Anglican Mainstream

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

By Charles Raven, SPREAD

The Very Rev’d Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark, has alleged that the Bishop of Rochester’s recently announced resignation is the first step in setting up an alternative church. According to last weekend’s London Sunday Telegraph he also declared that, together with Bishops Wallace Benn and Pete Broadbent, Dr Michel Nazir-Ali’s status as a bishop in the Anglican Communion, ‘must be open to some debate’ because they had declined invitations to last year’s Lambeth Conference.

Although he is one of the more outspoken liberals in the Church of England – in 2003, he described Archbishop Peter Jensen’s involvement with English conservative evangelicals as ‘reprehensible’ - these remarks cannot be dismissed as the unrepresentative prejudices of one man. He is a member of the Crown Nomination Commission, which has a key role in the appointment of the Church of England’s bishops, and Southwark Cathedral is the most ancient cathedral church in London.

This is the voice of comfortable liberal establishment religiosity made uncomfortable by GAFCON’s challenge to its hegemony, already expressed in the crude epithet  applied to Michael Nazir Ali in a letter from Lambeth Palace in December last year and judged sufficiently offensive for a member of Rowan William’s staff to have to resign.

As Dean of a cathedral which traces its history back to 604AD, Colin Slee is remarkably uninhibited by the weight of centuries and vigorously advocates overturning the Church’s historic teaching on sexuality.

Taking his cue from Rowan Williams, he argues that same sex relationships can be equivalent to marriage. However, unlike Dr Williams, he is willing to be quite blunt about the incompatibility of his position with the Bible. During the controversy over the attempt to appoint Dr Jeffry John, a leading advocate for the homosexual movement, as Bishop of Reading in 2003 he remarked "Jeffrey has always been incredibly honest and frank and has never ever tried to fudge. We’ve all got to have the courage to say some of the Scripture is complete rubbish." and "Gays have been excluded from the church for a very long time and what is that if not schism?"

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From Stephen’s Witness

I have written several articles on the topic of an Anglican Communion Covenant: one proposing a blueprint; another offering an “Evangelical Commentary” on the first “Nassau” draft; and more recently an evaluation of the Covenant process and drafts in the light of the Global Anglican Future Conference (available at http://www.stephenswitness.com/). As described in the latter piece, I have done so standing on the periphery of the Lambeth-appointed process and more in the midst of the GAFCON movement that led to the final Statement and Jerusalem Declaration.

Two things have been consistent in my writings to date: an affirmation of the positive value of a well-crafted Anglican Communion Covenant, and a critique of the official drafting process and the products that have been offered by the Covenant Drafting Group. In this essay, I intend to focus on the positive and propose two cheers for the third and most recent Ridley Cambridge Draft (RCD) that was published on Tuesday of Holy Week 2009.

Responding a week later in their Communiqué of 16 April 2009, the GAFCON Primates state: “We welcome the Ridley Cambridge Draft Covenant and call for principled response from the Provinces.” I hope this essay will represent the very kind of principled analysis that they are calling for.
 

Read here.

By Paul Handley, Church Times

THE GAFCON Primates have recognised the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), they announced in London yesterday.

The move is hardly a surprise. When conservative Anglicans met in Jerusalem last May for the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), they called for the formation of an “orthodox” Church in the United States, in parallel with (or opposition to) the Episcopal Church there. The ACNA was formed late in the summer, uniting conservative groups in the United States and Canada.

The leader of the new Church, the Rt Revd Bob Duncan, joined the GAFCON Primates for their second meeting, this time held at the Renaissance Hotel next to Heathrow Airport. Bishop Duncan was formerly the Bishop of Pittsburgh, but was deposed by the Episcopal Church’s leadership at the time the ACNA was formed.

He said that he had given a progress report to the GAFCON Primates. His Church had 100,000 members in 700 congregations in 28 dioceses. On any given Sunday, there were about 80,000 worshippers, about ten per cent of the numbers in the Episcopal Church, “and growing all the time”. The previous arrangement for conservatives who dissented from what they saw as the liberal leadership of the Episcopal Church had been to join one of the five “protectorates” run by the Provinces of the Southern Cone, Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, or Rwanda. Now all were united in the ACNA.

As well as being united, Bishop Duncan had told the Primates, his Church was “ready”, having prepared a constitution and canons “that look recognisably Anglican” and which he had amended after consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was also “focused” on its task of “reaching North America with the transforming love of Christ”, after a decade of division.

Bishop Duncan echoed the insistence of the Primates that theirs was not a breakaway movement. “I’m a cradle Anglican. My grandfather was a boy chorister. . . My theological views haven’t changed. The problem is that folks who have become the leadership of the Episcopal Church in the United States have pulled the rug out from under me. The person who is our Presiding Bishop, she didn’t begin as an Anglican. I did. She represents something very different. I don’t think I’m a breakaway.

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Anglican TV has interviewed Bishop Bob Duncan at the Gafcon Primates’ meeting in London this week.

Watch video here.

Read also summary of events, with photographs, from Baby Blue.

By Matthew Davies, from Episcopal Life Online

Conservative Anglican leaders and former Episcopalians, meeting April 14-16 in London, have said they recognize a proposed entity composed of disaffected Anglicans in North America.

The announcement came in an April 16 communiqué from the GAFCON/FCA Primates’ Council that was created at the controversial Global Anglican Future Conference. That meeting was held in Jerusalem during June 2008, one month prior to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of bishops. (Many of the bishops attending GAFCON chose to boycott the Lambeth Conference.)

FCA stands for the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which the April 16 communiqué described as "a movement for defending and promoting the biblical gospel of the risen Christ," but which Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has called "problematic in all sorts of ways."

The new North American entity, which its leaders are calling the Anglican Church in North America, was proposed in December 2008 for Anglicans who have decided they no longer want to be a part of the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada for theological reasons. ACNA membership includes several self-identified Anglican organizations, known collectively as the Common Cause Partnership.

Representatives of the entity are due to meet June 22-25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas, to approve a proposed constitution and set of canons.

(St. Vincent’s Cathedral is in the Diocese of Fort Worth and is one of the properties now held by former Episcopalians who aligned with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. The continuing Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth has filed a lawsuit for return of St. Vincent’s and some 50 other churches and properties.)

"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," the communiqué said. "Though many provinces are in impaired or broken communion with TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, our fellowship with faithful Anglicans in North America remains steadfast."

Read the rest of this entry »

By Nick McKenzie, Religious Intelligence

A meeting in London this week of traditionalist Anglicans has dismissed attempts to accommodate orthodox believers and says that if the liberal leaders of the North American churches sign up to the proposed Anglican Covenant ‘in good conscience’, it will be meaningless.

The leaders of the Gafcon movement issued a communiqué after their meeting at a hotel near Heathrow Airport in which they gave recognition to dissident Anglicans in North America. They said: “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.”

They came to this conclusion after hearing from the former Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, and said that “our fellowship with faithful Anglicans in North America has remained steadfast.”

The Episcopal Church has launched a number of legal actions in the past few weeks against parishes and dioceses, including Bishop Duncan, that have severed links with the national Church on questions of religious orthodoxy, and while it is the hope of Anglican Church leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, that the proposed Anglican Covenant will keep the Communion together, the Gafcon primates are unimpressed.

“The recent primatial meeting in Alexandria served only to demonstrate how deep and intractable the divisions are and to encourage us to sustain the important work of GAFCON,” they said.

A recent reworking of the proposed Covenant also failed to impress. Although the Gafcon leaders stressed that it was too early to comment on that draft, they said: “While we support the concept of an Anglican Covenant, we understand that its adequacy depends on the willingness to address the crisis that has ‘torn the fabric’ of the Communion. If those who have left the standards of the Bible are able to enter the Covenant with a good conscience, it seems to be of little use.”

The Gafcon leaders also welcomed the formation of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which is due to launch its English chapter in July. “We are also called to promote the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) in its stand against false teaching and as a rallying point for orthodoxy,” they said.

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Communiqué from the GAFCON/FCA Primates’ Council

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We meet in the week after Easter, rejoicing again in the power of the risen Lord Jesus to transform lives and situations. We continue to experience his active work in our lives and the lives of our churches and we rejoice in the Gospel of hope.

From its inception, the GAFCON movement has centered on the power of Christ to make all things new. We have heard this week of the great progress made in North America towards the creation of a new Province basing itself on this same biblical gospel of transformation and hope. We have also envisioned the future of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans as a movement for defending and promoting the biblical gospel of the risen Christ.

Yet we are saddened that the present crisis in the Anglican Communion of which we are a part remains unresolved. The recent meeting of Primates in Alexandria served only to demonstrate how deep and intractable the divisions are and to encourage us to sustain the important work of GAFCON.

The GAFCON Primates’ Council has the responsibility of recognizing and authenticating orthodox Anglicans especially those who are alienated by their original Provinces. We are also called to promote the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) in its stand against false teaching and as a rallying point for orthodoxy. It is our aim to ensure that the unity of the Anglican Communion is centered on Biblical teaching rather than mere institutional loyalty. It is essential to provide a way in which faithful Anglicans, many of whom are suffering much loss, can remain as Anglicans within the Communion while distancing themselves from false teaching.

At this meeting highly significant progress was made on the following fronts.

Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA)

The FCA in its initial stages is attracting membership by individuals, churches, dioceses, provinces and organizations involving millions of Anglicans.  We are heartened by the large numbers of Anglicans who share a commitment to the theological formularies of true Anglicanism that provide a firm foundation for our faith.

We have therefore reviewed the strategy and structures of the FCA to better reflect the demands now made on it. We were glad to receive from the FCA Theological Group their Commentary on the Jerusalem Declaration. We have established the FCA web-site, http://www.fca.net. We received reports from those involved in partnership development work in the Sudan and elsewhere.

The FCA is committed to pursue our common mission through the establishment of regional chapters and networks of Anglicans who will strengthen and support each other. We rejoice in the development of an active branch of the FCA in the United Kingdom and the proposed launch on July 6th in Westminster Central Hall, London. The establishment of an Advisory Board of bishops, clergy, and laity from around the world reflects the growing breadth of support.

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From GAFCON

Representatives of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) led by Pittsburgh Bishop and Archbishop designate Bob Duncan met Wednesday with the Primates.

All Primates were present.

The Primates Council was established after the GAFCON conference in Jerusalem in 2008 and contains leaders representing about 40 million Anglicans worldwide almost 75 percent of the communion.

The council is chaired by the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola.

The members are Rwandan Primate, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini, Tanazania’s Archbishop Valentino Mokiwa, Archbishop Justice Akrofi of Ghana, Primate of West Africa, Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, Primate of Kenya, Archbishop Henry Orombi of Ugana, Archbishop Greg Venables of the Southern Cone.

The council’s secretary is Dr Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney, Australia.

As well as Bishop Duncan, the North American delegation included Bishop Jack Iker of Fort Worth, Bishop Chuck Murphy of the Anglican Mission in the Americas, Bishops Martyn Minns and David Anderson of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, Bishop John Guernsey, Church of Uganda Bishop for congregations in America, Bishop Bill Atwood from the Anglican Church of Kenya and Bishop Don Harvey who leads the Anglican Network in Canada.

Canon Mike Murphy of the Anglican Mission in the Americas was also in the delegation.

The American delegation presented a report on the formation of the new province and answered questions from the Primates, who then went back into private session.

A communiqué is expected from the council tomorrow, Thursday.
 

By George Conger, The Living Church

By Charles Raven, SPREAD
 

Introduction

If the reformation set in motion by the GAFCON movement is to be genuinely global and sustained, the question of whether or not Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is to be counted as orthodox cannot be avoided. It is now obvious that two different forms of religion are taking shape within the Anglican Communion as they giving rise to new structures. This is most clearly seen in the United States where The Episcopal Church of the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada are developing what is effectively a new syncretistic religion behind a traditional façade while the emergent province of the Anglican Church in North America gives expression to the GAFCON movement’s reaffirmation of the historic Anglican faith. As Canon Vinay Samuel wrote in preparation for GAFCON in Jerusalem last year ‘We see a parallel between contemporary events and events in England in the 16th century… now, after five centuries, a new fork in the road is appearing. Though this fork in the road may present itself publicly as a choice in relation to aberrant sexuality, the core issues are about whether or not there is one Word, accessible to all, and whether or not there is one Christ, accessible to all.’ [1]

This process is not limited to North America. The same cultural forces are at work in the Western world as a whole and Dr Michael Nazir Ali’s recent resignation as Bishop of Rochester is a symptom of how far advanced this process is within the mother church of the Communion itself. Commenting on his decision he writes ‘I have resigned as Bishop of Rochester after nearly 15 years. During that time, I have watched the nation drift further and further away from its Christian moorings’ and this has ‘occurred while the Church has either looked on impotently or, sometimes, been complicit in bringing about the change it has subsequently regretted.’ [2]

Powerful opposing forces therefore bear in upon the Archbishop of Canterbury.

As Primate of All England, he is expected to articulate the residual spirituality of an England which is increasingly secularised and expects  its Church, in the words of Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor to be ‘in tune with some of the times here’ rather than being ‘more and more hemmed in by foreign Anglican churches’[3]. And of course this expectation can be backed up with the threat of disestablishment.

As titular head of the Anglican Communion, a role which if anything he has sought to enhance as shown by his highly personalized leadership of last year’s Lambeth Conference,  the majority of global Anglicans have very different expectations  (as Lord Falconer recognised), wanting the Anglican Communion to return to its confessional roots, to that biblical and apostolic faithfulness as articulated by GAFCON which happens to be so very much against the grain of the UK’s ambient secular relativism.

It is therefore vital for the GAFCON movement to have a clear understanding of the Archbishop’s theological commitments. His refusal to exercise effective discipline in the aftermath of Gene Robinson’s consecration as the first actively and openly homosexual bishop in the Anglican Communion led directly to the formation of GAFCON. Was this simply weakness, or did it stem from theological convictions? Could it possibly still be right for the GAFCON Primates to seek to work with Rowan Williams and the Windsor Covenant process, encouraging him to use his powers through the instruments of unity for the reform of the Communion? Or is that hope now futile, in which case the GAFCON Primates and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans have a gospel mandate to focus on the radical realignment of the Anglican Communion under new Conciliar leadership?

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From The Living Church