Anglican Mainstream South Africa

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
9/4/2008

The recently concluded Lambeth Conference which calls for diversity and inclusivity by ultra-liberal Western bishops will not heal the wounds in the Anglican Communion, and will do nothing to stop the inevitable schism they have caused. In a pointed editorial entitled “The Turning Point That Wasn’t”, John Bryson Chane, the Bishop of Washington described the once-in-a-decade gathering of bishops from around the Anglican Communion in two words, “optimistic and troublesome.”

“This Lambeth Conference could have been a positive turning point for the Anglican Communion, but instead the powers that be chose to seek a middle way that is neither ‘the middle’ nor ‘the way.’ It will therefore be up to bishops from around the Communion who have continuing partner and companion relationships to work toward a more holistic view of the church.”

Chane ripped the Archbishop of Canterbury saying Dr. Williams sought what he believed was a middle way that unfortunately continues to marginalize the Canadian and American churches. “Once again, more emphasis was placed on the sexuality issue as being the ‘line drawn in the sand’ that threatens Anglican unity, with little attention paid to the invasion of primates and bishops from other provinces who continue to wreak havoc in some dioceses within the Episcopal Church.”

Chane failed to say that the sexual innovations he and his ilk are forcing on the Anglican Communion is the actual cause of the slow moving schism.

Wrote Chane, “The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for sacrifices to be made to keep the garment of the Communion together. And for the American and Canadian churches, that clearly means sacrificing once again the full participation of gay and lesbian persons in the life of our church. I for one will not ask for any more sacrifices to be made by persons in our church who have been made outcasts because of their sexual orientation.”

His views were shared by the revisionist Bishop of Massachusetts, Tom Shaw who told “The Boston Globe” that he will continue to ordain gays which he called “pastorally important” and will also consult on same-sex weddings. He said that local priests will continue to bless same-sex marriages, although Shaw said that those priests are doing so on their own and that he hadn’t authorized anybody to do anything.

As for whether he would follow up on his earlier intention to push for ending the moratorium on gay bishops and allowing church recognition of same-sex marriage when the Episcopal Church meets at its General Convention next year, Shaw said he would now wait until he meets with all the American bishops next month to decide how he will proceed.

Read Full Article

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
8/13/2008

Despite huge and obvious divergences, the Anglican Communion is struggling to reach a new level of maturity, wrote Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, TEC Presiding Bishop, in a by-lined article in the Guardian newspaper. The recently-concluded Lambeth Conference provided an opportunity for bishops from around the Anglican Communion to discover the deeper realities of the contexts in which each seeks to spread the gospel, she said.

“One bishop from India reported a legislative requirement to obtain a magistrate’s certificate before baptizing a convert, with a prison term of several years and a significant fine as the penalty for proceeding without legal sanction.

“A bishop’s spouse from Africa reported the church’s difficulty in supporting widows who are pressured to marry the dead husband’s brother (even if already married), or else forfeit their children and property.”

VOL: Perhaps Mrs. Schori could have mentioned a Canadian Christian Pastor who is being threatened with jail for daring to say that sodomy is unbiblical and bad for your health.

Jefferts Schori: “Bishops from Madagascar told of cyclones that destroy their people’s homes and crops, often several times a year, and how they seek to build strong church buildings that can be havens from the storms as well as seats of learning.

VOL: This is a problem of natural evil which Jesus himself addressed. Wealthy churches like the Episcopal Church should be giving money to build and rebuild such structures instead of spending millions of dollars on lawsuits suing orthodox parishes for their properties.

Jefferts Schori: Western bishops spoke of the church’s pastoral role in seeking to provide sacred support for same-sex couples living in monogamous, life-long relationships.

VOL: There is no biblical evidence that the churches should be supporting any such sexual arrangements outside of heterosexual marriage. This is to denigrate and pollute “sacred” marriage and the gospel and offers a reductionist view of human sexual behavior that has no sanction in 2000 years of church history and is still not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, the great Orthodox churches of the East and West, the vast majority of Evangelicals throughout the world nor is it the overwhelming thinking of the Muslim community.

Jefferts Schori: “Bishops from Africa and Asia told of the difficulty of evangelism in majority Muslim societies. Sudanese bishops sought partnerships as they seek to resettle returning refugees and rebuild a devastated church structure.”

VOL: The Presiding Bishop missed the impromptu press conference by the Sudanese Archbishop who said Bishop Gene Robinson should resign and blamed western pansexualism for the difficulties in evangelizing Muslims. Jefferts Schori deliberately overlooks the fact that one of the great difficulties in doing Muslim evangelism is that they are pouring scorn, and, in some cases, persecuting Christians because of Western Anglican homosexual stances. How convenient of her to do this.

Jefferts Schori: “A Tanzanian bishop lamented the difficulty of biblical study without libraries or access to the scholarly tools Westerners take for granted. ”

VOL: As these brothers are orthodox, perhaps the Presiding Bishop could offer generous scholarships for their priests to study at TSM and Nashotah House. The “generous orthodoxy” of Virginian Theological Seminary is a bit too generous for African Evangelical Anglicans.

Jefferts Schori: Japanese bishops spoke of the church’s inability to address social change when Christianity is such a small part of society.

VOL: Japan’s Anglicans have never been known for their evangelical zeal. Despite a prosperous society, only 4% of Japanese people are Christians (George Gallup). Following World War II, the Japanese bought into America’s economic capitalist system, but not its gospel. This failure might be as much ours as theirs.

Jefferts Schori: “Given divergences that look interplanetary in degree and scale, what does this diverse body have in common? Certainly a recognizably common framework of worship, descended from the Church of England. A reliance on sacred scripture, in common with tradition and reason, also characteristic of roots in British Christianity. And a passion for caring for their flocks – the hungry, the sick, the aged and infirm, widows and orphans, and the forgotten, as well as those who know no good news.

“But the forms and structures of the various provinces of the Anglican Communion have diverged significantly, in ways that challenge those ancient ties to England and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Those provinces are the result of evangelism tied to colonial structures, whether of Britain or her former colonies, and that colonial history has still to be unpacked and assessed. The present attempts to manage conflict in the communion through a renewed focus on structural ties to old or new authorities have generated significant resistance, both from provinces who largely absented themselves from Lambeth and from dissenting voices among the attending bishops.

VOL: Correct. And the reason those provinces have absented themselves is because bishops like Jefferts Schori, Gene Robinson, Tom Shaw, et al don’t have the same gospel as the vast majority of the world’s Anglicans and they are in deep conflict over the meaning of mission and sex outside of marriage. The Episcopal Church has nobody to blame but itself for the mess it has caused and continues to cause the wider Anglican Communion.

Jefferts Schori: “The Anglican communion’s present reality reflects a struggle to grow into a new level of maturity, like that of adult siblings in a much-conflicted family. As we continue to wrestle, sufficient space and respect for the differing gifts of the siblings just might lead to greater maturity in relationship. This will require greater self-definition as well as decreased reactivity. Jesus’ own example in relationships with his opponents and with his disciples will be instructive.”

VOL: The truth is that the Anglican Communion’s “present reality” is one of apostasy and heresy in the West verses orthodoxy in faith and morals among the majority of the world’s Anglicans. The Global South rejects any notion that the new “maturity” leads to pansexual acceptance. It is Jefferts Schori and her ilk that want to change the doctrine and discipline of the church, and by doing so have brought the whole communion to the brink of schism.

The Anglican Communion is de facto split with the birth of GAFCON and it will not go backwards in the name of “maturity”. The so-called “dithering gifts” have fractured the Anglican Communion and, like Humpty Dumpty, will not be put back together again. “Greater self-definition” means being accountable to nobody including the Archbishop of Canterbury and “decreased reactivity” isn’t going to happen. The Internet will see to that. Asking Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola not to be “reactive” to Western apostasy is a bit like asking a caged lion not to eat a half dead cow being handed to it.

Anglican unity is over. The Lambeth Conference is finished. All that remains to be seen is who speaks for Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion as we move into the 21st Century. It surely isn’t a dying Western Anglican Church.

WILLIAMS STEALTH ENDORSEMENT OF GAY AGENDA REVEALED IN S.P.R.E.A.D. DOCUMENT

NOTE: VOL believes that in light of recent revelations of Dr. Williams on homosexuality with letters between himself and a lady psychiatrist in Wales, that this SPREAD article with links to the original S.P.R.E.A.D. document are important enough to run again.

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
2/19/2007

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams has been exposed in a 140-page document as a theologian-leader who has long supported non-celibate gay and lesbian sexual relationships, contrary to Holy Scripture.

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/content/Williamsandscripture.pdf

Williams, who authored The Body’s Grace and Open to Judgement has a long history of supporting pansexual behavior going back to the early 1980s when he was a spiritual director to persons engaged in homosexual activity.

A team of theologians headed by the Rt. Rev. John Rodgers produced the document believing that the Anglican Communion has not been made fully aware of the archbishop’s views that are at variance with the vast majority of 78-million Anglicans most of whom reside in the Global South and who eschew homosexuality.

The findings of the report are devastating and conclude that the defenders of the Anglican Faith cannot rely on Rowan Williams to use the powers of the Archbishop of Canterbury to preserve, much less propagate, the Anglican Faith which adheres to the sovereign authority of Scripture and requires obedience to the moral commandments given from God by Moses.

The evidence shows that Williams worked for many years before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury to replace the Anglican Faith with a different kind of faith which adheres to the sovereign authority of man’s reason, intelligence, and experience, and promotes a new moral code. The evidence also allows little room to believe that since becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury Williams has changed his teachings.

The 140-page document reveals that Williams began to reject Scripture’s prohibition of same gender sexual relations some time in the 1980s and in a newspaper interview in 2002 he stated that his “developing sense over the last twenty years” that the Church should approve of same gender sexual relations “has come in part from being the spiritual director to people of the homosexual orientation.”

In an interview Williams said; “I did come to a point where I could no longer say the Biblical account answers all of the questions we have or want to ask.”

Williams acted on his conclusion that scripture did not have all the answers concerning same gender sexual relations with such diligence that he became a leader in the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. This movement was founded in 1976 in England by Richard Kirker who is currently its Executive Director. The LGCM sponsored an annual “Michael Harding Memorial Address” and Rowan Williams addressed the group a decade later in his now famous lecture “The Body’s Grace”.

Williams founded the Institute of Christianity and Sexuality and in 1996 changed its name to the Center for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality expressly holding as a matter of “conviction ” that “it is entirely compatible with the Christian faith not only to love another person of the same sex, but also express that love fully in a personal sexual relationship.”

Williams critique of Scripture can best be summarized in his own words: “I suspect that a fuller exploration of the sexual metaphors of the Bible will have more to teach us about a theology and ethics of sexual desire than will the flat citation of isolated texts; and I hope other theologians will find this worth following up more fully than I can do here.”

Williams was also a member of the board of editors of the journal Theology and Sexuality when its first edition was published in 1994 and remained on its board till 2002 after he was selected to be the Archbishop of Canterbury.

David Holloway, an evangelical leader exposed an issue of this journal which had such articles as, ‘men, Muscles and Zombies,” “The Place for Porn in a Gay Spiritual Economy,” and “Finding God in the Heart-Genital Connection.”

In 1990, Williams worked with the Rev. Canon Jeffrey John, Bishop Richard Holloway, and others to found another organization which promotes the Church’s approval of same gender sexual relations, “Affirming Catholicism”. In the words of its executive director, “Affirming Catholicism has consistently called for the full inclusion of lesbian and gay members of the Church.”

Affirming Catholicism sets forth in its website many of the concepts used by the proponents of the Church’s approval of same gender sexual relations. Among them is the major concept that Scripture’s commandments concerning moral behavior are not conclusive, but are subject to change inspired by the Holy Spirit and measured by human reason, intelligence and experience.” This concept becomes clear when various Affirming Catholicism web publications are pieced together.

Williams gave papers at the Affirming Catholicism conferences in 1991, 1993, 1995, and 2000. Williams traveled to the USA and Canada addressing Affirming Catholicism members in those countries.

In 1992 when Williams was enthroned as Bishop of Monmouth in the Province of Wales he ordained a priest he knew to be unrepentantly homosexual. Williams later explained that he takes the “minority” position that priests do not have to give up a homosexual lifestyle, and he is “not convinced that a homosexual has to be celibate in every imaginable circumstance.” However, if priests engage in same gender sexual relations, Williams would “want to be sure that their attitude to their sexual habits is a reasonable, prayerful, and theologically informed one.”

Not surprisingly Frank Griswold’s teachings reflect Affirming Catholicism’s themes of the Holy Spirit speaking in new ways and the measuring of sexual conduct by human experience.

But it is not only homosexuality that Williams has affirmed. In March 1996 Williams reviewed a book, “Just Good Friends: Towards a Lesbian and Gay Theology of Relationships. Williams states among other things, “Liz Stuart is able to point meaningly and effectively to the image of Sophia as the connection-making, time-taking energy of God in the world, the divine “Spiderwoman” whose life is found in but not extinguished by the event of Jesus – Jesus in the community of those he loves and who love him.”

Williams wrote that “contemporary debates suggest that we are getting worse all the time, with out obsessive searches for purity, whether radical or conservative.”

Later he wrote, “The apparently clear line between eros and friendship is illusory; we are looking at different forms of one passion – the passion for life-giving interconnection.”

In 1997, Williams demonstrated his commitment to his teaching that the Church should approve of same gender sexual relations by giving up the opportunity to be the Bishop of Southwark in the C of E rather than abandon it. Carey objected to the appointment, and asked Williams to distance himself from his teaching. Williams refused the condition and was not nominated for the post.

Williams later helped the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality’s “sister organization,” Changing Attitude, (a network of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual members of the Church of England) lobby for the approval of same gender sexual relations at the 1998 Lambeth Conference. Williams wrote the forward for the book “The Other Way? Anglican Gay and Lesbian Journeys” published by Changing Attitude in June 1998.

The 1998 Lambeth Conference voted overwhelmingly against homosexual relationships affirming that the only place for sexual expression was in life long union between a man and a woman in marriage. When Roman Catholic Cardinal Cassidy gave the homily at Lambeth, he said that there could be no unity between the Catholic Church and the Communion as long as the Communion permitted sexual behavior contrary to the Gospel. Williams took an opposite position to Cassidy saying that opposing views on the sexuality question should not be a bar to unity. Williams said that unity in the Anglican Communion despite the difference over the sexuality question was not “unity at all costs.” Williams obliquely dismissed Scripture as the basis for Christians to discern moral truth.

When Lambeth 1:10 was overwhelmingly passed by a vast majority of bishops that said same gender sexual relations are “incompatible with Scripture” and therefore should not be engaged in, Rowan Williams countered that God doe does not communicate to us authoritatively through the Holy Scriptures, because the writers thereof “misapprehended(ed)” and “misread” “the mind of God” and therefore Holy Scriptures are not the rule and ultimate standard of faith and practice.

Williams joined with other bishops in announcing to the world their refusal to comply with the 1998 Lambeth Conference’s teachings concerning the authority of Scripture and same gender sexual relations.

On the last day of Lambeth Williams and a group of other Anglican bishops announced to the world their opposition to Resolution 1.10′s prohibition of the approval of same gender sexual relations. They did this by signing and issuing to the public the 1998 Pastoral Statement to Lesbian and Gay Anglicans.

In 2000, after Williams was enthroned as the Archbishop and Primate of Wales, he provided the Foreword to the book “Seeking the Truth in Love, The Church and Homosexuality, by the Bishop of Bristol-Swindon, Michael Doe. Williams argued, as he did at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, that the members of the Anglican Communion should remain united despite their differences over the teaching that the Church should approve of same gender sexual relations.

With the publication of “The Body’s Grace” as a pamphlet and as a chapter in the book “Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings”, and the reprinting of Open to Judgement in 2002, Williams put forth afresh, which he was under consideration to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, his teachings that the church should approve of same gender sexual relations and any opposition to based on Scripture relies on “an abstract fundamentalist deployment of very ambiguous biblical texts.”

In 2002, on the eve of his becoming the next Archbishop of Canterbury, a group of evangelical clergy and laity who sought the return of the C of E to its Biblical roots expressed its objection to Williams becoming the next ABC. They wrote a book “A Line in the sand, Reform and Rowan Williams” which pointed out Williams’s anti-Scriptural teaching concerning same gender sexual relations and called on Williams to expressly state his position concerning such teaching and suggested Williams decline the appointment to be the next ABC if he could not repent.

Williams responded saying he would separate out his personal views from “the majority teaching of the church, and I will exercise the discipline of the Church as I am bound to do. But I can’t go beyond this and say that I believe what I do not believe.”

As a result Church Society an orthodox group of theologians, clergy and laity me with Williams and after talking with him made the following charges against Williams.

On salvation: Williams claimed to uphold the 39 Articles believing a person can only be saved through Christ, however this does not mean that a person of another religion can be saved even though they do not personally know Christ.

On Sexual Practice: Williams is the first ABC who is prepared to condone sexual immorality, including homosexual practice in defiance of I Cor. 6: 9-10. Williams believes that there may be circumstances in which homosexual practice is acceptable. Within a committed ‘covenantal’ relationship it may be permissible for homosexual practice to take place, says Williams.

We conclude that Dr. Rowan Williams teaching on sexuality are sub-Biblical, indeed heretical; that he does not accept Scripture as God’s Word concerning the nature of God, man’s relation to God, or the manner in which man should behave. Williams does not provide answers, he only poses questions and offers a methodology for answering them by looking to “our experience of Christian humanity and reality and how our thinking fits with it.”

By dismissing Scripture as the supreme source of knowledge and treating it as merely a methodological guide for finding God’s will in the experience of Christian humanity, Williams replaces the Anglican faith with a totally new religion wrapped in Christian trappings and terminology.

The entire 148 page report can be read in PDF format here:
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/content/Williamsandscripture.pdf

END

August 6th, 2008 Posted in News |

http://www.anglican-mainstream.org.za/wp-admin/page-new.php?posted=64

Lambeth: Surmise, frustration, and interest greet proposals

August 5th, 2008 Posted in News |

By Pat Ashworth, Church Times

INITIAL REACTIONS to the Windsor Continuation Group’s suggestions reflected a scepticism that exists within the group itself. On the subject of the moratoriums, the group acknowledges that, on three previous occasions, most recently the Primates’ Meeting in Dar es Salaam in 2007, requests to desist have been “less than wholeheartedly embraced on both sides”.

As a result, much surmise and varying degrees of frustration followed Monday’s airing of the group’s observations, writes Pat Ashworth. Even the Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, was throwing up his hands and could not come up with a comment.

The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, reflected a view expressed by others when he said on Tuesday: “Everyone will tell them how deficient it is, and then something else will happen.”

Resolutions at this Lambeth Conference would have been disastrous, but this had been the wrong process, he suggested. “The Americans have produced material which they say they have had no chance to give, though they gave it to the ACC and they gave it to the Primates. All the time, different things are being presented to different groups and so not everyone is in the loop.”

Dr Morgan voiced one key difficulty: bishops from provinces where leadership was autocratic still could not comprehend why their colleagues in other provinces were not able to make an instant decision.

“The assumption is that polity is made by bishops. Some of us live in Churches that believe in synodical government. We can influence but not control,” said Dr Morgan.

The Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Thabo Makgoba, found the reception of the report very encouraging. “When people stood up and said: ‘Well, my brother Americans, I disagree fundamentally and theologically with you, but I will not leave the Anglican Communion — that, for me, kept up the spirit of indaba.

“In indaba, we do not write each other off. We say: ‘I may disagree with you, but let’s keep on defining what our position is and through that we will finally come to an agreement.’

A significant majority of those at Lambeth wanted to stay together, said the Archbishop. “My sense is that, even if we are not articulating it as such, even if sometimes we are clumsy at that, the fact that we have stayed right through and engaged one another is a positive thing.”

The Primate of Australia, the Most Revd Phillip Aspinall, said he saw the wisdom in the idea of setting up a pastoral forum and the three suggested moratoriums, adds Ed Beavan; but he called for the Lambeth Conference to flesh out the details.

“We’ll be looking for the Lambeth Conference to work out these proposals in more detail. We need to have the Windsor Continuation Group give a bit of a steer so they can show the way the Communion should be moving.”

The Bishop of Alabama, the Rt Revd Henry Parsley, described the group’s suggestion of a pastoral forum or “holding bay” for disaffected groups within the Communion, as “interesting”.

“My sense is it would bring people together face to face to talk about these things. I think that will be a tremendous step forward, so we’re not sending communiqués across the ocean, so we don’t really talk about things in person.

“We need restraint, patience and forbearance, forbearance is one of my favourite biblical words. We all need patience and forgiveness. As Desmond Tutu said about the Anglican Communion: ‘We’re messy, but we’re also lovable.’”

GAFCON, the future and the Jerusalem Statement

August 3rd, 2008 Posted in Global Anglican Future Conference, Lambeth Conference, News |

by the Rev David Holloway, vicar of Jesmond Parish Church, Newcastle, England.  August 3 2008

GAFCON and its history

The Global Anglican Future CONference held in Jerusalem at the end of June 2008 occurred not to stop a split in the Anglican Communion but because there already exists such a  split. That is a sad but hard fact. The presenting problem is homosexual relationships, with things coming to a head in 2003 in the United States with the consecration as bishop of New Hampshire of a partnered homosexual, Gene Robinson. Since the 1970s and the “Gay Liberation” movement the Western Churches have tried to pretend the “gay agenda” is not a problem. The leadership has wanted this to be considered a secondary issue over which there is liberty to disagree. The majority of Christians, however, think otherwise. Votes in the Church of England’s General Synod in 1987 and the Lambeth Conference in 1998 made this crystal clear. A significant number of bishops, however, ignored these resolutions.

In 2002 Rowan Williams was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams had publicly admitted to ordaining a man he knew had a homosexual partner and acknowledged “that ‘conforming your life … to Christ’ doesn’t necessarily mean giving up a homosexual lifestyle.” Before his appointment was official, therefore, some of us, incumbents of larger Anglican churches, felt obliged to write to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, registering our opposition. We said:

“such actions and views [as those above] fly in the face of the clear teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference 1998. Rowan Williams would not have the confidence of the vast majority of Anglicans in the world, who are now in the third world and who, as loyal Anglicans, take the Holy Scriptures as their supreme authority. His appointment would lead to a major split in the Anglican Communion (including the Church of England).”

Sadly we have been proved correct.

The last straw

In the summer of 2003 Rowan Williams, at the start, approved the appointment of a partnered homosexual as the new Bishop of Reading. Fortunately Jeffrey John, the man concerned, offered his resignation after Oxford clergy had vigorously protested. Then came the autumn of 2003. Rowan Williams now found himself presiding at a meeting of Primates (senior archbishops from around the world) at Lambeth. The meeting was over the proposed consecration of Gene Robinson [already referred to] and it warned:

“If his consecration proceeds … 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).”

The consecration, however, went ahead. Discussion after discussion was held to resolve problems that followed. But little was changed. Indeed, discussion without discipline means more and more church gay activity with impunity. In England, for example, bishops were soon equivocating over homosexual Civil Partnerships (virtual “gay marriage”) with one of the first, if not the first of these, taking place in our own parish of Jesmond at the Newcastle Civic Centre. A clergyman from the Durham diocese was there registering his relationship with his male lover in December 2005. A service followed in St Thomas’ Haymarket at which the former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, preached and a former suffragan bishop of Durham was present. The clergyman involved has now retired from Durham diocese. But he is living in retirement in Newcastle and with Permission to Officiate (as a clergyman in the Newcastle diocese) granted by the Bishop of Newcastle.

The last straw for the GAFCON Primates, however, was in February 2007. At the main Primates meeting in Tanzania it was decided that the Episcopal Church of America should be given just one last chance to repent of its support for the gay agenda and being complicit in the consecration of Gene Robinson. But its decision had to come before 30 September 2007. But what did Rowan Williams do? Let me now quote Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Primate of All Nigeria (and on the GAFCON leadership team). In his opening address at the conference he reminded the 1100 plus participants of what happened next:

“Strangely, before the deadline, and before the Primates could get the opportunity of meeting to assess the adequacy of the response of TEC [the Episcopal Church] 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.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury seemed so “not interested” that last November (2007) he decided to preside and preach at a “secret” service of Holy Communion for Church of England gay clergy and their partners. This shocked many as Holy Communion should never cause a “scandal” (according to the rubric in the Book of Common Prayer service – the Anglican standard).

Why GAFCON?

It was for all these, and other reasons, said Archbishop Akinola, that GAFCON came about: “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.” To be fair to Rowan Williams, he now is seeking, as Archbishop of Canterbury and as best he can, to “uphold” the orthodox position. But if he personally is still not convinced of the clear biblical teaching prohibiting gay sex, he will not be teaching the orthodox position effectively nor will he properly refute erroneous views. Yet the Church of England Canon C18 requires “every bishop … to teach and to uphold sound and wholesome doctrine, and to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange opinion.” Nor is this a secondary issue. “Let’s talk about knife crime and the poor and not sexuality,” say some, including Gene Robinson. But according to the Archbishop of the Sudan, Daniel Deng Bul, speaking at the Lambeth Conference at the end of July 2008 and calling on Gene Robinson to resign, this is certainly not a secondary issue for him. It is a life and death issue:

“This issue of homosexuality in the Anglican Communion has a very serious effect in my country. We are called ‘infidels’ by the Moslems. That means that they will do whatever they can against us to keep us from damaging the people of our country. They challenge our people to convert to Islam and leave the infidel Anglican Church. When our people refuse, sometimes they are killed. These people are very evil and mutilate and harm our people. I am begging the Communion on this issue so no more of my people will be killed.”

Scriptural authority

The real issue, of course, is scriptural authority; and that relates to the question “what does it mean to be Anglican?” Is Anglicanism to be defined as a Communion of those who can subscribe to a doctrinal basis, namely the legal basis of the Church of England, that says Anglican doctrine …

“… is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular, such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal” (Canon A5)?

Or is Anglicanism to be defined by the so called four Instruments of Unity – the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates Meeting and the ACC (Anglican Advisory Council) even when there is no longer doctrinal agreement? The idea that mere structures can sustain unity without an agreed agenda of adequate common belief, is to live in cloud-cuckoo land. Indeed, it is a recipe for chaos. So the GAFCON statement makes it clear where it stands. It defines Anglicanism as a Communion of those united by their confession of Canon A5 (and it underlines the value of the Thirty-nine Articles). It does not see invitations to the Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury as necessarily definitive. It follows, of course, that those who do not subscribe to that Anglican confession are the schismatics, not those who absent themselves from a Lambeth Conference. It is interesting to note that a document discussed by the bishops at  the Lambeth Conference at the end of July and called the St Andrew’s Draft Covenant has a less robust profession for Anglicanism:

“it professes the faith which is uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as containing all things necessary for salvation and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith, and which is set forth in the catholic creeds, and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear significant witness, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation.”

This form of words follows the “liberal” revised Church of England Canon C15 that since the 1970s has allowed clergy to hold any and every belief. It looks good. But without requiring assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England that previously was required, there is no control on how little you need to be believe to be a clergyman. In the words of a Church of England Doctrine Commission report, there are now people who

“would respect the dogmas of the Church (epitomized in the creeds) as showing, in the language and thought-forms of the age that produced them, balanced and authoritative affirmations, excluding false theological solutions and including the necessary theological ingredients. For such Christians, however, both doctrines and dogmas are so inadequate to the living reality of whom they are the attempted theological formulations that they cannot command full commitment or loyalty. In the best sense of the word they are ‘provisional’.”

So GAFCON is once again taking the Thirty-nine Articles seriously. Without doing so people can believe all or (almost) nothing while claiming to be “Anglican”.

“Expressly declared”

But why is it the homosexual issue in particular is the issue that has fractured the Anglican Communion? The answer probably is in the last words of Article XVII of the Thirty-nine: “in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.”

The prohibition on same sex relationships is “expressly declared” in the Bible. It is not ambiguous. That is the consensus of the Church of England bishops who have admitted that there is …

“… in Scripture an evolving convergence on the ideal of lifelong, monogamous heterosexual union as the setting intended by God for the proper development of men and women as sexual beings. Sexual activity of any kind outside marriage comes to be seen as sinful, and homosexual practice as especially dishonourable” (Issues in Human Sexuality 1991 p 18).

Such an “express declaration” means it is not possible to claim submission to biblical authority with integrity and say that such relationships are right. They are “expressly declared” as wrong. (Of course, the Bible is not saying it is wrong to be tempted sexually; rather it is wrong to pretend such desires are right and good).

Because this prohibition is clear from the Bible, its rejection raises much deeper questions about biblical authority. As the Church of England, the mother church of the Anglican Communion, bases itself (or “grounds” itself – Canon A5) on the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, which you have in the Bible, plain rejections of biblical authority require church discipline. The GAFCON leadership, representing two-thirds of world Anglicanism, felt that such a lack of doctrinal discipline on the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury was serious. This lack of discipline was especially evidenced by the invitations to Lambeth of those who consecrated Gene Robinson while there were no invitations for their own bishops who have been helping believers in heretical dioceses. It, therefore, seemed wise to set up an international conference for Anglican bishops and other leaders to consult, to encourage one another and to begin something that, God willing, will help unite the true Anglican Communion.

So much for background. The following is the final statement that came out of Jerusalem – and it was a truly collaborative effort.   Read the Jerusalem Statement here www.gafcon.org/index.php

A challenge to the Archbishop of Canterbury to declare a split in the Anglican Communion for the sake of orthodox Christianity