More reflections on FCA
From Nick Jones, Red Letters
I was at the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans conference yesterday in Westminster Central Hall and I have to say it was very good. Well supported, well run except for Michael Nazir Ali talking too long at the back end, inspiring with its sequence of challenging addresses that called for faithfulness to the Biblical Gospel as well as to mission, backed by some excellent video presentations of what is happening around the UK. Bob Duncan, the new head of ACNA, the alternative Anglican province in North America, was wonderfully gracious as was Bishop Wallace Benn as he expounded the meaning of ‘fellowship’ from Philippians. It was eirenic in the most part too. Despite the sparring that preceded the conference, speakers simply urged Evangelicals not yet in support to get on board. I sat near Andrew Goddard who writes for the Open Evangelical website Fulcrum and he was clapping along for the most part as was the Bishop of Exeter two rows down. Two other Diocesan bishops sent greetings that were broadcast.
The presence of a good number from Forward in Faith was intriguing. They clearly didn’t quite know what to do in worship led by Stuart Townend and his band who mainly sang his own songs including the stirring ‘In Christ Alone.’ The American leader of Forward in Faith spoke about mission with Evangelical fervour. The Bishop of Fulham was more eccentric. ‘Satan is alive and well’ he declaimed ‘and living in Church House’. Speaker after speaker made it very clear that women’s ordination and consecration would be considered as a secondary issue, though Peter Jensen, the Archbishop of Sydney, in a stirring speech, said that to make no provision for those who oppose women bishops was tantamount to schism.
A series of presentations in the afternoon was heavily laced with input from those with the Conservative Evangelical grouping Reform. Old stagers David Banting and Richard Coekin were interviewed on the platform to tell horror stories about liberal bishops , as was an ordinand from WycliffeeHall who had struggled for four years to get accepted. Frankly, he did seem rather immature, but I have no doubt that to be accepted for ordination these days it’s not good enough to be simply Evangelical. They wouldn’t I’m sure think that the great theologian Karl Barth was sophisticated enough for Church of Enlgand ministry for one thing! When asked to sum up his beliefs he famously once answered, ‘Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so!’
The conference actually reminded me of the old days before Evangelicalism in the Church of England got institutionalised and consequentially insipid. We were being about what we should be about: robustly proclaiming the Good News of Jesus in a lost age of secularism, cheered on by our brothers and sisters in Christ from those very parts of the world where our missionaries went and sacrificed everything to take the Good News of Jesus a generation and more before us.
The conference didn’t answer all my questions, but I’m proud to affirm my membership of the FCA and to encourage others to join. I hope next time though we can gather either in the north or somewhere more central at least and that there will be a bit less of a middle class (not to say ‘posh’) feel about it all.
Nick Jones is Vicar of St John’s in Great Horton, Bradford
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