A meeting was held at All Souls Church, Langham Place, in London yesterday evening on Global Anglicanism & English Orthodoxy?. Speakers included three of the (arch)bishops who had attended GAFCON last week: Henry Orombi (Archbishop of Uganda), Greg Venables (Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone) and Peter Jensen (Archbishop of Sydney).
Riazat Butt at The Guradian Church of England crisis: Mass defections loom as rebel faction appeals to English clergy
Hundreds of English clergy appear poised to defect from the Church of England to join a new conservative movement after a conference led by rebel archbishops was swamped with delegates in London yesterday.
George Pitcher at the Telegraph Anglican Church crisis: Phoney war becomes an invasion
The phoney war declared on the The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in the Holy Lands last week has turned into an invasion.
Ruth Gledhill at the Times Evangelical Christians sign up to a ‘Church within a Church’
Nearly 800 clergy and lay leaders from the Church of England took the first steps yesterday towards forming a “Church within a Church” to be an evangelical stronghold against the ordination of gay people.
Andy McSmith at The Independent Anglican rebels ‘punched gay rights activists’
Three gay rights protesters say they were punched while being forcibly removed yesterday from a conference at which rebel bishops were trying to attract recruits to a network for Anglicans who believe all same-sex relationships should be condemned.
There is also a good opinion piece in The Independent by Deborah Orr – “A man of God we should all be supporting”, which is calling for the non-religious to come out against GAFCON.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/deborah-orr/deborah-orr-a-man-of-god-we-should-all-be-supporting-858285.html
God, that word “progressive” makes me gag. It is full of all the self righteousness and judgementalism of “orthodox” and serves much the same purpose.
Following the All Souls meeting a petition has gone up for English Anglicans who support GAFCON: http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/20243.html
It quite explicitly says:
“Please only sign this petition if you are a member of the Church of England in England itself.”
So far, there are 110 signatures and these include ones from Australia, Ireland, Italy and Israel. I think basic reading skills need to be provided by GAFCON before moving on to anything as tricky as biblical interpretation!
Re. the petition.
Hey, Hong Kong and Singapore are there too!
Maybe it’s not reading lessons that are needed, but geography ones.
After doing my blog last night, I came to the view that Anglicanism is in meltdown; and continuing to read here, I have the same view. Pete Broadbent, who went to All souls has some perceptive comments but those who would leave would have to leave entirely. Law and promises bind a clergyperson to the bishop in England, and leaving that means independence.
Many have long entertained intuitions that sooner or later the conservative realignment must surface in a campaign – or two or three or four? – on the very local home shores of CoE – so now it has overtly begun, or so it appears. The ambitions of realignment believers are indeed running quite high. Their realignment now aims at bringing down two birds with one holy stone, casting out non-straight believers and uppity women with one bold stroke – as always, spin doctored as the only real flat earth biblical option we have available to us as thinking believers. Outside… Read more »
Is Tom Dunelm finally recognizing the consequences of his earlier words? (Hope springs eternal — it’s not that I expect him to admit it …)
Given that the GAFFEPRONE believe Fresno, California is in Argentina and Faifax County, Virginia is in Nigeria, it is more than apparent that geographical illiteracy is a prerequisite for membership.
How cocky these evangelicals are ( not seeing their own inconsistencies and revisonist divisions , especially on divorce and womens ordiantion) and I do not think they will accept being placed in a diocese overseen by FIF.>
I could have *sworn* we “apostate” Yanks warned you English this was coming. [The “Martin Niemoller analogy” never, sadly, goes out of style: “First they came for…”]
Lord have mercy!
From the Guardian: “The archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen…added that Gafcon had to take care of Christians caught in dioceses, parishes and churches who were faithful to orthodox biblical teaching but found themselves under liberal leadership. ‘If we do not care for them, who will?’ he asked.” Ah, so dissenting clergy are ostensibly under “assault” and are so very, very persecuted in England, too, eh? Heterodox bishops before, behind and all around us, eh? It’s true: This attempt at usurpation could be seen coming a mile away. Why the GAFCON gang think this means staying in the communion is baffling,… Read more »
From the Times: Archbishop Peter Jensen, of the Sydney Diocese in Australia, told the meeting that sex was at the heart of the debate. He said: “Sexual immorality leads you outside the kingdom of God, just as does greed. It is not a second-order issue.” He added: “What we are dealing with here is not a split, but a movement possibly as significant as the evangelical revival [of the 19th century], and it may bring evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics together.” At least they are finally admitting that this is all about sex. (How interesting that the group’s spokesperson would also reference… Read more »
I am surprised that no-one has picked up on this from The Guardian piece:
The event was clearly intended as a rallying point, with theologian Jim Packer saying there was something “dispensable about the archbishop of Canterbury.
“It is not of the essence of Anglicanism to be in communion with him when he becomes part of the doctrinal problem.
“Pray for the next archbishop and that he may be with us sooner than we might have thought.”
Question for you all:
Pluralist writes: “I came to the view that Anglicanism is in meltdown…”
and drdanfee writes of people being “maybe a tad jaded by endlessly heavy realignment preachments by now”
We’ve had breakaways before in TEC and the Anglican Communion. Remember TEC ordaining women? TEC back in the 70s giving money to the Black Panthers’ milk/lunch programs?
Back then, people said the breakaways would just die off, but with GAFCON and Foca (or whatever the real name of this breakaway group is) – and with the power of the Internet, will that happen?
Lord have mercy, indeed!
We are weak as a Church, as no one seems to have picked up the inherent contradiction between clauses 4 and 13 of the Jerusalem Declaration. Article 26 is quite clear, and rules out the kind of summary rejection declared in clause 13. Therefore it is difficult to see how anyone can endorse the Declaration and the Thirty Nine Articles at the same time. That needs to be heard, because it’s a real technical issue at stake; not just a matter of opinion, and it’s failure to pay attention to that kind of detail which is landing us in this… Read more »
Anglican Christians who are gay are punched and shoved out of “All Souls” parish before they can even take seats. What more needs to be said about the FOCA prelates and their movement? They have had some time to issue a public apology, to go personally to these three men and offer their sincere repentance, and to officially repudiate what was done to them at “All Souls” parish. They have not done so. I expect that they will not do so. So we have the biblical “orthodoxy” of violence against gays (you recall stoning, or the situation in Zaire where… Read more »
Yes I noticed that bristolian. I think many conservative evangelicals haven’t got over Rowan’s appointment-thay felt sure it wd be an evangelical-and indeed it would seem by all acounts that Nazir-Ali has found it difficult to come to terms with the fact he is still in Rochester….I do hope Rowan will stick it out through Lambeth and beyond. It must be a bed of nails but any renewal of an Anglicanism that has anything distinctive to offer the Una Sancta in the future will come from the catholic centre drawing on the ecumenical theology achieved in the last 40 years.My… Read more »
They claim no schism because, after they have walked out the door, they don’t shut the door behind them. Usually it is the institution that shuts the door behind them that seals the schism.
So when the diocesan bishop is declared unorthodox, and they sign up to international oversight and ignore the diocesan, when the bishop then removes them from the parish and forces them to be the independents of their behaviour, then the schism is called.
I trust that the clerics who addressed the meeting at All Souls were properly authorized by the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury, pursuant to the Overseas Clergy Measure. And, of course, if they were not there should be appropriate sanction for the Incumbent.
If Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics actually come together over this, that will indeed be something to report in the papers.
Posted by: christopher+ on Wednesday, 2 July 2008 at 7:50pm
Surely they will be able to, given a considerate approach to the others’ needs, attention to timing, and practice.
I’m sure it would do the papers heart good to know of such special moments.
I’m behind Peter Jensen too.
Given that–a question. (I’ve been asking a lot of that this morning.) Would a change of government in the UK make it possible to appoint an Archbishop of Canterbury more acceptable to FOCA’s members? I think it is a valid point to raise.
I have a feeling that there will be efforts to ensure that the relevant political mechanisms are in place to allow for this to happen. While PM Brown’s efforts to ensure independence for the CofE on this matter are ongoing, I don’t know how UK politics will be like in a year or so.
How kind of Dr Packer. Not.
I think that the extent of influence of government on the AofC is exaggerated.
However, as David Cameron is himself a liberal Anglican who attends a gay friendly church…
I don’t believe there is any particular way for the government to appoint a new ABC barring Rowan’s resignation or death. Removing him – barring some sort of charge – would be highly damaging to both church and state. And the sort of charge the “conservatives” would bring would go over like a fart at a garden party with the wider UK society.
karen macqueen+
you may be interested to know that the panel at All Souls was asked whether they “unequivocally condemn violence against lesbian and gay people” to which Henry Orombi replied: “Violence against homosexuals is wrong.”
As for the specific incident in question, see now the letter from the Rector of All Souls Church to the Editor of The Independent.
The Rector of All Souls, Canon Hugh Palmer, stated in his letter to the editor of the Independent that, having investigated the allegation, he found no evidence of a punch being thrown. He said an All Souls’ staff member pushed protesters back from the fire door and closed it, which any right-thinking person would consider absolutely the right and responsible thing to do at a public meeting. The politically-correct establishment is now almost without shame in printing allegations against Evangelicals without evidence to back them.
“The politically-correct establishment is now almost without shame in printing allegations against Evangelicals without evidence to back them.”
You know, I’m sure I could find an Imperial altar somewhere on which you could very pointedly refuse to burn a pinch of incense.
I am British and live in Costa Rica. I heard Bishop Venables speak on BBC World, on Hard Talk. He did not express any anti gay sentiments, despite provocation by the interviewer. He stated and re stated the Biblical positon that homosexuality is wrong. That doesn not mean that Christians hate homosexuals, true Christians don’t “hate” anyone. “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. We all have instincts to do wrong, to sin, and we suppress them. If we didn’t we would be back in anarchy qwith every man for himself. I want to have sex with someone who isn’t my… Read more »
“I think when homosexuality was against the law, there were not nearly so many homosexuals” And you base that on what? The fact that most weren’t open about it and hid in marriages for fear of their lives? Do you really think that making a biological fact illegal reduces the incidence of it? The only way you can think this makes any sense is if you think we all wake up some morning and decide that we will be gay, and we wouldn’t do that if it was illegal. How much of “listening process” did your parish carry out in… Read more »