Anglican Mainstream

By Chris Sugden, CEN

At an evening gathering of over 500 Anglicans in the Emmanuel Centre, Westminster, on Thursday 26 April, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (UK and Ireland) hosted scores of senior Anglican leaders from 30 countries who arrived from conference at St Mark’s, Battersea Rise, in a fleet of red double decker buses. They were welcomed by the Bishop of London who encouraged them in evangelism. They also heard of Christian witness amid the terrorism in Nigeria and countries of Central Asia.
 
The chairman of the Global FCA, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of Kenya said: “You are coming under growing pressure to compromise the gospel. Sometimes laws are interpreted to inhibit Christian witness and popular opinion is often hostile to the Christian values and beliefs that have provided the historic foundation of your society. A Jesus who is just a guide and teacher along with others is deemed acceptable, but not a Jesus who is Lord, and a Jesus who is not Lord is not the Jesus of the Bible, the one who is Alpha and Omega, the crucified and risen Lord of all creation.”

He continued: “In such times the Church should be a ‘pillar and bulwark of the truth’, (1 Timothy 3:15) but as we have heard this week, the Church of England and the other Anglican Churches of the British Isles are in spiritual crisis themselves. We have been saddened to hear of the all too familiar pattern of orthodox and evangelical laity, ordinands and clergy being marginalised and their witness chilled by church hierarchies that bend to the prevailing culture.

“There is no middle ground. If you do not face any immediate threats in your particular circumstances, it is tempting to think that you can opt out and keep these difficult things at arm’s length, but we need each other. We should not exist in isolation.

Following a Nigerian Gospel Choir, Bishop John Ellison, Chairman FCA UK Panel of Bishops, and Rev Paul Perkin, Chairman FCA (UK and Ireland) in a joint statement said that the next few months would reveal the direction being taken by the Church of England regarding issues of marriage and sexuality, and the provision or not for the inclusion of those who hold to traditional understandings of the Bible on matters of ministry.

“The FCA (UK and Ireland) is a fellowship of those anywhere in the UK and Ireland, including the Diocese of Europe, who can affirm the Jerusalem Declaration. Within it the Anglican Mission in England is not an institution, but a framework that is taking shape as it responds to those needing to receive help in their own dioceses.

“AMiE is a registered Mission Society dedicated to support growing and planting churches, and providing ministers and oversight for those churches, and has a Panel of Bishops authorised by the FCA Primates Council to provide that oversight.

“The Primates of the FCA have assured us that, through instruments now available in this country, including the panel of bishops of the Anglican Mission in England and the FCA UK, those who might otherwise have been under pressure to leave the Church of England can remain within the family of global Anglicanism and be recognized by that body as faithful to the Church of England itself.”
 

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