Ordination of homosexuals, same-sex marriages and a perceived deviation from Jesus’s gospel have prompted some 300 hundred clergymen and hundreds more delegates from the conservative wing of the Anglican Communion to gather this week in Jerusalem.

The meeting, known as the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), is perhaps the most tangible demonstration yet of the division within the 77-million-strong Anglican church.

More liberal dioceses located primarily in North American and Britain are now pitted against more conservative congregants and clergy who come from the West, but also in disproportionately high numbers from Africa, Asia and South America.

These conservative Anglicans might represent just a third of the Anglican bishops, but they make up about 75 percent of Anglican churchgoers, said GAFCON organizers who spoke with The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Read it all.

Received from Gafcon via email:

Opening Address by Archbishop Peter Akinola
Sunday 22nd June, 2008

People of the living God, welcome to Jerusalem. Welcome to GAFCON. One of the marks of apostolic ministry is signs, wonders and miracle[1]. There are many in today’s Church, who would lay claim to apostolic authority without holding on to apostolic faith nor do they manifest any of the marks of the apostles. In GAFCON, I have seen signs and wonders. That we are able to gather here this week is a miracle for which we must give thanks to God.

There have been many seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but as a testimony that the Lord our God is firmly in control of GAFCON, he has graciously removed them. A conference of this magnitude would normally require several years of extensive planning, consultations and fund raising. We had barely five months to put this conference together. The Lord raised men and women who gladly and willingly offered their time, skill and money to make it happen.

I am very grateful to the members of the leadership team for their selfless and sacrificial roles in helping to deliver this conference, [please stand for recognition] We are deeply grateful to all provincial, diocesan and parish local committees, the donors, the tour agents, the travel agents, the Jordanian and Israeli governments for allowing us to meet here and in Jordan. Brethren, we appreciate the labours of love of the theological resource group. I must also thank in advance all those who will provide leadership in worship, workshops and plenary. We are heavily indebted to the various sub-committees and their leaders. God bless you all.

Why are we here? What have we come to do?

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) holding here in the holy land this week has understandably elicited both commendation and contempt in varying measures from all who claim a stake in shaping the future identity or in destroying the traditional identity of the global Anglican Communion.

Those who failed to admit that by the unilateral actions they took in defiance of the Communion have literally torn the very fabric of our common life at it deepest level since 2003, are grumbling that we are here to break the Communion.
Similarly, those who fail, for whatever reason to come to terms with the painful reality that the Communion is in a state of brokenness and lacked the ability to secure a genuine reconciliation, but simply carried on the work of the Communion in a manner that is business as usual are not happy with us.
And of course there are those who argue that while there may be some justification for GAFCON; why not call it after Lambeth 2008.

But thanks be to God that there are millions of people around the world including members of other denominations and those of other faiths who not only share our concerns but have chosen to partner with us and are praying for us.
For those of us gathered here in the Name of the Lord, and on behalf of the over 35 million faithful Anglicans we represent[2] GAFCON is a continuation of that quiet but consistent initiative, a godly instrument appointed to reshape, reform, renew and reclaim a true Anglican Biblical orthodox Christianity that is firmly anchored in historic faith and ancient formularies.

Be that as it may, we must note that we cannot understand our present circumstance without locating it within the context of the controversies of the past decade. Every responsible historian knows that his task is predicated on the treasury of past events ”“ rightly interpreted, as the compass for the present and guide for the future. For this reason, GAFCON takes its bearings from the tides of varied opinions and equivocations that have characterised our Communion in the last few years and exposed our once robust reputation as children of the Reformation to scorn. We were well-known for our stand on Scripture as the foundation stone of our tradition and reason.

The underlying objective of GAFCON necessarily compels a deep and honest reflection on the theological and ecclesiological inconsistencies of the past decade at the highest and most sacred levels of our Communion[3]. While not contesting the right to personal opinions and attitudes to this new situation, we must disabuse our minds of the unworthy views about GAFCON being a monster on the horizon, or even a strange breed of Anglicanism devoid of antecedent factors.

Whichever way you look at it, the Communion is deeply in trouble. This is not only because of the actions of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada but also because the hitherto honoured Instruments of Communion, in recent years have, by design become instruments of disunity, putting the Communion in an unprecedented brokenness and turmoil.

Brethren, we spent much of our God-given precious time travelling long distances and at huge costs, meditating and praying earnestly about what we thought were common concerns, urging for a listening process while assuring people with different sexual orientation of God’s love and our pastoral commitment to them, putting out carefully-worded communiqués and urging for restraint with regards to any attempt at defying time-tested limits.

PRE- LAMBETH 98
Human memory is very short. Therefore, permit me to suggest that we need to retrace our steps to some of the events that preceded Lambeth ’98 when some, particularly the Global South of the Communion sensed the crisis ahead. It was the Second Anglican Encounter in the South, which was held in Kuala Lumpur from 10th -15th February 1997 with the theme, ‘The Place of Scripture in the life and Mission of the Church in the 21st Century’. The theme was in the context of a premonition that the Communion was ‘at a time of difficulty and confusion in some provinces and of growth, martyrdom, dynamic missionary encouragement and quiet but powerful witness in others’.

Looking back, one must confess that some of the resolutions couldn’t have been more prophetic. Take for instance the Encounter’s resolution about ‘Scripture, the Family and Human Sexuality’:
Reflection on our Encounter theme has helped further to deepen our resolve to uphold the authority of Scripture in every aspect of life, including the family and human sexuality.
Therefore:
6.1 We call on the Anglican Communion as a Church claiming to be rooted in the Apostolic and Reformed Tradition to remain true to Scripture as the final authority in all matters of faith and conduct;
6.2 We affirm that Scripture upholds marriage as a sacred relationship between a man and a woman, instituted in the creation ordinance;
6.3 We reaffirm that the only sexual expression, as taught by Scripture, which honours God and upholds human dignity is that between a man and a woman within the sacred ordinance of marriage;
6.4 We further believe that Scripture maintains that any other form of sexual expression is at once sinful, selfish, dishonouring to God and an abuse of human dignity;

6.5 We are aware of the scourge of sexual promiscuity, including homosexuality, rape and child abuse in our time. These are pastoral problems, and we call on the Churches to seek to find a pastoral and scriptural way to bring healing and restoration to those who are affected by any of these harrowing tragedies.

This Second Trumpet was used by God to make the majority of the Bishops who participated in the Lambeth Conference 1998 stand together to assert the authority of the Bible against the revisionist agenda that was being peddled then.

Post-Lambeth Reactions
Paradoxically, that which was universally hailed as the triumph of biblical truth was, soon after the Lambeth Conference, lamented by a self-conceited typical American bishop, Jack Spong of Newark (now retired) as a disastrous condescension to stone-age logic. He actually said that the Africans were theologically “animistic and superstitious” and ignorant of scientific advancement. Lest some interpret this as a racial rather than a doctrinal issue, Barbara Harris (a black), Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts, even said the African Bishops’ loyalty had been “bought with chicken dinners” by the conservative American Anglican Council. Of course, these slanders were calmly repudiated by noted African voices such as my most worthy predecessor- The Most Rev. Joseph Adetiloye, who said: “We in Africa hold the Bible as our authority for the Christian life. Therefore we will stand by the Word of God. To do otherwise, I’m afraid, would be impossible”¦”

Many American revisionist dioceses and congregations withdrew their financial assistance to needy African dioceses. Responding to this development, Bishop John Rucyahana of Rwanda who had been affected by that action said, “This has happened to many other African countries and African churches. Our opinion and independence of mind is being choked by [patronising generosity] via the gifts of money. That is manipulation and dehumanizing to think we will do what people want because they have money.”

Clearly the bedrock of the revisionist perspective is the humanist, rather than theological approach. This is the crux of the problem: they are going in the opposite direction from what Biblical orthodoxy demands, and with such a mindset, a meeting-point with those who are labelled conservatives ”“ who have chosen to stand where the Bible stands, becomes a very remote possibility.
Crossing the ‘Rubicon’
Between the Lambeth Conference in 1998 and 2003, several dioceses in the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) continued with impunity to legitimise open same-sex unions. The election and proposed consecration, in 2003, of a man in an active homosexual relationship, Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in defiance of Resolution 1:10 of Lambeth 98, inflicted the most devastating wound on the pastorally responsible listening process recommended by that conference. Throughout the Communion, there was widespread outcry against that proposal. For ease of reference the text of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 is appended to this address.
The Primates’ meeting in October 2003 at Lambeth Palace discussed this development with deep concern and came up with this statement:
“We ”¦ re-affirm the resolutions made by the bishops of the Anglican Communion gathered at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 on issues of human sexuality as having moral force and commanding the respect of the Communion as its present position on these issues. We commend the report of that Conference in its entirety to all members of the Anglican Communion valuing especially its emphasis on the need “to listen to the experience of homosexual persons,…”
“Therefore, as a body we deeply regret the actions of the Diocese of New Westminster and the Episcopal Church (USA) which appear to a number of provinces to have short-circuited that process, and could be perceived to alter unilaterally the teaching of the Anglican Communion on this issue. They do not. Whilst we recognise the juridical autonomy of each province in our Communion, the mutual interdependence of the provinces means that none has authority unilaterally to substitute an alternative teaching as if it were the teaching of the entire Anglican Communion.
“To this extent, therefore, we must make clear that recent actions in New Westminster and in the Episcopal Church (USA) do not express the mind of our Communion as a whole, and these decisions jeopardise our sacramental fellowship with each other”¦
At that point, the red lights were unmistakable and the appropriate note of caution was sounded by the Primates:
“If his consecration proceeds, we recognise that we have reached a crucial and critical point in the life of the Anglican Communion and we have had to conclude that the future of the Communion itself will be put in jeopardy. In this case, the ministry of this one bishop will not be recognised by most of the Anglican world, and many provinces are likely to consider themselves to be out of Communion with the Episcopal Church (USA). This will tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level, and may lead to further division on this and further issues as provinces have to decide in consequence whether they can remain in Communion with provinces that choose not to break Communion with the Episcopal Church (USA).
Sadly, in spite of the Primates’ godly admonition, prophetic and timely warning the consecration went ahead. This singular defiant action put our Communion in total disarray as some provinces like West Indies and Southern Cone declared a state of impaired Communion with ECUSA and others like Uganda, South East Asia, Kenya, Rwanda and Nigeria broke off sacramental communion with it.
It was now clear that ECUSA by its own deliberate action had made its choice to walk apart from the rest of the Communion.
For most of us, this was the point when the truth of the African proverb that “a dog that is heading for self-destruction stops heeding the hunter’s whistle” became clear. We also recalled the question posed by Prophet Amos, “Do two walk together except they have agreed to do so?”[4]
Some people interpreted our response as a judgmental attitude, but we knew we had come to that point when we had to stand up for our convictions based on the word of God and the faithful witness of a long succession of Anglicans, rather than fall for anything in the name of enlightened logic and dictates of modern cultural trappings.
Meetings and More Meetings
More efforts were still made in an attempt to manage the crisis, and we remember in particular the Dromantine meeting of the Primates in 2005 where ECUSA and Canada were given time to respond to the questions put to them by the Windsor report and also to consider their place within the Anglican Communion[5].

To our utter dismay, it became apparent that our sober resolutions were, in the aftermath, trivialized by some of our most respected leaders. As if that was not bad enough, our corporate integrity was abused and the pains and concerns shared so open-mindedly ridiculed and betrayed by the flagrant compromises of those entrusted with the responsibility of guarding divine and eternal truths. These rather reckless departures from our painstaking resolutions turned delicate matters into what became more of a pastime for merely pious rhetoric at the expense of the spiritual welfare of our Communion which was evidently in jeopardy.

In the light of this, the Conference of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) commissioned a group that came up with The Road to Lambeth which was endorsed by several Provinces[6] including Nigeria.

The last major meeting that considered this issue was the Primates’ Meeting in Tanzania in February 2007. After long and painful hours of deliberations the primates gave TEC a last chance to clarify unequivocally and adequately their stand by 30th September, 2007.

Strangely, before the deadline, and before the Primates could get the opportunity of meeting to assess the adequacy of the response of TEC and in a clear demonstration of unwillingness to follow through our collective decisions which for many of us was an apparent lack of regard for the Primates, Lambeth Palace in July 2007 issued invitations to TEC bishops including those who consecrated Gene Robinson to attend the Lambeth 2008 conference.

At this point, it dawned upon us, regrettably, that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not interested in what matters to us, in what we think or in what we say.

For the avoidance of doubt, I need to reiterate the most agonizing part of it all which is the fact that thrice, in the course of these crises, we have met as Primates of the Communion and have been unable in good conscience on each occasion to share in the Lord’s Supper with leaders of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. What else can more powerfully and most vividly demonstrate our brokenness? No solution has been found to this fundament issue. Until sacramental communion is restored, we remain sadly, broken. This is the stark reality our leaders continue to ignore and of course to the peril of the Communion.

As the Lambeth Conference 2008 approached and invitations were being sent out as though it was business as usual, some of our Provinces counselled the Archbishop of Canterbury to consider shifting the date[7] until the time for a meaningful fellowship and healing of relationships could be discerned. In addition, it would give the provinces of the Communion space to conclude and ratify the draft Anglican Covenant. Rejecting all entreaties, Lambeth Palace chose not to be bothered about that which troubles us; decided to stick to its own plans and to erect the walls of 2008 Lambeth Conference on the shaky and unsafe foundations of our brokenness.

Why GAFCON?

We cannot succumb to this turmoil in our Communion and simply watch helplessly. We have found ourselves in a world in which Anglican leaders hold on to a form of religion but consistently deny its power. We have a situation in which some members of the Anglican family think they are so superior to all others that they are above the law, they can do whatever they please with impunity. As a Communion we have been unable to exercise discipline. In the face of global suspicion of the links of Islam with terrorism, Lambeth Palace is making misleading statements about the Islamic Law, Shari a, to the point that even secular leaders are now calling us to order! We can no longer trust where some of our Communion leaders are taking us.

Repeatedly, those of us in the leadership team of GAFCON have been advised by all levels of our ecclesial structures to avoid a vacuum. All our bishops and wives who would normally look to the Lambeth Conference for fellowship but now could not along with senior lay leaders and selected clergy to whom Lambeth authorities are not willing to listen should meet in another forum for prayerful deliberation on matters critical to our common life and mission. Thus GAFCON is a rescue mission.
Our beloved Anglican Communion must be rescued from the manipulation of those who have denied the gospel and its power to transform and to save; those who have departed from the scripture and the faith ‘once and for all delivered to the saints’ from those who are proclaiming a new gospel, which really is no gospel at all, {Gal 1.} In the wisdom and strength God supplies we must rescue what is left of the Church from error of the apostates.
Brethren, we are here
—Because we are bound together in a godly fellowship by the Gospel-the gospel that shaped the theological and ecclesiological foundations of our Church-the same gospel with its transforming power that made the difference in the lives of our heroes like Thomas Cranmer, William Wilberforce, the Clapham brothers and Ajayi Crowther.
— Because we are convinced that GAFCON is a veritable tool within the Communion which God is using to bring together all who are concerned not only about the need to preserve the faith, but also to persevere and bequeath a legacy of wholesome, undiluted faith to future generations of Anglicans. It is God’s gift to the Anglican Communion and to the world.
— To draw fresh inspiration to enable us ‘contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints’ both for our sake and for the sake of future generations of Anglicans.
— Because we want to renew our commitment to our sacred duty to preserve and proclaim uncompromisingly, the undistorted word of God written to a sinful and fragmented world. GAFCON is a meeting of ordained and lay leaders concerned about the mission of the Church and how best to carry it out and be poised to address the ever-present challenges of self-reliance, good governance, overcoming corruption and to prepare a strong and stable platform for upcoming generations.
–Yes, GAFCON offers fresh hope for a meaningful spiritual haven for orthodox Anglicans who can no longer hold out and be truly Anglican under revisionist leadership.
–We are here because we know that in God’s providence GAFCON will liberate and set participants [particularly Africans] free from spiritual bondage which TEC and its Allies champion. Having survived the inhuman physical slavery of the 19th century, the political slavery called colonialism of the 20th century, the developing world economic enslavement, we cannot, we dare not allow ourselves and the millions we represent be kept in religious and spiritual dungeon.
–Because we know that together as lay leaders, clergy and bishops of our Church we can banish the errors plaguing our beloved Communion-for we will not abdicate our God-given responsibility and simply acquiesce to destructive modern cultural and political dictates.
–We are here because we know that in spite of the fractures in our Communion, as orthodox Anglicans, we have a future and so we are here in the holy land to inaugurate and determine the roadmap to that future.

And from what better place in the world could we take the fullest advantage of the most powerful reminders of the life and ministry of our Lord and only Saviour Jesus the Christ than here in the holy land where he was born, grew up, served; was killed, rose again for our justification, ascended to heaven and now seated at the right hand of God the Father, interceding for us.

It was here in the holy land that our Lord Jesus the Christ of God gave the command to go and proclaim the sacred message of salvation and to disciple those who believe. From here, brethren, the recipient Church in the power of the Holy Spirit went out to the world and began the gradual process of its transformation.
So far, I have tried to address the whole question of ‘why and how’ we got to where we are in the life of our beloved Anglican Communion. The challenge we must now address is, where do we go from here and what is the roadmap for that journey? As we participate in the various workshops and plenary sessions, I ask that we give some prayerful consideration to the following questions:
1. In the light of the fact that the Communion is in a state of brokenness in fellowship and sacrament, are we reconcilable; is there anything that can be done which has not been articulated for the restoration of sacramental Communion?
2. A sizeable part of the Communion is in error and not a few are apostate; is the Communion correctable from within or must it be from without?
3. A growing number of our people are already talking about what they call ‘unavoidable realignment’ for the rescue operation within the Communion; is that the best way forward and if not, what are the alternatives?
4. To some, GAFCON is the metamorphosis of CAPA and the Global south. Is it? Put in another way, what is the place of CAPA and the Global south which historically antedate GAFCON in an all-embracing and truly global GAFCON?
5. We know that the expert ‘divide and rule’ agents of TEC and Lambeth have been at work using money and other attractions to buy ‘silence and compromise’ from some gullible African and Global South Church leaders; hence we have begun to see signs of disunity in our ranks. How do we forestall this danger in GAFCON?
6. Can we here begin to discern the content and nature of that future we long to see and work for as Anglicans?
7. What sort of recognisable structure and funding must GAFCON as a ‘movement’ in the Communion have to be able achieve the tasks set for it?
As I conclude let the world be informed that be it by birth or by conversion the men and women in GAFCON are people who have grown to be Anglican Christians by conviction, upholding the tenets of Anglican biblical orthodoxy. We have no other place to go nor is it our intention to start another church. Anglicans we are, Anglicans we’ll remain until the LORD shall return in glory to judge each one according to his deeds.
And finally fellow pilgrims it goes without saying that we have committed so much prayer and material resources to this conference and pilgrimage. We have not come here to fantasise or day dream. This is the land in which the LORD our God manifested his glory and power in concrete actions in empirical history.
The programme, painstakingly designed with you in mind, is therefore fairly elaborate with variety of activities such as pilgrimage to holy sites, liturgical worship, devotional prayer sessions, workshops, Bible study and several plenary sessions. I urge you; please make GAFCON a worthwhile event. Be involved. Be punctual in attending all sessions. Participate fully and actively. Only by so doing can we together this week here in the holy land, come up with practical, realistic and actionable decisions that will honour God and bring blessing to our Communion. Let us walk, work and pray together here in Jerusalem to inaugurate that glorious future of the Anglican Communion.

And now to the King Immortal, Invisible, the only wise God be all honour, glory, dominion and majesty, for ever and ever. Amen.

[Appendix]
Lambeth 98: Resolution I.10; Human Sexuality
This Conference:
a. in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage;
b. recognises that there are among us persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation. Many of these are members of the Church and are seeking the pastoral care, moral direction of the Church, and God’s transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of relationships. We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ;
c. while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialization of sex;
d. cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender union.;

________________________________________
[1] 11 Corinthians 12.12
[2] This is out of the estimated 55 million Anglicans who go to Church regularly.
[3] See ‘The Way, The Truth and The Life ( Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future)
[4] Amos 3.3
[5] See details in sections 8-14 of the Communiqué issued by the Primates, Feb 2005.
[6] See minutes of CAPA Primates Meeting , Dar es Salaam, Feb, 2007
[7] that wont be the first time in the history of Lambeth Conferences

If you read GAFCON’s “The Way, the Truth, the Life” (484kb PDF) and Bishop Duncan’s opening address, “Anglicanism Come of Age: A Post-Colonial and Global Communion for the 21st Century” (100kb PDF), you will encounter what can be regarded as one very significant contradiction: The writers of “The Way, the Truth, the Life” state, “The Anglican Church has always been a confessional institution…” whereas Bp. Duncan says, “Anglicanism is neither papal, nor confessional, it is rather apostolic and conciliar.”

GAFCON’s detractors may well see this contradiction as an opportunity to allege that those who are busily involved in crafting a new global Anglican future cannot even agree on the nature of Anglicanism’s past and present identity. And, of course, there are those, from both the liberal and Anglo-Catholic camps, who have never liked the idea of Anglicans being a confessional people. It was considered a virtual article of faith in the Confirmation class I attended that the Articles of Religion (the 39 Articles) were in no way to be viewed as a confession of faith, such as the Augsburg Confession is for Lutherans or the Westminster Confession is for Presbyterians.

Read it all.

Listen to it all (it starts a little past 45 seconds in). Mr. Piggott is the Religious Affairs correspondent of the BBC and he is interviewed on the BBC’s very fine “Sunday” programme.. Note carefully the quote from Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney at the conclusion of the segment.

See below for links to bloggers and reporters who are in Jersusalem covering GAFCON. We’ll keep this “sticky” until the GAFCON final statement appears. Look for new entries below this post.

We thought it might be helpful to round up a list of those who are providing first-hand coverage and blogging of GAFCON this week.

Anglican TV’s Kevin Kallsen is there and is providing live-streaming coverage of some of the sessions, as well as written diaries. All the AnglicanTV coverage is here. (This elf is currently watching such live stream coverage as I type this. You rock, Kevin. Thanks for your service!) (Note: Stand Firm should usually be broadcasting Kevin’s live feed.)

Stand Firm’s Matt Kennedy+ is there and will be sharing his impressions and insights, and showing off his amazing live blogging skills. Just keep an eye on Stand Firm for Matt’s posts throughout the day.. Matt’s wife Anne+ is also at GAFCON. You can follow her accounts at her blog, an undercurrent of hostility, here.

The London Times’ Ruth Gledhill is in Jerusalem and you can find her reports here.

Anglicans United’s Cherie Wetzel and her husband, the Rev. Todd Wetzel are there. You can follow Cherie’s reports here.

Scotland’s the Rev. David McCarthy is at GAFCON and blogging at his Gadget Vicar site.

The official GAFCON site is here.

If you know of others who are blogging and reporting from GAFCON, please post links in the comments. Thanks.

[b]Update[/b]:

Thanks to a tipster, we note that Fr. Russell Martin of St. Timothy & St. Titus parish (under the Southern Cone) in San Diego, is blogging. His entries are posted at San Diego Anglicans.

[b]George Conger[/b] is in Jerusalem. His blog is here.

[b]Sydney Anglicans[/b] has a dedicated GAFCON page here.

[b]Christianity Today reporter Tim Morgan[/b] is in Jerusalem. The CT blog is here.

[b]Five Delegates from Melbourne Australia[/b] are blogging here.

Some folks from [b]Reform Ireland[/b] are blogging. Their blog is here.

[b]Thinking Anglicans[/b] are in touch with those covering GAFCON for the Lesbian & Gay Christian movement and have posted e-mail from them as part of a GAFCON coverage roundup.

A Sydney attendee, Tony Payne, is blogging here.

Do keep us posted if you come across more links for first-hand reports from GAFCON. Thanks!

[b]Update 2[/b]:

[b]Father Lee Nelson[/b] (dio Fort Worth) has a GAFCON photoblog that is very nice, here.

A blogger from the Anglican Coalition in Canada, Pastor Barclay, has many excellent photos, here.

The Sydney Anglicans GAFCON page has news, pictures, videos, and also blog entries. We’ve noted three blog entries so far. Abp. Peter Jensen, Bishop Robert Forsyth, and Dr. Karin Sowada.

There is an excellent collection of daily photo albums from GAFCON set up at Picassa, here.

“I’m not hearing anything about breaking up the Anglican Communion, or anything of the sort,” Bishop Martyn Minns told The Living Church. Bishop Minns, formerly rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va., is the founding Missionary Bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), an outreach of the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

“We are not focusing all of our attention on human sexuality,” he added. “The workshops are designed to get us moving forward with emphasis on evangelism, church planting, the Bible, family and marriage, and also on developing a better understanding of our Anglican identity.”

Bishop Minns said a booklet titled “The Way, The Truth and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future,” released by GAFCON organizers at a press conference June 19, has been mischaracterized in some reports as conference planners’ declaration of independence from the Anglican Communion. He noted that the booklet is a historical summary of the recent past, and does not contain specific recommendations for the future.

“The purpose of the conference is not to call people away from either the Lambeth Conference or the Anglican Communion,” he said. “Certain things of monumental importance have changed about Anglicanism within the past 10 years. Those things have irreversibly reshaped the landscape. We must get together and work out what to do about our future in light of the facts that have occurred.”

Read it all.

We’re looked forward to this immensely. Already the gathering of the initial team has been an extraordinary, bracing occasion and one which we have enjoyed thoroughly. I am looking forward to an extraordinarily interesting and rather exciting conference I have to say and you may be interested to know that I personally, speaking for myself now, personally wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury just a couple of weeks ago to assure him of my prayers for Lambeth and for the successful outcome of the Lambeth conference and he has now written to me and assured me of his prayers for us and his prayers for a successful outcome of this conference as well. So I think that’s worth knowing when we talk a great deal about things like schism and so forth.

Read or listen to it it all.

More than one thousand Anglicans from 25 nations, including 300 bishops are on their way to Jerusalem to attend the Global Anglican Future Conference. The meeting, which will be held June 22 ”“ 29, includes daily addresses from key Anglican pastors, teachers and leaders.

The Most Rev. Peter Akinola, primate Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) will formally welcome pilgrims to GAFCON on June 22. There are over 22 million Anglicans in church every Sunday, making the Church of Nigeria the largest church of the Anglican Communion.

After a pilgrimage to the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane on Monday morning, the Most Rev. Henry Orombi, primate of the Anglican Church of the Province of Uganda, will deliver the keynote address, “Jesus Christ as Lord” on Monday afternoon.

Read it all.

The schism long forecast for the Anglican Communion over the church’s liberal stand on homosexuality may be getting closer. A document released by a group of conservative churchmen called the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFcon) made it clear that the more than 250 bishops who belong to the group intend to transform the 77-million-member global Communion, the world’s third-largest affiliation of churches, because of their differences over the church’s stance on gay priests and other issues.

Just days before the group’s conference is set to begin in Jerusalem, GAFcon’s leader, Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, declared in a 94-page theological statement: “There is no longer any hope, therefore, for a unified Communion … Now we confront a moment of decision … We want unity, but not at the cost of relegating Christ to the position of another wise teacher, who can be obeyed or disobeyed. We earnestly desire the healing of our beloved Communion, but not at the cost of rewriting the Bible to accommodate the latest cultural trend. We have arrived at a crossroads; it is, for us, the moment of truth.”

Read it all.

“What I and others on the conserving side of the Episcopal church represent is this clear vision that the church can never be anything other than under God’s Word and can never be anything other than submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ,” [Bishop Robert Duncan] says.

The last straw for many came with the ordination of openly gay bishop Gene Robinson in 2003. Since then, the splinter churches have sought refuge in the worldwide Anglican church. They’re now under the authority of churches in Africa and South America. These Third World congregations are also theologically orthodox. And they’re growing. Today more than 43 million Anglicans attend church in Africa alone — that’s more than half of all Anglicans worldwide.

“Isn’t it staggering” says Duncan, “that God would lift up the church in Southeast Asia instead of the church in Britain — or the church in Uganda instead of the church in America?”

The phenomenal growth and the split are rocking the Anglican church worldwide. This summer, the church’s “Lambeth” conference, held only once every 10 years, will be boycotted by many Third World Anglicans. They’ll attend a rival event, The Global Anglican Futures Conference or GAFCON in Jerusalem. Duncan says this represents the shift between two eras.

“Some thing is about a world that once was and one thing is about a world that is emerging,” he said.

[Theologian Edith] Humphrey predicts, “I think the real business of the church is going to go on at GAFCON because there we have an opportunity to move on without impediments.”

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Divisive as it all may sound, conference organizers are quick to reject the charge that they are trying to upstage the upcoming Lambeth Conference, the official meeting of Communion bishops held in England every 10 years under the auspices of the archbishop of Canterbury, now the Most Rev. and Right Hon. Rowan Williams.

But many attending the Jerusalem meeting, including the Most Rev. Peter Akinola of Nigeria, have said that they will not attend the Lambeth gathering in mid-July. And GAFCON attendees admit they have lost patience with Anglican and Episcopal church leaders, who conservatives say have refused to take clear or decisive stands on such issues as gay marriage and openly gay clergy.

“The traditional power brokers of the Communion are being challenged,” says the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, missionary bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a group of about 60 American congregations that have cut ties with the U. S. Episcopal Church and are now incorporated under Archbishop Akinola’s Nigerian province. Minns charges that the Communion’s leadership in the global north continues to ignore demographic and theological reality: that the church in the global south is not only the largest part of the Communion (with more than 40 million of the 70 million Anglicans and Episcopalians) but also the most committed to orthodox Christian teaching.

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GAFCON leadership team and key participants in the week long conference are on their way to Jerusalem for the final preparations for the meeting beginning Sunday. The Pre-GAFCON consultation in Jordan wound up early, and the participants move to Jerusalem today. Hotel and meeting rooms previously unavailable in Jerusalem became available at the same time GAFCON leaders learned that previously granted permission for the Jordan consultation was deemed insufficient.

GAFCON delegates have taken the alterations in their stride, the move proving no barrier to a developing sense of fellowship.

Already, there’ve been joyous scenes as GAFCON leaders greeted each other.

The Nigerian delegation was given a rousing cheer as was Archbishop and Mrs Yong Ping Chung. Archbishop Yong, of Sabah, will give a Bible study during the Gafcon week.

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A report in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper referring to the book was headlined Hardline bishops declare Anglican split and went on to declare that they had “formally declared an end to the Anglican communion”.

That was firmly rejected by one of the GAFCON leaders, Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen, who referred to the actions in North America by churches in defiance of the Lambeth decisions of 1998 on homosexuality.

“If we’re talking about schism and the break up of the communion, that’s where it starts and that’s where the responsibility is,” Archbishop Jensen says.

Earlier, Archbishop Jensen told the BBC from Amman that the actions meant that the Anglican communion had turned “from a nuclear family to an extended family”.

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THE Clearest indication yet that the forthcoming Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) will herald a formal split in the Anglican Communion came yesterday (Thursday) with the publication of The Way, the Truth and the Life.

The 94-page book will be given to everyone who attends GAFCON ”” organisers expect 1000, including 280 bishops ”” and has been produced by the 25-strong GAFCON theological resource team, chaired by the Archbishop of Bendel, in Nigeria, the Most Revd Nicolas Okoh. The group’s secretary is Canon Dr Chris Sugden, executive secretary of Anglican Mainstream, based in Oxford.

The book uses the language of the parting of the ways. “We see a parallel between contemporary events and events in England in the 16th century. Then, the Catholic Church in England was faced with the choice of aligning itself with either Rome or Geneva. But, when forced to decide its identity, it sought to distinguish itself from both the practices of the Papacy and the excesses it associated with the more radical reformers.

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Gafcon, the Global Anglican Future Conference, will work towards shaping an “Anglican future in which the Gospel is uncompromised and Christ-centred mission [is] a top priority,” Dr Jensen, the chairman of the conference’s programme committee, said. He denied charges the conference was a shadow Lambeth Conference, saying the delegates meeting at the Renaissance Hotel near Israel’s Knesset in West Jerusalem were not going to “ape” Lambeth. “This is a conference about he future and we’ve deliberately invited lay people, clergy and others” to ask what it means “to be Anglican,” he said. “How can we best serve God, how can we honour his word and how can we best make his message known? They’re the big themes we’ll be looking at,” Dr Jensen said.

However, Dr Jensen, along with bishops from amongst the largest provinces of the Communion: Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, will boycott the Lambeth Conference, attending Gafcon in its place. “We have made other plans to travel to Jerusalem [instead of Lambeth] to reflect on how best we can do the work of the Lord,” Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya explained last week, citing conservative disquiet with its agenda and guest list.

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It is true that the forthcoming Lambeth Conference will also be a divided body, boycotted by an unprecedented numbers of bishops. But the semi-fiasco of Gafcon means that Dr Williams still has a chance of keeping the conservative Christians of, say, Uganda, in dialogue with the liberal provinces of the United States and Canada.

Whether the Anglican Communion can survive the inevitable discord of Lambeth is still unclear. But it is encouraging that some of the most vociferous critics of liberal Anglicanism have decided to join in debate and worship with their fellow bishops at their traditional gathering in England rather than declare allegiance to a rival body meeting in the Middle East.

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The whole world is watching. This gathering is about the future. In my travels around North America this spring it has become increasingly clear just how much faithful Anglicans are looking to what we will do here. In contrast, there is almost no popular expectation surrounding Lambeth.

We are here on pilgrimage. With the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, we know ourselves to be strangers and exiles, aliens here. We are headed to a lasting city.
We know that everything we do has to do with the story: the old, old story. Finally, it is not about England, or Canterbury, though these relationships matter to us. Our life, our witness, our leadership, our pilgrimage here is all about Jesus.

What comes out of this gathering we cannot predict. But we are confident that God is not done with Anglicanism. We are confident that GAFCON is one piece of what God already has in mind as part of a Global Settlement of Anglicanism. This Global Settlement of Anglicanism we also understand to be but one aspect of a 21st century Reformation of the whole Christian Church.

It is tempting to be impatient. But impatience is just that, a temptation. Impatience does not become servants. We will do our part here. We will work hard here. We will build relationships here. We will focus on the story here. We will try to get out of God’s way here. We will say our prayers here. We will dream here. But finally we will entrust everything to our Master here. Our God is sovereignly re-forming his Church, of that we may be sure, and of that this Global Anglican Future Conference is an unmistakable sign. The Prophet Jeremiah has a word for us: “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jer.29:11) We do well also to remember St. Paul’s assurance at the end of I Thessalonians: “He who has called [us] is faithful, and He will do it.” [5:24]

This promise is true, as are all the promises, not least for us Anglicans.

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At the last Lambeth Conference, in 1998, the bishops overwhelmingly passed a resolution saying that homosexuality was “incompatible with Scripture,” and that homosexuals should not be ordained. The vote revealed the growing strength of the conservative bishops from Africa and the developing world.

To forestall conflict, the organizers of this year’s Lambeth Conference have planned for no resolutions, no proposals and no votes. Instead, the bishops will meet in small groups, on the theory that they will overcome their divisions by building personal relationships.

The Rev. Dr. Ian T. Douglas, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., who served on the design committee for Lambeth, said in a news conference last month, “It’s fundamentally about the encounter, about conversations among the leaders all oriented to: what is God calling the Anglican Communion and the bishops to be about in the wider world?”

Bishop Minns said of the Lambeth Conference, “It’s unfortunate, at a time the church needs clear and strong leadership, it gets two weeks of conversation.”

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GAFCON, which says it represents about 35 million Anglicans mostly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, will be held less than a month before the 10-yearly Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops from around the world opens on July 16.

[Arne] Fjeldstad said [Archbishop Peter] Akinola was not denied entry into Jordan but gave up after several hours’ delay at the border.

“He was kept in bureaucratic limbo,” he said. “They claimed that, as a diplomatic passport holder, he had to give advance warning that he was coming. He decided to go back to Jerusalem.”

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It is a large pdf file which may be found here.

Many of the people attending these gatherings have smoldered for years over the church’s creeping universalism, the flouting of biblical authority, the increasing numbers of same-sex blessing ceremonies and the tolerance of gay clergy and bishops in the Episcopal Church.

GAFCON also is the conservative Anglican alternative to Lambeth, the once-every-10-years conference of Anglican bishops at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, starting in mid-July.

Lambeth usually attracts more than 800 bishops, but GAFCON has peeled off about one-quarter of that number who have elected to go to Jerusalem instead.

No doubt the folks meeting in the Middle East have a strategy for Lambeth, a huge world stage where for three weeks every cause imaginable gets huge media exposure.

Unfortunately, this year’s Lambeth was organized to confound the media by avoiding decisive votes and statements. The massive gathering will be organized as a series of private Bible studies among the bishops.

So, no matter where you turn, there are a lot of secret meetings going on. At some point, the smoke needs to clear.

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The pre-GAFCON preparatory consultation in Jordan wound up early, and the participants moved to Jerusalem on Thursday, 19th June. Hotel and meeting rooms previously unavailable in Jerusalem became available at the same time GAFCON leaders learned that previously granted permission for the Jordan consultation was deemed insufficient.

The time in Jordan was very valuable for prayer, fellowship, and networking. The group made pilgrimages to Mt. Nebo and the Baptism Site of Jesus. GAFCON Chairman Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, and Archbishop Greg Venables of Southern Cone, were for different reasons unable to be in Jordan. Both are, however, expected to play significant roles at GAFCON in Jerusalem.

GAFCON book, The Way, The Truth and the Life, will be released on Thursday, 19th June, in Jerusalem. A press conference will be held at the Renaissance Hotel on Thursday, 19th June at 19:00 hours.

The 94-page book is published by Latimer Trust and was prepared by GAFCON Theological Resource Team. It provides the theological and historical foundation for the movement of orthodox Anglicans that is meeting in Jerusalem June 22 ”“ 29. More than 1,000 Anglican leaders from 25 countries, including 280 bishops, are expected to attend the conference.

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In recent decades, as membership dwindled in liberal-leaning European and North American churches, the rolls of Global South churches, as they are known, expanded dramatically. The majority of Anglicans now live in developing countries and are scandalized by Northern views of Scripture.

The leadership of the conservative summit comes mainly from these provinces.

The top organizers are Orombi, along with the archbishops ”” called primates ”” of the Anglican churches of Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Southern Cone based in Argentina. U.S. conservatives, a minority within the Episcopal Church, and British Anglicans also are playing important roles.

“There is an air of certainty and clarity among the bishops going to GAFCON, which stifles debate and openness to those of other views,” said Mark D. Chapman, lecturer in systematic theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxford, England. “This would change the soul of Anglicanism as an inclusive and tolerant church that is able to live with difference.”

But Bishop Martyn Minns, head of the conservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America, said orthodox Anglicans are the ones being shut out.

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Who is organizing GAFCON?

GAFCON was conceived by the Anglican Archbishops of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, the Southern Cone (South America), and Sydney (Australia). Evangelical Anglican Bishops from the UK and the USA were also involved in its organization.

How many people will participate in GAFCON?

More than 1,000 people have registered for GAFCON, including more than 280 Bishops, their wives, clergy and non-ordained church leaders. One hundred and seven (107) people from Uganda will be going, including 34 Bishops.

Why is GAFCON being held in Jerusalem?

GAFCON is essentially a pilgrimage. We are going back to the roots of our faith, to the place where Jesus was born, lived, died, and was raised from the dead.

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Those of us from the Network attending this historic event are grateful for their prayers. Out of a total of more than 1,000 bishops, priests, deacons and laity who have registered for GAFCON, just over 130 will be from North America. Of the more than 280 bishops registered to attend, 19 are affiliated with Common Cause.

We are a small contingent going to what is likely the most important Anglican event in decades. We are not running the show or driving the agenda. This meeting is not about North America or our problems. It is about expanding a faithful, orthodox Anglican witness worldwide. It is also about working together to sail through the storms assailing the western colonial model that has characterized the Anglican Communion for the past century.

The storms are here and, frankly, the traditional structures of the Anglican Communion don’t appear ready to deal with them. Archbishop Williams is clearly steering the Lambeth Conference away from any sort of accounting for The Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada’s increasingly brazen flouting of orthodox faith and the decisions of the last Lambeth Conference. The Anglican Covenant becomes weaker with every revision. We hear reports that the earliest we could expect to see any covenant in place would be sometime around the 2018 Lambeth Conference.

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More than 200 Anglican bishops from conservative dioceses around the world are to boycott next month’s Lambeth Conference and attend a rival Global Anglican Future Conference in Jordan this week instead.

Entire provinces, such as Nigeria, Uganda and R wanda, are attending the alternative gathering, styled Gafcon, instead of Lambeth because of their emphasis on a Bible-based Christianity that rules out many of the liberal developments in the Western Church, such as the increasing acceptance of homosexuality.

Two Church of England bishops, Wallace Benn, of Lewes, and Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, of Rochester, will be carrying the standard for the Church of England, and conservatives from the United States and Australia will also be in Amman.

Although organisers say their goal is not to set up a rival Anglican structure, in a statement at the weekend the Church of Uganda admitted that the aim of Gafcon was “to prepare for an Anglican future in which the gospel is uncompromised and Christ-centred mission is a top priority”.

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More than 35 members of the Australian contingent to GAFCON gathered in Sydney to hear Archbishop Peter Jensen declare that the conference is about “facing new realities in the (Anglican) communion and turning them into gospel opportunities”.

The Sydney contingent met at St Andrew’s House to pray and prepare for the one-week gathering, which starts in Jerusalem on June 22.

The conference will be preceded by a meeting of the leadership team and bishops from majority-Muslim countries in Jordan.

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The massive undertaking that is the Global Anglican Future Conference or (GAFCON) is days away from starting in Jerusalem.

Archbishop Peter Jensen, along with the Bishop of North Sydney, Glenn Davies and the Academic Dean of Moore College, Dr Mark Thompson will be meeting this week in Jordan with the conference leadership team in preparation for the seven days of prayer, bible study and fellowship that will follow in Israel.

Dr Jensen has told sydneyanglicans.net that he’s expecting to find a buzz among the 1000 who will gather.

“I’m expecting to find a great number of people thoroughly committed to the Bible and to the Lord Jesus Christ, fellowshipping together, working on who we are as Anglicans and then working on the future. It’s going to be one of the most significant events, I think, in the Anglican Communion, at least in this next two or three decades.”

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When I interviewed Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation of Anglicans of North America (CANA) this week, he was already in Jerusalem a week before the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCon) which will gather 300 conservative bishops representing 35 million Anglicans, more than half of those in the world.

Most are from the “Global South,” such as Africa, Asia, South America, Australia. However, many are “missionaries” from those countries to the U.S., such as Minns, who has attracted 55 conservative congregations, most of which have fled the increasingly liberal Episcopal Church. Another 250 have left for such groups as the Anglican Mission in America.

The gathering of GAFCon bishops is almost revolutionary, because only weeks later, the Archbishop of Canterbury will preside over Lambeth, a conference for the world’s Anglican bishops. The Global South bishops decided not to attend Lambeth, but to hold their own gathering instead.

Does this mean there will be split in the Anglican Communion?

Minns thought not: “We are in a process of realignment. When children grow up, you have to re-do your relationship, and begin to relate as equals. They are no longer kids and want to share in the leadership of the family. Institutional change is difficult.”

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