Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2006
Reprinted from HoBD with permission.

So word has now come from the Nigerian Synod that should be abundantly clear to the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is, if I'm not mistaken, the third preemptive strike.

In this communiqué the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) gives reality to its new name, and new significance to the parentheses. The Church of Nigeria _is to be_ the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes the Anglican Communion. The Lambeth Conference is described as risking having outlived its usefulness, and an alternative all-Anglican all-Bishops conference, in the "age-long tradition" (well, at least from 1867) of decennial gatherings will take its place, under the careful organizational oversight of this new regime — if things don't go the way the Nigerian pontificators think they should.

Archbishop Rowan, what part of this do you not understand? Who, exactly, is tearing the fabric of the Communion at this point? Who are the "super-apostles" who puff themselves up, trumpeting their delight in recognition by Time and declaring other parts of the body to be "cancerous lumps" worthy of excision? These pronouncements from Nigeria are more than unhelpful. It is time to recognize the nature of pride, and real "unilateral" action against other members of the church when it is proposed or taken. This is not the spirit of interdependence, but something else entirely.

Tobias S Haller BSG

[Read the proclamation that inspired this essay by clicking on "word" above.]