A new plan afoot from Lambeth?

In an interesting turn of events, the "Anaheim Seven" are meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yesterday Dan Martins reported that

Seven diocesan bishops of the Episcopal Church are presently at Lambeth Palace for a brief--but, I'm sure, intense--consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury. All seven are members of the Communion Partners, and all seven are signatories to the Anaheim Statement.

Dan speculates that the talks center around the two tier plan that has been suggested by Lambeth observers.

I have no inside knowledge of the subjects under discussion, but it doesn't require any eavesdropping equipment to figure out that they're talking about how Dr Williams' "two tier/two track" plan might actually get implemented. More specifically, it is a safe bet that each of the seven is interested in what steps a diocese might have to take to remain on Tier/Track One even as TEC [The Episcopal Church] per se is assigned to Tier/Track Two.

The Archbishop's schema is going to happen; of that I am more certain than ever. It will happen too quickly and too decisively to suit the ruling party in the Episcopal Church. It is long since past happening too slowly and too subtly to suit those in what had been TEC's conservative wing, and who are now part of the GAFCON-ACNA axis. But the Archbishop has behaved with utter consistency and coherence since the advent of this crisis in 2003, and there is no reason to think he will deviate from that path now. He will never send the Presiding Bishop an email saying, "The tracks have been assigned. You're in #2."

He will say something like, "Here's the Anglican Covenant. Churches that adopt it as their own will remain in full communion with the See of Canterbury."

If that happens, and it might, then the ABC better be prepared from most of the Church of England to flee his No. 1 group for the safety of TEC, The Scottish Episcopal Church, Anglican Church of Canada and several other provincial churches. If it does happen, then TEC should close the purse and used that money on evangelism in the United States and humanitarian efforts throughout the world. We should have done that several years ago.

Dan goes on to say

The General Convention, of course, will never do so. In time, the consequences of that decision will be seen in the form of invitations to Primates Meetings that never reach 815, and registration materials for the Anglican Consultative Council that never make it to TEC's chosen delegates. It will not come with a bang. It won't even be a whimper. It will simply be the sound of silence.

Well, there won't be primates meetings - TEC foots a huge percent of the bill for the AC. Nigeria isn't going to put up the funds necessary to call all the faithful together to play king-of-the-hill. It's not going to happen. None of the schismatic organizations can find the necessary capital. It's also going to look bad when the African provinces spend thousands of dollars traveling to meetings with 99 percent of the Anglicans in their respective provinces can't feed their children. That will make a huge statement to the world about whether Jesus is first in the dictators' minds, or if power is foremost.

The wild card in the mix, of course, is the ACNA. Despite the word "Anglican" in their title (and on the signs in front of their churches), it could be plausibly argued that the ACNA, technically, is not Anglican. Not yet, at any rate. But they are aligned with GAFCON, which represents the overwhelming majority of the world's actual Anglicans. So they are part of a matrix that is capable of putting immense political pressure on Lambeth Palace. I suspect the seven bishops and Dr Williams are discussing this fact as well.

Sorry, Dan, but these people do not represent "the overwhelming majority of the world's actual Anglicans." They represent themselves. Period. Almost all of them were appointed by like minded men. They were not elected and they do not represent the sheep trapped in their dictatorships.

Mrs. Umbuto in Kenya doesn't have a say or a care in all of this nasty business. She doesn't care if women get to wear pointy hats or who sleeps with whom. She cares about her daily existence and how she's going to keep her children alive one more day.

The real majority of the world's true Anglicans (at least in name) are living on the brink of starvation. It is wickedly evil that their appointed leaders are more concerned with power, sex and keeping women "in their place" than than finding a way to feed the starving.

And Jesus Wept.