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On their final day, primates met in a marathon, 14-hour session, finally releasing a stunning setback for revisionists. In a 10-page communiqué, the primates said:

• It is "not acceptable to the majority of the communion" for a person living in a same-sex relationship to be a bishop.

• The Episcopal Church has an "ambiguous stance" with regard to same-sex blessings and has not prevented its local pastors from providing such blessings.

• Intervention by Global South bishops and primates to shield conservative churches has increased tension and triggered litigation over church property.

The primates then recommended:

• Further refinement of the Anglican Covenant to clarify the church's common beliefs.

• Creation of a new pastoral council and the position of "primatial vicar" in the U.S. to resolve disputes at the local level.

• That the Episcopal House of Bishops not give their consent to any gay person to become a bishop and "make an unequivocal common covenant" not to authorize any rite for the blessing of same-sex unions.

• That Episcopal leaders cease suing breakaway churches; and that churches halt legal action to remove property from Episcopal oversight.

• That intervention by primates stop after the new council and vicar are functioning.

The primates gave a deadline of September 30 for Episcopal bishops to act, noting that there would be unspecified "consequences" if the requests were unmet. At the closing press conference, held near midnight, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams admitted the new structures were an experiment. "Pray for it," he said. Back in the U.S., revisionist Episcopal bishops decried the communiqué. One suggested strongly that it was time for the Episcopal Church to pull out of the Anglican Communion.

Despite the clear victory, some conservatives struck a conciliatory note. A Global South conservative, Archbishop John Chew of Singapore, told ct, "The communiqué is a total package, not a zero-sum game." Episcopal Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh said in a statement, "The result can surely be described as an answer to prayer. What we have is an interim proposal for an interim period with interim structures."

But a handful of visionaries see something strategic happening within global Anglicanism beyond a tug of war over human sexuality. Archbishop Orombi said in a short interview that a deep level of structural change is beginning to occur.

His own national church is growing both in numbers and capacity. In Kampala, Anglicans are building a new cathedral with double the seating capacity, and starting new missions. Archbishop Orombi sees a new wave of Christianity gaining momentum in the Global South, with global implications. It's a third wave of global Anglicanism: The first wave was the initial creation of the Church of England and the English Reformation in the 16th century; the second wave was embodied by the Church Mission Society, which spread Anglicanism worldwide.

About the third wave, Orombi says, "The revival we are experiencing is not going to stop in Africa."

Most scholars have defined globalization primarily in economic and political terms. But now, some are seeing a different dimension develop. They call it global civil society.

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April 2007, Vol. 51, No. 4