Colin Slee's J'Accuse From Beyond the Grave.

Colin Slee, the late Dean of Southwark Cathedral

For those of you who follow the increasingly melodramatic politics of Anglicanism, the late Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark Cathedral in London who died of pancreatic cancer in November, dropped a posthumous bombshell today.

Madpriest in Newcastle scooped the Anglican blogosphere with this article in The Guardian. Apparently the two English Archbishops in private are far from their earnest conciliatory public personas. Here are some highlights from The Guardian article:

The fraught divisions have been laid bare in the leak of an anguished and devastating memorandum written by the Very Rev Colin Slee, the former dean of Southwark Cathedral, shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer last November. Dr Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, vetoed candidates from becoming bishops of the south London diocese.

The document reveals shouting matches and arm-twisting by the archbishops to keep out the diocese's preferred choices as bishop: Jeffrey John, the gay dean of St Albans, and Nicholas Holtam, rector of St Martin-in-the-Fields in central London, whose wife was divorced many years ago. Eventually Christopher Chessun, then an assistant bishop, was chosen.

Slee described Williams shouting and losing his temper in last year's Southwark meeting, which left several members of the crown nomination committee, responsible for the selection of bishops, in tears.

Slee also in effect charges the church with hypocrisy, stating that there are several gay bishops "who have been less than candid about their domestic arrangements and who, in a conspiracy of silence, have been appointed to senior positions". The memo warns: "This situation cannot endure. Exposure of the reality would be nuclear."

Slee said of the meeting: "We had two very horrible days in which I would say both archbishops behaved very badly. The meeting was not a fair consideration at all; they were intent on wrecking both Jeffrey John and Nick Holtam equally, despite the fact that their CVs were startlingly in an entirely different and better league than the other two candidates …

"The archbishop of Canterbury was bad tempered throughout. When it came to voting, certainly two – possibly three – members were in tears and [Williams] made no acknowledgement but carried on regardless. At a critical point Archbishop Sentamu and three other members simultaneously went to the lavatory, after which the voting patterns changed."

When persuasion fails, there is always intimidation. Interesting how the next Bishop of Southwark was chosen by the two Archbishops in a men's room. I don't think even the most aggressive satirist could come up with a more emblematic image of the whole process.

This is behavior which to me appears more like Cromwell (Thomas and Oliver) than Hooker. This whole Covenant business, the whole right wing effort to transform the Anglican Communion into the Anglican Church, to transform a tradition of Lex Orandi Lex Credendi into a confessional church, is starting to look less like a legitimate campaign and more like a bishops' coup.

ADDENDUM:

There is a very good discussion at Mark Harris' blog about the Colin Slee memo and its possible impact on the Covenant process. Not only is Fr. Harris' post worth reading, but so is the conversation in the comments.

I think Episcopalians should think hard about giving veto power over the decisions of their General Convention, and over their diocesan conventions, to a group of unelected and unaccountable bishops who make their decisions in secret. I've always said that we need only look across the Tiber to Rome's travails to see the results of unaccountable power making decisions in secret. In the wake of the Colin Slee memo, I'd say we need look no further than across the Thames at Lambeth Palace.