Gafcon leaders speak out against centralisation
From George Conger, Religious Intelligence
Political and ecclesiastical authority should reside within the provinces of the Anglican Communion and not the “instruments of unity,” eight archbishops concluded last week at the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) Primates’ Council meeting in London.
In a statement released after three days of talks, the eight archbishops stated that the third province movement in North America should seek recognition first from the provinces of the Communion, bypassing the Anglican Consultative Council.
On April 16 the Primates of Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, the Southern Cone, Tanzania, Uganda, and West Africa, along with the Archbishop of Sydney released a statement endorsing the formation of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), saying it was “authentically Anglican.”
The primates affirmed the desire of their churches, representing over two-thirds of the active churchgoers in the Communion, to preserve the integrity of the Anglican Communion, but gave a muted vote of no confidence to the current draft of the Anglican Covenant and the communion’s administrative structures.
Leaders of each of the breakaway jurisdictions in the US and Canada that were part of the June 2008 Gafcon conference in Jerusalem were present at the meeting, including Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan the group’s ‘archbishop-designate’, Fort Worth Bishop Jack L Iker, AMiA Bishop Charles Murphy, CANA Bishop Martyn Minns and his suffragan Bishop David Anderson, Bishop John Guernsey of the Church of Uganda’s congregations in America, Suffragan Bishop Bill Atwood of All Saints Diocese in Kenya, and Bishop Don Harvey of the Anglican Network in Canada.
Representatives of the Reformed Episcopal Church were unable to attend however Bishop Wallace Benn of Lewes was present as a guest at the meeting.
The FCA primates gave their blessing to the formation of ACNA, the 100,000-member third province, stating “we celebrate the organization and official formation of ACNA,” and recognized it as “genuinely Anglican.” The primates further recommended that “Anglican Provinces affirm full communion with the ACNA,” adding that they looked “forward in real hope to a positive response amongst the Churches and Diocese and Provinces of the Communion to our call to enter into communion” with the ACNA. By going first to the provinces for support, rather than approaching the ACC, a lasting structural and political base of support for the ACNA would be established that will end “cross border incursions” and restore a “measure of peace” to the church.
The primates’ statement comes as a challenge to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who has sought to confine the debate within the structures of the four “instruments of unity”, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates’ Meeting, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference.
Formally articulated by the Inter-Anglican Doctrinal and Theological Commission in 1997’s Virginia Report, the four instruments of communion, or unity, have not yet gained official status. The 1999 ACC meeting in Dundee declined to endorse the report. The Communion’s individual provinces are bound by the inter-Anglican statements only to the extent that they adopt them within the terms of their individual constitution and canons.
The Gafcon primates’ disquiet with the current regime was also voiced in their tepid initial response to the third draft of the Anglican Covenant. While they supported in theory the “concept of an Anglican Covenant,” the “adequacy” of the final document “depends on the willingness to address the crisis” dividing the Communion.
Nonetheless, “they remained committed to the Anglican Communion” and to its reform, renewal and “to being a faithful and creative voice within it to recapture focus on mission.”
A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury told Religious Intelligence that Dr Williams was on holiday and had not been in contact with the primates during their London meeting.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
