The pointy end of GAFCON

From SydneyAnglicans.net (Australia):

Bishop Robert Forsyth | 27 June 2008

As GAFCON makes its exciting, inspiring and exhausting way into its second half, the question of ‘What next?’ is becoming more and more urgent. So many are looking for so much from this conference. We are facing a danger of unrealistic expectations.

And yet, as GAFCON has already, from my point of view at least, achieved so much more than a realist would expect, then just maybe the crucial final statement will do the job.

There are at least four distinct groups of delegates here, all with different approaches to GAFCON.

One group consists of those like us from the Diocese of Sydney, who come from relatively safe church environments and are concerned for the crisis of the Anglican Communion - onlookers who are keen to help.

Another group, basically the massive African delegation, is more passionately involved in taking a new place of leadership in a communion that has been perceived as patronising in the past and now failing to be faithful to the very Christ that the West once brought to Africa. There is a real sense in which GAFCON is an expression of the renewal of Christian faith in the non-West.

The group with most to ask for from GAFCON are those, like many in the USA and Canada, who are fighting for their lives in the face of hostile and persecuting church authorities. They face the threats of the loss of property and even more importantly, of Anglican legitimacy.

And finally there is the group of those from various earlier “continuing Anglicans” like the Reformed Episcopal Church in USA and the Church of England in South Africa. They see themselves as Anglicans and yet are not included in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation list to Lambeth.

On top of this, GAFCON consists of Anglicans from very different churchmanship and theological and liturgical styles.

And yet already some common themes are emerging.

There is a common horror of the extent that some churches in the Communion have wandered from not simply Anglican, but Christian truth and discipline.

There is the conviction that GAFCON must not be a conference, but the beginning of something that will continue on. And that whatever ‘this’ is that continues, it will aim to renew and restore Anglican churches throughout the world to Biblical and apostolic goals.

There is a common enthusiasm for the central authority of Scripture in our churches, and the classic Anglican formularies like the Articles of Religion and the Creeds.

And, most wonderfully, there is a refusal to countenance bitterness of spirit or self-righteousness in relation to the rest of the Communion. I think that we are aware of the great danger that faces every reform and renewal movement in the church, of becoming factious and self-serving, judgmental. I pray that the tone of this conference will be the tone of the movement is emerging, whatever form it takes.

Tomorrow (Friday) the first draft of the crucial conference will be released for discussion.

We will have come to the pointy end of the conference.


Bishop Robert Forsyth is the Bishop of South Sydney and part of the Sydney Diocesan delegation to the Global Anglican Future Conference.