THE CHURCH OF NIGERIA: OUR PERSPECTIVE
..As part of the stance of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), it resolved not to attend any future conference or meeting where the above named two Provinces will sit and participate in discussion.
However, the January 2016 Primates meeting in Canterbury was considered an exception. Thus, the GAFCON and Global South resolved to attend.
In spite of the hollow restrictions placed on The Episcopal Church, the Presiding Bishop of TEC and the Chairman, Anglican Consultative Council, have avowed that the Primates had no authority to take that decision. During the Canterbury meeting itself, the way and manner in which those who hold the orthodox view of human sexuality and marriage were spoken of by the authorities, and denounced as “homophobic”, left no one in doubt that we were in the wrong place. In fact, the authorities believe that patience was being exercised to enable the communion to bring up the scripture-believers gradually to embrace the homosexual doctrine. Thus, the Anglican Communion’s journey is very uncertain for the orthodox. They are walking into a well-rehearsed scheme to gradually apply persuasion, subtle blackmail, coercion on any group still standing with the Scriptural Provision as we know it, to join the straight jacket of the revisionists and be politically correct. Somehow, they are succeeding!
….
as long as we are now candidates for whom every opportunity in the Anglican Communion should be explored to gradually teach us to embrace the new sex culture, it will be unwise to deliberately walk into a well-prepared camp of recruitment, blackmail, indoctrination and toxic relationship.
Therefore, we regret our inability to attend the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Lusaka, Zambia.
We continue to pray for God’s Church to return to the Holy Bible, for its faith and practice.
Read it all and see also statements of non-attendance from the Church of Uganda, the Church of Kenya, the Church of Rwanda and Archbishop Mouneer Anis
Unnecessary of course, as Nigeria, along with the 32 of the 38 provinces who agreed to censure TEC at Canterbury comprise the overwhelming orthodox majority of the Communion. It may say something about the siege mentality of Christians in a country where internally they are assaulted and killed by Boko Haram and other extremists, and feel unsupported from the Communion leadership from abroad, indeed undermined as they pay the price for the foolish comments of Western liberal leaders.
A pretty clear reference to the comments of Welby and Fearon not only at Canterbury but in the past in a clear attempt to criticise the large African provinces for the attempted actions of the secular legislatures.
It is also used by Welby and others as a stick to beat orthodox Anglicans over here and to soften them up. Of course it is untrue. I have never heard anyone be unkind to or about gay people in any church I have attended in England, nor have I heard of it happening in others. It is found on football terraces and in pubs but churches are the last places one expects to find it.
It is consistant with the long established strategy of gay activists to belittle and to isolate those who they feel are unreformable from those who may be swayed, and Welby and his cohorts have clearly decided this is a policy which will serve their own ends in trying to get other Global South members to gang up on the major African provinces.
I think it is yet another huge miscalculation on Welby’s part, akin to his comments when visiting the GAFCON conference in Nairobi.
This I think was a miscalculation on the part of the TEC and ACC leadership. The reality is that Welby managed to get the Global South and GAFCON leadership to attend a meeting with TEC and ACoC leaders over against the declarations of impaired Communion and policy of refusal to meet the liberal North American leaders without repentance. That was a huge advance for TEC and ACoC. By throwing it back in the faces of the Primates, Curry and Hiltz have thrown the efforts made on their behalf away and are probably now in a worse position with a broader group of Global South Provinces.
Well yes, that is what will be organised for Lusaka, just as it has been for the facilitated conversations going on in England and now moving on to General Synod. Plenty of listening to minorities, but reference to Holy Scripture is forbidden as a ground for what participants say.
If you play the game, you will lose.
I think the non-attendance of the three major African provinces, comprising a considerable proportion of the membership of Anglicans is extremely serious. It has ramifications for any future meeting such as Primates Meetings of which Welby has scheduled a series, to which he asks TEC and ACoC to attend.
This looks like more than not attending one meeting. TEC and the ACC leadership have shot themselves in the foot for the future. Welby’s silence on their barrack room lawyering has undermined confidence in his willingness to follow through as he promised to do at Canterbury.
It will be interesting to see if others will follow the lead of the large GAFCON provinces. What will the GAFCON Primates decide in April? What will the GS Standing Committee provinces do? I see Welby has scampered off to Burundi.
Amen to that
That’s three provinces who are honest, about the dishonesty shown at, and following, Welby’s January meeting.
++Welby = ++Williams
Let’s see who else stands firm?
++Williams = wolf
++Welby = wolf in sheep’s colthing
Clothing
Kenya and Nigeria, and which is the third not attending?
They are facing facts: “it will be unwise to deliberately walk into a well-prepared camp of recruitment, blackmail, indoctrination and toxic relationship.” Precisely.
#5 I believe it is Uganda, Katherine.
Thank you, Pageantmaster. I remembered that statement but failed to note that they definitely were not going to Lusaka. These three provinces may very well hold the majority of active Anglicans worldwide.
Welby is apparently discovering that going back on your word results in “consequences.”
Tens of thousands of pounds spent flying all over the world to meet with primates, delicate negotiations over a period of months to set up a “Primates Gathering.” And after you get everyone in a room and spend a week putting together a compromise that everyone can live with and even the PB of TEC describes as “fair,” Welby decides to throw the whole thing out and give in to TEC. What possible sense does this make? He could have restored a cathedral with the money wasted on all this- if he had done nothing from the day he became ABC, he could not have achieved a failure of this magnitude.
He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success Job 5:12
Ah well.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord Joshua 24:15
It is also interesting to note the role of the two rogue Africans in all this: Tengatenga, now the paid tool of TEC using his remaining position on ACC to do the will of TEC even though he is a redundant bishop; and ‘Secretary General’ Fearon, who never misses an opportunity to aim a kick at the church he comes from.
Neither a pretty sight.
AXIOS!
When many of the largest provinces no longer recognize the Anglican Consultative Counsel as an instrument of communion, has it any relevance? This certainly seems likely to speed GAFCON effectively replacing the prior structures of the communion for all but TEC, Canada, much of the CoE. and Canterbury.
And to the extent that there was goodwill on the part of some to wait and see on Welby, I think it is pretty clear that the man has destroyed that with this duplicity.
Good for Nigeria, Kenya & Uganda.
Re: what Pendennis wrote: [i]This certainly seems likely to speed GAFCON effectively replacing the prior structures of the communion for all but TEC, Canada, much of the CoE. and Canterbury.[/i]
That triggered an idea: I wonder if contributions could be raised prior to the next GAFCON in order to help support attendance by leaders from some of the other Global South leaders who’ve not yet previously been to GAFCON. If I were a betting woman, I’d wager that should those GS leaders attend GAFCON, they’d find it such a breath of fresh air and a time of edification & encouragement that they’d never look back to or miss the old-wineskin Anglican Communion gatherings with all the manipulation and blather by the Global North.
Pageantmaster,
“Welby’s silence on their barrack room lawyering has undermined confidence in his willingness to follow through as he promised to do at Canterbury.”
And just what specifically did he promise?