Dispatch from the U.K.

Our English-born friend Nigel Taber-Hamilton [rector, St. Augustine's-in-the-Woods Episcopal Church, Diocese of Olympia] has recently begun his sabbatical, beginning with stops in the U.K. One goal of The Episcopal Majority is to "establish ties with national churches or groups abroad who are sympathetic to the Episcopal Church." We asked Nigel+, in the midst of his busy travels, to share some anecdotes about what he is hearing from other Anglicans about The Episcopal Church. These are his off-the-cuff remarks, as he moved from one WiFi site to the next.

As I journeyed on my sabbatical through England and Scotland I made a point of speaking with as many Anglicans as possible, always seeking to get a sense of how they understand what is going on in our Communion, their opinions of the Archbishop of Canterbury, of the Episcopal Church, and of the folk I call “neo-Puritans.”

I was very encouraged by what I heard. Of course, I wasn’t attending any rabidly evangelical parishes (which make Baptists look “High Church”!). Here are some of the responses.

In a small parish outside of Bristol (in the west of England) I found a sense of “I wish this would all go away.” When pressed, most folk really didn’t like what they saw as a sort of evangelical imperialism coming out of Africa. No one liked Archbishop Akinola, though not all had heard of him.

On Iona, one New Zealand priest (very active in her province) said “[the Episcopal Church and other progressive provinces] have lots of friends in New Zealand, but our bishops are essentially ‘keeping their heads down,’ having seen the way TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada have been excoriated by Akinola and his cronies.”

A lay person from Kent was less willing to say she supported TEC, but was very clear that she found the conservative stance of the Global South and the English Evangelicals to be deeply offensive.

I stayed with a Scottish Episcopalian who is a member of St. Matthews Episcopal Church which worships at Rosslyn Chapel. (Her tales of the changes that have come as a result of The DaVinci Code were fascinating!)

She was as outspoken as the New Zealander – said it was typical of the English to want to gloss over differences and not confront the Global South – that it was appeasement without a plan. [At least Chamberlain used the time he gained from his agreement with Hitler to rebuild British armaments.] She said that former Primus (=Primate) Richard Holloway would have been even more outspoken than the current Primus, that the Scottish Episcopal Church stood firmly with The Episcopal Church, but, again, its bishops were trying to stay out of the line of fire. She thought (as the New Zealander also thought) that if push came to shove, the Scots would stand by us.

A retired priest at Lincoln had nothing good to say about the way the Archbishop of Canterbury was handling the situation.

I chose not to ask the Vice Dean of Canterbury, Clare Edwards, about the situation, since she is, after all, a prominent cleric at the Archbishop’s cathedral. But she did indicate her admiration for The Episcopal Church, especially with regard to our role in the process that led to the ordination of women and our continued ministry of inclusion.

No one had anything good to say about the Archbishop of Canterbury. The best that they could say can be summed up as “Damned with faint praise”! “Well, he was a great academic at Oxford,” and “He could be more outspoken when he was Archbishop of Wales.”

The more outspoken wished him gone, and felt that he was doing more harm than good – that he had “sold his soul to Archbishop Akinola,” in one memorable phrase.

No one seemed to think that “holding the Communion together” was a particularly high value if it was achieved at the sacrifice of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

I was actually quite surprised by the antipathy toward Archbishop Akinola. I think the best way to describe their perspective is that they viewed his actions as a sort of "imperialism-in-reverse."

As I noted at the beginning, none of the folk I spoke with came from the "evangelical" wing of the English Church. [I don’t think the Scots even have an “evangelical wing”!] I do know, however, that they have no love for the Archbishop of Canterbury because he comes from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. In addition, they believe he hasn’t gone far enough.