That’s Newcastle NSW, not Newcastle England.
Bishop Brian Farran of Newcastle New South Wales, Australia has issued a press release.
You can read it as a web page here or as a PDF file here.
It starts out:
The prospect of an international conference of Anglican bishops and other leaders, the Global Anglican Future Conference, immediately prior to the Lambeth Conference is disturbing simply because whatever rhetoric dresses up that conference, it is a counter-conference to the Lambeth Conference. It is a one-dimensional conference designed to bolster the conservative voice within the Anglican Communion.
GAFCON is being organized because its proponents are dissatisfied with the breadth of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation list to Lambeth. It is therefore a theologically political conference. It will cause embarrassment whether intended or not to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the rest of the Anglican Communion.
Dr. Peter Jensen, the Archbishop of Sydney, is one of the conservative leaders who are promoting this conference. It needs to be understood that Dr. Jensen is an organizer of this conference in his own personal capacity or possibly in his capacity as the Bishop of the Diocese of Sydney. It must be seen that Dr. Jensen has no authorization to do this as the Metropolitan of the Anglican Province of New South Wales. I am not suggesting that Dr. Jensen would act in this way as the Metropolitan of New South Wales but public perception might not be discriminating in this regard.
As the Bishop of Newcastle I wish to dissociate myself from any movement such as GAFCON that might damage or lessen the moral authority of the 2008 Lambeth Conference…
There’s a lot more.
After all this blows up with the inevitable split, isn’t Rowan Williams going to look an absolute fool? He will be suspected by many of those who remain and rejected by those who have set up a rival body.
Still, that’s what happens when you try and stay in the middle of the road
You get knocked down.
Given his lack of backbone, treachery and principle, its the least he deserves.
Way to go, Bishop Farran! 🙂
Sydney is a city, not a state. It has more influence in some areas and others and is more trusted by some than others. Australia actually has some very enlightened and very broad minded Anglican leaders. I remember the Archbishop of Perth commenting a few years ago along the lines of: “It’s not that God makes new things, but that God makes things new again”. That is, it’s not that God gives us a new bible, but that God makes the old bible interesting again. That is the exploratory aspect of study that Bishop Farran’s is highlighting when he refers… Read more »
The lot more puts a lot more between him and the Archbishop of Sydney, and the organisers of GAFCON. Brian Farran’s is the more representative Anglicanism of Australia, with a broad mind, considerably broader than the Advent Letter or basis of invitation to Lambeth.
Indeed. Read it all. “This imperious decision of location may be indicative of the impositional mind-set of the Global South leaders, a departure from the courtesies of classic Anglicanism. In the end theology is not a matter for a police-state approach….”
Sydney have had church plant incursions into Newcastle diocese for a long time. Newcastle know what Sydney is up to.
Sensible chap, Newcastle.
“Still, that’s what happens when you try and stay in the middle of the road”
My Texas friends say the middle of the road is where you find dead armadillos and a yellow stripe.
Indeed — not all of Australia is like the Archdiocese of Sydney — in fact, none of it is — except for the church planting that Sydney has done in other dioceses (this diocesan boundary violation stuff was being done by Sydney long before the Africans got into the act) — some years ago an Ozzie told me that the only reason that the rest of the Australian church puts up with Sydney is that it has all the endowments.
This meanwhile is the kind of text we’ve all been waiting for:
“The urgent need of the Church of England, therefore, must then be for overseas intervention by orthodox Primates who are willing unambiguously to break fellowship with the current Archbishop of Canterbury and act jointly to initiate a new Global Anglican missionary movement in England.”
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=7457
It is Virtue Online and Anglican Mainstream stuff, and was always intended.
If Canterbury will not strongly do its leadership part to confirm and maintain historic Anglican breadth of scholarship, inquiry, and discussion across hot button differences; then perhaps other bishops may speak up, anyways. Many thanks to Bishop F. Canterbury has said that no Anglican is asserting unintelligent readings of scripture; but the last fifty years of wide-ranging scholarship call this confidence too much into question, especially in the fast changing hot button domains related to biopsychosocial studies of human nature and human embodiment. One wonders when so many bishops stopped reading science, or at least speaking regularly with scholars and… Read more »
Interesting paper that you linked us to, Pluralist. It was a well written precis of how they have gotten to where they in a bit under 25 years. It not a recent (since 2003) phenomenon. They quoted Proverbs 25:26 ‘Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked. My reply to that one is Isaiah 32:7 “The scoundrel’s methods are wicked, he makes up evil schemes to destroy the poor with lies, even when the plea of the needy is just.” or Isaiah 59:3 or 57:20-21 “the wicked are like the… Read more »
The VirtueOnline piece you link to, Adrian, was written by a priest who was chucked out of Worcester Diocese, when the Bishop refused to renew his licence. His practice with anyone who disagreed with him on his PCC and in his parish was to tell them that if they didn’t like what he was doing they should leave. He then provoked a row by refusing to let the Bishop conduct any services in his church. he also refused an offer the Bishop made whereby the Bishop of Peru (NB Southern Cone) visiting as a partner bishop would conduct the confirmation.… Read more »
Ok Doug Chaplin, I’ve added a link to your informative comment from here:
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/01/raven-interventionin.html
“Sydney is a city, not a state.”
Speaking as a Melburnian, you could have fooled me. Sydney IS a state (of mind).
Kieran
You have my chuckles.
I foolishly said in the early 1980s that I would live in any city in Australia except Sydney. I’ve now been here since 1987.
Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humour.
And the cultural things that concerned me about Sydney before I moved here still concern me. My gratitude is that the vast bulk of Sydneysiders are not that vulgar, but the loud ones puport to represent the rest of us. (A bit like the Global South purports to represent Anglicanism – another culural parallel).
The Bishop of Newcastle (NSW) wisely points out: “In the end theology is not a matter for a police-state approach – the tortuous history of the Mediaeval Church reminds us too graphically that this is surely not the case. Rather, theology is a conversation not so much with perceived adversaries as with others who with integrity seek the truth as it is found in Jesus. The fact that there may be differences of insight is congruent with the four gospels themselves.” Sadly, people like Global South Bishops (and their Western puppets — or puppeteers?) Jensen, Akinola, Minns, Venables, Gomez, Duncan,… Read more »
“…theology is a conversation not so much with perceived adversaries as with others who with integrity seek the truth as it is found in Jesus.”
Of course, Jensen, Akinola, Minns, Venables, Gomez, Duncan, Iker, Schofield, Nazir-Ali, et al are firmly convinced that they have already FOUND that truth and are no longer seeking it. No others need apply.
That is their hubris…that they know the mind of God completely and any disagreement with them is a disagreement with the divine.
“In other words, this piece is a long attempt at self-justification.” Priest/PCC/whatever behaves badly. Bishop disciplines said priest/congregation/whatever. The latter group then claims it is being persecuted by its evil liberal bishop. This, to my eye, is nothing new. I have yet to see an example of the “persecuted minority” referenced by AM recently and commented on on another thread, that DIDN’T fit this scenario. It occurs to me that this is more than a mere persecution complex, it is a form of idolatry: one is worshipping victimhood (which, BTW, is a rejection of the Gospel, since Christ gives us… Read more »