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http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8511

JERUSALEM: Historic Moment As Orthodox Anglicans Ratify New Direction for Church

Posted by David Virtue on 2008/6/29 20:20:00 (1857 reads)

JERUSALEM: Historic Moment As Orthodox Anglicans Ratify New Direction for Church

By David W. Virtue in Jerusalem
www.virtueonline.org
June 29, 2008

Describing it as a solemn and important moment, Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen told 1,200 pilgrims at the Renaissance Hotel that the Anglican Communion "is about to receive a dose of order."

Moments later, Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola stepped up to the podium and announced that a statement had been written and accepted by the leadership. Copies were then handed to all the participants. Ugandan Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi proceeded to solemnly read it aloud.

At the conclusion of the Statement, the delegates rose to their feet as one and broke into applause.

Akinola then returned to the podium and asked, "Is it your will it be adopted. Cries of 'yes' resounded throughout the ballroom."

The Archbishop of Tanzania, the Rt. Rev. Valentino Mokiwa then rose and asked for the people's prayers. Immediately, Archbishops Peter Akinola (Nigeria), Henry Luke Orombi (Uganda) Greg Venables, (Southern Cone) and Emmanuel Kolini (Rwanda) stepped up to the podium and publicly signed the document. Archbishop Mokiwa (Tanzania) still needs to obtain clearance from his House of Bishops, but indicated that would not be a problem. Archbishop Peter Jensen also affirmed the document, but could not sign it as he is not a Primate. Archbishop Justice Akrofi (West Africa) also signed it.

"That glorious future we have been looking forward too has been borne," cried Akinola. The 1200 pilgrims then stood as one and broke out in the doxology.

The Nigerian Primate then gave the final blessing. The delegates roared "Amen" and sang an African hymn. Following this, they all broke out and sang, "To God be the God I don't think this is right but I don't know what it should be glory great things he has done."

Dr. Os Guinness, author, social critic, and plenary speaker told VOL, "This is an historic moment. 200 years of slow hemorrhaging of faith from the liberal revisionism of the Enlightenment has finally been staunched by a major movement of faith and truth."

What has happened here today in Jerusalem is momentous. A new day has dawned for world Anglicanism. The Anglican Communion will never be the same again.

What they told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, was clear and unequivocal. They will not tolerate a global communion with a colonial structure. They then said Dr. Williams had overturned the conciliar authority of the Communion by deflecting the Primates' demand in 2003 for discipline of TEC. Above all, they stated that they don't need to go through Canterbury to get to Jesus. The participants also affirmed the need for a new North American Anglican province, which will undoubtedly get Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop, riled up and consulting her attorney, David Booth Beers. Since none of the U.S. bishops here signed the document, there is not a lot she can do.

What the participants heard today, they will carry back to their parishes and dioceses in the US and Canada. What they say will only hasten the schism started by liberals and revisionists with their actions in 2003.

At a press conference, the five primates, including Bishop David Anderson of CANA, were questioned on the statement with one reporter asking if the statement was more magisterial than expected. Archbishop Orombi replied that it was within the framework of the Anglican Communion with recognition, for the moment, that Dr. Rowan Williams was still the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola said that with the turmoil in the Anglican Communion this Declaration is "a fresh hope and fresh beginning. We are going to send it out with a covering letter as a chance to renew... to start all over again and march on."

Asked if GAFCON is "a church within a church" Akinola said "No". "I don't agree with that description. We are part of the worldwide church."

He said that history has been made. "What we have today is not just Global South members, but a global coming together of faithful Anglicans from around the world. What the official Instruments of the Communion have not been able to do this conference has done."

Questioned about who would support a new North American Anglican orthodox Province, Bishop David Anderson said all the Episcopal bishops present were on board. "There was an overwhelming consensus. Our hope is for a re-gathering of a portion of the church that has scattered. Heterodoxy is untenable."

He said that the new province will not be just the US and Canada, but it will be transnational in character. Asked about a timeline, Anderson said, "We want to go home and figure out what needs to be done."

Questioned about the American Anglican Council and the American Anglican Network, Anderson said, "to the extent that they are part of the communion, they are all signatories of Common Cause and Bishop Robert Duncan is moderator of both AAN and CCP.

Asked about the implications of the province being a new legal entity, Anderson said they would have to explore that over the coming months.

"The Province is in a proto stage. It has gone a long way and we would need to see how that plays out. Perhaps, by the end of the year, we will have a petition to lay before the Primates."

END

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http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2008/6/30/ACNS4417

Anglican Communion News Service

Archbishop of Canterbury responds to GAFCON statement

Posted On : June 30, 2008 5:04 PM | Posted By : Webmaster

ACNS: ACNS4417

Related Categories: Lambeth

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has responded to the final declaration of the Global Anglican Future Conference with the following statement:

The Final Statement from the GAFCON meeting in Jordan and Jerusalem contains much that is positive and encouraging about the priorities of those who met for prayer and pilgrimage in the last week. The ‘tenets of orthodoxy’ spelled out in the document will be acceptable to and shared by the vast majority of Anglicans in every province, even if there may be differences of emphasis and perspective on some issues. I agree that the Communion needs to be united in its commitments on these matters, and I have no doubt that the Lambeth Conference will wish to affirm all these positive aspects of GAFCON’s deliberations. Despite the claims of some, the conviction of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Lord and God and the absolute imperative of evangelism are not in dispute in the common life of the Communion

However, GAFCON’s proposals for the way ahead are problematic in all sorts of ways, and I urge those who have outlined these to think very carefully about the risks entailed.

A ‘Primates’ Council’ which consists only of a self-selected group from among the Primates of the Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion. And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries is fraught with difficulties, both theological and practical – theological because of our historic commitments to mutual recognition of ministries in the Communion, practical because of the obvious strain of responsibly exercising episcopal or primatial authority across enormous geographical and cultural divides.

Two questions arise at once about what has been proposed. By what authority are Primates deemed acceptable or unacceptable members of any new primatial council? And how is effective discipline to be maintained in a situation of overlapping and competing jurisdictions?

No-one should for a moment impute selfish or malicious motives to those who have offered pastoral oversight to congregations in other provinces; these actions, however we judge them, arise from pastoral and spiritual concern. But one question has repeatedly been raised which is now becoming very serious: how is a bishop or primate in another continent able to discriminate effectively between a genuine crisis of pastoral relationship and theological integrity, and a situation where there are underlying non-theological motivations at work? We have seen instances of intervention in dioceses whose leadership is unquestionably orthodox simply because of local difficulties of a personal and administrative nature. We have also seen instances of clergy disciplined for scandalous behaviour in one jurisdiction accepted in another, apparently without due process. Some other Christian churches have unhappy experience of this problem and it needs to be addressed honestly.

It is not enough to dismiss the existing structures of the Communion. If they are not working effectively, the challenge is to renew them rather than to improvise solutions that may seem to be effective for some in the short term but will continue to create more problems than they solve. This challenge is one of the most significant focuses for the forthcoming Lambeth Conference. One of its major stated aims is to restore and deepen confidence in our Anglican identity. And this task will require all who care as deeply as the authors of the statement say they do about the future of Anglicanism to play their part.

The language of ‘colonialism’ has been freely used of existing patterns. No-one is likely to look back with complacency to the colonial legacy. But emerging from the legacy of colonialism must mean a new co-operation of equals, not a simple reversal of power. If those who speak for GAFCON are willing to share in a genuine renewal of all our patterns of reflection and decision-making in the Communion, they are welcome, especially in the shaping of an effective Covenant for our future together.

I believe that it is wrong to assume we are now so far apart that all those outside the GAFCON network are simply proclaiming another gospel. This is not the case; it is not the experience of millions of faithful and biblically focused Anglicans in every province. What is true is that, on all sides of our controversies, slogans, misrepresentations and caricatures abound. And they need to be challenged in the name of the respect and patience we owe to each other in Jesus Christ.

I have in the past quoted to some in the Communion who would call themselves radical the words of the Apostle in I Cor.11.33: ‘wait for one another’. I would say the same to those in whose name this statement has been issued. An impatience at all costs to clear the Lord’s field of the weeds that may appear among the shoots of true life (Matt.13.29) will put at risk our clarity and effectiveness in communicating just those evangelical and catholic truths which the GAFCON statement presents.

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http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/13844/

SARAH HEY

A Brief Analysis of Rowan Williams’ Response to the Jerusalem Declaration

Monday, June 30, 2008 • 11:43 am

But why would the authors of the Jerusalem Declaration imagine or wish to "pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion" when they have just spent a week meeting about the fact that they do not believe that certain other leaders in the Communion actually share the same gospel?

I am not surprised by the points of critique that Rowan Williams offers. Nor do I find them -- or him -- disturbing, as I would expect nothing less than what he has said. I like him [from what I know from a great great distance], and I usually enjoy reading his sermons and talks.

In his critique, Rowan Williams states "A 'Primates' Council' which consists only of a self-selected group from among the Primates of the Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion" . . . and this is of course true.

Of course this will not "pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion" -- just as the actions of TEC do not "pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion". I would put it to the Archbishop of Canterbury that this matter of the Primates Council not "passing the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion" is a feature, not a flaw.

Rowan Williams goes on to ask "By what authority are Primates deemed acceptable or unacceptable members of any new primatial council?"

But that's an easy answer. By what authority does the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club determine the seedings of the tennis players who enter The Championships?

The answer is rather clear. By the authority of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club which manages The Championships.

Any organization -- and the Jerusalem Declaration establishes the rudiments of an organization -- has the authority to manage its affairs and establish a coherent order and discipline. Of course . . . so does the Anglican Communion, another organization that has the authority to manage its affairs and establish a coherent order and discipline. It will be interesting to see if either succeeds.

Finally, Rowan Williams asks "how is effective discipline to be maintained in a situation of overlapping and competing jurisdictions?"

The answer is . . . not at all, for the Anglican Communion as a whole.

But then . . . that won't be a change. It is clear that there is no ability to maintain "effective discipline" in this "situation" in the Anglican Communion. Nor is there anything on the horizon that is likely to maintain "effective discipline" in the future.

Since a group of Primates and bishops has recognized and acknowledged that inability for the Anglican Communion, they appear to be determined to carve out a place of sanity -- a small green isle of order -- within the Anglican Communion in which such discipline actually can be maintained.

What the Jerusalem Declaration appears to be establishing is an organization that will keep "effective discipline" for itself, since the umbrella Anglican Communion is unable to. As has been thoroughly proven over the past five years, those who authored the Jerusalem Declaration have no authority to maintain "effective discipline" for the Anglican Communion as a whole and as such, cannot pretend as if they do.

But what they create and develop -- there is authority and responsibility.

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http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=317

After GAFCON

Reflections by Tom Wright
the Bishop of Durham

30 June 2008

I spent this last week in a great celebration of the love and power of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. I confirmed many new believers. I installed a dynamic new rector in a key parish. I assisted in consecrating a wonderful man as the new Bishop of Stockport. I spent four days in prayer and pastoral conversations with twenty-seven ordinands, listening to their breathtaking stories of God’s power, guidance, and (in some cases) profound healing, and praying with them for their new ministries. All this climaxed in two wonderful ordination services, with great crowds, great singing, great praying, and above all a delight in and celebration of God’s presence, God’s gospel, and the power of God’s Spirit to love Jesus and make his good news known in our diocese and parishes.

So it was with great interest that I heard that many Anglicans had spent that same week in Jerusalem – which has been, over the years, a special place for me, too – to celebrate the same gospel, the same God, the same love and power of Jesus, the same dynamic and life-changing message through the work of the Spirit. As I read the GAFCON communiqué, phrase after phrase said to me ‘How wonderful that my brothers and sisters gathered there were joining with me in this great adventure we call God’s kingdom!’

I warmed, too, to GAFCON’s statement of our contemporary context. I have long believed and taught that our new century presents new problems (secularism, pluralism, the decline of modernity with nothing to put in its place, and much else) and that this means a great, fresh opportunity for the gospel. I have been saying for years that, in this context, we shouldn’t be surprised that serious challenges arise from within the church itself, offering the world a pseudo-gospel, a caricature of the world-changing love of God in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, an attempt to hold the outward form of godliness while denying its real power. I have believed and taught for years that we will have to work through these challenges if, instead of merely being distracted and having our gospel energies soaked up, we are to come through with the fresh message our culture (and individuals within it!) so badly need. If mission is our priority – as it certainly is for me and my diocese – then we should expect to face serious theological and moral challenges, and to have to overcome them in prayer and deeper study of scripture.

And of course I have found myself involved in the troubled situation of our Communion following the disastrous events of 2003. I have grieved at the muddled teaching which has allowed all kinds of confusions about Christian doctrine, behaviour and even the nature of Anglicanism to abound, with disastrous consequences. I have shared the frustration of many at the fact that we don’t possess the kind of structures that would enable us to deal straightforwardly and clearly with the complex problems that have faced us. As Archbishop Rowan has said, our present ‘instruments of Communion’ were not designed to meet this kind of problem, and we badly need to find new ways forward. I, with others, have given a lot of time and energy to work on all this, and the Archbishop’s statement that the forthcoming Lambeth Conference will take Windsor and the Covenant as its basic road-map were very heartening. So I fully agree with the GAFCON statement – and with Archbishop Rowan – that the Communion instruments have not been able to deal with the problems, and that we need to find better ways of going about it. Part of the genius of Anglicanism has been to be reformed by the gospel but always ready for fresh reformations by that same gospel: to recognise that God has more light to break out of his holy word, and that this may lead us to do things in new ways, sometimes setting us free from tired structures and sometimes creating new structures for new gospel purposes. That is precisely what Windsor is proposing, and what Lambeth will be pursuing.

What’s more, it is enormously exciting to live at a time when new leadership is arising from places completely outside the north Atlantic axis. Africa was one of the great cradles of early Christianity, producing such towering minds as Tertullian and Augustine. Most of us have long ago moved away from any idea that Christianity, or even Anglicanism, somehow ‘belongs’ to England or northern Europe. In my own diocese we love our link with Lesotho, and always find that visits from our friends there bring new energy and joy to our parishes and schools. Just as you don’t have to go to Jerusalem to meet Jesus – he is alive and present to heal and save in every place! – so it’s obvious that you don’t have to go to Canterbury to be part of the Anglican family. However, as I know, going to Jerusalem can help. Pilgrimage can add a new dimension to our awareness of who Jesus was and is; it has done that for me, as it clearly has done for those attending GAFCON. Likewise, the historic link with Canterbury is not to be dismissed. Cutting your links with the past can be like cutting off the roots of a tree. Reconnecting with our roots – and, where necessary, refreshing and cleaning them – is always better than pretending we don’t need them. But what matters is of course the fruit. Here in my diocese, as in so many in England, we are refreshing our roots and seeing real fruit; but we don’t imagine we are self-sufficient. On the contrary, we know we have a great deal to learn from brothers and sisters in many other parts of the world, Africa included. I would have hoped, actually, that all this would now go without saying: that we have long moved beyond the sterile stand-off between ‘colonialism’ and ‘post-colonialism’. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s what matters.

I and my colleagues in this diocese, like so many others, share exactly in the sense that we are a fellowship ‘confessing the faith of Christ crucified, standing firm for the gospel in the global and Anglican context’, sharing too the goal ‘to reform, heal and revitalise the Anglican Communion and expand its mission to the world’ and ‘to give clear and certain witness to Jesus Christ’. For this reason, I know that the GAFCON leaders can’t have intended to imply (as a ‘suspicious’ reading of their text might suggest) that they are the only ones who really believe all this, that they and they alone care about such things. The rest of us, no doubt – including several of us who were not invited to GAFCON – are eager to share in any fresh movements of the Spirit that are going ahead. And as we do so I know that the GAFCON leaders would want us to express the various questions that naturally come to mind as we contemplate what they have said to us. Just as they wouldn’t want anyone to swallow uncritically the latest pronouncement from Canterbury or New York, so clearly they wouldn’t want us merely to glance at their document, see that it’s ‘all about the gospel’, and then conclude that we must sign up without thinking through what’s being said and why. It is in that spirit that I raise certain questions which seem to me important precisely because of our shared goals (the advancement of the gospel), our shared context (the enormous challenges of contemporary society and of a church often muddled in theology and ethics and lacking the structures to cope), and our shared heritage (the Anglican tradition with its Articles, Prayer Books and historic roots).

Central to these questions is the puzzle about the new proposed structure. I am sure the GAFCON organisers are as horrified as I am to see today’s headlines about ‘a new church’. That doesn’t seem to be what they intended. But for that reason it is all the more strange to reflect on what the proposed ‘Primates’ Council’ is all about. What authority will it have, and how will that work? Who is to ‘police’ the boundaries of this new body – not least to declare which Anglicans are ‘upholding orthodox faith and practice’ (Article 11 of the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’), and who have denied it (Article 13)? Who will be able to decide (as in Article 12) which matters are ‘secondary’ and which are primary, and by what means? (What, for instance, about Eucharistic vestments and practices? What about women priests and bishops?) Who will elucidate the relationship between the 39 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, on the one hand, and the 14 Articles of GAFCON on the other, and by what means? It is precisely questions like these, within the larger Anglican world, which have proved so problematic in the last five years, and the ‘Declaration’ is actually a strange document which doesn’t help us address them. Many at GAFCON may think the answers will be obvious; in some clear-cut cases they may be. But there will be many other cases where they will not. It is precisely because I share the officially stated aims of GAFCON that I am extremely concerned about these proposals, and urge all those who likewise share that concern to concentrate their prayers and their work on addressing the issues in the way which, remarkably, GAFCON never mentioned, namely, the development of the Anglican Covenant and the fulfilment of the recommendations of the Windsor Report. I am delighted that many of the bishops who were at GAFCON are also coming to Lambeth, where their help in pursuing these goals will be invaluable.

In particular, though, there is something very odd about the proposal to form a ‘Council’ and then to ask such a body to ‘authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and congregations’ – and then, as an addition, ‘to encourage all Anglicans to promote the gospel and defend the faith’. Many Anglicans around the world intend to do that in any case, and will not understand why they need to be ‘recognised’ or ‘authenticated’ by a new, self-selected and non-representative body to which they were not invited and which will not itself, it seems be accountable to anyone else. Of course, within the larger global context, not least in North America, I can understand the perceived need for something like this. I know how warmly the proposals have already been welcomed by many in America whose situation has been truly dire. But I also know from my own situation the dangerous ambiguities that will result from the suggestion that there should be a new ‘territorial jurisdiction for provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion, in those areas where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or are preventing its spread.’ Sadly, as I suspect many at GAFCON simply didn’t realise, that kind of language has been used, in my personal experience, to attempt to justify various kinds of high-handed activity. It offers a blank cheque to anyone who wants to defy a bishop for whatever reasons, even if the bishop in question is scrupulously orthodox, and then to claim the right to alternative jurisdictional oversight. This cannot be the way forward; nor do I think most of those at GAFCON intended such a thing. That, of course, is the risk when documents are drafted at speed.

In short, my hope and prayer is that the spiritual energy, the sense of celebration, the eagerness for living and preaching the gospel, which were so evident at GAFCON, can and will be brought to the forum where we badly need it, namely, the existing central councils of the Anglican Communion. I understand only too well the frustration that many have felt at these bodies. But if GAFCON is to join up with the great majority of faithful, joyful Anglicans around the world, rather than to invite them to leave their present allegiance and sign up to a movement which is as yet – to put it mildly – strange in form and uncertain in destination, it is not so much that GAFCON needs to invite others to sign up and join in. Bishops, clergy and congregations should think very carefully before taking such a step, which will have enormous and confusing consequences. Rather, GAFCON itself needs to bring its rich experience and gospel-driven exuberance to the larger party where the rest of us are working day and night for the same gospel, the same biblical wisdom, the same Lord.

+THOMAS DUNELM:

Executive Summary

GAFCON was a great celebration of the gospel of the love and transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The church needs this energy and vision. But this doesn’t mean the GAFCON proposals can be accepted without question. The proposed ‘Primates’ Council’ is a strange body, just as the ‘Declaration’ is an odd document which leaves many ambiguities. It gives far too many hostages to fortune, inviting us to trust an unformed and unaccountable body to make major decisions and giving licence to all kinds of unhelpful activities. It isn’t so much that GAFCON should invite people to sign up to its blank cheque. Rather, GAFCON itself should be invited to bring its Christian vision and exuberance to the larger party where the rest of us are working for the same gospel, the same biblical wisdom, the same Lord.

The Rt Revd Dr Tom Wright is the Bishop of Durham

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http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/13859/#241728

DAVID OULD

Changing the Structures? What +Wright and +Williams seem to be avoiding

Monday, June 30, 2008 • 5:08 pm

This is the key issue: the structure by which discipline may be executed already exists in the Anglican Communion. What is lacking is not an adequate structure but any will from the man responsible for their execution to implement discipline.

Well, the heavyweights brought out their responses. We've all, no doubt, waited eagerly to see what Canterbury and Durham would say. Canterbury, of course, had to say something - he was clearly criticised by the Jerusalem statement. But +Wright should be of interest to us to for he represents those who claim to be evangelical and yet would continue to meet with those that they freely acknowledge are heterodox. Together they are the problem and, dare we say it, the denial of the extent of the problem.

One common theme in both their responses did stand out to me.

First, Canterbury, who we report on here.

The Lambeth Conference, we are told, is the place to sort out the inadequate structures in the Communion. Once they are fixed, and the Covenant is in place, order may be restored.

This is also +Wright's thrust (as we report here):

It is precisely because I share the officially stated aims of GAFCON that I am extremely concerned about these proposals, and urge all those who likewise share that concern to concentrate their prayers and their work on addressing the issues in the way which, remarkably, GAFCON never mentioned, namely, the development of the Anglican Covenant and the fulfilment of the recommendations of the Windsor Report. I am delighted that many of the bishops who were at GAFCON are also coming to Lambeth, where their help in pursuing these goals will be invaluable.

...

Wright is more sympathetic - but he thinks that the GAFCON leaders have chosen the wrong course of action; they should be working through and on the current structures.

But, we have to ask, is the problem with the Communion the inability of the structures to meet the crisis? Is that really what is going on?

Of course not. The structures we currently have are more than adequate and the GAFCON Primates were more than happy to use them. So we had Lambeth 1.10, we have had clear messages from the Primates' meetings. We have had the Windsor Commission on which Wright sat and the Report which they produced. Transparent and dynamic statements and requests have been made time and time again.

And then, of course, we have one final structure - the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Everything that has been mentioned before ultimately relies upon him. The final means by which TEC could have been disciplined lay at his disposal, namely invitations to Lambeth 2008.

Two years ago I wrote "A Canterbury Tail" at a time when many were optimistic about Williams. Here's some of what I said:

But there remains a deeper problem. Williams is not really our ally. Of course, on one level he is, he is promoting the unity of the church and has finally spoken clearly about how unlikely we are to accept the revisionist position in the near to medium future. But, at the same time, he hasn’t really done anything to drive away strange and erroneous teaching. He has been passive in the rôle of teaching/feeding the flock when the duty of the bishop is to be active. Canterbury really is a tail that should wag the dog, even if the dog wants to go in the wrong direction but at the moment he is still being wagged by the dog that he should be purposefully leading. Currently that’s not such a problem since the main body of the dog is going in the right direction.

Of course now, 2 years later, we can see where the dog is going (and yes, I am using that language again). This is not intended as a "I told you so" more a Dr. Phil (and forgive me for this), "the past predicts the future". If the past is any indicator of the future then one this should be abundantly clear to us: Williams will never discipline TEC. The GAFCON statement makes this abundantly clear:

The third fact is the manifest failure of the Communion Instruments to exercise discipline in the face of overt heterodoxy. The Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada, in proclaiming this false gospel, have consistently defied the 1998 Lambeth statement of biblical moral principle (Resolution 1.10). Despite numerous meetings and reports to and from the ‘Instruments of Unity,’ no effective action has been taken, and the bishops of these unrepentant churches are welcomed to Lambeth 2008. To make matters worse, there has been a failure to honour promises of discipline, the authority of the Primates’ Meeting has been undermined and the Lambeth Conference has been structured so as to avoid any hard decisions. We can only come to the devastating conclusion that ‘we are a global Communion with a colonial structure’.

Now, I take issue with the notion that we have a "colonial structure". One legacy that the British left from the Empire was some very effective structures! Nevertheless the point is clear. It is the unwillingness of one particular Instrument of Unity, Canterbury himself, to sort this problem out that has led us to the current crisis and talk about structures won't change a thing.

This year is election year in the US. Many Americans are, we are told, very unhappy with the way their country has been run the past 8 years. Is that a failure of the system? Hardly! Those who are unhappy don't want to mess with the system, they just want a new leader. One who they think will run the country properly. Similarly back in the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's days are increasingly looking numbered. Those Labour MP's who will finally oust him won't look for a radical overhaul of the structures already in place. They just want a leader who will do the job properly.

And so to Jerusalem. As the GAFCON Statement makes clear, they don't want a new Communion - they just want leadership who will do the job properly and if Williams won't do it then they will.

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http://acl.asn.au/kjs-responds-to-gafcon-emission/RSS

TEC Presiding Bishop responds to GAFCON ‘emission’

Posted on July 1, 2008
Filed under News

TEC Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has responded to the Global Anglican Future Conference with the following statement.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN3042732420080630?sp=true

Rebel Anglican meeting lamentable: U.S. church leader

Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:57pm EDT

By Michael Conlon, Religion Writer

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A just-concluded meeting of conservative church leaders in the worldwide Anglican Communion will have little lasting impact, the head of the Episcopal Church, the faith's U.S. branch, said on Monday.

"Much of the Anglican world must be lamenting the latest emission" from the Global Anglican Future Conference issued on on Sunday in Jerusalem, said Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

A communique issued at the end of the meeting of conservatives, who are upset by the Episcopal Church's consecration of an openly gay bishop and worried about other issues in the global Anglican church they consider an assault on orthodoxy, "does not represent the end of Anglicanism," she said.

Rather it is "merely another chapter in a centuries-old struggle for dominance by those who consider themselves the only true believers," said Jefferts Schori, who in 2006 became the first woman to head a national branch of the global church.

The Jerusalem meeting, whose participants said they represented 35 million people in the 77-million strong Anglican Communion, promised on Sunday to remain part of the global church confederation.

But they said they would form a council of bishops to provide an alternative to churches they said were preaching a "false gospel" of sexual immorality.

They pledged to continue sponsoring breakaway conservative parishes in what they consider liberal western countries and called for a separate conservative province or group of churches in North America.

Jefferts Schori issued a statement in response saying that "Anglicanism has always been broader than some find comfortable."

"Anglicans will continue to worship God in their churches, serve the hungry and needy in their communities, and build missional relationships with others across the globe, despite the desire of a few leaders to narrow the influence of the gospel," she added.

The Jerusalem meeting took place ahead of the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Communion's once-a-decade meeting which takes place later this summer in England.

Jefferts Schori said she was looking forward to that meeting for "constructive conversation, inspired prayer, and relational encounters."

Bishop Martyn Minns, a Virginia-based leader of the conservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America who attended the Jerusalem meeting, told U.S. reporters by phone from Israel on Monday that a split in the Anglican church is not being discussed.

"The language of split was not part of the conversation," he said. "We're all part of the family. It's more like the traditional family where children grow up and are treated differently," he said.

A number of U.S. congregations have left the Episcopal Church and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of church leaders in Africa and other countries. Minns was consecrated a bishop in 2007 by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, a leading force among the Anglican conservatives.

The Anglican Communion and the 2.4-million-member Episcopal Church have been in upheaval since 2003 when the U.S. church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in the more than four centuries of church history.

Disputes over scriptural authority, the blessing of gay unions and other matters have become a worldwide issue.

(Editing by Peter Bohan and Eric Walsh)

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http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2008/06/27/there_is_no_anglican_schism

Damian Thompson
Holy Smoke

Damian Thompson is a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph and editor-in-chief of a major Catholic newspaper. He is the author of Counterknowledge: How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history

There is no Anglican schism

Friday, June 27, 2008, 04:02 PM GMT [General]

If Gafcon had created a proper schism within the Anglican Communion then I reckon Rowan Williams would be sleeping a lot easier this weekend. But it didn't. The meeting of 300 conservative bishops hoisted a flag right in the centre of world Christianity - Jerusalem - and declared that the proceedings of the Lambeth Conference don't matter very much because no one will pay a blind bit of attention to them.

I have to disagree with my colleague George Pitcher. I don't think Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester was exploited at Gafcon. I think he guessed correctly that Gafcon offered him an alternative power base and he seized his opportunity brilliantly. The same goes for Peter Jensen, the Archbishop of Sydney.

These two ruthless ecclesiastical politicians gambled that it was safe to boycott Lambeth, because you don't lose much by making yourself absent from a shouting match. (Mind you, it wouldn't surprise me if Rochester showed up in an unofficial capacity at the conference.)

Gafcon did not create an alternative Church of fundamentalist bigots. Instead, the moderate evangelical Nazir-Ali and the ultra-Protestant Jensen shepherded the bishops in Jerusalem towards a mainstream conservative position, focussing on fidelity to Scripture, that will resonate with Anglicans all over the world.

As a result, it will now be much harder to cordon off a "tolerant" C of E from the fearsome rows taking place elsewhere in the Anglican world. English conservatives are reinvigorated by Gafcon, and ready to do battle with the liberal establishment of the Church over a range of issues, including Islam and homosexuality.

And, talking of which, I gather that Dr Rowan Williams is pretty cross with Dr Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, for allowing a "gay wedding" to take place in his diocese and then reacting with unconvincing indignation when the news was made public. So that should make Lambeth an even more strained affair that was it already going to be. Connoisseurs of episcopal discord should book their train tickets to Canterbury now.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7481349.stm

Battling 'liberal' Church policies

By Robert Pigott

Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News, Jerusalem

Page last updated at 11:47 GMT, Monday, 30 June 2008 12:47 UK

Traditionalist Anglicans claiming to represent at least half of the membership of the worldwide communion, and more than a third of its bishops, have declared war on what they call the "false teaching" used to justify active homosexuality.

The Anglican Church is being destroyed by false teaching of the Bible on issues such as homosexuality

The Rev Rod Thomas

Reform

They have set up what amounts to a church within a church in order to organise for a long struggle against the ordination of gay clergy, the blessing of gay relationships, and what they claim is a drift towards accepting other religions as offering "equal access to God".

The Rev Rod Thomas, of the conservative Church of England group Reform, helped to formulate the organisation's strategy.

He claimed that traditionalists had been forced to create a new alliance to prevent the Bible being rewritten by liberal Anglicans to suit their current lifestyles.

"The Anglican Church is being destroyed by false teaching of the Bible on issues such as homosexuality", he said.

"We are gong to stand against this trend, and spread the true message of the Bible with confidence."

Traditionalists believe the Bible rules out active homosexuality, for example.

Road to schism?

They met in Jerusalem to bolster their claim that they were in touch with the authentic teaching of the early Church.

The group emphasises its intention of staying inside the Anglican Communion, but the alliance's mission statement appears to be a significant step towards eventual schism.

It is ready to send bishops anywhere in the world if traditionalist Anglicans call for help in countering liberal policies which in the view of the "Primates' Council" undermine strict biblical teaching.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, said the "revisionist agenda which we've seen in the same-sex agenda is a missionary one and will spread its views as much as it can.

Traditionalists want to counter liberal policies

"So the rest of us have to do missionary work to defend the gospel and to promulgate it."

The American Church is likely to be the first target for intervention by the new alliance.

Traditionalists are breaking off relations with the liberal wings of the American and Canadian Churches, and intend to set up a new church for conservatives who have split away from them in protest at the ordination of an openly gay bishop in 2003.

Intervention

Dr Jensen said there was no reason why the Church of England itself would be exempt from intervention by the new Primates' Council.

"Theoretically, any church, anywhere, that did the same as the Americans could expect traditionalists to complain and the primates to act", he said.

Did that mean sending bishops in to minister to traditionalists? "Indeed it does…that's the way the Anglican Church works."

That is fiercely disputed by liberals who say Anglicanism has always been about mutual tolerance and inclusion, and a long tradition of non-interference in each other's territories.

The Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, said the traditionalists had lost their nerve and backed away from leaving the Communion to set up their own church.

He said: "They've realised the Communion is a better boat to fish from".

'Jerusalem declaration'

Despite remaining inside the Anglican Communion, the traditionalist alliance will operate without reference to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It rejects his traditional role as arbiter of who can be defined as an Anglican.

The "Jerusalem Declaration" issued at the end of their week in the city, makes clear that they intend to grow.

But the Jerusalem traditionalists will have to be careful how they proceed.

It is partly to avoid the chaotic intervention in the United States by several different African churches, setting up parallel organisations that has led to their new strategy.

The battle now is for the support of moderate conservatives, the substantial body that is unhappy with the Episcopal Church in American and with Canadian dioceses that bless gay partnerships, but have a deep affection for the Communion and did not go to Jerusalem.

The alliance may be hoping to lie in wait, expecting more gay bishops in America, and officially sanctioned services of blessing for same-sex couples.

Archbishop Peter Jensen accepted that their behaviour was "unusual" for Anglicans. But he said "these are unusual times".

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