GAFCON: “A Movement For Christ And The Gospel”

Special Report/Analysis By David W. Virtue,
Robert England, and Auburn Traycik

The Christian Challenge
www.challengeonline.org
July, 2008

----
Galvanized by a growing and unremedied theological divergence in the Anglican Communion, the Global Anglican Future Conference launches a mission to clearly reassert the Church’s historic faith and “rescue” the Communion from those who have departed from it. But what GAFCON identifies as a reform-from-within movement looks to some like a breakaway Communion, or - as one liberal writer put it – “an attempt to seize control of global Anglicanism from the dithering hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
-----


NEARLY 1,200 PILGRIMS FROM FIVE CONTINENTS – including 303 bishops representing two-thirds of the Anglican Communion’s active members - met in Jerusalem June 22-29 for what one bishop said “must surely be the most significant watershed for Anglicans since the Reformation.”

They were a multi-cultural, multi-racial but not multi-faith group of pilgrims to the Holy Land, who coalesced in irenic resolve to resist the actions and teaching of some northern provinces of the Communion that they believe are at odds with the historic faith.

In the end, participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) launched a new international “spiritual movement” to act within the Anglican Communion as a bulwark against liberal revisionism, though it also appears positioned to act as an alternative Anglican orbit.

In their final statement, GAFCON participants identify themselves as “a fellowship of confessing Anglicans” that is not breaking from the Communion, but rather aims to reform and renew it from within.
But their communiqué shifts more authority to the Global South by, among other things, creating a Primates’ Council comprised of seven African and South American provincial leaders who took part in GAFCON. It also plans for a vigorous expansion of missionary activities around the globe. As well, it rejects the authority of the U.S. Episcopal Church (TEC), accusing it of proclaiming a “false gospel,” and calls for the creation of a faithful new Anglican province in North America.

Specifically, it calls for the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) - a coalition of Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic bodies and groups within and outside of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada - to become the nucleus of the new province, which would be recognized by the Primates’ Council.

THE GAFCON AGREEMENT creates a rival power center within the 77 million-member Communion, aimed at giving conservatives a way to resolve the problems that have paralyzed the global church since 2003, when TEC approved the consecration of divorced, actively gay cleric V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, and local option on same-sex blessings. Conservatives see such breaches of sexuality doctrine as the symptom of a deeper chasm over scriptural authority, creedal beliefs, and basic approaches to the faith.

Hence, in their final statement, GAFCON participants center their fellowship on adherence to 14 tenets of the faith contained in The Jerusalem Declaration which reaffirm (inter alia) the uniqueness of Christ, the authority of Holy Scripture, the catholic creeds and four of the Ecumenical Councils, the Anglican formularies, and biblical sexuality doctrine.

The statement recognizes the historic role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but maintains that authentic Anglican identity is not necessarily determined by the holder of that office, but rather by loyalty to a set of orthodox theological principles.

This significant change, seen as a welcome move away from the Communion’s “colonial structure,” also reflects disillusionment among GAFCON participants with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Communion councils which - despite conservative leaders’ best efforts over a long period - have failed to deal satisfactorily with the actions of both TEC and the Canadian Church, where the blessing of same-sex unions has been approved by five dioceses (though they have officially begun in only one).

Despite numerous meetings and reports to and from the Anglican “instruments of communion” - which include the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Conference, Primates’ Meeting, and Anglican Consultative Council - “no effective action has been taken,” the GAFCON statement said, “and the bishops of these unrepentant churches [in the U.S. and Canada] are welcome” at the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops July 16-August 3 in Canterbury. “To make matters worse, there has been a failure to honor promises of discipline, the authority of the Primates’ Meeting has been undermined and [Lambeth] has been structured so as to avoid any hard decisions.”

For that reason, many of the bishops at GAFCON were planning to skip Lambeth, rather setting forth in Jerusalem a vision for future Anglican fellowship and mission that they hoped would be considered by the Canterbury confab.

As GAFCON met, too, there was further evidence that Communion “instruments” and processes - including that stemming from the 2004 Windsor Report, which called for moratoria on gay bishops and blessings - were not working well.

The Jerusalem assembly began just after Bishop Robinson entered a civil union with his male partner, and had the union blessed, at a New Hampshire Episcopal parish; that was before Robinson headed to Lambeth, to which he was not invited. Meanwhile, across the continent, any residual restraint on same-sex blessings that might have existed in several California Episcopal dioceses seemed to be giving way, following a state judicial demand for gay “marriage.”

On the eve of GAFCON, moreover, a homosexual “wedding” took place for the first time at a Church of England parish in London. The officiant is likely to face discipline, and the newlyweds – two Anglican priests - have resigned and were leaving the country. But the fact they felt it okay to proceed with such a service seemed a troubling signal about what C of E bishops had set in train a few years ago by deciding to allow clergy to register same-sex partnerships (legal under British law), if they abstain from sex and do not have the relationships blessed in church.

SOME MEDIA REPORTS put a lot of the onus on GAFCON for upsetting things, nonetheless. And although GAFCON leaders rejected such characterizations, some reports described the meeting’s outcome as “schism in all but name,” or “a church within a church.” Conversely, a few liberal writers accepted that the GAFCON movement planned to remain in the Communion, but only (as The Guardian’s Andrew Brown put it) to try to “seize control of global Anglicanism from the dithering hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

Added to this, of course, were questions and criticism of GAFCON swiftly forthcoming from liberal and moderate Anglicans leaders, including Archbishop Williams and TEC’s Presiding Bishop, but also from some conservatives.

Some of the issues raised by critics touched on the legitimacy (or not) of the Primates’ Council, how it will relate to other Anglican structures, and what standing it has to recognize a new alternative province; the wisdom (or not) of sidelining the traditional role of the Archbishop of Canterbury; the intention to continue boundary-crossing to provide pastoral care to those fleeing liberal provinces; and whether the list of orthodoxies in The Jerusalem Declaration is sufficient or deficient.

-“We Are The Communion”-

Responding to detractors, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, said simply that GAFCON is “a movement for Christ and the gospel.” He was speaking to some 750 Evangelicals at All Souls, Langham Place, London, shortly after the Jerusalem gathering.

GAFCON “is not a breaking away from the Communion – we are the Anglican Communion,” said Southern Cone Archbishop Gregory Venables at All Souls. He also maintained that no power grab was involved, but rather the exercise of “legitimate authority” to bring co-religionists together within the Communion “so that there can be working in unity.”

In a Guardian column, Canon Chris Sugden of the British-based Anglican Mainstream also contended that the GAFCON movement and Primates’ Council has standing:

“The primates of the Anglican churches of Nigeria, West Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda (six out of 12 African provinces in Africa) and the Southern Cone, churches of over 40 million members out of 55 million churchgoing Anglicans worldwide, have decided that there is a way forward within the Anglican Church that can bring order out of chaos and which does not involve a split. As elected leaders of their churches they are hardly unrepresentative. The whole provincial governance of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Nigeria took this decision as provinces at Jerusalem to support the Jerusalem declaration and statement.”

-It All Started In Amman-

GAFCON - in which participation was by invitation only - began with a preliminary meeting in Amman, Jordan, where a group of 100 theologians and other leaders gathered to reflect privately on what it is Anglicanism stands for. This “pre-GAFCON” encounter was to transpire June 18-22, but ended abruptly when GAFCON’s chairman, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, was denied a visa into Jordan and was forced to stay in Jerusalem. So the meeting packed up and came to him, traveling to Jerusalem by bus.

At a press conference June 20 at the Renaissance Hotel, GAFCON’s Jerusalem headquarters, Archbishops Akinola and Jensen made the point that the conference then getting underway was not about splitting from the Communion. This did not dissuade the secular media, who were determined to spin the story as schism-bound rebels with a cause.

Over the next week, Anglican leaders and laypeople from over 25 countries came together in the land where Jesus was incarnated, taught, ministered, was crucified and resurrected, to seek and draw closer to Him there. They visited the places associated with His birth, ministry and Passion; they met for prayer, Bible study and worship (at least some of it reportedly employing contemporary renderings of the historic Cranmerian liturgies, drawn from An Anglican Prayer Book). They attended “superb” workshops (as one participant put it) on topics such as “Evangelism and Church Planting,” and “Biblical Authority and Interpretation.” They heard “outstanding” addresses and sermons from a number of personages, including Professor Os Guinness, Archbishop Venables, former South East Asian Archbishop Yong Ping Chung, and England’s Bishop of Rochester, the Pakistani-born Michael Nazir-Ali. And GAFCON participants also contributed to what would ultimately come out of their meeting as a vision for the future of faithful Anglicanism.

THAT QUITE A BIT OF WORK had already been done was evident in the release, early in the meeting, of a 94-page book, The Way, The Truth and the Life, which was the result of reflections that had been underway before the Amman session. Prepared by the GAFCON Theological Resource Team, it provided the theological and historical foundation for the international movement that was taking greater shape in Jerusalem.

After outlining the recent history of conflicts within the Anglican Communion, the book set out to define authentic Anglicanism, discussing what was at stake in the conflict, and the future for believing Anglicans.
“Our journey is a witness that the truth of God is accessible. We are convinced that God has made himself known, sufficiently for us to be able to respond to him, and to make truly moral choices between obedience and disobedience,” said the authors.

The book dealt frankly with the crisis facing the Anglican Communion. “We have made enormous efforts since 1997 in seeking to avoid this crisis, but without success. Now we confront a moment of decision. If we fail to act, we risk leading millions of people away from the faith revealed in the Holy Scriptures” and even “denying our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,” wrote Archbishop Akinola.

-Schismatics: Not In Jerusalem-

Early in the Jerusalem encounter, conference leaders reiterated that the break in the Communion was not coming in the Holy Land but had already come in actions by North American liberals that breached biblical authority and Anglican norms. It was they who had changed, while those at GAFCON held the same beliefs they always had.

Archbishop Jensen told a press conference that TEC’s 2003 consecration of a practicing homosexual had created an “irreversible” situation in the Communion that “rocked us all.”

GAFCON was a response to this, and not a further cause of schism, he maintained. He said that some attending the meeting would also go to the Lambeth Conference, but that for some, GAFCON would be an alternative to a Lambeth that they could not in conscience attend.

Robinson’s consecration “damaged” the Communion, Jensen said. In response to that, some conservative provinces had offered oversight, a continuing link to the Anglican Communion, and indigenous bishops for faithful Anglicans removing themselves from the theologically liberal North American provinces, he said. (Some 300 congregations have left TEC to attach themselves to African provinces or the Southern Cone, conservatives say, though TEC’s Presiding Bishop claims that only 55 or 60 congregations have departed to date.)

“We are seeing a reshaping of the (Anglican) landscape…and now we must work out what to do with the future,” Jensen said.

Though some reports spoke of tensions at Jerusalem between “reformers” and “separationists” (Bishop John Rodgers of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) being prominent among the latter), the inside strategy seemed to prevail early, though aspects of an outside strategy may be seen in what GAFCON decided.

There is no plan for conservatives “to walk away” from the Communion, said Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi. “We are meeting to renew our faith, to get a sense of direction of what we can be as Anglicans. We do not want to start a new church,” he said.

“I am not hearing about breaking up the Communion,” Jensen said. “North Americans have rent the Communion. We are trying to renew the Communion. I want to see it better than ever before. It will be different, however.”

Kenya Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi said that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other “instruments of communion” had “betrayed and abandoned” the global church, and therefore new structures are necessary. “We need an agreed-upon theological framework and appropriate structures to sustain its growth into the future,” he said.

BUT NOT EVERYONE agreed that that was the right way forward. In a strained, invitation-only service, the Bishop of Jerusalem, Suheil Dawani (who had not been happy about GAFCON being held in his diocese to start with), insisted that the unity of the Communion lay with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dawani told visiting pilgrims at St. George’s Cathedral that his flock is “orthodox” and did not agree with recent developments in TEC concerning sexuality, “but that is not going to divide us. Unity is at the heart of the gospel, and we as indigenous Christians in this Holy Land are committed to the work of peace, justice and reconciliation.”

In a clear swipe against GAFCON, Dawani said “pilgrims do not bring decisions with them. They come to seek prayerfully the decisions God wants them to make. God has not finished with us or with our Church.”

-GAFCON: A Rescue Mission-

In his opening address in Jerusalem, Archbishop Akinola, who leads 22 million churchgoing Nigerian Anglicans, explained the impetus for the conference, and set the tone and task for it, starting with the “signs and wonders” which had produced the event.

“That we are able to gather here is a miracle,” he said. Somehow, in “barely five months,” the meeting came together with sufficient organization, personnel and funding. He put the total cost of GAFCON at 2.5 million pounds, a significant amount of which was raised in Nigeria in three weeks. Nigeria even managed to pay for its bishops from the U.S. to attend.

Akinola said that those who are unhappy with GAFCON, or are “grumbling that we are here to break the Communion,” are those who fail to admit that the Communion has already been torn by TEC’s unilateral, defiant action in 2003, and that it is broken and lacks “the ability to secure a genuine reconciliation.”

But he contended that GAFCON “is a continuation of that quiet but consistent initiative, a godly instrument appointed to reshape, reform, renew and reclaim a true Anglican Biblical orthodox Christianity that is firmly anchored in (the) historic faith and ancient formularies….”

He retraced the history of the current conflict, and the various conservative efforts to reassert biblical sexual morality, starting with the Kuala Lumpur statement in 1997, and the overwhelmingly-adopted 1998 Lambeth Conference Resolution 1.10, and the ways in which those efforts had been ignored and flouted by American liberals. Indeed, they pushed forward toward the 2003 consecration of Gene Robinson, despite a Primates’ Meeting communiqué declaring that proceeding with the rite would have devastating consequences for the Communion. “Total disarray” and a serious breakdown in communion followed the event, Akinola said.

But though TEC had essentially separated from the Communion, further efforts were made “to manage the crisis,” he noted, including the 2005 and 2007 Primates’ Meetings, the latter of which gave TEC “ a last chance to clarify unequivocally and adequately their stand” by last September 30.

When Dr. Williams sent out – before September - invitations to Lambeth ’08, including among invitees U.S. bishops who had consecrated Robinson, “it dawned upon [conservative primates] that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not interested in what matters to us, what we think or in what we say,” Akinola said.

After that, Williams also refused calls to convene a Primates’ Meeting to assess and act on the response of TEC’s bishops to the primates’ 2007 communique, though a by-mail poll of the primates showed “no consensus” among them that TEC had responded adequately to a call not to authorize same-sex blessings.

“Whichever way you look at it,” Akinola maintained, “the Communion is deeply in trouble. This is not only because of the actions of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, but also because the hitherto-honored ‘instruments of communion,’ in recent years have, by design, become instruments of disunity, putting the Communion in an unprecedented brokenness and turmoil…

“Our beloved Anglican Communion,” the Archbishop said, “must be rescued from the manipulation of those who have denied the gospel and its power to transform and to save; those who have departed from the scripture and the faith ‘once for all delivered to the saints’…”

But what form that rescue should take, and how the GAFCON movement should therefore proceed, Akinola asked the gathering to help decide. “A sizeable part of the Communion is in error, and not a few are apostate; is the Communion correctable from within or must it be from without?” he asked, for example.

-Secularism, Islam, Anglicanism-

In his address to the Jerusalem confab, Bishop Nazir-Ali, a senior prelate in the Church of England, cited the need for a tougher challenge by Christians to the “militant secularism” that is threatening the Church and western civilization. He also defended the right and duty of Christians to share the Gospel with Muslims, noting that Muslims likewise have the right to exercise Da’wa – an invitation to Islam; dialogue proceeds on the understanding that each is a missionary faith, said Nazir-Ali - who has received death threats for similar comments he has made in Britain.

As well, the bishop maintained that the Communion’s future “is to be found in its authentic nature, not recently invented innovations or explanations.” He said that Anglicanism is a “confessing church” in that its adherents have confessed the faith held by the Universal Church. It is wrong to think that Anglicans can believe in anything, or nothing, he said.

He advocated a “conciliar church,” saying that the Communion’s “instruments” have proven insufficient to the current crisis. “They were based on good English manners,” which are now “not enough…I have been frustrated by decision after decision that does not stick,” he said.

Nazir-Ali praised the GAFCON gathering as the “miraculous beginnings of a new ecclesial movement for the sake of the gospel.”

-The Final GAFCON Statement-

What seemed to come out of the week in Jerusalem was a determination to become a distinct fellowship that will stand visibly unified in the historic faith, and refocus on the mission of the Church while either reforming or bypassing Communion leadership structures that seem to hinder the problem-resolution needed for that mission to go forward with full effect.

The meeting’s final statement – jubilantly received by the 1,200 participants – says that GAFCON is “a spiritual movement to preserve and promote the truth and power of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ as we Anglicans have received it.”

The statement reiterates that GAFCON emerged in response to a crisis in the Communion that involved “three undeniable facts”:

1. The “acceptance and promotion within the provinces of the…Communion of a different ‘gospel’ (cf. Galatians 1:6-8) which is contrary to the apostolic gospel.” Many proponents of the different gospel believe that Jesus is only a way, not the way, the truth and the life, and/or have altered biblical sexuality teaching, the statement says.

2. The declarations by Global South provinces “that they are out of communion with bishops and churches that promote this false gospel,” and the cross-border realignments by parishes, dioceses and provinces that have occurred within the Communion as a result. “A major realignment has occurred and will continue to unfold,” the statement says.

3. The “manifest failure of the Communion instruments to exercise discipline in the face of overt heterodoxy.”

GAFCON participants go on to say that they are “a fellowship of confessing Anglicans” whose goal is “to reform, heal and revitalize the Anglican Communion and expand its mission to the world.”

AS THE BASIS of the global fellowship, the statement publishes The Jerusalem Declaration. In it, Christ’s unique and universal Lordship, atoning death, and glorious resurrection are proclaimed as securing the redemption of all who come to him in repentance and faith.

The Declaration also upholds: “the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments [as] the Word of God written and [containing] all things necessary for salvation”; “the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church”; the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion; the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as “a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture”; and “the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders.”

As well, the Declaration acknowledges “God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family.” The Declaration’s backers “repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.”

Accepted, too, are the Great Commission, and the responsibility to “be good stewards of God’s creation, advocate justice in society, and seek relief and empowerment of the poor and needy.”

The Declaration’s endorsers acknowledge “freedom in secondary matters” but pledge to “work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide” their fellowship, the most obvious of them being women’s ordination.

An outreach to faithful Anglicans outside the Communion seems included in another part of the Declaration which recognizes “the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice,” who are encouraged to join in supporting the statement.

Meanwhile, the Declaration rejects “the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed,” calling on them “to repent and return to the Lord.”

THE STATEMENT goes on to ask primates at GAFCON to form the movement’s initial Council (which met after the communiqué was issued, and is expected to meet next in August). The Council is asked to “organize and expand the fellowship of confessing Anglicans,” and to be the authority through which members of the fellowship are recognized; again, it appears that these may include bodies not in full communion with Canterbury.

The GAFCON statement accepts the general “desirability of territorial jurisdiction” for Anglican dioceses and provinces, though an exception to this is “those areas where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or are preventing its spread.”

Moreover, it urges that a North American province be formed for “the federation known as the Common Cause Partnership” and be “recognized by the Primates’ Council.”

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A NEW PROVINCE will of course not be without difficulties, or a panacea. The new North American jurisdiction, for example, would be recognized, at least initially, only by certain Communion provinces (though ones representing most of the world’s active Anglicans). The new entity also is unlikely to improve the legal picture for Episcopal parishes wishing to realign with their property. And considering the number and types of groups involved, it may be a long time before the province is consolidated and unified.

Some also question whether it can be a coherent fellowship if it lacks complete interchangeability of ministers. The orthodox Forward in Faith, North America (FIF-NA) has called for CCP to observe a moratorium on female ordination until it completes a promised study of the question.

The Rt. Rev. David Anderson, head of the American Anglican Council (AAC) and a bishop within the Nigerian-backed Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), reportedly said recently that he expected the new province to debut next year. Speaking at Wisconsin’s Nashotah House Seminary, he outlined how he believes the new province will work. One audience member wrote this account of Anderson’s remarks:

“The new province will work from the existing Common Cause framework. It will be a federation of ‘judicatories,’ and each will (for the short term) keep its own hierarchy, canon law, etc. There will be mutual recognition of orders, expedited transfers of clergy, and respect for each other’s disciplinary measures. (If they can pull this off, they will have done better than the Continuing Church.) They will agree to disagree on women’s ordination, and some judicatories…will ordain women priests, while others…will not. (I am not sure how that will work or why they think it is a good thing.) They will be working on a single new Prayer Book (which somebody has already funded), which will not simply be 1662 (no matter what the GAFCON…document may say). Eventually, everybody will grow together organically, but nobody will be forced.”

Some observers asserted that the GAFCON statement, in calling for the new province’s formation, put Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, CCP’s Moderator, in line to become the entity’s primate. But he himself had no role in this. Duncan, while he was at Amman, was not in Jerusalem, but instead on a long-planned trip to Italy with his wife in celebration of his 60th birthday.

However, Bishop Martyn Minns of the Anglican District of Virginia, which is part of CANA, stated in a telephone press conference on GAFCON’s final day that, initially, the new province might be overseen by several bishops.

-Responses From Officialdom-

The ink was barely dry on the Jerusalem documents when Archbishop Williams responded to them with a few positive comments, but more critical or questioning ones.

Denying that Anglicans outside GAFCON are “proclaiming another gospel,” he claimed that the “tenets of orthodoxy” spelled out in The Jerusalem Declaration “will be acceptable to and shared by the vast majority of Anglicans,” and that Lambeth ’08 would doubtless “wish to affirm all these positive aspects of GAFCON’s deliberations.” It was not clear that the Lambeth program would allow such an action, however.

Williams scored the idea of a “Primates Council” because of its self- selection, saying it would “not pass the test of legitimacy.”

“And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries,” he said, “is fraught with difficulties,” including because of “our historic commitments to mutual recognition of ministries” (though the Communion long ago jettisoned this to accommodate provinces that wanted to ordain women).

Most astoundingly, from the conservative viewpoint, Dr. Williams asked how “effective discipline” – something never yet in evidence during his tenure - was to be maintained “in a situation of overlapping and competing jurisdictions.”

He said is it “not enough to dismiss” the Communion’s existing structures. He entreated GAFCON leaders “to share in a genuine renewal of all our patterns of reflection and decisionmaking in the Communion,” and especially in shaping “an effective (Anglican) covenant.” The covenant as so far drafted through official channels, however, is increasingly seen by conservatives as unlikely to produce sufficient theological harmony and mutual accountability among Anglican provinces. GAFCON appears to have proffered The Jerusalem Declaration as a substitute.

SEVERAL CONSERVATIVE OBSERVERS were astonished that Williams thought that TEC might sign on to The Jerusalem Declaration, with some noting, for example, remarks by TEC’s Presiding Bishop that have been widely seen as denying the uniqueness of Christ.

The AAC’s Bishop Anderson also asked: “Why does Dr. Williams find crossing provincial boundaries to offer pastoral care a more grievous sin than the revisionist false gospel and persecution of the orthodox Anglicans that is the cause of the boundary-crossing?”

He denied that GAFCON has “dismissed” Communion structures, but said they had “proved an obstacle to good governance,” so “any reformation will have to find ways to work around the structural dysfunction.”

CLEARLY RIDICULING the Jerusalem statement, TEC Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said June 30 that “much of the Anglican world must be lamenting the latest emission from GAFCON.” She contended that the meeting’s communiqué represented “merely another chapter in a centuries-old struggle for dominance by those who consider themselves the only true believers.”

Schori’s Canadian counterpart, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, denied any implication that his province proclaims a “false gospel.” He said that in his visits to many parishes, synods, and other church gatherings across the country, he had seen “a faithful proclamation of the apostolic gospel.”

The Bishop of Durham. N.T. Wright – a moderate Evangelical who had not been supportive of GAFCON – said afterward that the Jerusalem event was “a great celebration of the love and transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” But that “doesn’t mean the GAFCON proposals can be accepted without question.”

The proposed Primates’ Council seems “a strange body,” he said, and The Jerusalem 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 license to all kinds of unhelpful activities. It isn’t so much that GAFCON should invite people to sign up to its blank check. 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.”

He made a case for why the “historic link with Canterbury is not to be dismissed.” Yet he agreed that “the Communion instruments have not been able to deal with the problems,” and implied (again, against evidence at the time) that Lambeth would be “pursuing” a solution in this area.

-GAFCON And Anglo-Catholics, Continuers-

The Jerusalem conferees were of course predominantly Evangelical, and those “of a more Catholic Anglican persuasion may legitimately worry if they have been left out of GAFCON’s vision of orthodoxy,” asserted Jordan Hylden in First Things. But the Jerusalem meeting included a plucky minority of Anglo-Catholics and extramural Anglicans who seem to see a way forward in GAFCON.

The GAFCON statement’s support for a new province, with CCP as its foundation, drew particular welcome from Forward in Faith, North America, which was the first organization to begin calling from within TEC – 11 years ago – for the formation of a separate, orthodox Anglican province in North America.

Interestingly, FIF-NA thought GAFCON somewhat reminiscent of its 1989 synod in Fort Worth, “which also involved an international presence and a call for lead bishops to establish a structure that could further the cause,” said a statement by Quincy Bishop Keith Ackerman, FIF-NA President, and six other members of the organization who were in Jerusalem. What was different with GAFCON, they said, was that “several of the primates…have already acted, and the great energy and urgency apparent in both the conference as a whole and in its leadership…We met to talk about something that is already happening, and to plan its direction for the future.”

The FIF-NA delegation also noted that, while not all Continuing bodies – orthodox Anglican churches not recognized by Canterbury – “are interested in a relationship with the Communion, GAFCON is the first on-the-ground effort within the Communion to reintegrate those which do. About two-thirds of Continuers were represented” in Jerusalem.

ONE LEADER among them proffering a generally good review of GAFCON was Bishop Paul Hewett of the Diocese of the Holy Cross, who is Moderator of the Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas. FACA is a CCP member comprised of faithful U.S. bodies outside of TEC, some of which are Continuing Churches (because they strive to continue on the path their provinces followed before innovations of the 1970s and later). FACA, which joins FIF-NA (and most of the Christian world) in upholding an all-male priesthood, was represented at GAFCON by bishops, clergy and laity from Hewett’s jurisdiction and three other FACA members: the AMiA, Reformed Episcopal Church, and the Episcopal Missionary Church. Other FACA members include the Anglican Church in America, and the Anglican Province of America.

Hewett said he thought that GAFCON “got it about right with the amount of structure being put into place. We can go slowly on structures now, until we begin to sort out the issues we face. This will help us to steer clear of some of the division” that followed the 1977 St. Louis Congress, the springboard for most of the Continuing Church. While FIF-NA saw parallels between GAFCON and its 1989 Synod, Hewett thought the Jerusalem meeting “resembled St. Louis on a global scale. One senses from both events that from now on, nothing will ever be the same. What makes GAFCON different is the preponderance of Global South leadership and membership, which will drive our faithful Communion for generations to come.”

Still, he saw a commitment to “the consensus of the undivided Church of the first millennium” as vital to overcoming differences among prospective constituents of the new province.

In particular, he said that FACA, and FIF-NA, “will not compromise the ministry as our Lord instituted it and the apostles continued it. We are not, and can never be, in communion with anyone who ordains women. If those who do so continue the practice, we will remain in our federated relationships, entirely independent in our own synods and structures,” Hewett said.

He said that AMiA’s Bishop Rodgers had noted in Jerusalem the “serious degree of impaired communion” around the female ordination matter, and the need for a proper study such as the one AMiA conducted, which led that largely Evangelical body to find against ordaining women as priests or bishops.

PARTS OF THE GAFCON STATEMENT were also welcomed by Archbishop Mark Haverland of the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC), a leading Continuing Church body, though he did a thorough critique of the statement, particularly comparing it with ACC teaching. He believes his observations are shared by most in the Continuum.

“On the immediate issues that led to the GAFCON conference, we stand with GAFCON and its statement,” wrote Haverland (who was not in Jerusalem). That is, the ACC believes and teaches what Scripture and the Universal Church have always taught everywhere concerning human sexuality. He noted a lack of recognition by GAFCON, though, that the “problem of divorce and remarriage” antedates and “in many ways prepared the ground for” the crisis concerning homosexuality.

As well, Haverland said the Jerusalem statement, “by its silence concerning the ordination of women to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate, implies that [that] earlier aberration is tolerable, if not desirable, and is at worst a much less serious departure from the universal practice of the orthodox and catholic Church than is homosexuality.” On the contrary, the ordination of women and homosexuality “both flow from a confusion concerning both sexual roles and…the place of sexual identity in Church and Christian life…The ordination of women is in effect a claim by official Anglican bodies to authority over the deposit of the Faith…Such a claim, once made, can be pressed into service to justify any further innovation or aberration in doctrine or morals,” as has been seen in several churches, he contended.

Haverland supported GAFCON’s appeal to the Prayer Book, Articles, three Creeds and the first four Ecumenical Councils. He pointed out, though, that “these same formularies received formal assent from the same Anglican bodies that since the 1970s have abandoned orthodox and catholic doctrine.” The ACC, he said, had fixed its doctrinal stance firmly within the 1977 Affirmation of St. Louis, which is rooted “within the great central Tradition of Christendom, represented by the consensus of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches and of the teaching of the Undivided Church of the first millennium. Since the studied ambiguities of some traditional Anglicans permitted the grave errors of recent years to arise, it is no longer enough to recapitulate compromise positions and formulas. A clearer, more explicitly catholic and orthodox stance is demanded by the times…”

He went on to note several teachings of the Affirmation and the ACC about which GAFCON is silent, including that “the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist are generally necessary for salvation”; “there are seven sacraments received by the central Tradition of the Universal Church, namely Baptism, Confirmation or Chrismation, the Eucharist, Penance, Unction of the Sick, Matrimony, and Holy Orders”; and that “human life is sacred from the moment of conception to natural death, and directly willed abortion always is gravely sinful.”

Haverland concluded with a call from his church for “all self-described Anglicans to return to the central Tradition of Christendom…We welcome GAFCON as a small step in the right direction. But we…predict that the ambiguities and silences that characterize its statement will lead…to fragmentation and confusion…”

CLEARLY, HOWEVER, extramural Anglicans who were at GAFCON tended to see it as more than “a small step in the right direction.”

GAFCON “establishes a new alignment and marks a new beginning for faithful Anglicans throughout the world,” said Presiding Bishop Leonard Riches of the Reformed Episcopal Church, a “separated” but not Continuing Anglican jurisdiction. Founded by ex-Episcopalians in the latter 19th century as an emphatically Evangelical church, the REC has moved more to the center of the Anglican mainstream in recent years. It is in intercommunion with the Anglican Province of America, a Continuing Church body, and the Anglican province of Nigeria.

“The establishment of a Primates’ Council marks a step toward restoring the church to the ancient, conciliar form of order and government” by which “orthodoxy and orthopraxis are maintained and promoted in the life of the church,” Riches wrote his flock July 18.

“The primates’ signed affirmation, attached to the conference statement and The Jerusalem Declaration, provides authentication and recognition to the [REC] as full partners in the realigned [international] Anglican fellowship…together with other ‘confessing Anglican jurisdictions,’” Riches wrote. “With joy and thanksgiving we take our place as members of a global family and fellowship…”

-GAFCON: The Jury’s Out-

Still, it obviously remains to be seen, as First Things’ Mr. Hylden noted, whether or not the movement represented in Jerusalem “will wind up serving the faith and unity of historic Anglicanism, or lead to further fragmentation and schism.”

Can the GAFCON fellowship possibly succeed in “rescuing” a Communion that seems resistant to being saved, especially by a movement often viewed as violating Anglican institutional etiquette (a far graver sin, for some, than heterodoxy!)?

GAFCON probably is not overestimating its chances on that score. For what does seem to be clear about what came out of Jerusalem, was this: While the GAFCON movement has not yet “forsworn cooperation” with the rest of the Communion, it does seem to be saying (as Hylden put it) “that if the Anglican Communion won’t discipline itself, then the GAFCON Anglicans will take care of themselves, with or without Canterbury.”

The ball, in other words, was in the court of Archbishop Williams and the 2008 Lambeth Conference.

At this writing, Dr. Williams’ return serve seemed to be a whine – a Lambeth background paper that accused conservative prelates who offer cross-border pastoral care or who stayed away from Lambeth over theological differences of breaching collegiality and weakening “the body of Christ for which they have responsibility.”

Sources: Stand Firm in Faith, The Church of England Newspaper, FrontPage.com, The Living Church, The Guardian, BBC, Episcopal News Service, Christian Newswire, www.religiousintelligence.co.uk, The Times (London), www.virtueonline.org
----

Permission to circulate the foregoing electronically is granted, provided that there are no changes in the headings or text