Updated again Saturday morning
According to the Church Times in this report by Pat Ashworth headlined Dawani fails to divert GAFCON ‘pilgrims’:
THE ORGANISERS of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) insist that they will be holding the event in Jerusalem, despite strong protests and an alternative suggestion from the Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt Revd Suheil Dawani, and his colleagues in the Holy Land.
However, the following announcement has just appeared on the GAFCON website:
Global Anglican Future – Travel Plans
This morning we have released the following communication on behalf of the leadership team of GAFCON:
“We have heard that GAFCON has aroused considerable interest and enthusiasm. We would encourage those who are planning visits to the Holy Land to coincide with GAFCON to await the announcement of the venue and the exact start and finish dates before making final plans”
The GAFCON Leadership Team.
An article in today’s Church Times by Bishop Tom Wright, criticising GAFCON, is behind the subscription paywall until next Friday now available there, and also at Fulcrum, but you can read criticism of the article by going to this blog post here.
Friday afternoon update
According to Ruth Gledhill writing on her blog, Gafcon ‘to take place as planned’:
Paul Eddy, doing the PR for Gafcon, insists that nothing has changed. He says: ‘The final details of venue, hotels are being finalised, a team was out in Middle East just last week with conference and hotel and transport reps, all according to plan. Full details to be sent out to non-Bishops March 1.’ He continues, ‘The timetable agreed at the beginning has always been that Bishops nominate clergy and lay folk and the official invites will be sent to non-Bishops on March 1.’
She also includes a link to the report of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, by Andrew Brown which is available at How Christians love each other.
Last week’s Church Times had a clutch of letters about GAFCON. See Both a gaffe and a con? The Global Anglican Future Conference.
Saturday morning
The article by Tom Wright is now also available here at Covenant.
I can’t help but laugh at critique of Tom’s letter on StandFirm. For the crime of disagreeing with +Akinola, +Jensen and Sugden, Tom Wright is now declared unorthodox! I expect the book burnings will soon follow…
According to Ruth Gledhill everything is full steam ahead: “This makes it sound as though change is on the cards but Paul Eddy, doing the PR for Gafcon, insists that nothing has changed. He says: ‘The final details of venue, hotels are being finalised, a team was out in Middle East just last week with conference and hotel and transport reps, all according to plan. Full details to be sent out to non-Bishops March 1.’ He continues, ‘The timetable agreed at the beginning has always been that Bishops nominate clergy and lay folk and the official invites will be sent… Read more »
“THE ORGANISERS of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) insist that they will be holding the event in Jerusalem, despite strong protests and an alternative suggestion from the Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt Revd Suheil Dawani, and his colleagues in the Holy Land. Bishop Dawani says he learned about the conference from a press release.”
I am embarrassed with their humility.
Look at the language used!
“We have heard that GAFCON has aroused considerable interest and enthusiasm”
(It’s the sort of false optimism you get with job application webpages.)
Like – prepare for an adjustment. It will be an adjustment, though, no more.
I wonder what the logo will be?
I mean, are they going to Cyprus?
Assuming mid-June to be firmly in the tourist season, how do the GAFCON organizers anticipate, at this short notice, to find accommodation for the people they expect to attend their pilgrimage?
“I can’t help but laugh at critique of Tom’s letter on StandFirm”
Yes, but it’s not funny. In the end the smallest lot of puritans will depart the Anglican Communion, and despite all the destructive squabbles in the last few years the rest of us will have settled nothing and will still be left with most of our biblical authoritarians.
If we have to have a split, can’t it be a decisive one? This achieves nothing and we’ll just spend the next 10 years going round and round the houses while most thinking people leave the sinking church.
Erika Baker — I agree, but fear we are in a similar position to the post-Constantinnian church which took many years (& schisms) to “settle” things — puritans keep walking away when they are not powerful enough to exclude others. But the commenters on SFiF are quite right from their perspective — I think the sad thing is the ongoing denial of N. T. Wright (& others) of the true nature of those with whom they have chosen to associate — the surprising thing is that they should be so naive as to be surprised. And surely no one really… Read more »
I would say that it looks as if they are going to try to shift to Cyprus. Telling people not to book flights to Jerusalem on the advised dates is a clearer signal than having your PR tell everyone that nothing has changed. He will say that whatever happens.
Tom Wright forgets that GAFCON has Anglo-Catholic participants.
Furthermore because he is evagelical he doesn’t
play on their varying and conflicting interpretations of Scripture.
“thought of desired” should be “or” (of course) — some things spell-check won’t help!
Andrew Brown — you may well be correct — I suppose after they have booked their accommodations, they will ask the Bishop of Cyprus what he thinks about hosting the GAFPIL (or not).
BTW — interesting that Ruth Gledhill seems finally to have come around to your POV on the question of a schism (i.e, the Evangelical Global South “walking apart” rather than TEC & other “liberal” churches being expelled).
CANA bishop David Anderson, in his weekly AAC update, states – http://innocentdoves.blogspot.com/2008/01/aac-weekly-update-by-bishop-anderson.html – “Those who are following the news about the planned GAFCON gathering will have read the “leaked” minutes of the confidential meetings which were held to discuss the event. Closer inspection reveals that the purported text “leaked” was not an agreed-upon set of minutes at all, and was not in fact leaked, but planted. Apparently, upon examination of the text in circulation, the words are those of a Janina Zang, a Missionary of USPG (General Secretary is Bishop Michael Doe), who is on assignment as Personal Assistant to… Read more »
No, Prior Aelred, they’ll take the GAFPIL in Jerusalem and then were invited to make the GAFCON in Cyprus.
My bit on the wobble at http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/ including a piccy of Tom Wright.
Pluralist You’re article is interesting, particularly the desire for hard-right Zionists to precipitate Jesus returning in all his glory. What a lot of people whitewash over is this vision involves Jesus murdering every soul on this planet, condemning the overwhelming majority to hell, and taking a select few to the rapture in a divine heaven. If that isn’t a genocidal fantasy, I don’t know what else is. Something that both the Christian Zionists and their complacent Jewish compatriots should contemplate is that they have an empty Jewish tabernacle of the ark in a museum. They would all do with a… Read more »
Thanks loads for the link to AB’s 1998 Lambeth report. I suddenly recall George Santayana’s aphorism: We who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. To think that the real basis for this schism is not homosexuality, though that remains a dodgy wedge armament for tearing down all the house among realignment front runners of all sorts; but the ordination of women, and most especially, the underlying ethical-theological notions of equal worth in incarnation or embodiment, taken as nothing but a sharp jab at men, straight or not, who feel God must surely look upon the genitals; with… Read more »
Right, there does seem to be increasing confusion among GAFCON’s supporters now.
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/01/gafcon-to-upstage-opnion.html
Either J. I. Packer is off message or it is wobbling on time and/ or place. There is clear inconsistency in the ranks.
The real Anglo-catholics in San Joaquim ( Southern Cone incorporated) should get together and form a rival diocese, which has a Bishop who will not go to GAFCON, and consort with an Archbishop who allaows grpae juice at communion and is about to release Lay presidency on the Anglican Communion.
I wish Bishop Wright had mentioned the Jensen Lay presidency time bomb in the hold of the Good ship GAFCON and the duplicity of inviting Anglo-Catholics to participate, who would not be even considered fit to clean St Andrews Cathedral in Stydney in normal circumstances.Wright treats GAFCON as an Evangelical monopoly.
By the way what are GAFCON, an American Construction company doing to protect their name. Lets form a legal defence fund now… I nominate Martin reynolds for treasurer.
Robert
There’s no problem as to who does the cleaning. As long as they shut up and don’t spout any teachings contrary to the divine revelation.
Goodness, if they had to exclude all unclean things, the men would have to clean up after themselves.
No, no,no,no,no,nohhhhhhh….. Not another chequebook in the house! I have been telling Robert Ian for some time now that this conference will not be happening as planned, it just may be that I will be right for a change!! Flights from Lagos to Tel Aviv to suit the published dates are still available £460 return (before you get to the airport) on Ethiopian Air or £940 from Lufthansa via somewhere in Germany and it’s the same £1000 from New York to Israel while Londoners can get there for just over £300! But its less than £200 to Paphos from Manchester… Read more »
The point is that GAFCON is the legally registered Californian Construction company…see their website.
GAFCON (Anglican) could be infringing that name.
Do they know?/…any corporate lawyers out there?
Could you imagine TESCO not going to court ifthere was a Conference called THE EPISCOPAL SOUTH COALITION (TESCO).
The trouble with you liberals is that you are not litigacious enough!
“The trouble with you liberals is that you are not litigacious enough!”
Unlike the GAFCON organisers, the “real” people and companies out there might simply think that they’re just not important enough to waste ligitation money on.
Or they might like the cheap PR – if you type GAFCON into Google the Californian company comes first on the results list. Not bad for them.
Should I have said litigious?
Hi Robert When I contemplated what was being done to me in my local diocese, I did some research. It turned out that my story was not unique, either within my diocese, nor the global Anglican communion, nor just Christianity. One possibility was to take the litigous path. Others had done it for less than I had experienced and “won” the case. The problem was, it did not solve the problems in the priesthood. They paid the monies, made the settlement and entered into contracts of silence in exchange for compensation. The priesthood had no remorse and merely said amongst… Read more »
Yes. Litigious.
And while we’re at it, can some of us sue Venables, Schofield, Akinola et al for their appropriation of the word “Anglican?”
Malcom: …and of the word “orthodox” too!
Litigacious. Um, gracefull litigation?