…I have come to the sad realization that there is no desire within the ACC and the SCAC to follow through on the recommendations that have been taken by the other Instruments of Communion to sort out the problems which face the Anglican Communion and which are tearing its fabric apart. Moreover, the SCAC, formerly known as the join Standing Committee (JSC), has continually questioned the authority of the other Instruments of Communion, especially the Primates Meeting and the Lambeth Conference.
…
Some may say that the provinces within the Anglican Communion are autonomous, and each province is free to make its own resolutions. While I agree and accept the autonomous nature of each province, I believe that the participation in the decision making process that affects the life of the Anglican Communion should be for those who show respect in word and deed to the whole Communion – not those who turn their backs to every appeal and warning.

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Once in a while comes an historical event so momentous, so packed with unexpected force, that it acts like a large wave under still water, propelling us momentarily up from the surface of our times onto a crest, where the wider movements of history may be glimpsed better than before.

Such an event was Benedict XVI’s landmark announcement in October 2009 offering members of the Anglican Communion a fast track into the Catholic Church. Although commentators quickly dubbed this unexpected overture a “gambit,” what it truly exhibits are the characteristics of a move known in chess as a “brilliancy,” an unforeseen bold stroke that stunningly transforms the game. In the short run, knowledgeable people agree, this brilliancy of Benedict’s may not seem to amount to much. Some 1000 Church of England priests may convert and some 300 parishes turn over to Rome””figures that, while significant when measured against the dwindling numbers of practicing Anglicans there, are nonetheless mere drops in the Vatican’s bucket.

But in the longer run””say, over the coming decades””Rome’s move looks consequential in another way. It is the latest and most dramatic example of how orthodoxy, rather than dissent, seems once again to have taken the driver’s seat of Christianity. Every traditionalist who joins the long and already illustrious history of reconversion to the Catholic Church just tips the religious balance more toward Rome. This further weakens a religious communion battered from within by decades of intra-Anglican culture wars. Meanwhile, the progressives left behind may well find the exodus of their adversaries a Pyrrhic victory. How will they possibly make peace with the real majority of Anglicans today””the churches in Africa, whose leaders have repeatedly denounced the Communion’s abandonment of traditional teachings? Questions like these are why a few commentators now speak seriously about something that only recently seemed unthinkable: whether the end of the Anglican Communion itself might now be in sight.

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It is true that for many African church members and leaders homosexual behaviour is regarded as unnatural, not moral, not Christian, nor African. But this is also true of a large number of other traditional societies anywhere in the world who resist modern cultural pressures and seek to deal with them in their own way. Churches with their global communities and their willingness to assess traditional and cultural norms by transcendent divinely authorized Christian values and norms and by their partnership with the global church and drawing on the knowledge and resources of the global church are best placed to help African societies deal with the challenges of modernity in an African way, relating the best of their cultures, refining their cultures and rejecting those who would assault their cultural identity and integrity.

It is sad to see that some leaders of TEC who have advised this project have departed from this very tradition of support of Anglican churches in the non-Western world to negotiate their cultural challenges in which Anglican mission work along with Roman Catholics has been a leader. It raises the question of their motivation in promoting such an attack on the African Anglican Churches ”“ perhaps it is a backlash against the African Anglican Churches breaking communion with TEC. Far from going beyond colonialism, this report falls back into it by universalizing the local culture of the United States.

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Speaking today in an exclusive interview with The Christian Post, the retired archbishop said the covenant will not solve the essential problem of the Anglican Communion, which he identified as a crisis of biblical orthodoxy where the historic Anglican counterpart in America has embraced immorality and refuses to repent of it

The Anglican Covenant, which calls upon archbishops and presiding bishops leading the 38 Anglican provinces worldwide to promote unity within the denomination, “will not help convert the sinful,” he said.

Ultimately, it is the Anglican leaders themselves, not a committee, who have to be responsible for the spiritual life of their churches.

“It’s (the success of the Anglican Covenant) dependent on their willingness to repent, but they (the leaders of the American Anglican Church) have no fear of God,” he said, comparing them to Eli, a priest in the Bible whose sons died because he failed to discipline them.

“None of the resolutions have worked. None of the committees have worked,” said archbishop Tay. He described the Anglican Consultative Council, a ”˜major decider’ in the Anglican Communion, as ”˜U.S.-controlled.’

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The final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant pleased the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, who has served on the document’s design group since its inception in 2006. Dr. Radner, an Episcopal priest, is professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto, Ontario.

“My sense about it is that they didn’t really change anything substantial,” he told The Living Church, referring to the working group charged with revising the document from its previous iteration as the Ridley Cambridge draft.

“They salvaged what could have been a bad mess from May [2009],” when the Anglican Consultative Council met and, after a chaotic legislative session, ultimately asked for revisions to the document’s fourth section, which proposes how provinces will be accountable to the Anglican Communion as a whole.

Because changes to the fourth section did not reflect what Episcopal Church leaders were seeking, Dr. Radner said, the document helps change that province’s standing. He described it as being part of a pattern, along with the ecumenical dialogues of the Anglican”“Roman Catholic International Commission and the recent meeting of the Archbishop of Canterbury with Pope Benedict XVI.

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It is a vision most mainstream Canadian church leaders can only dream of: Sunday mornings in which parishioners dance and sing through three-hour services. Seminaries overflowing and unable to keep up with demand for pastors as the number of the newly baptized rises.

The dream is a reality in such places as Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, where there is an explosion in Christianity. In the past decade, this demographic surge has started to spill out of Africa, as well as Asia and Latin America, in the form of missionaries to the West, a trend influencing everything from styles of worship to doctrine.

Whereas many Catholic intellectuals and academics in North America have the luxury to worry about, for example, the ordination of women, the Africans entrust that issue to the judgement of the Vatican and concern themselves instead with the practical work of basic survival.

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Archbishops representing Anglican churches in the southern hemisphere will formally accept a covenant aimed at promoting unity within the worldwide denomination when they meet in Singapore 2010.

The Global South Anglican, which brings together 20 of the 38 provinces (churches led by archbishops or their counterparts) in the Anglican Communion and in which the Bishop of Singapore and Archbishop of the Church of the Province of Southeast Asia The Most Revd Dr John Chew serves as incumbent general secretary, will be holding its fourth meeting or ”˜encounter’ from 19 to 23 April.

The Anglican Communion Covenant as it is called was developed over the past number of years to salvage unity within the communion after the ordination of an openly homosexual bishop by The Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism, threatened to split it.

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In June 2008, 1200 Anglican leaders, bishops, clergy and lay people, from 27 provinces of the Anglican Communion met in Jerusalem for the Global Anglican Future Conference.

The result of their deliberations in the cradle of Christianity was the Jerusalem Declaration. The document has since formed the basis of ”˜The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans’, a worldwide movement of orthodox believers which has launched several regional groups (such as FCA UK) and is growing in strength by the month.

Now, the work of 40 theologians, from 14 countries throughout the Anglican Communion, provides a commentary on this important document and how it relates to scripture, Anglican formularies and historic Anglicanism.

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19th – 23rd April 2010, Singapore

Theme: “The Gospel of Jesus Christ””Covenant for the People; Light for the Nations.”

The Global South Anglican Primates Steering Committee met in Singapore on 1st to 2nd Dec 2009 to discuss and confirm planning details on the coming Encounter.
This 4th Encounter will build on the ecclesiological vision of the ”˜One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ’ we shared at the 3rd “Red Sea” Encounter at El-ein-Suknah, Egypt in 2005. The coming 4th Encounter aims to further develop this in our common life and witness in and for the Gospel. We will explore how we may relate to one another in covenantal and communion autonomy with accountability in matters of faith and order; partnerships and networks in existing and new mission fields; and mutual capacity building for increased self-reliance for greater service.

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Thus ++Rowan played true to his role as Archbishop of Canterbury, while Bishop Griswold, enthusiastically supported by the same-sex activists in ECUSA, arrogated to himself the right to act in derogation of the bishops of Lambeth. Both did so despite the scorn which each thereby called upon his decision — although the collective scorn heaped upon ++Rowan has never ceased, while that allocated to Presiding Bishop Griswold ended with his retirement. By remaining on the stage, and what is more by remaining steadfastly true to the limitations of his position, Archbishop Rowan has remained the sole target on which both sides could vent their anger. Hence he is in the impossible part of a “first among equals” who is now seen as neither “first” nor “equal”.

Meanwhile, back at ECUSA, the Most Reverend Frank Griswold has given place to the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori. If Bishop Griswold arrogated to himself the right to act in derogation of his colleagues at Lambeth, Bishop Jefferts Schori seized the opportunity to so to act even before she had ever gone to Lambeth and met her equals. What is more, she has from the outset of her term in office presumed to act in derogation of her own equals in her own Church. The result has been a double usurpation of authority: where ++Griswold claimed only the right to consecrate a duly elected bishop in defiance of the advice of Resolution 1.10, ++Jefferts Schori has not only announced that she will do the same if the requisite consents for Canon Glasspool are received, but she also has made herself the sole arbiter of whether a bishop who transfers to another Church in the Anglican Communion thereby renounces his orders.

In presuming to claim that the Right Reverend Henry Scriven so renounced his orders in transferring from the Diocese of Pittsburgh to the Diocese of Oxford, and in recently declaring that the Right Reverend Keith Ackerman had done the same in resigning the Diocese of Quincy and going to work under the Bishop of Bolivia, the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA has effectively declared that she alone will be the judge of who can become, and who can remain, a bishop in the Episcopal Church (USA) — regardless of what her equals in the Communion may believe. They are, to that extent, no longer her equals, but only bishops to be tolerated if they stay out of her way, to be ignored if they presume to disagree, and to be denounced and punished by any means possible if they try to hinder or interfere.

When one bishop so distorts the polity of the Communion as to claim the power to decide status without regard to the opinion — nay, the full consensus — of the other bishops in the Anglican Communion, what we have is no longer a Communion, but an autarchy.

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The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.

The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications.

The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.

This decision represents an intransigent embrace of a pattern of life Christians throughout history and the world have rejected as against biblical teaching. It will add further to the Episcopal Church’s incoherent witness and chaotic common life, and it will continue to do damage to the Anglican Communion and her relationship with our ecumenical partners.

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina

We have received the Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter informing us of the Pope’s offer of an ”˜Apostolic Constitution’ for those Anglicans who wish to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. We believe that this offer is a gracious one and reflects the same commitment to the historic apostolic faith, moral teaching and global mission that we proclaimed in the Jerusalem Declaration on the Global Anglican Future and for this we are profoundly grateful.

We are, however, grieved that the current crisis within our beloved Anglican Communion has made necessary such an unprecedented offer. It represents a grave indictment of the Instruments of Communion whose very purpose is to strengthen and protect our unity in obedience to our Lord’s clear command. Their failure to fully address the abandonment of biblical faith and practice by The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada has now brought shame to the name of Christ and seriously impedes the cause of the Gospel.

The Primates Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON/FCA) is convinced, however, that Anglicanism has a bright future as long as we remain grounded in the Holy Scriptures and obedient to our Lord Jesus Christ’s call to reach the lost and make disciples of all nations teaching them to observe the whole Gospel. We also believe that there is room within our Anglican family for all those who hold true to the ”˜faith once delivered to the saints’. We would like to encourage those Anglicans who are considering this invitation from the Roman Catholic Church to recognize that Anglican churches are growing throughout the world in strength and offering a vibrant testimony to the transforming work of Christ.

We are convinced that this is not the time to abandon the Anglican Communion. Our Anglican identity of reformed catholicity, that gives supreme authority to the Holy Scriptures and acknowledgement that our sole representative and advocate before God is the Lord Jesus Christ, stands as a beacon of hope for millions of people. We remain proud inheritors of the Anglican Reformation. This is a time for all Christians to persevere confident of our Lord’s promise that nothing, not even the gates of hell, will prevail against His Church.

(signed)

+Peter Abuja (Archbishop Peter Akinola),
Chairman,
GAFCON/FCA Primates Council

The Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England – the people in the United States known as Episcopalians – is in a terrible bind. Talk about “dithering.” The current Archbishop, a certain Reverend Rowan Williams, is stalling for time; which, of course, is a sign that he doesn’t know what to do. His problem is that the more conservative Anglicans or Episcopalians, especially the Africans, say they will leave the Church, known among Church types as the Lambeth Communion, unless the Archbishop disciplines the Americans, who have – horror of horrors – ordained a Gay Bishop and also, equally scandalous from their point of view, tolerate women priests. The Americans, on the other hand, are having none of the African stuff. They say, in effect, that if the Archbishop does something they don’t like, THEY will cut and run.

So, the Reverend Williams dithers. He stalls for time. I, of course, follow all of this stuff, but having grown up Baptist – people who are all too familiar with splits – I am not as sympathetic with the Archbishop’s plight as might be desired. In the U.K. I frequently suggest to my Anglican friends that splitting is not necessarily a bad thing. First there is one church, then two, then four, then eight, and so on. They don’t like that at all. Nor, of course does the Archbishop. His problem is simple: The Africans have the numbers and the Americans have the money. What a mess.

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The news media have portrayed this rightward outreach largely through the lens of culture-war politics ”” as an attempt to consolidate, inside the Catholic tent, anyone who joins the Vatican in rejecting female priests and gay marriage.

But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind ”” not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.

Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.

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4. At the same time we believe that the proposed Anglican Covenant sets the necessary parameters in safeguarding the catholic and apostolic faith and order of the Communion. It gives Anglican churches worldwide a clear and principled way forward in pursuing God’s divine purposes together in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church of Jesus Christ. We urge churches in the Communion to actively work together towards a speedy adoption of the Covenant.

5. In God’s gracious purposes the Anglican Communion has moved beyond the historical beginnings and expressions of English Christianity into a worldwide Communion, of which the Church of England is a constitutive part. In view of the global nature of the Communion, matters of faith and order would inevitably have serious ramifications for the continuing well-being and coherence of the Communion as a whole, and not only for Provinces of the British Isles and The Episcopal Church in the USA. We urge the Archbishop of Canterbury to work in close collegial consultation with fellow Primates in the Communion, act decisively on already agreed measures in the Primates’ Meetings, and exercise effective leadership in nourishing the flock under our charge, so that none would be left wandering and bereft of spiritual oversight.

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From the promotional blurb on the website:

Rather than restaging the arguments for and against the ordination of openly gay clergy, this day-long conference analyzes the threatened schism in the Anglican Communion in order to examine wide-ranging and interrelated issues of religion, secularism, globalization, nationalism, and modernity. How and why, we ask, has homosexuality come to serve as a flash point for so many local and global conflicts?

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–Anglican Church in Ghana, from 100,000 in 1970 to 236,000 in 2000

–Anglican Church of Kenya from 582,600 in 1970 to 3.1 million in 2000

–Anglican Church in Nigeria from 2.914 million in 1970 to 18 million in 2000

–Anglican Church in Rwanda from 161,899 in 1970 to 700,000 in 2000

–Anglican Church in the Sudan from 300,000 in 1970 to 2.2 million in 2000

–Anglican Church in Uganda from 1.281 million in 1970 to 8.580 million in 2000

–The American Episcopal church from 3.196 million in 1970 to 2.325 million in 2000

–The Anglican Church in Britain from 27.659 million in 1970 to 23.983 million in 2000

–The Anglican Church of Canada from 1.176 million in 1970 to 784,000 in 2000

–The Scottish Episcopal Church from 86,351 in 1970 to 48,300 in 2000

In their bid to export what South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence labeled “the gospel of indiscriminate inclusivity,” revisionist forces in the Episcopal Church have allies they can call upon in the Anglican Communion, and not just the usual suspects in Canada, Scotland or New Zealand. When seeking validation for their actions, Episcopal leaders have called upon the churches of Mexico, Brazil, and frequently, Southern Africa. At about 2 million members, the province of Southern Africa is significantly larger than either Anglican population in Mexico (25,000) or Brazil (83,000) and is more equivalent to other mid-sized African provinces such as Rwanda (1.27 million) and Kenya (2.5 million).

None of these provinces has provoked the Anglican Communion as their American and Canadian counterparts have, with the election of openly partnered homosexual bishops. But in the Episcopal Church’s evangelistic fervor to spread heterodox teaching to the rest of the Anglican Communion, they are more than ready to play a supporting role.

Just like in the Episcopal Church, not everyone in these provinces is revisionist. Some bishops in Mexico and Southern Africa have either criticized TEC’s actions at General Convention, or expressed solidarity with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), the alternative province-in-formation recently launched by U.S. and Canadian traditionalists. Indeed, Brazil has experienced its own split, with the conservative northern diocese of Recife breaking away from that province and joining the neighboring Province of the Southern Cone.

But the majority of the provinces, and certainly their leadership, are onboard with the revisionist agenda. The Episcopal Church views them not merely as allies in holding off conservative detractors like the churches of Nigeria or Rwanda, but also as a beachhead for liberalizing other Global South provinces such as Tanzania and even Uganda.

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…[Archbishop Rowan Williams’] latest proposal to hold together the warring factions, a two-track system that could give his rebellious U.S. Episcopal Church a secondary role in the Communion, has disappointed just about everyone.

“It’s well meaning but, I think, a futile attempt to paper over two irreconcilable truth claims,” said Bishop Martyn Minns, former rector of Truro Church in Fairfax City, who heads a group of congregations that has broken from the Episcopal Church because its members think that the church does not follow the Bible closely enough.

Those on the other side aren’t happy either.

“It doesn’t contribute to holding people together,” said Bishop Peter James Lee of the Virginia Diocese. “Even though he explicitly says this is not a first-class, second-class division, it feels that way.”

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My new acquaintance, a self-described traditional Christian who has issues with the ordination of women (never mind gays and lesbians), shook his head. From his perspective, the Episcopal Church is out of touch with the majority and has failed to recognize its place in the world.

I would argue that Episcopalians, who number around 2 million in a worldwide church of 80 million, are acutely aware of their place on the global Christian stage….

Episcopalians know [about the global Church shift from North to South]. Whatever their views on sexuality, they speak passionately about the importance of preserving relations and avoiding a major schism.

The question then becomes how to balance the desire to remain in communion with the desire to be fully inclusive of gay and lesbian members.

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The Covenant
We had come to Jamaica ready to move forward on the Covenant. The deliberations and decisions of the Council make clear that the ACC wants a covenant. Our disappointment was that we could not get it now. The decision to modify the timetable was by a very slender margin of only three votes. And many people took the middle road position in order to give time to improve the Covenant.

Interventions
Cross-provincial interventions are a serious matter. The Archbishop of Canterbury has given his assurance that the role of the Pastoral Visitors would take care of the need for a listening process for faithful Anglicans alienated from their churches and in a significant number of cases deposed from their orders in North America. Some of us who had previously had significant doubts about the wisdom of these interventions have become aware from those whose provinces have taken this bold step that these interventions were both necessary and justified, and others that they were understandable, as an answer to a distress call. We therefore urge the Archbishop to dispatch Pastoral Visitors immediately who will incorporate into their work a listening process because of the urgency of the situation.

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But the fact the Global South is at the forefront of fuelling the North American schism is not that surprising, said Philip Harrold, a professor of Church history at the Trinity School Ministry in Pennsylvania, an Anglican seminary.

“The history of Christianity in general and Anglicanism in particular is the history of movement from one epicentre of growth and vitality to another. And the Northern Hemisphere churches by and large are in a period of decline. If you look at the Global South the contrast is remarkable. They are the ones sending missionaries out into the world, which is always a sign of health and vigor and commitment. That seems to be where the communion is going. It’s part of a wider picture of Christianity in general.”

Since 1910, the Christian population of Africa has grown from 10 million to 360 million today.

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Bishop Duncan echoed the insistence of the Primates that theirs was not a breakaway movement. “I’m a cradle Anglican. My grandfather was a boy chorister. . . My theological views haven’t changed. The problem is that folks who have become the leadership of the Episcopal Church in the United States have pulled the rug out from under me. The person who is our Presiding Bishop, she didn’t begin as an Anglican. I did. She represents something very different. I don’t think I’m a breakaway.

“I don’t believe I have divided the Church. I believe the innovators are the ones who are dividing the Church. I love them, and I want to behave in a godly way towards them, and I will do everything I can to convince them about the truth that’s been delivered; but my focus now has to be on those who don’t know Jesus.”

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A meeting in London this week of traditionalist Anglicans has dismissed attempts to accommodate orthodox believers and says that if the liberal leaders of the North American churches sign up to the proposed Anglican Covenant ”˜in good conscience’, it will be meaningless.

The leaders of the Gafcon movement issued a communiqué after their meeting at a hotel near Heathrow Airport in which they gave recognition to dissident Anglicans in North America. They said: “The FCA Primates’ Council recognizes the Anglican Church in North America as genuinely Anglican and recommends that Anglican Provinces affirm full communion with the ACNA.”

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In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We meet in the week after Easter, rejoicing again in the power of the risen Lord Jesus to transform lives and situations. We continue to experience his active work in our lives and the lives of our churches and we rejoice in the Gospel of hope.

From its inception, the GAFCON movement has centered on the power of Christ to make all things new. We have heard this week of the great progress made in North America towards the creation of a new Province basing itself on this same biblical gospel of transformation and hope. We have also envisioned the future of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans as a movement for defending and promoting the biblical gospel of the risen Christ.
Yet we are saddened that the present crisis in the Anglican Communion of which we are a part remains unresolved. The recent meeting of Primates in Alexandria served only to demonstrate how deep and intractable the divisions are and to encourage us to sustain the important work of GAFCON.

The GAFCON Primates’ Council has the responsibility of recognizing and authenticating orthodox Anglicans especially those who are alienated by their original Provinces. We are also called to promote the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) in its stand against false teaching and as a rallying point for orthodoxy. It is our aim to ensure that the unity of the Anglican Communion is centered on Biblical teaching rather than mere institutional loyalty. It is essential to provide a way in which faithful Anglicans, many of whom are suffering much loss, can remain as Anglicans within the Communion while distancing themselves from false teaching.

At this meeting highly significant progress was made on the following fronts.

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Joining the archbishops in the three-day meeting are the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh in the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone and the archbishop-designate of the ACNA; the Rt. Rev. Jack L. Iker, Bishop of Fort Worth in the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone; the Rt. Rev. Charles Murphy; the leader of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA); the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, Bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America and one of his bishops suffragan, the Rt. Rev. David Anderson; the Rt. Rev. John Guernsey, Provincial Bishop Suffragan for the Anglican Church of Uganda; the Rt. Rev. Bill Atwood, Bishop of All Saints Diocese in the Anglican Church of Kenya; and the Rt. Rev. Don Harvey, leader of the Anglican Network in Canada.

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