The Church Times has this report: UK Evangelicals ask conservative Primates to rethink:
A GROUP of Evangelical bishops in the Church of England have written to conservative Primates urging them to rethink their objections to the Lambeth Conference.
The group, seven diocesan bishops and 13 suffragans, wrote to the Primates of Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Southern Cone of America that they “long to share with you in fellowship and in celebration at Lambeth”. To stay away, they suggest, “would inevitably split apart those who share an equally high regard for scriptures [sic] and for the historic faith of the Church”.
The letter arose from an annual gathering of Evangelical bishops. The signatories are the Bishops of Bradford, Bristol, Carlisle, Durham, Lichfield, Oxford, Southwell, Barking, Bedford, Crediton, Croydon, Doncaster, Dunwich, Lancaster, Lynn, Maidstone, Penrith, Southampton, Swindon, and Tewkesbury…
I have commented on this all in some detail, both the letter and the GAFCON Lagos Press Conference. As well as the blog
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/02/global-anglican-communion-blueprint.html
there is a website page that outlines and comments on Prof. Stephen Noll’s blueprint for a Global Anglican Communion. It really does tell all we need to know.
http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/relthink/gafconblueprint.html
The bishops are on a non-starter as regards at least four Churches in Africa, and makes no difference to the aims and intentions of GAFCON either in ideology (early Reformation) or structure (new structures of international Anglican governance).
Interesting that James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, and David Urquhart, Bishop of Birmingham, are both conspicuously absent from this list of evangelical bishops. They are, of course, the chair and vice-chair of Wycliffe Hall Council. Maybe they want Wycliffe Hall to be the boot camp for GAFCOM in England? The Elaine Storkey mess suggests that they’re going the right way about it. By the way, anyone know what has happened to the appointment they were meant to be making in New Testament? I hear rumors that no UK NT scholar would apply and they are are going to have to… Read more »
Not that those primates have actually said anything about not attending Lambeth, tue? I’d like to see the rsvp list for myself 🙂
+Sergio Carranza, Assistant Bishop of LA, speaks his mind here: http://inchatatime.blogspot.com/2008/01/truly-orthodox-anglicans.html Here’s a bit: “Here we are, just a few months away from the Lambeth Conference and we find ourselves in an impasse: the Bishop of New Hampshire without an invitation to attend the meeting, the poachers from the Global South hunting in the U.S.A. and Canada, the schismatics trying to steal TEC’s property, the Nigerian post-colonial neo-crusader-in-reverse uttering threats, and the Archbishop of Canterbury giving the impression that he is willing to sacrifice the Episcopal Church in order to appease the radical conservatives and thus maintain the unity of… Read more »
Chelmsford is the other misssing evangelical
chester and lewes are also absent
But the conservative evangelicals regard Chelmsford as a Revisionist.
http://www.churchsociety.org/issues_new/church/national/iss_church_national_bishoplist.asp
He is also a patron of Changing Attitude, so I don’t suppose that his signature would carry much weight.
(Mind you, they also have Liverpool down as a ‘Liberal Evangelical’.)
Clearly, the GAFCON attendees will all turn up at Lambeth having prepared to take on what they see as the liberal establishment running the CofE and AC. This letter from English bishops is opening the door to them…..just in case it had been shut a bit too far by the statements of Akinola et al. So, English evangelicals want to make sure that the GS turn up without losing face….and they will turn up……… I think this letter shows that liberals have lost the chance to persuade the so called “open evangelicals” to accept TECs innovations as legit in the… Read more »
I’ve just noted that they also have Rochester down as a liberal…
Gregg Griffith has just posted a piece at Stand Firm which appears to be an attempt by GAFCON organizers to reframe their problems with Bishop Dawani. The lead in to the piece states “a trusted source in the Middle East last week sent this email to one of the GAFCON organizers as a way of explaining what is going on over there”. “A trusted source”; “one of the GAFCON organizers”. No names. “……. opposition to the Jerusalem meeting has nothing to do with the internal politics of the Anglican Communion, and everything to do with the politics of the Diocese… Read more »
Ah Yes GGriffiths. For some reasons of his own, he seems to repeatedly connect his worried sense of the various modern looming threats and insults to manly masculine manhood – probably of a traditionalistic tilt? – with quite a few hot button themes of our Anglican conscientious believer differences. This presumptive deep and strong connect follows, actually, from the standard going con evo reading of the Genesis creation stories, which starts out raising sex/gender so high that it is nearly indelible as an eternal mark of human being, and therefore well nigh ontological. The reading largely maintain a studied silence… Read more »
It’s a very interesting list, but many of these so called Liberal Evangelicals have nothing liberal about them. A word Revisionist is used in some cases. Some of the Liberal Catholics hardly qualify too. I think the only motive of these evangelicals writing to specific primates is to protect the Lambeth Conference and add to their own weight, and not to become an outside flank themselves. It is in their interests not to have the evangelical wing split. There are also institutionalists (Rowan Williams is one). They never think that it might make more sense to have some sort of… Read more »
Note how FIF..UK ( Anglo-Catholics) are remaining quiet…maybe they too can see that GAFCON is really Evangelical ultra -Protestantism.
Better to go down with Gene than Peter Jensen.
Yes, I wouldn’t have said their was anything very liberal about Southwell and Nottingham either, although I’m pleasantly surprised to see his name as a signatory. Almost as surprised as I am to see South East Asia not listed amongst those the letter was sent to – as the General Secretary of the Global South, I would have thought ++Chew would certainly have been staying away from Lambeth.
So Lapin Have you given us another example of a retired bishop attempting to pilfer his former church’s holdings? Seems to be a common thread weaving there. Pluralist, I enjoyed your insights, I think you’re right about the preparation being set to create a new structure whilst keeping the channels open to see how much they can rip out of the existing infrastructure. There’s that pilfering theme again. Romans 2:22-23 “You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor… Read more »
Isn’t the Evangeliccal division between pro -women ordination and anti-women ordination?
I think it is safe to say that South East Asia is not very happy with either GAFCON or with the way some of its organizers have characterized Dr. Michael Poon. They may or may not show up at Lambeth, but they may not go to Jerusalem, either.
“he will soon be surrounded . . . by men without chests”
Melanie (G Griffiths)-speak for ++KJS? ;-/
“I think this letter shows that liberals have lost…”
Funny, Londoner: I think it indicates exactly the OPPOSITE!
“lunatic fringe of American conservatism,” Sergio Carranza.
And then, a “message” from the “lunatic fringe of American conservatism,” delivered by a “chest beating” conservative(?) which underscores Bishops Carranzas out-of-mind observation of free-for-all behaving “lunatics” at The Body of Christ.
Assuming GAFCON can organise itself, what happens regarding Lambeth this time may well be framed to some extent by GAFCON. Assuming GAFCON meets first and starts to set up parallel structures, then many of these evangelicals writing will want to press to cover as much GAFCON territory as possible. Yet the whole structure, those “lack of resolutions” approach of this Lambeth, will initially prevent too much from happening. The result is that evangelicals at Lambeth may want to press for almost a coup there of method, to indeed start producing resolutions. If they don’t, they leave ideological territory open to… Read more »
The way to blow the GAFCON ship out of the water is to demand that Sydney comes clean on Lay presidency. No one is going after them on this…this is their achilles heel. They should also be challenged to come clean and clear on divorce and re-marraige, if they are going to mainly deal with sexual eythics as Jensen asserts. That would upset many of the common cause partners.
well done, robert ian williams, for slipping that one through the censor. 😉