The Primate of Brazil, The Most Revd Maurício Andrade has written about the boycott by five Anglican Primates of the 2008 Lambeth Conference.
Read Message from the Anglican Primate of Brazil – The Most Revd Mauricio de Andrade at ACNS.
He concludes:
37 Comments… I believe The Episcopal Church of the United States has been showing all of us an example of the path to unity and reconciliation, because they have met all the requests for visits that were made and answered all the questions that were posed. They have spent time, money, and energy to meet the primates’ requests, always with generosity and openness. I think we need to keep in mind that we are Anglican. We are seeing a disregard of our richness and our ethos, that is, autonomy of the Provinces.
The Anglican Province of Brazil has already spoken out against the creation of a new pact, because our way of being Anglican has already been defined in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. We are not nor do we want to be a mere federation of churches. We wish to continue in communion with Canterbury, a symbol of our unity, as full members of the Anglican Communion.
We intend to go to Lambeth open to dialogue, and to feel the presence of God guiding us as His people, breaking the bread that unites us in the Body of Christ, and expressing solidarity with the world in need of the Word of transformation and salvation. We therefore reaffirm our reply to the invitation of Archbishop Rowan Williams and deeply regret the boycott by five archbishops.
The Australian reports this: Anglican conference ‘is wrong time, wrong place’:
WHEN the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, meets his ecumenical colleague the Bishop of Jerusalem this week for an informal afternoon tea, even lashings of cream and jam for the scones won’t be able to cover the chill in the air…
…Bishop Dawani, visiting Australia this month to speak to local congregations, was not consulted about GAFCON and believes the meeting will have a negative impact on efforts to create peace in his diocese, which covers Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan…
Archbishop Jensen spoke to his diocesan standing committee about not attending Lambeth, and the full text of his remarks is in a PDF file here. The standing committee issued this press release endorsing his decision.
7 CommentsUpdated Tuesday
First, we had Uganda’s Anglicans hail boycott of Lambeth meeting from Reuters on Sunday.
And the BBC Sunday programme had a segment on Uganda which you can listen to here (9 minutes audio):
Uganda shuns Lambeth Conference
The Anglican Church of Uganda has announced that its bishops will not be attending this year’s Lambeth Conference, the meeting of worldwide Anglicanism that takes place once a decade. The Ugandan bishops cited what they called the “crisis” over homosexuality. The Most Reverend Henry Orombi, the Archbishop of Uganda, talked to Sunday.Stefan Stern writes about business and management issues for the Financial Times. In a recent column he turned his attention to the challenges facing the Archbishop of Canterbury. He discussed his take on the Anglican ‘brand’.
Now, today, we have Uganda’s Anglicans threaten to secede from global church from Associated Press today.
And allAfrica.com republishes from yesterday’s Kampala Monitor Homosexuality – COU May Secede.
This morning we also had Ugandan Anglicans in ultimatum to US church over gay marriages in the Guardian.
This afternoon, ACNS reports Church of Uganda Still a Part of Anglican Communion.
5 CommentsAs the Living Church reports,
An English translation of the canons and constitution of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone has recently been completed. Translating the 20-page document from Spanish to English was accomplished by staff members from the dioceses of Fort Worth and San Joaquin.
The Diocese of Fort Worth has published the translation on its website. Bishop Jack Leo Iker of Fort Worth and the standing committee recently prepared a second report concerning the possibility of aligning with the Province of the Southern Cone. This comparative report reflects on key points of difference between the constitution and canons of The Episcopal Church and those of the Southern Cone. The report concluded that affiliation with the Southern Cone would provide Fort Worth with “greater self-determination” than it currently has under The Episcopal Church…
The PDF file of the translation is here.
The report on their content is here.
8 CommentsAn article that I wrote recently has been included in the LGCM Anglican Matters newsletter that was also published as an advertising supplement to this week’s Church Times.
The entire supplement is available online as a PDF file here (900Kb).
The article is a summary of Anglican Communion events during the past six months or so. It was published with the title Has the Covenant already sunk? and an html copy of it is now here.
17 CommentsEkklesia has published a paper written by Savitri Hensman and titled Binding the church and constraining God. Here is the abstract:
In a paper carefully analysing the popular use and misuse of biblical and doctrinal language about God and Church, Savitri Hensman shows that inflexible, one-sided, naïve or ideological conceptions of God in sections of the Christian tradition can reinforce domineering models and practices in the Church – which is in fact supposed to be a creative vehicle of Jesus’ broken body in the world, not a defensive fortress. God is not confined by rules set by humans and our institutions, she argues, however powerful they may be by earthly standards. In the biblical tradition, God is at work outside as well as within institutions, including those that claim to be about God’s business. Liberation, reformation and healing will continue to happen even if, at first, they are not acknowledged by the authorities (ecclesial and otherwise); and in time truth will break through our illusions. This paper is highly relevant to issues being discussed in and beyond Anglicanism, concerning its disputed future, and in other sections of the worldwide Church. It makes specific reference to the debate about an Anglican Covenant in the run-up to the Lambeth Conference 2008. It may also give those outside the Church a better understanding of how language and tradition is being applied and misapplied within very diverse Christian communities during a time of considerable upheaval and anxiety, both inside and outside the Church.
Read the whole paper here.
3 CommentsThe primates of Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and the Southern Cone have issued a public response to the letter they were sent signed by 21 English evangelical bishops.
The full text of the response is here: GAFCON Response to Evangelical English Bishops. Part of it reads:
45 Comments… You will know that some of us have not been able to take communion with the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church since February 2005, – a period of about three years. The reason is that TEC took an action to consecrate Gene Robinson as Bishop in 2003 contrary to the resolution of the Lambeth Conference, an action of which they have not repented. The consecrators of Gene Robinson have all been invited to Lambeth, contrary to the statement of the Windsor Report (para 134) that members of the Episcopal Church should “consider in all conscience whether they should withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion”.
You will know that some of those who objected to this consecration in the United States and have made arrangements for orthodox oversight from other provinces including ours have been charged with abandonment of communion. Their congregations have either forfeited or are being sued for their properties by the very bishops with whom you wish us to share Christian family fellowship for three weeks.
To do this is an assault on our consciences and our hearts. Further, how can we explain to our church members, that while we and they are formally out of communion with TEC, and provide oversight to these orthodox colleagues, we at the same time live with them at the Lambeth Conference as though nothing had happened? This would be hypocrisy.
We are also concerned that the invitation list reflects a great imbalance. It fails to address fundamental departures from historic faith that have triggered this crisis and yet excludes bishops of our own provinces, of Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda who teach and practice Biblical faith. As constituted, the invitations suggest that institutional structures are superior to the content of the faith itself.
We are also mindful of the press interest in the Conference, and in the presence in some form or other of Gene Robinson and his male partner, and of 30 gay activists. We would be the continual target of activist campaigners and media intrusion. In these circumstances we could not feel at home…
Updated Thursday evening
Religious Intelligence had this on Tuesday:
Theological convictions, not bruised feelings, will prevent at least three provinces from attending the 2008 Lambeth Conference, the Primate of the West Indies has said.
In an interview with the Nassau Guardian yesterday, West Indian Archbishop Drexel Gomez stated “there are at least four provinces in Africa that have either said they will not attend or are still considering if they will attend, but there are three who said they will definitely not be attending.”
Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda had announced they will not be attending the conference as it is currently organized. Sources in the Anglican Church of Kenya tell us that the Church was to have made a decision at its House of Bishops meeting scheduled for this week. However, the post-election violence has postponed the meeting to April when a decision will be taken…
The Nassau Guardian article itself is here. It also says:
It would be “scandalous” if gay Anglican Bishop Canon V. Gene Robinson appeared at the upcoming Anglican Lambeth Conference in July with his partner, Archbishop Drexel Gomez told The Guardian Monday.
The upcoming conference, held once every 10 years, is expected to see the coming together of a number of Anglican Bishops at the University of Kent in Canterbury. But because of the on-going schism within the Communion as a result of the ordination of Robinson almost six years ago, Gomez said some provinces recently indicated they would not attend the upcoming conclave.
Uganda’s decision is now reported widely in the media:
Religious Intelligence again on Thursday: Uganda to boycott Lambeth
The African Province announced its intention in a statement issued last night by the Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Rev Henry Orombi, pictured, on the same day the Church of England’s General Synod discussed the content of a Covenant which is being drawn up to try and keep the worldwide Communion together.
The boycott revolves around the Church’s long-running row over homosexuality, which came to the fore after the consecration of an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, by the Episcopal Church (TEC) of the USA in 2003. In the statement Bishop Orombi writes that Bishop Robinson’s consecration and the TEC’s continued practice of blessing same-sex couples is ‘in flagrant disregard’ of a resolution passed at the 1998 Lambeth Conference which described homosexual practice as ‘incompatible with Scripture’.
He added that their non-attendance was a means of expressing their disapproval that American bishops have been invited to the ten-yearly gathering of Primates. He said: “This decision has been made to protest the invitations extended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Rowan Williams, to TEC Bishops whose stand and unrepentant actions created the current crisis of identity and authority in the Anglican Communion.” He added they planned to meet with other traditionalist bishops at an ‘alternative Lambeth’ called the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem in June, which is expected to be attended by other conservative leaders from Africa and Australia.
Press Association Uganda boycotts Anglican conference
Reuters Ugandan bishops to boycott global Anglican meeting
BBC Uganda boycotts Anglican meeting
The Times Uganda bishops join boycott of Lambeth Conference over gay priests
And Ruth Gledhill has a blog article which links to the actual text of the Uganda statement as an RTF file. I have reproduced it as an html page here.
The decision by Rwanda not to attend goes back to June 2007, see Lambeth invitations: Rwanda not attending.
The decision by Nigeria goes back to May 2007, see Nigeria responds to Minns not being invited and also later, Nigeria: open letter to Canterbury.
41 CommentsEpiscopal Majority has published, in four parts, an essay by Christopher Webber titled Unity and Diversity in the Lambeth Conference.
Read the four parts:
Part I: The Beginning
Part II: Broader Agendas
Part III: Coming to Grips with Unity and Diversity
Part IV: Living Together as a Truly Global Community
The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced the formation of the Windsor Continuation Group (WCG), as proposed in his Advent Letter. The WCG will address outstanding questions arising from the Windsor Report and the various formal responses from provinces and instruments of the Anglican Communion.
Details on the Anglican Communion News Service.
8 CommentsPat Ashworth in the Church Times has Disputed parts of Anglican Covenant redrafted.
… Just 13 of the 34 Anglican provinces submitted a formal response to the first draft of the Anglican Covenant (the Nassau Draft), something that the Covenant Design Group (CDG) suggests might be attributed to “lack of translation” or indeed “other foci in the life of Provinces”…
Scroll down the Church Times article for a summary of the Appendix: Four routes for discipline:
18 CommentsTHE PROCESS for disciplining a Church is graded according to whether there is a threat to “the unity of the Communion or effectiveness or credibility of its mission” and how urgent this is.
Informal conversation is the first resort, Route 1. If that fails, the next step is to consult the Archbishop of Canterbury. He then has a month either to resolve the problem by issuing pastoral guidance, or to refer it to three Assessors of his choice. The Church that is getting the guidance has a month to respond. If the outcome is unsuccessful, it refers it to the Assessors. The Assessors have a month in which to choose one of four routes, depending on the perceived urgency of the dispute.
If a threat to unity is clearly involved and is considered to be a matter of real urgency, the Archbishop requests action by the Church involved. The Church has six months to consider: if it doesn’t respond after that time, it is considered to have rejected his request. The Church can appeal to the Joint Standing Committee (JSC) if it does not believe that it is threatening unity and mission. The JSC decides whether there is a threat. If the appeal is lost, the matter goes to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).
Route 2 comes into play if it is unclear whether there is a real threat to unity or not, but the matter is still considered urgent. If so, it can be referred by the Archbishop of Canterbury to another of the Instruments of Communion to decide whether there is a threat. The Instrument makes a request to the Church, and then the matter proceeds as with Route 1.
Route 3 takes a longer view. The Archbishop refers longer-term issues that “would benefit from rigorous theological study” to a commission for evaluation. He chooses the commission in consultation with the secretary general of the Anglican Communion. The commission studies it for 18 months, and then pass on its judgement to an Instrument of Communion. If rejected, it then goes to the ACC.
Route 4 provides mediation, if no threat to unity is perceived. This is a three-year process. The mediator has no decision-making authority, and cannot compel the parties to accept a settlement. The matter is declared closed after three years.
The ACC is the final arbiter over Routes 1, 2, and 3, and whether a Church’s action is compatible with the Covenant. “If the Council decides the rejection is incompatible, the Church can declare voluntarily that it relinquishes the force and meaning of the Covenant; or the Council decides it for them.”
If either declares relinquishment, the ACC must initiate “a process of restoration with the Church of the Communion and other Instruments of the Communion”.
Press release from the MCU available here:
MCU opposes the Draft Covenant
The proposed Anglican Covenant (The St Andrew’s Draft) would only make the church more autocratic and outdated, says the Modern Churchpeople’s Union (MCU).
‘It takes the Anglican out of Anglicanism and there wouldn’t be much left’, says the MCU General Secretary, Jonathan Clatworthy. ‘Until now we have lived together respecting differences of opinion. This Covenant would mean every time there’s an objection someone will lay down the law’.
The wording of the Covenant itself is a clear improvement on previous drafts. But the sting is in the tail. An Appendix to the Draft Covenant sets out ways in which members of the Communion could be disciplined.
Members of the Anglican Communion would be asked to commit themselves to accept a ‘request’ from the Archbishop of Canterbury or the global Primate’s Meeting. If they refused the request they could ultimately be expelled from the Communion.
MCU objects to the Covenant because it would centralize decision-making and reduce the traditional autonomy of Anglican Provinces. Just one Anglican Province could object to developments elsewhere and so changes could only be made at the speed of the slowest. Churches would become increasingly out of date.
MCU believes that the threat of expulsion will impoverish Anglican church life. The short timescales envisaged are likely to stunt discussion and suppress the search for consensus. The character of the international ‘Instruments of Communion’ which currently bind the Communion together would be changed as they take on semi-judicial roles.
The practical result of the St Andrew’s Draft Covenant would be a much more centralized, authoritarian and unadventurous Communion. It is likely to magnify disputes and to turn them into judicial processes. It is likely to leave the Church less able to face the challenges of the modern world.
To read the Appendix mentioned above go here.
And for more material on the Covenant from MCU, go here.
31 CommentsUpdated Thursday morning
Anglican Communion News Service Covenant Design Group issues communique and draft
An Anglican Covenant – St Andrew’s Communique
Introduction to the Anglican Covenant (St Andrew’s Draft)
An Anglican Covenant – St Andrew’s Draft Text
An Anglican Covenant – Commentary to the St Andrew’s Draft
An Anglican Covenant – Draft Appendix Framework Procedures for the Resolution of Covenant Disagreements
PDF file containing the above documents
Update
Initial press reactions:
Tameka Lundy Bahama Journal New Try At Consensus In Anglican Church
Jonathan Petre Daily Telegraph Anglican Church sets up peacemaker court
Religious Intelligence Draft Covenant text issued
Marites N Sisson Anglican Journal Communion distributes second draft of proposed ‘covenant’
Episcopal News Service Covenant Design Group issues communiqué and second draft
25 CommentsUpdated Monday evening
The Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen has issued this statement Why I am going to Israel. This is essentially a repeat publication of his 27 December statement:
…The next Lambeth Conference has been summoned for July-August 2008. The Archbishop of Canterbury is responsible for the guest list, and he has invited all except for the Bishop of New Hampshire on the one hand and some of the new bishops appointed to care for the dissidents on the other. Thus, for example the Bishop of New Westminster has been invited although his actions have caused the Reverend David Short and his congregation (which includes Dr Jim Packer) to withdraw as far as they can from the Diocese. An invitation to share the Conference under these circumstances has posed a real difficulty for many of us.
Several African Provinces have indicated that they will not be attending Lambeth, because to do so would be to acquiesce with the North American actions. They are not ending the Anglican Communion, or even dividing it. They are simply indicating that the nature of the Communion has now been altered by what has occurred. They see that since the American actions were taken in direct defiance of the previous Lambeth Conference, the Americans have irreparably damaged the standing of the Conference itself. They asked without success for the Conference to be postponed. They do not think that this Conference is what is needed now. To attend would be to overlook the importance of the issues at stake.
The Anglican Future Conference is not designed to take the place of Lambeth. Some people may well choose to go to both. Its aim is to draw Biblical Anglican Christians together for urgent consultation. It is not a consultation which can take place at Lambeth, because Lambeth has a different agenda and far wider guest list. Unlike Lambeth, the Future Conference is not for Bishops alone – the invitations will go to clergy and lay people also. It seeks to plan for a future in which Anglican Christians world-wide will increasingly be pressured to depart from the biblical norms of behaviour and belief. It gives an opportunity for many to draw together to strengthen each other over the issue of biblical authority and interpretation and gospel mission…
The Sydney Morning Herald reports the reaction of the Primate of Australia, Phillip Aspinall to Dr Jensen’s decision not to attend the Lambeth Conference:
…Dr Aspinall said in a statement that he was disappointed over the move by Dr Jensen, and urged him to reconsider.
“I find it difficult to understand the view that the Lambeth Conference is not a proper place to deal with issues facing the international Anglican Communion,” Dr Aspinall said.
“Lambeth happens once every 10 years and basically all the bishops of the international Anglican Communion are invited.
“It is a very significant gathering in which the vast majority of bishops will participate.”
He said the only way to address issues of “deep difference” in the church was to “come together, pray together, study the scriptures and speak openly with each other”.
“That some bishops seem willing to forego this important opportunity is disappointing,” Dr Aspinall said.
He said he hoped that another key conservative bishop, Archbishop Drexel Gomez, who heads the Anglican Church in the West Indies, could convince Dr Jensen to rethink his move…
Earlier Ruth Gledhill had written about the Gafcon ‘power struggle’. She reproduces the text of a lengthy note about GAFCON by an unknown hand.
There are also links there to her video interview of me, and another interview of Jim Rosenthal, made just after the Lambeth Palace press conference two weeks ago.
And today, The Times has published Ruth’s article Archbishop aims to save divided Church. It is neither Rowan Williams nor Peter Jensen but rather Drexel Gomez, who is interviewed:
The Anglican archbishop in charge of drawing up the document intended to reunite his warring Church said he believes that schism can still be averted in spite of divisions over the issue of homosexuals.
The Archbishop of the West Indies, the Most Rev Drexel Gomez, said that a new formula had been found that would allow the disciplining of errant churches while respecting the traditional autonomy of the 38 worldwide Anglican provinces. Urging all Anglican bishops to attend the Lambeth Conference this year, he said that it would be a “tremendous tragedy” if the Church fell apart.
A new document to be published this week would form “a basic way of holding each other accountable as a Communion”, he said. But he indicated that the Episcopal Church of the United States was unlikely to face discipline or any form of exclusion from the Anglican Communion as a result of consecrating Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003…
Update
There is more in the Sydney Morning Herald for Tuesday:
Article by Peter Jensen Lambeth boycott needed to stand by biblical view
Newspaper editorial article Absence is no argument:
29 CommentsTHE old adage that the absent are always wrong is not necessarily true. But in matters of tactics, it remains a useful rule of thumb: you cannot win a debate by boycotting it. Yet this is precisely what Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop, Peter Jensen, and the bishops of his diocese are proposing to do by refusing to attend this year’s Lambeth Conference – a once-in-a-decade meeting of the world’s more than 800 Anglican prelates. It is the latest development in a potentially schismatic dispute over church attitudes to homosexuality between the conservative leaders of the strongly evangelical Sydney diocese and their allies, notably in Africa, on one side, and more liberal Anglicans elsewhere (including Australia)…
The following press release has been issued by the Diocese of Sydney:
79 CommentsArchbishop’s statement on Lambeth
Statement from Archbishop Peter Jensen – speaking after the service of ordination of 48 deacons at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney –
‘With regret, the Archbishop and Bishops of the Diocese of Sydney have decided not to attend the Lambeth Conference in July. They remain fully committed to the Anglican Communion, to which they continue to belong, but sense that attending the Conference at this time will not help heal its divisions. They continue to pray for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference.’
The Church Times has this report: UK Evangelicals ask conservative Primates to rethink:
22 CommentsA GROUP of Evangelical bishops in the Church of England have written to conservative Primates urging them to rethink their objections to the Lambeth Conference.
The group, seven diocesan bishops and 13 suffragans, wrote to the Primates of Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Southern Cone of America that they “long to share with you in fellowship and in celebration at Lambeth”. To stay away, they suggest, “would inevitably split apart those who share an equally high regard for scriptures [sic] and for the historic faith of the Church”.
The letter arose from an annual gathering of Evangelical bishops. The signatories are the Bishops of Bradford, Bristol, Carlisle, Durham, Lichfield, Oxford, Southwell, Barking, Bedford, Crediton, Croydon, Doncaster, Dunwich, Lancaster, Lynn, Maidstone, Penrith, Southampton, Swindon, and Tewkesbury…
Updated Thursday
Fulcrum has published an article that also appears in this week’s Church of England Newspaper by Graham Kings entitled Substance and Shadow: Lambeth Conference and GAFCON. An extract:
…What is being planned to happen at GAFCON? No mention is made of the background documents of the Lambeth Conference: The Windsor Report, the Covenant Process and the Advent Letter of the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the Ontario conference mentioned above, Chris Sugden described a group of Anglicans (and implied he was included in the definition) who are made up of:
those who disagree with The Episcopal Church in its teaching on doctrines and ethics, and no longer trust the Archbishop of Canterbury to deal adequately with the problem.
This ‘no longer trusting in the Archbishop of Canterbury’ matches his earlier article, ‘Not Schism but Revolution’, in Evangelicals Now (September 2007), where he stated, after a quotation from Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh:
In other words, since the Archbishop of Canterbury has not provided for the safe oversight of the orthodox in the United States, he has forfeited his role as the one who gathers the Communion.
Some of the planners of GAFCON have a tendency to be militant. They are intent on the setting up a ‘shadow Communion’ not centred on Canterbury. This ‘non-Canterbury Communion’ is openly being discussed on conservative American web sites. The insistence that there are now ‘two branches’ of the Anglican Communion is a crucial part of the deposited legal defence of the churches of the Anglican District of Virginia, part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) led by Martyn Minns, against The Episcopal Church…
Thursday updates
Vinay Samuel has written a letter to the Church of England Newspaper see Dr Vinay Samuel responds to Bishop Tom Wright.
Archbishop Peter Akinola held a press conference in Lagos about GAFCON, see Press Conference – 30th January 2007:
The Primate of Nigeria, the Most Reverend Peter Akinola, gave a press conference in Lagos, Nigeria on January 30 announcing the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in the Holy Land. The occasion was a gathering of the GAFCON Theology Resource Team.
Archbishop Akinola said:
“We are planning a conference in the Holy Land in the month of June: GAFCON – Global Anglican Future Conference. That conference is called by those members of the Anglican Family who see themselves as orthodox Anglicans, who are upholding the authority of scriptures, and believe that the time has come to come together to fashion the future of our Anglican family. This has to be done within a theological framework. They will be producing a book to help all members of the conference to study beforehand. That book will cover the themes for the conference. What are the challenges? Why are some people deviating from the orthodox faith? Why are they allowing modern culture to overwhelm the word of God. They will be highlighting the Lordship of Jesus Christ over his church and over the world. If the Lord is king why are people not following his leadership? Why are people interpreting this word in a way that suits their fancy?
We must also look at the Church of God in our time and the whole area of its mission : what is God doing in our time, responding to the needs of our time – e.g. Aids, poverty, corruption, good and bad governance. We are going to use that conference to address all these issues.
By early May the book will be available. These are very exciting times. On behalf of the Church of Nigeria and GAFCON I want to thank you for spending sleepless nights brainstorming for us to give us the road map that will guide us in our generation.”
Press Questions
What led to the creation of GAFCON? There is the Lambeth Conference and the ACC. There are three bodies. Is the church of USA represented in GAFCON?
Primate: Let me answer the last question first: America as a church is not part of GAFCON. But there are many individual members of the church, bishops, each in his own right that will be part of GAFCON. Officially TEC is not part of GAFCON.
What led to GAFCON? It is a very long story. In the last five years we have had this endless controversy in the Anglican Communion. To the world this is about homosexuality. To us it is just a symptom of the real problem. Homosexuality is not peculiar to Anglicans but Anglicans have the courage to discuss it openly. The issue is that there are members of our Anglican family who are not paying attention to scripture, but are giving prominence to modern culture. They are bringing new principles to interpret scripture. The word of God has precedence over any culture. Those of us who will abide with the Word of God, come rain come fire, are those who are in GAFCON.
Those who say it does not matter are the ones who are attending Lambeth. There might be a view, for whatever it is worth, that they want to be there to observe what is going on. But Uganda, Rwanda, Sydney, Nigeria: we are not going to Lambeth conference. What is the use of the Lambeth conference for a three weeks’ jamboree which will sweep these issues under the carpet. GAFCON will confer about the future of the church, which will set a road map for the future. We are a movement that will move away from the “maybe – maybe not”.
The issue is that church leaders are endorsing what is wrong. They are not willing to make the gospel that the Lord can bring change available. We want to move forward with commitment to the word of God. The question is asked how many people we are. The question is rather how many people we are representing. Four primates who are in the leadership of GAFCON represent more than 30 million Anglicans…
The press conference also refers to the paper Global Anglican Orthodoxy: A Blueprint by Stephen Noll which is available on the GAFCON site.
48 CommentsUpdated yet again Monday evening
First, at the Lambeth press conference on Monday, the Archbishop of Canterbury said this, as reported by the Living Church in response to a question about Bishop John-David Schofield:
Regarding the attendance of San Joaquin Bishop John-David Schofield, inhibited by the Presiding Bishop earlier this month, the archbishop said he is “waiting on what comes out of the American House of Bishops’ discussion of that. It’s not something I’ve got a position on yet. At the moment he still has an invitation.”
Second, there are several reports from Episcopal News Service that relate:
San Joaquin: ‘Moving Forward, Welcoming All’ conference to host online audience January 26
and
Province VIII seeks lay representative for vacated Executive Council seat
And then there was this statement from Forward in Faith North America FiF NA President responds to inhibition of Bishop Schofield.
And finally, there was a letter in last week’s Church Times by the Bishop of Horsham, see Why I signed the San Joaquin letter.
Friday evening update
Here is the official ACO page for the Diocese of San Joaquin.
Saturday evening update
Episcopal News Service reports that San Joaquin Standing Committee not recognized as official, Presiding Bishop says.
The full text of the letter she sent to the committee members can be read here (PDF).
Monday evening updates
There are various opinions being expressed about this letter, see:
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.
Updated Tuesday evening
At yesterday’s press conference about Lambeth 2008, Rowan Williams was asked about GAFCON. He replied:
I think it’s important to remember that before the last Lambeth, and indeed on other occasions, there have been major international gatherings — regionally or in other ways constructed — preparing for Lambeth, and I am very happy to see such regional events going forward. But I do have real concerns that in this case there are unresolved issues for the local Church, for the Church in Jerusalem, which has pinpointed some anxieties about having such a conference at this time in the Holy Land. I really hope they can be addressed.
Here is a link to the Bishop in Jerusalem’s earlier press statement.
More recently, the Bishop in Jerusalem held two meetings about the GAFCON proposal, separately with the Archbishop of Sydney and then two days later with the Primate of Nigeria. The minutes of both those meetings can be found here.
This is reported on the Guardian website in Bishops attack rival summit for Anglican clergy in Holy Land by Riazat Butt.
Update
Further reports on this:
Episcopal News Service has GAFCON organizers challenge Jerusalem bishop’s concerns for planned Holy Land event by Matthew Davies
Ruth Gledhill has Gafcon ‘disastrous’ for Holy Land says local bishop on her blog and Rival Lambeth conference ‘disastrous’ for Jerusalem in Times Online.
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