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.
“The Catholic Church in England was faced with the choice of aligning itself with either Rome or Geneva.” Choice? Given the history of the Reformation in England, this is truly a strange sentence.
#1, Indeed. To which choice Jewel, Hooker and the Caroline Divines responded, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on one’s point of view, the Church of England retained its Catholic infrastructure, upon which the Reformers, with mixed success, imposed Reformed and Lutheran theologies always at odds with this Catholic infrastructure. This should be the real presenting issue before all Anglican conferences, but of course it is lost in the issues of the day (although the WO issue does impinge upon the basic issue I refer to).