Anglican Mainstream

By Mike Keulemans, New Directions

Like so many other teenagers of my era, I was taught by my school history teacher that in the sixteenth century the ancient Church of our land was transformed into a national institution that was both Catholic and Protestant, or as Professor Diarmaid McCulloch might put it more accurately, both Catholic and Evangelical.

The Evangelical Anglicanism in which I grew up started with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and then taught me that the ministry of Word and Sacrament within the Book of Common Prayer. As part of this process, I came to value the lives of great Evangelical heroes…

Later on, going to college and living in other parts of the country, I came into contact with many Anglican Catholics, who also believed that we should begin with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and then go on to develop our Christian character from the Word and Sacrament of the Book of Common Prayer. They also had their heroes… I learnt to value their heroes as much as my own and my Catholic friends were willing to discover the value of my heroes as well.

What I am saying is that, in our heart of hearts, both us Catholics and Evangelicals share a common Anglican heritage. It was the Book of Common Prayer, whether in its 1662 or its 1928 version, that actually secured our common purpose. One of the tragedies of the past half century has been the fact that the long process of liturgical revision has never offered us a modern language BCP.

Now at last the prospect of women in the episcopate and a host of other unbiblical and unhistoric novelties has woken up both our constituencies. Forward in Faith and Reform find themselves locked in a protracted struggle to maintain their very existence as valued members of the Anglican Church. Frankly, I would no longer wish to remain in a Church which had effectively expelled my Catholic brethren, and I suspect that most of my Catholic friends would not wish to stay in a Church without Evangelicals either. So what do we do now?

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The Fourth Blast of the Trumpet

The image of the trumpet blast seems to be an over-dramatic description of the communiqué issued from the latest Global South Encounter. In fact, the response to it has been somewhat muted. But as a guest at the conference, I believe that it fully deserves the title ‘trumpet’ and will in time be regarded as an historic statement.

One reason why it fails to create a strong reaction is that it simply confirms the obvious. The crisis moment has now passed. Many of the Global South provinces have given up on the official North American Anglicans (TEC and the Canadian Church) and regard themselves as being out of communion with them. They renew the call for repentance but can see that, failing something like the Great Awakening, it will not occur. The positive side to this is that they are committed to achieving self-sufficiency so that they will cease to rely on the Western churches for aid. That is something the Global South has been working on for some time, with success.

In my judgment, the assembly was unresponsive to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s video greetings. I don’t think that what he said was obscure. It just seemed to be from another age, another world. His plea for patience misjudged the situation by several years and his talk of the Anglican covenant was not where the actual conference was at. He seemed to suggest that the consecration of a partnered lesbian Bishop will create a crisis. In fact the crisis itself has passed. We are now on the further side of the critical moment; the decisions have all been made; we are already living with the consequences. And it was in working out the consequences that the communiqué may eventually be seen to be historic.

Read here

By Charles Raven, SPREAD

Although not attended by great fanfare and ceremony, something quite remarkable seems to be happening in Singapore at the fourth Global South to South Encounter. We are seeing the emergence of a global Anglicanism of substance, displacing the shadow Anglicanism of institutional pragmatism. Institutions which until recently had the appearance of substance – the Anglican Consultative Council, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates meeting and the Archbishop of Canterbury himself – are now taking on an unreal quality as shadows of a discredited past while the GAFCON movement, dismissed by many at its inception in 2008, is turning out to have foreshadowed a fundamental realignment which is now beginning to express itself in new structures.

The shadow quality of the old order was inescapable in both the medium and the message of Rowan Williams’ address. Due to a ‘full diary’ his was a virtual presence by video and his message amounted to little more than yet another call to continue with ‘careful listening’. So it is not surprising that Dr Williams politely absented himself this time round since it is clear that he has nothing new to say.

At the previous South to South encounter at the Red Sea in 2005, the Global South primates held him to account for his well known sympathy for the homosexual agenda and when a private request to repudiate those views failed to elicit a response, it was reiterated in a public letter which also called on the Archbishop to be more decisive: ‘We are disappointed’ they wrote ‘with your deferring to “process.” You seem to keep saying, “My hands are tied.” We urge you to untie your hands and provide the bold, inclusive leadership the Communion needs at this time of crisis and distrust’. In response, Dr Williams reaffirmed the Covenant process as the only way forward and concluded rather crisply: ‘If this letter is a contribution to that process of debate, then it is to be welcomed, however robust. If it is an attempt to foreclose that debate, it would seem to serve very little purpose indeed.’ Read here

By Pat Ashworth, Church Times

THE Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) Primates Council has bracketed the UK with Kenya and Uganda as nations “where Christian views are marginalised and ignored”.

England is also defined as an “Associate Par­ticipant”, along with Australia, New Zealand, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Communion Partners of the Episcopal Church in the United States, in the “Fourth Global South to South Encounter” to be held in Singapore later this month.

The Council, which constitutes the Primates of Nigeria, West Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the Southern Cone, to­gether with the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, and the leader of the Anglican Church in North America, Archbishop Robert Duncan, was meeting in Bermuda as guests of the American businessman Emmanuel Kam­pouris (News, 9 April).

Absent from the Bermuda meeting was the Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Revd Henry Orombi. He demanded of the Archbishop of Canterbury last week that the Primates of the Anglican Communion should meet urgently, without the American and Canadian Primates, and with an agenda set by the particip­ants.

In a three-page letter sent to Dr Williams last Friday and released to the press, Arch­bishop Orombi hints at a double standard in the treatment of Primates and complains that the responsibility of the Primates is being diminished.

He commends the “clarity and honesty” of the President Bishop in Jerusalem and the Middle East, the Most Revd Mouneer Anis, who resigned in February from what became the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion (SCAC) (News, 5 February). Archbishop Orombi does not recognise the SCAC, and has not attended meetings since its failure, as he sees it, to uphold the “hard-won agreement” of the Primates at Dar es Salaam in 2007.

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Grateful for the gracious guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the leadership of the Most Reverend Peter J. Akinola, the Primates Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON/FCA) met in Bermuda from April 5 through 9, 2010.

The Primates Council consists of Primates (Senior Archbishops) of Anglican Provinces who met together in Jerusalem in June 2008 as part of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). Their determination to give witness to the life transforming gospel of Jesus Christ and the trustworthiness of the Bible led to the establishment of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA).

FCA is a movement defined by theology that delivers spiritual and practical outcomes to faithful Anglican Christians around the world. Together the Primates Council represents over thirty four million Anglicans more than half of the active membership of the Anglican Communion

Read here

GAFCON website has announced today that the Commentary on the Jerusalem Declaration by its Theology Resource Group is now available for downloading.  The website also gives ways the printed version can be accessed in different parts of the world.

http://www.gafcon.org/news/being_faithful_now_available_for_download/

The Commentary on the landmark Anglican ‘Jerusalem Declaration’ has been released in digital form and is available for immediate download. (Large pdf file)

In June 2008, 1200 Anglican leaders, bishops, clergy and lay people, from 27 provinces of the Anglican Communion met in Jerusalem for the Global Anglican Future Conference.

One of the results was the establishment of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, with the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’ as its foundation.

In 2009, 40 theologians, from 14 countries throughout the Anglican Communion, produced a commentary on this important document called “Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today”.

This Gafcon/FCA Primates Council, including leaders from some of the strongest Anglican communities in the world, have urged Anglicans everywhere to read and study this important work.

It has now been made available for download, in special edition along with “The Way, The Truth, and the Life” which was launched at GAFCON.

The complete PDF is available for download here.

From Anglican Samizdat

It is to say, rather, that the GAFCON proposals are not only not needed in England but are positively harmful and indeed offensive. This was more or less what I said on the radio last Thursday, where I distinguished carefully between the American and English situations. AS FAR AS ENGLAND IS CONCERNED, it is damaging, arrogant and irrelevant for GAFCON leaders to say, as they are now doing, ‘choose you this day whom you will serve’, with the implication that there are now only two parties in the church, the orthodox and the liberals, and that to refuse to sign up to GAFCON is to decide for the liberals. Things are just not like that. Certainly not here in England.

A proposal to give the partners of gay priests some of the same rights that are awarded to priests’ spouses is likely to spark a new row over homosexuality.

 

Bishops and senior clergy will debate at next month’s General Synod whether the Church should provide same-sex couples with the same financial benefits as are awarded to married couples.

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Statement from GAFCON/FCA Primates Council

We have received the Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter informing us of the Pope’s offer of an ‘Apostolic Constitution’ for those Anglicans who wish to be received into the Roman Catholic Church.  We believe that this offer is a gracious one and reflects the same commitment to the historic apostolic faith, moral teaching and global mission that we proclaimed in the Jerusalem Declaration on the Global Anglican Future and for this we are profoundly grateful.

We are, however, grieved that the current crisis within our beloved Anglican Communion has made necessary such an unprecedented offer. It represents a grave indictment of the Instruments of Communion whose very purpose is to strengthen and protect our unity in obedience to our Lord’s clear command.  Their failure to fully address the abandonment of biblical faith and practice by The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada has now brought shame to the name of Christ and seriously impedes the cause of the Gospel.

The Primates Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON/FCA) is convinced, however, that Anglicanism has a bright future as long as we remain grounded in the Holy Scriptures and obedient to our Lord Jesus Christ’s call to reach the lost and make disciples of all nations teaching them to observe the whole Gospel.  We also believe that there is room within our Anglican family for all those who hold true to the ‘faith once delivered to the saints’. We would like to encourage those Anglicans who are considering this invitation from the Roman Catholic Church to recognize that Anglican churches are growing throughout the world in strength and offering a vibrant testimony to the transforming work of Christ. 

We are convinced that this is not the time to abandon the Anglican Communion. Our Anglican identity of reformed catholicity, that gives supreme authority to the Holy Scriptures and acknowledgement that our sole representative and advocate before God is the Lord Jesus Christ, stands as a beacon of hope for millions of people.  We remain proud inheritors of the Anglican Reformation. This is a time for all Christians to persevere confident of our Lord’s promise that nothing, not even the gates of hell, will prevail against His Church.

+Peter Abuja,
Chairman,
GAFCON/FCA Primates Council
November 10, 2009

Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today

A Commentary on the Jerusalem Declaration supplemented by The Way, the Truth and the Life – Theological Resources for a Global Anglican Future

How did the worldwide Anglican Communion come to the present situation, in which its conflict is a matter of continual public debate, and where it seems no peace-initiatives have been able to succeed? Out of concern for the very future of the Anglican Communion, over 1000 senior leaders from seventeen provinces in the Anglican Communion, representing 35 million church-going Anglicans, met for the Global Anglican Future Conference and Pilgrimage (GAFCON) in Jerusalem in June 2008. They met to seek counsel, to pray, and to return to their biblical and historical roots in the Holy Land, in a coalition of the willing. The GAFCON Statement, which contains the Jerusalem Declaration, is a prophetic response to the current situation of indiscipline. Being Faithful is an exposition of the Jerusalem Declaration, set alongside the theological resource papers drafted for the meeting in Jerusalem, which were previously published as The Way, the Truth and the Life.

Over against the culture of repudiation and innovation, public confession of the apostolic faith is necessary in order to shine the light in a dark place. To identify where orthodox Anglicans stand in response to these powerful cultural influences, it is necessary to confess that which we believe in relation to the current challenges. This is a time-honoured response of the Church to the challenges to its life. More importantly, it is an expression of, and a humble witness to, our orthodoxy and identity as Anglicans, living under the full and complete authority of the Bible. We are not attempting to fix Anglican identity but to reaffirm it, as being anchored in the apostolic faith, and as belonging to a Christian church which is centred on the gospel and bounded by Scripture.

We are using a new Print on Demand publishing partnership in the UK and USA which we hope will make the book more accessible and affordable around the world. Publisher’s price: £7.50, US$10.00 (if bought via US channels). Additional overseas shipping will apply if bought from the UK.

ISBN: 978 0 946307 99 9

First published 2009: 162 pages

International purchasers should note that they may be able to source this book more cheaply via Amazon.com due to local printing.

Read further here
 

By David W Virtue and Mary Ann Mueller, Virtueonline

NASHOTAH, WISCONSIN—In a stunning pronouncement, the American Anglican Council (AAC) announced the launching of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans-North America (FCA-NA) this week bringing together individual Anglicans in the great Diaspora who are unable to find an ACNA church near them. Orthodox Episcopalians and Anglicans can join to become ministry partners.

"I am pleased to announce the formation of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans – North America as a ministry partner of AC-NA to which you can apply immediately," said the Rev. Phillip Ashey, AAC’s travelling chaplain. He urged Anglicans to go on line and join the FCA -NA apply at: www.fca.net.

FCA-NA joins with FCA in England and South Africa.

This much-awaited announcement was made at the Nashotah House refectory in front of more than 50 members the Southeastern Wisconsin American Anglican Council (SEWAAC) chapter monthly meeting.

GAFCON secretariat and FCA director Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen charged the ACC to organize the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in North America. Since then Fr. Ashey and others, including Nashotah House Dean Robert Munday and Fr. William Beasley – who were both present at this month’s SEWAAC meeting – have been working towards seeing FCA-NA become a reality. As AAC’s Chief Operating Officer, Fr. Ashey has been kept busy with back-to-back meetings while in the Upper Midwest. He will address delegates at a major FCA-NA planning summit in Plano, Texas, this week, along with Dean Munday, Fr. Beasley and others, to hammer out detailed plans for the FCA-NA’s eventual roll out.

FCA has rolled out with great fanfare and success in England and South Africa. The next logical step was North America where the infant Anglican Church in North America is getting a foothold and seeking formal recognition from the rest of the Anglican Communion as the Thirty-Ninth Province. Hopefully, FCA’s American unveiling will take place before the end of the year.

Fr. Ashey explained that ACNA’s focus is to reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ, and with the help of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which was originally conceived through last summer’s GACFON meeting for the "benefit of the church and the furtherance of its mission".

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Presentation at the launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, Southern Africa, Port Elizabeth, September 3 2009

Chris Sugden

Why was it necessary for the Primates of Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Southern Cone to invite Anglicans from around the world to meet with them and their bishops in Jerusalem in June 2008 for the Global Anglican Future Conference? You have with you today three people who were in the room when that decision was taken: Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, Canon Vinay Samuel and myself. 

My privilege this morning is to set out why GAFCON Jerusalem 2008 was necessary.

The immediate cause for GAFCON was the invitation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams to those who had consecrated Gene Robinson as a Bishop to attend the Lambeth Conference.  This invitation was sent in July 2007, and the timing was significant as I will show later.

Following this invitation, Archbishop Peter Akinola made a visit in October 2007 at his own expense to London to meet with Archbishop Rowan Williams to ask him most seriously to delay the Lambeth Conference until the issue of the consecration of Gene Robinson by the Episcopal Church could be resolved.   When Archbishop Williams proved immovable on this certain things became crystal clear to Archbishop Akinola and his colleagues. Read the rest of this entry »

By David W Virtue, virtueonline

The Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken about the actions of GC2009 but what he says brings little comfort or solace to orthodox Anglicans across the world, especially congregations in revisionist dioceses under siege by equally revisionist bishops.

In an effort to keep the Anglican Communion from imploding, the Archbishop of Canterbury is proposing to re-conceive the Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies rather than a theologically coherent "community of Christian communities" in a "two-tier" or a "two-track" model in an endeavor to hold the communion together.

Dr. Williams’ response to The Episcopal Church General Convention’s passage of two explosive resolutions endorsing the ordination of homosexuals as clergy and bishops and rites for same-sex unions that could bring about a de jure schism in the Communion was described by a senior Church of England cleric close to Lambeth Palace as so much "Ro-Babble – a Panglossian description of the blindingly obvious in 2,823 words."

Nothing is ever final: "Let’s just hope that all will be well in the end, when everyone has signed the Covenant and then we can all hold hands and sing kumbaya." "It is Rowan acting as a pope. He will not allow anyone else to make decisions, and he will string it all along and spin it as much as he can along the way. He is still hoping that the whole Communion can be conned into following TEC’s lead. Plant more facts on the ground and just give it time…."

An orthodox archbishop described William’s response as "nuanced, offering no leadership in the present crisis."

Virtually all responses to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s take on the two GC2009 resolutions have been negative or not at all.

To date, TEC’s presiding bishop, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, has not responded to Williams’ letter.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Steven Noll, From Stand Firm’s website

I want to join others in appreciating the strong statement by Bp. Tom Wright on the actions of GC09. It is not time to quibble about the past. He clearly sees the road taken by TEC and defends out the biblical basis for marriage and against homosexual practice which goes back to Lambeth 1.10. Bravo!

As for his concern about ACNA, I am sure, knowing Rowan Williams and others in the Anglican Communion hierarchy, that there will be no rush to enfranchise ACNA or disenfranchise the Communion Partners. Is it too much to ask the ABC to reaffirm the Dar prohibition on lawsuits for all orthodox in TEC and ACNA on threat of immediately withdrawing his recognition?

The big question for the days ahead is whether the two streams of the orthodox movement – which had coalesced in the Anglican Communion Network and the Global South coalition – will begin to come together again. I believe their reunion, not at first political but spiritual, is devoutly to be wished. Read the rest of this entry »

By John Richardson, The Ugley Vicar

What is to prevent the fissiparation from which Protestantism has historically suffered? What is to provide the way back into that unity which is the essence of the gospel and the subject of so many urgings from Christ and the Apostles?

To quote a traditional Irish saying, “If I was going there, I wouldn’t start from here.” But here is where we are, so how might we get there?

I have suggested in previous posts that we need to be very careful about ‘private judgement’. Though this is much beloved of Protestants (linked as it often is to the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture), it is a grave error to suppose that the individual should be encouraged to make decisions about doctrine —especially the untrained and inexperienced individual.

As history has shown, sometimes individuals —Athanasius or Luther —must indeed take a stand, and some individuals —Augustine, Calvin, etc —have made massive contributions to doctrinal understanding. But history has given us the chance to sift their contributions and generally doctrine is something for us to receive, not to discern.

To move from our divided ‘here’, to a united ‘there’, then, our first need is humility and our second need is historical awareness. We need to know what the Church has said in the past and learned from the past. And in this respect, if the ‘Gamaliel principle’ has any validity at all it must suggest that history is on the side of the theological conservatives.

A classic example of theological history in action would be our acceptance of the Creeds —particularly the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds, which are the most widely known and used. The issues they addressed were deeply controverted at the time, and the conclusions they reached on the nature of the Trinity do not follow immediately from a ‘plain’ reading of Scripture. Yet they have stood the test of time and resisted efforts to reject or recast them, and we now expect Christians to understand doctrine and read Scripture in the light of them.

This is not to set the Creeds above Scripture. The Anglican Articles, for example, say they are only to be believed because they may be proved from Scripture. But they do set aside alternative —for example, non-Trinitarian —readings of Scripture. And they do this with the general agreement of the vast majority of Western Churches and Christians.

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By Ruth Gledhill, Timesonline

As the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams leads discussions about Anglican unity in Jamaica, heavyweight theologians are battling it out over the internet.

Is the Anglican Covenant an instrument to castrate conservatives, or a stick to beat liberals?
 

Thank you to Chris Sugden for this photograph from Jamaica of the welcome banner for the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica. Chris is reporting the event for Anglican Mainstream.  Episcopal Life online is also there and reports from Sunday’s opening eucharist the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon. The Anglican Church must challenge itself and its neighbours to respond to the material and spiritual needs of the world, he said. Episcopal Life has a video of the sermon here.

Read here.

By Charles Raven, SPREAD

In today’s Church of England Newspaper, Bishop Michael Nazir Ali asks ‘Is the much debated Covenant fit for purpose?’ Clearly not he answers. However, the Revd Professor Stephen Noll, a leading GAFCON theologian and American missionary Vice Chancellor of Uganda Christian University, in a recent article urged that GAFCON Churches should now be much more positive about the Windsor Covenant process and ‘move to the front of the queue and sign on to the Covenant’
So how can two very able theologians, both strongly committed to the GAFCON movement, come to such different conclusions?

The clue is in their context. Stephen Noll’s surprisingly positive assessment of the Ridley draft has been welcomed by Fulcrum, the English liberal leaning evangelical Anglican group, with its Theological Secretary Graham Kings, the newly appointed Bishop of Sherbourne, describing Stephen Noll’s proposal as ‘very encouraging indeed’.

Yet only twelve months ago, Fulcrum’s leading bishop, Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, controversially denounced the GAFCON leadership as ‘super-apostles’ using St Paul’s designation for the false teachers of 2 Corinthians chapters 11 and 12. So praise from the same group should give pause for careful thought.

The Fulcrum response is a very significant because it illuminates the English context in which the Windsor covenant process needs to be understood, a context which is much more immediate and pressing for Michael Nazir Ali than for Stephen Noll. So when Michael Nazir Ali concludes that the Ridley Draft ‘leaves us exactly where we have been these last six years’ and fears that ‘it may even be worse’ the question arises as to what is really energising the Covenant process after years of fruitless discussion. Could it be that it has become a strategy for taming of the GAFCON movement?

Whatever our working assumptions about the wider context, it is only right that the new draft should first be taken at face value. Stephen Noll helpfully notes that ‘the two essential ingredients of an effective Anglican Covenant involve both ‘doctrinal substance and disciplinary efficacy’ http://www.stephenswitness.com/2009/04/ridley-cambridge-draft-appreciation.html and claims that the essential weakness of the St Andrew’s and Nassau drafts was that while tolerable on the former, they failed on the latter.

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From the Church of Ireland Gazette

The Archbishop of Sydney, the Most Revd Peter Jensen, made a significant impact on Church of Ireland evangelicals during his visit to the Evangelical Fellowship of Irish Clergy last week. In his address at Dollingstown, and in an interview with the Gazette he made clear his own well-known views on the current human sexuality issues dividing the Anglican Communion and also provided important insights into the work of Gafcon, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and the emerging new Anglican Church in North America.

Indeed, the recent meeting of Gafcon Primates was timely, with the 14th Anglican Consultative Council meeting about to take place in Jamaica, at which the Church of Ireland will be represented by the Revd Dr Maurice Elliott and Kate Turner. As we indicated in our editorial comment last week, the ACC meeting will have an important and wide-ranging agenda, and the Anglican Covenant project, even if the present draft is fully approved, is still several years away, at least, from being implemented throughout the Communion.

In these circumstances, it is important to recognise that the Anglican Church in North America initiative, while outside the normal process for creating a new Province, is an attempt to bring together Anglicans who have been splitting off from the established Anglican Churches in the US and Canada, mainly as a result of fundamental differences over the human sexuality issue. The intention is both positive and godly, and, rather than rejecting the move as irregular and as creating an unwanted parallel jurisdiction within the US and Canada (parallel to the US Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada), an accommodation should be sought with the new Anglican Church in North America that would enable it to be part of the Anglican fellowship.

Indeed, there is no doubt that those Anglicans who have formed the Anglican Church in North America are committed to the heritage of Christian faith and life as it has been transmitted in classical Anglicanism. Parallel jurisdiction may be an anomaly, but Anglicans are hardly strangers to anomalies.

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.

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By Glenn Davies, Sydney Anglicans (H/T ACL Sydney)

Last week the GAFCON Primates met in London to deliberate on a number of significant issues. However, the most far reaching of their decisions was to recognise the new Province of the Anglican Church in North America.

In the words of the Primates’ Statement of 16 April 2009:

“We met with Bishop Bob Duncan and a number of the Episcopal leaders of the proposed new Province. Careful consideration was given to the new ‘Province in formation’ in North America. This is made up so far of approximately 100,000 Anglican Christians in Canada and the US who wish to be known as Anglicans and to be in fellowship with the Anglican Communion worldwide. We have asked whether we can recognize and authenticate this movement as truly Anglican.

As a result of this process, we celebrate the organization and official formation of ACNA around the same principles that gave rise to the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) and now the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA). Though many Provinces have expressed impaired or broken communion with TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, our fellowship with faithful Anglicans in North America has remained steadfast.

The FCA Primates’ Council recognizes the Anglican Church in North America as genuinely Anglican and recommends that Anglican Provinces affirm full communion with the ACNA”.

It has usually been the case that the Archbishop of Canterbury has been involved in the formation of any new Province in the Anglican Communion (if not actually requiring his consent).

In recent years the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council have also been actively involved in creating new provinces, as was the case in the inauguration of the Province of Hong Kong in 1998. Read the rest of this entry »