Word: naughton
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...Naughton, an outspoken canon with the liberal Episcopalian Diocese of Washington, D.C., had been predicting a GAFcon meltdown for months. He feels that Akinola began losing influence at last year's meeting of Anglican archbishops in Dar es Salaam in February 2007. There Akinola pressed for formal approval of a new, conservative branch of U.S Anglicanism competing with Episcopalianism, a prototype of which he has already created. The move was seen as a harsh slap at the Communion and had the effect of reminding each primate that if schism occurred he too could be subject to such competition...
...Naughton's next tea leaf came last fall when a relatively moderate bishop defeated Rwandan hardliner Emmanuel Kolini to succeed Akinola as head of the African Anglican group CAPA. "Even within Africa," argues Naughton, "we saw the emergence of a large group of bishops who disagree with Episcopal Church on homosexuality but think Akinola and his American friends present a far greater threat to the Communion...
...months before GAFcon, says Naughton, a leading Southeast Asian theologian criticized some of the planning of the conference. That elicited a scathing reply from one of Akinola's U.S. bishops. When that became public, conservative unity seemed suspect. Meanwhile, allegations in The Atlantic magazine that participants in an anti-Muslim massacre in Nigeria had worn tags with the initials of a Christian organization run at the time by Akinola contributed to the devaluation of his leadership. That loss of stature was further accelerated this week by the unwillingness of both Akinola and his Ugandan ally Archbishop Henry Orombi to condemn...
...Naughton believes that the combination of Akinola's problems and a tension between conservatives more concerned about gays and those who increasingly regard that issue as a sideshow have combined to stall their movement, at least for now. "They overplayed their hand, and the tide has turned against these guys," he says...
Kendall Harmon, a canon with the diocese of South Carolina and in many ways Naughton's conservative counterpart, continues to hope that GAFcon may be the start of "a new thing." But Harmon agrees that GAFcon will not have the impact some had hoped for, and that barring a surprise conservative rebellion at the Lambeth conference, the big blow-up around homosexuality many had expected this summer will be deferred. Anglicans, says Harmon ruefully, are incrementalists, and "that has continued through this season...