On Archbishops Kolini’s and Yong’s reply to E. Radner
A brief response by E. Radner
The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner,
Senior Fellow, The Anglican Communion Institute
Archbishops Kolini of Rwanda and Yong of Southeast Asia have sent out a weighty rebuke for what I have written regarding the need for mutual accountability within the larger church as we seek to right the listing vessel of the Anglican Communion’s common teaching, and the Christian teaching and witness of ECUSA in particular. I accept the rebuke for what it is, coming from two respectable archbishops. I apologize for any misrepresentations of the AMiA I may have made in what I have written.
Archbishops Kolini and Yong are both people whom I greatly admire in their zeal for the Gospel and their evangelistic vision. I have shared communion with them in Our Lord’s Body and Blood; and have broken bread with them; indeed, I have shared my home with then Bishop Kolini and his wife. In what I have written I have deliberately avoided accusing individuals of wrongdoing, or of imputing evil motives to specific persons. This is, in large measure, because I have had deep respect for many of the persons involved in the AMiA. And I do not question the integrity of their faith. Rather, I share with them – as best I can – a passion for the truth of Christ Jesus as given in the Scriptures.
Without touching on details in dispute, I must nonetheless stand by my main argument regarding the dangers we are in through a failure to find a clear and mutually subjugating pathway for our decisions in defense of the Gospel of Jesus. I have responded to some of the questions raised regarding my views in a recent exchange with Bishop FitzSimons Allison, and I will not reiterate them here. Let me only point out that accountability for our common life in Christ is not exhausted, nor even greatly extended, if emanating only from within Rwanda, or from the part of the Archbishop of Southeast Asia acting personally, anymore than it is if it is pretended for the General Convention of the ECUSA acting within its limited and unilateral purview. If we do not strive for a greater and deeper and broader basis for our discernment, decision, and discipline – as broad as our Communion and broader still! -- we risk disintegrating the bonds of our shared life even as we lose the means by which our faith is ordered towards the common good. The call to “conciliarity” – of taking counsel together and submitting ourselves to “what seems good to all of us” in the Spirit through the instruments of our common order – is not yet something that has been sufficiently followed in our midst. Surely all of us know we must do better.
With respect to details, it seems as if Archbishop Kolini is under the impression that I am ignorant of matters touching directly upon the life of the Christians whose ecclesial existences have been affected by the AMiA. I respectfully assure him that this is not the case. As a Regional Missioner in the Diocese of Colorado for several years, I have rather concrete knowledge about a range of relevant matters. At the time of the original AMiA splits among many of our congregations less than four years ago – I say this as more are occurring – I was directly engaged in assisting in working with many fractured and injured congregations (as I was in trying to protect the canonical status of clergy who were leaving for the AMiA). Indeed, I know a good many things that both prudence and charity demand I relate privately to him, as in fact I have already done on a number of occasions. If there is any confusion about the scope of this experience and the responsibility for oversight that was in fact offered it – by bishops of ECUSA or the AMiA or Rwanda or Southeast Asia – I suggest that Archbishop Kolini come to Colorado, where we may actually visit with those involved, and where others besides myself can offer their personal testimonies. Let this count as a formal invitation for such a visit, that will surely have as its fruit the furtherance of the reconciliation we all so desire in the Lord.
In the meantime, it is probably wiser if this “parish priest from Colorado” were simply ignored by Primates like Archbishops Kolini and Yong, rather than met so robustly. I am hardly worth your trouble, however wrongheaded I may be. I am deluged with enough local chastisement to satisfy even the more distant and exalted corners of the world.
