Some Possible Root Causes of TEC's Problems


In the US profession of corporate leadership and management, there is a tool called "root-cause" analysis. In Japanese industry, the same idea is called "Asking the Five Whys," where the number "five" is not to be taken literally. Root-cause analysis is a powerful tool in making organizations more effective, especially in the presence of problems and/or competition. Following are some possible root causes of TEC's problems among the Primates.
  1. The mainstream TEC has a competent, organized, well-funded opposition which for more than a decade has been working to get TEC thrown out of the Anglican Communion, and replaced by a new, much more conservative US Anglican church. The leaders of this US movement have been actively courting senior African bishops since before Lambeth 1998.

  2. Central Africa was missionized in the 19th century by conservative English evangelicals who presented their version of Anglicanism as the only Anglicanism. This version is quite literalistic, especially around the sexuality issues. Today's Africans who were raised in this tradition are shocked and repelled by enlightenment and post-enlightenment biblical interpretation. While they have been well-taught about the contents of the bible, they have been taught little or nothing about the last century and a half's development of methods of biblical interpretation.

  3. In Central Africa, Islam and the Roman Catholic Church are aggressive competitors to the evangelistic Anglicans. Both of these competitor groups have very conservative attitudes towards GLBT issues, and can easily appeal to African cultural prejudices against GLBTs.

  4. American economic and military power, especially as being used by the GWB administration, but also as having been exercised for decades by Corporate America and earlier US administrations, are highly resented by people of the third world. A nation led by someone who believes that Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites can be made to live together happily by having them participate together in one election is not to be respected - to put it mildly! In short, berating and punishing Americans for their "faithlessness" is a way of getting psychic revenge for other factors causing major resentment.

  5. The fact that the recent Primates' Communique focuses solely on TEC, may be a case of divide-and-conquer. The Anglican churches in other progressive countries may be next. We should be aggressively working with our natural allies to head off any divide-and-conquer strategy that our opposition may pursue.

  6. In southern Great Britain (i.e. below Hadrian's Wall), unlike in most of the developed world, the idea of "new" is not viewed as desirable in an idea or product. Whereas to a North American or Western European (on the continent) "new" tends to connote "improved, better," to a southern Briton, it connotes "untested, shaky, unreliable." This factor may contribute to the Abp of Canterbury's apparent lack of sympathy toward TEC. Also, the C of E's resistance to women as bishops is likely a factor.

  7. Whereas in the US, extra-conservative Anglican evangelicalism represents somewhere around 5 to 10% of the clergy and laity, in England the liberal-conservative split in the C of E is much more nearly 50-50. This makes potential schism over sexuality (and/or women bishops) a much more serious numerical problem for the C of E than for TEC, giving C of E conservatives a much bigger stick to wave, and giving the ABC a strong reason to give the conservatives' desires more weight.

  8. Because of the greater frequency at which the Primates meet, they can wield more influence than the Anglican Consultative Council, the only so-called Instrument of Communion that has a Constitution and Canons, and which contains all four orders of ministry.

  9. Most provinces do not have a polity where governing power is shared beyond the episcopal order of ministry. Therefore TEC and its Mexican and Central American descendants which share such a polity are a threat to the political stability and moral authority of other provinces, including the CofE. Our choice of a woman as our primate magnifies this threat.

  10. The ABC says that he teaches what the two other bishops-only Instruments of Communion decide is the theology of the AC (To me, this is an abrogation of his own moral responsibility as the original Instrument of Communion.) He also does not teach the historic Anglican encompassing of a variety of viewpoints.

    Ted Mollegen