Anglican Mainstream

By Peter Ould

…There is no real discipline at all in some parts of the church in matters holy, lawful and honest and this is the reason why GAFCON happened, why the Jerusalem Statement was issued and why hundreds of orthodox clergy and laity, evangelical and anglo-catholic, met at All Souls Langham Place last week. They met because the moment has now come in England to stand up to liberalism.

Of course, "Liberal Christianity" is anything but. Despite the loud exhortations from its leading proponents that the "broad church" is the key nature of Anglicanism, Christina Rees and others like her worked on Monday night to produce a framework for the legislation for Women Bishops that would cut out from the Church of England those traditionalists who believed that the ordination of women, let alone their consecration as bishops, was a deeply heterodox move. In doing so they demonstrated that they were far less interested in liberality of theological thought and far more concerned with pushing a specific revisionist interpretation of Scripture with the explicit removal of those who believed the traditional orthodox faith.

This is no wonder though when you examine the theology of some of those leading the campaign to make women bishops with a single clause measure. For example, some of the leading candidates to be the first women bishop, like Christine Hardman, Archdeacon of Lewisham (Southwark Diocese again) and June Osbourne, Dean of Salisbury Cathedral (again, not the most conservative of dioceses at all) have some of the most liberal doctrine of their contemporaries. Christina Rees the Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church) is also heavily involved with Giles Fraser’s Inclusive Church which campaigns for the acceptance of gay sexual relationships in the church.

If evangelicals who support women bishops, and there are a fair number who do in good conscience, eventually allow a single clause measure to go through General Synod they will unwittingly be signing their own theological death warrants, for a single clause measure will signal a victory for the revisionist agenda which, despite its pretence otherwise, is not interested in the slightest in a broad church but rather wishes to expunge the Church of England of its up to now orthodox doctrine. It is for the likes of Elaine Storkey, Bishops Tom Wright and Pete Broadbent, Andrew Goddard, Graham Kings and their open evangelical colleagues to consider very carefully whether they can support the adoption of a single clause measure. These are the real decision makers now, and the future of the Church of England is actually in their hands, for they hold the key votes and the key influentual voices in the orthodox constituency. Let us not kid ourselves that Reform or Forward in Faith can by themselves save the day - it is Fulcrum who now have the hands to play. Yet, they run the danger of not seeing the problems that are destroying the Church of England, not stepping up to the job of both standing very clearly for creedal and moral orthodoxy and working actively against heresy and ethical unholiness.

Is it the end of the Church of England as we know it? Do we feel fine? The answer to that is now firmly in the hands of those who can choose either to accept the reality of the drift to apostasy that we are slowly facing, or to keep their heads in the sand and deny the current inability of Instruments of Unity of the Communion to discipline those who would rewrite the very nature of Anglicanism.

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