Meanwhile the Bishop of Newcastle, Bishop Brian Farran, who lives right next to the Sydney Diocese says Archbishop Peter Jensen has created difficulties for his relationship with the rest of the Australian church. I asked him what are those difficulties.
Brian Farran: Well I think it’s particularly difficult within the province of New South Wales where the Archbishop is the Metropolitan. I think there’s in fact emerging as he has, probably by default, as a principal leader of the GAFCON movement, and their statement in which they really encourage the formation of what seems like a church within a church. I think it would be difficult for him to come back and operate as if nothing has happened, and that the relationships that we have normally, through say our Primate with the Archbishop of Canterbury, that they’re going to be a bit muddied by his relationship with this secondary movement.
Stephen Crittenden: I’ll come to the Archbishop of Canterbury in a moment, but presumably there would be some conservative Anglicans in every diocese in Australia who might want to join this new Confessing movement, but also many Anglicans in Sydney who’d like to escape it. I mean is this the time when some kind of Episcopal oversight needs to be offered to alienating Anglicans in Sydney?
Brian Farran: Well I personally don’t agree with alternative forms of Episcopal oversight, so I’m finding myself rather constrained in all of this. Certainly I’ve been in contact with some of the Anglicans in Sydney who sometimes flee up to Newcastle actually for a dose of liturgical renewal, and they themselves have said that they’re totally disappointed that the Sydney bishops are not going to be at Lambeth, and they really do feel abandoned in that. So I guess there will be people in Sydney who are looking for some kind of insight from Lambeth and some follow-on.
Stephen Crittenden: Isn’t the primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury actually ended in that these people will be giving their allegiance to apparently a new conciliar body from which they will take their lead?
Brian Farran: This is one of the problems that the Archbishop of Canterbury has signaled in the press release that he’s issued after GAFCON. He’s indicated for example, that the GAFCON’s initiative in establishing a sort of primational council of some of those African Archbishops, will in fact blur the role of our own primates meetings within the Anglican communion, and I’m not sure how GAFCON’s going to operate, because we’ve had these four very significant instruments of unity within the Anglican community, which includes of course the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates’ meetings, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Lambeth Conference. And now there seems to be a rival organisation being established who may well actually be instrumental in developing bishops to move into other dioceses which they regard as unorthodox.
Read it all and peruse the other two GAFCON segments here and there.
“…because we’ve had these four very significant instruments of unity within the Anglican community…”
Which the Americans completely and utterly rejected, with absolutely no fallout or discipline from these Very Significant Instruments of Unity.
ECUSA burned down the house. Don’t blame your brother bishop for trying to rebuild.
I don’t think we care any longer what these bishops say.
Gafcon for many anglicans represents hope.
Canon Harmon, perhaps you could usefully add “NSW” after Newcastle, since “Bishop of Newcastle” is also the title of both Anglican and Roman Catholic prelates in England. (Not so potentially embarrassing as “Bishop of Edmonton” – a title borne by a Canadian lady and a suffragan bishop of the Diocese of London who resolutely opposes the ordination of women.)