There are increasingly shrill cries for a centralized authority over the Churches of the Anglican Communion. Some are now claiming that there is such crisis in the Communion that the only possible resolution is in granting the Lambeth Conference and the Primates’ Meeting a ‘Conciliar authority,’ although no one can say who it is that would or could, under Anglican polity, grant such authority. These arguments are claimed to be rooted in the principle of ‘What affects all, should be decided by all.’ These arguments are based on two premises, one of which is false and one of which is faulty.
The assumption that the Anglican Communion is in crisis is false. Only those who have a craven lust for power view the state of affairs in the Communion as dangerously critical. In reality, there is no crisis. On the other hand, views such as these do indeed threaten to create one. If people begin to accept the premise that the Anglican Communion (read: 'the Anglican Church') is in crisis, then people may in fact choose to accede the authority that God has entrusted to them as faithful protestants. In that case, the Communion would indeed enter a crisis, a critical destruction of the virtues of autonomy and autocephaly that the Communion has represented since its emergence in the late 1800's.
