Thinking Anglicans

GAFCON starts

on Sunday, 22 June 2008 at 9.41 pm by Simon Sarmiento
categorised as Anglican Communion

There are numerous reports from GAFCON. The official GAFCON site has: Archbishop Akinola’s Opening Address in full.

The subsequent news conference is reported in “We Have No Other Place to Go” – Akinola confims there is no break away. An audio clip is available. And Stand Firm has a fuller record of questions and answers.

And there is also GAFCON Leadership Meets Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem. Another version of this encounter can be found in the ENS report, Jerusalem bishop calls GAFCON participants to reconciliation, not division.

First media reports:

Reuters Ari Rabinovitch Conservative Anglicans to discuss Communion split

Jerusalem Post Matthew Wagner Anglicans gather in Jerusalem to protest secularization

BBC Robert Pigott Rival meeting deepens Anglican rift

Telegraph Martin Beckford Primate of Nigeria vows to rescue Anglican church from crisis over sexuality

In a rallying cry to the hundreds of traditionalists who have gathered in Jerusalem for a critical summit, the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, said many in the Communion were “apostates” who were going against their religion by tolerating homosexuality.

He poured scorn on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, for his “misleading” comments on Islamic law and claimed he was not interested in what he and other African leaders had to say.

But Archbishop Akinola pledged that he would help Anglican worshippers break free from the spiritual “slavery” they had been placed in by the liberal West, and said the Gafcon conference would answer important questions about what should happen next in the church.

The Times Ruth Gledhill Rebel Anglican bishops plan refuge for orthodox views

Anglican bishops meeting in Jerusalem are planning to form a “church within a church” to counter Western liberalism and to reform the Church from within.

Senior sources told The Times that the most likely outcome of the divisions over homosexuality and biblical authority was an international “Anglican Fellowship” that would provide a home for orthodox Anglicans…

…The new fellowship could have a leadership of six or seven senior conservative bishops and archbishops, such as the Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Right Rev Bob Duncan — who chairs the US Common Cause partnership that acts as an umbrella for American conservatives — Archbishop Henry Orombi, Primate of Uganda, and the Church of England’s Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali.

The aim is not to split the worldwide Anglican Communion, which has 80 million members in 38 provinces, but to reform it from within. Formal ties would be maintained with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, but fellowship members will consider themselves out of communion with the US and Canada…

The Church Times blog has a good roundup of links here.

And Iain Baxter has emailed us a summary of the first day, which is below the fold.

It is well, it is well with my soul.

The opening meeting of the GAFCON conference, here in Jerusalem, ended with this classic hymn. But all is not well with the soul of Anglicanism, at least according to Arch Bishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria. In the US, The Episcopal Church is championing spiritual bondage and it’s all part of the continuing struggle against colonialism.

We are here because we know that in God’s providence GAFCON will liberate and set participants [particularly Africans] free from spiritual bondage which TEC and its Allies champion. Having survived the inhuman physical slavery of the 19th century, the political slavery called colonialism of the 20th century, the developing world economic enslavement, we cannot, we dare not allow ourselves and the millions we represent be kept in religious and spiritual dungeon.

He declares: “a sizeable part of the Communion is in error and not a few are apostate;”

However, not even all the African and Global South leaders agree with him. But this is because they are been bought off:

We know that the expert ‘divide and rule’ agents of TEC and Lambeth have been at work using money and other attractions to buy ‘silence and compromise’ from some gullible African and Global South Church leaders; hence we have begun to see signs of disunity in our ranks.

Lambeth is clearly the enemy along with The Episcopal Church in the US and the Canadian Diocese of New Westminister.

Lambeth Palace, in July 2007, issued invitations to TEC bishops, including those who consecrated Gene Robinson, to attend the Lambeth 2008 conference. At this point, it dawned upon us, regrettably, that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not interested in what matters to us, in what we think or in what we say.

He asks: What sort of recognisable structure and funding must GAFCON as a ‘movement’ in the Communion have to be able achieve the tasks set for it?

Does this mean that money must be used to keep errant “sound” Bishops and Churches on side?

The GAFCON conference has cost £2.5 million. Six individuals in Nigeria donated $1.2 million of this and one individual alone gave $900,000. There is clearly big money behind this grouping but where is it going? This week may begin to give some answers.

Iain Baxter
Media Participant for the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement
GAFCON, Jerusalem 2008.