Thinking Anglicans

Fellowship under fire

Updated Friday evening

Pat Ashworth in the Church Times has a comprehensive report of events leading up to Monday’s UK launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), including new shenanigans in the Diocese of Southwark.

Read Fellowship leaders take flak in run-up to London launch.

Some related items:

Friday evening update

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Erika Baker
Erika Baker
15 years ago

Andrew Goddard says: “many looking in from the outside see FCA as a new alliance which will be resolute in opposing women bishops and create more places where ordained women and their gifts will not be welcome, no matter how orthodox and mission-minded the ordained women are?” Why should someone who believes that lgbt people cannot be ordained, however orthodox and mission minded they may be, be surprised when an even more fundamentalist group of people uses the same arguments against women priests? Amazing, how theologically flexible people can be when it suits them, and yet not see that it’s… Read more »

Robert Ian Williams
Robert Ian Williams
15 years ago

People have short memories. Charles Raven was “forced “out of the Church of England when George Carey refused to assist him.

He heads a group called Spread …promoting Reformed Anglicanism and has set up an independent church in Kidderminster.

Edward Craig
Edward Craig
15 years ago

Prediction: The FCA will reshape the Anglican Communion with the support of sensus fidelium. Ghandi described the situation well “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

mahatma gandhi

Merseymike
Merseymike
15 years ago

I think the manic ravings of Nolland gives the game away. This is just another anti-gay movement and an attempt to turn back the clock. In the week when our likely next PM, of the party who one assumes most of these people vote for (although there is another which suits their views far more closely!) apologised for his support for Section 28 and pledged continued support for equality for lesbian and gay people, they have retreated into the church to act as the last bastion against equality. I don’t think that these people have realised that they have not… Read more »

Spirit of Vatican II
Spirit of Vatican II
15 years ago

Charles Raven does not seem to have an idea in his head. His negative joustings with Rowan Williams are no substitute for some positive proposal of his own on how scriptural values are to be interpreted today.

Spirit of Vatican II
Spirit of Vatican II
15 years ago

Manic indeed: “LGBT-affirmation is on the offensive… Naively assuming all is well plays right into the ‘gay’ activist hand, and is precisely what it is after, for it keeps the facade reassuringly intact while radically changing the reality of what people actually believe and how they operate their sexual lives. FCA is about challenging this slow but insidious slippage, and doing it openly, positively, and publicly. It is hard to confront denial, but it must be done.” FCA has defined itself in astonishingly narrow terms — should it be wrong, as in fact it is, about the nature of the… Read more »

JCF
JCF
15 years ago

Citing *Gandhi* to predict (support) a takeover by the FCA?!

You’re got chutzpah, Mr Craig: I’ll give you that.

Göran Koch-Swahne
15 years ago

The usual suspects.

edward craig
edward craig
15 years ago

JCF,
Actually, I agree with the Global South Bishops that much of the Gay agenda is another expression of the colonial mentality attempting to dictate what is and what is not. That is why Ghandi’s quote is apropos. The homosexual agenda in its present form is nothing other than a white male movement determined to get it’s way. Those days are over.

counterlight
15 years ago

Would somebody please tell this gay man what the “gay agenda” is?
I’ve never understood what anyone means by that. Did our secret headquarters under the Castro put out a memo and I missed it? Would it be teaching schlubby straight men how to dress and get in shape followed by global domination? Is our plan to turn Canterbury cathedral into Barney’s Britain still on schedule?

The perfect acronym for an over-priced trashy fashion chain, and a segregationist movement to keep the homos out of church; FCUK!

drdanfee
drdanfee
15 years ago

Yeah, quoting Ghandi is a bit much for anybody on the Anglican right as a sensus fidelum street performance, not least FCA. Do none of these Anglican right leaders and speakers have any sense at all, that they have already lost the key ideological struggles among younger folks in nearly every single western democracy? If they think the Global South Anglicans will avoid globalization, let alone subsume it, by studiously avoiding both equality-democracy and reading the massive New Sciences? – they are even more fascinatingly self-deluded than they ordinarily look and sound to the rest of us? xDuncan has, however,… Read more »

Cynthia Gilliatt
Cynthia Gilliatt
15 years ago

You may find versions of the Gay Agenda via Google.

They usually include brunch, light workouts, hair styling, and shopping for clothes… The lesbian agenda includes workouts, dog walking, attending what used to be called the Dinah Shore LPGA tournament, shopping for gramola …

Then there are the onses posted by thy homophobic paranoid wingnuts that include establishing polyamory, destroying Christianity and indeed, Western Civilization As We Know IT!

Edward Craig
Edward Craig
15 years ago

Counter light and drdanfee,

Actually I would be considered a leftist, since I have been a socialist for years, and Che Guevera is my hero. Nonetheless, I do not subscribe to the sexual politics of white males who are for the most part the socio-economic priviliged and love to mask their domination and power behind pet projects. I’ll say again the global south represents a rejection of the cultural hegemony of white males in the Anglican Communion.

Father Ron Smith
Father Ron Smith
15 years ago

‘Michael Nazir-Ali has written “Only God Can Save Us from Ourselves” ‘

Nothing new here, then, from this retiring bishop, Michael Nazir-Ali. Is he speaking of just himself, or of all those odd C.of E. Bishops who have written notes of encouragement to the would-be ACNA Province. No wonder he is retiring. The Question is, how close to retirement from the C.of E. are these other dissident bishops?

Rev. Dr. Christian Troll
15 years ago

You’re quite right, Edward Craig. I’ve also long known Bishop Tutu is really one of the “white males who are for the most part the socio-economic priviliged and love to mask their domination and power behind pet projects”.

And the “Global South” leaders +Jensen and ++Venables truly do represent “a rejection of the cultural hegemony of white males in the Anglican Communion”. Just ask all the black women +Jensen has ordained in the Diocese of Sydney.

Edward Craig
Edward Craig
15 years ago

You are right. Jensen and Venables do reject the privileges of white male “cultural” hegemony. By the way, I study in South Africa, and while many respect the good Bishop Tutu, but many also recognize that his status is an enigmatic one – just like the clergy collar cutting Archbishop of York.

Rev. Dr. Christian Troll
15 years ago

“Many” indeed recognize that Bishop Tutu’s status is an enigmatic one – but I suspect “everyone” recognizes he is is not a socio-economically privileged white male.

And if +Jensen’s neo-Gnostic puritanism is a rejection of white patriarchy then please explain why he so wholeheartedly embraces a view of women lifted directly from late 19th century Britain?

choirboyfromhell
choirboyfromhell
15 years ago

“The homosexual agenda in its present form is nothing other than a white male movement determined to get it’s way.”

Yes, we are SO going to get the third world to embrace the white man’s agenda of mourning for Michael Jackson and cash our returns for more credit equity swaps and Starbucks in Nairobi. Watch out, here WE come!

Edward Craig
Edward Craig
15 years ago

Good Rev Dr and choirboyfrom hell,

Here is a summation of my observations from another blogger, “The fact that those Provinces which have thus far recognized ACNA constitute nearly half of the world’s Anglicans carries no weight whatsoever with them, because in their elitist liberal eyes, the people who make up those Provinces are “people who never were English, [and who] don’t speak English as their native tongue”, to quote one prominent member of ECUSA’s Executive Council.)

Rev. Dr. Christian Troll
15 years ago

Citation for this “one prominent member” please?

And the alleged racist outpouring of one unnamed official, as quoted by another unnamed blogger, prove what exactly? That Archbishop Jensen is not the curious product of Australian sectarianism blended with Billy Graham revivalism, English puritanism, and a strange fear of churches not led by persons in possession of a penis?

Edward Craig
Edward Craig
15 years ago

Point: Millions of African Anglicans support Duncan, Venables and Jensen. The provinces of Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya – the largest provinces of practicing Anglicans in the world (and eventually the Roman Catholic and Orthodox) – support their theological and ecclesial direction. What gives your minority position such weight in the communion is nothing other than the rapidly withering vestiges of British colonialism.

Rev. Dr. Christian Troll
15 years ago

No, Edward.
What gives our position such weight is the Love of God for those whom the Pharisees have vilified, down trodden, and cast out.

choirboyfromhell
choirboyfromhell
15 years ago

Oh well gee whiz Ed Craig, I guess MIGHT makes RIGHT doesn’t it? If you’re the biggest boy on the block, you get the lunch money no doubt!

And Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya are such peaceful, democratic examples of success, I guess we really should emulate their version of Christianity, not to mention their “theological and ecclesial [ecclesiastical?] direction”.

English as a native tongue…and not homosexual, now that’s an example of double discrimination if I ever did hear…oh, I and come from a recovering ex-British Colony too, and never was subject of the Queen as well.

Pat O'Neill
Pat O'Neill
15 years ago

Edward:

As I–and others here–never stop pointing out, it is the bishops of those provinces who support Duncan, Venables and Jensen. We have not the slightest idea who or what the millions of African Anglicans in those provinces actually support since they have no voice in the selection of their leaders.

I suspect most of them don’t care a fig one way or the other what is happening in some other churches half a world away.

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
15 years ago

“Millions of African Anglicans support Duncan, Venables and Jensen.” And millions of early Christians supported Arianism as well. They were actually the power in the Church for over a century, despite being condemned by at elast one Ecumenical Council. Yet might didn’t make right in that instance. Besides, Jesus taught us how to tell the true teachers from the false ones: “By their fruits shall you know them.” So, I don’t care how many support them. For me, the question is simple: Do these people reveal the Gospel in their lives? They deny the faith of others simply because they… Read more »

Pat O'Neill
Pat O'Neill
15 years ago

Edward:

As I–and others here–never stop pointing out, it is the bishops of those provinces who support Duncan, Venables and Jensen. We have not the slightest idea who or what the millions of African Anglicans in those provinces actually support since they have no voice in the selection of their leaders.

I suspect most of them don’t care a fig one way or the other what is happening in some other churches half a world away.

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