NONE of the Communion wide bodies has ANY decision to decide ANTHING for the Communion.

Williams: "“Thinking back over things I don’t think I’ve got right over the last 10 years, I think it might have helped a lot if I’d gone sooner to the United States when things began to get difficult about the ordination of gay bishops, and engaged more directly with the American House of Bishops,”

Two points:

1. He still doesn't get our polity -- r.e. engage more directly with the American HOB.

2. Presumably he regrets not spending more time with the Americans applying pressure to back down on gay bishops. (Just as he has done twice with his "friend" Jeffrey John.

@Malcolm r.e. the reaction in the Global South.

The link given in to the T'graph has this (perhaps the story has been updated since it was first posted.

quote/
Last night Bishop Mouneer Anis, the leader of Anglicans in the Middle East and North Africa – who is chairman of the Church’s leaders in the so-called "Global South" welcomed the suggestion.
But he added: “Speaking personally, I think having a presidential figure will not solve divisions unless the presidential figure has the support of the primates of the Anglican Communion.
“So [it has to be] someone who is elected, who sits and talks with the primates and would have an executive role to implement what they decide.”
And he said it was news to him that the discussions were taking place.
/unquote

Err, that is not the *full report*. That is only the Recommendations.Full text coming up shortly at Thinking Anglicans.

My bad, Simon. I will amend.

Perhaps, as I asked of him in a piece at the Cafe, he might have spent more time with sexual and gender minorities. That his concern is meeting only with bishops shows again what may be true, that the office of bishop is not prone to humanizing? He certainly did not do much toward honoring the humanity of lgbtqi people. And yet, I still quote his works often and love his rambling Anglican way of doing theology. Perhaps now, he can devote his pen to humanizing.

I believe the archbishop said "The Church was wrong over the 'treatment' of homosexuals" not the belief of what constitutes a marriage and a proper family.

John Chilton, maybe he hasn't misunderstood our polity at all, but thought it would have been more expedient to make his case to the HoB in order to try to convince a majority of bishops exercising jurisdiction to withhold consents in the case of "problem" elections to the episcopate. That would presumably be easier than dealing with GC.