The Anglican church is in “chaos” with the “moral authority” of the Archbishop of Canterbury lying in tatters amid growing splits over homosexuality and women bishops, rebel leaders claim.
In a direct challenge to the leadership of Dr Rowan Williams, three leading Archbishops said they had decided to “take things in hand”.
Leaders of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Foca), a newly formed network for millions of Anglicans angered by the rise of liberal theology, denied that they planned to “seize power” within the church.
“Aides to Dr Williams privately accuse the traditionalists of becoming a ‘Protestant sect’ …â€
How does one get up the brass to make such an accusation when one coddles those that purport to “marry†two men and supports schemes whereby women are said to be ordained? These sound a lot like the actions of a Protestant sect that doesn’t intend to be impeded by a silly thing such as the Catholic Tradition.
Please tell somebody in authority to scrap FOCA as an acronim, immediately.
Jeff, nobody in authority coined FOCA. It is purely the appellation assigned by various liberal groups in the UK. I think the Guardian started it, and several liberal sites have picked it up so they can make rude jokes about GAFCON.
No new name or acronym was created at GAFCON. Look at the final statement. There is reference to “a fellowship of confessing anglicans” but that is used descriptively, NEVER as a title.
Just ignore this acronym, and it should go away.
I agree with the first commenter to the Telegraph article, on the Telegraph website. The Queen needs to fire Williams and appoint an Archbishop who will uphold the faith once delivered!
Ruth Gledhill in The Times also today used “the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans” as if it were a formal title, deliberately ignoring Dr. Stephen Noll’s explicit comments about the avoidance of capital letters or any such formal name in a press conference in Jerusalem. Still, it’s understandable that journalists want a quick, shorthand way of referring to this movement, since the leaders of GAFCON have insisted that GAFCON is a movement, not just a moment or one-time event. That is a perfectly reasonable desire.
The fact is, unless the leaders of this movement of ours choose a name for it, others will choose one for us instead. So I suggest we take the initiative and come up with one of our own choosing.
One problem with using “fellowship of confessing Anglicans” is that FCA is already a fairly well-established acronym in evangelical circles, where it refers to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a ministry especially to high school students involved in athletics.
Unfortuantely, contrary to the optimistic hopes of the Elves, I’m not so sure that if we just ignore it, the label will just fade away. As long as the Jerusalem gathering represents the beginning of a real, enduring movement, and clearly its leaders intend it as such, then some such label is going to emerge. And some new acronym will surely surface. And the fact is, that particular phrase, the “fellowship of confessing Anglicans” does appear several times in the GAFCON statement and is an apt self-description.
The problem s that the press is eager to make the movement into a full-blown rival church right away. Despite what the leaders of the movement have explicitly said about that. And that is misrepresenting the facts. Journalists are entitled to their opinions and interpretations, but not to twist the facts.
David Handy+
Having been interviewed several times and reading the resulting stories I Have little faith in reporters or the media in general. I was freelance on a paper in the 1940’s when we still had editors who believed in who, what, when, and where; all esle was editorial comment by the reporter.
These news articles with fire alarm words – ‘schism’ ‘chaos’ ‘rebellion’ ‘seize’ ‘violence’ etc are too far removed from reality to be taken seriously. My response, descriptors and questions like: ‘incredulous’ ‘presupposition’ ‘skewed and biased reporting’ ‘partisan’ ‘soap opera grade’ ‘sensationalist’ ‘This person also writes for those peculiar publications you pass at the check out counters in grocery stores.’
Baruch (#6) and GA/FL (#7),
We may bemoan the loss of journalistic integrity or judgment here, but I for one do take such articles quite seriously, in the sense that they are key opinion-forming influences in our secularized society. I don’t for one moment take them seriously as sources of accurate and reliable information. But I do take them seriously as adversaries or at least obstacles that have to be faced and dealt with in the course of fulfilling the Great Commission in the western world.
One way to put the challenge before us is this: how can we communicate our message to the rest of the culture, when we can’t rely on the mass media to portray us and our case objectively? How can we take our case to the people DIRECTLY? For the grim reality is that we can no longer rely on the fairness of an extremely secularized and generally hostile press (whether we’re dealing with print, broadcast, or internet journalism). So we have to create our own Christian communications media.
This is part of what it means to live in a post-Christendom culture, where Christians have lost control of the major centers of culture. The Global South Anglicans manage to evangelize their societies anyway. The pre-Constantinian Catholic Church did the same. We can too, by God’s grace, as long as we’re willing to pay the steep price involved.
Alas, journalism is one of the fields where Christians are LEAST represented. It is a real mission field today.
David Handy+