THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION: The End Is the Beginning

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
9/2/2008

When the GAFCON primates met in London to decide how they would respond to the Lambeth Conference, they made their position abundantly clear - there will be no going back on what was accomplished in Jerusalem. The new ship of Anglican orthodoxy has set sail. It will not turn back.

In a single breath, they rejected any overture by the Archbishop of Canterbury that would require them to compromise on the faith once for all delivered to the saints. They will have no truck with sexual behavior outside of heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman.

The finality in their communiqué must have sent chills around Lambeth Palace and across town at the Anglican Communion Office run by Canon Kenneth Kearon and his liberal staff.

The only question left is whether the Archbishop of Canterbury wants to join the GAFCON primates or form his own Global South equivalent by co-opting Archbishops like John Chew (Singapore) and the CAPA (African) bishops. There is no middle ground. The high moral ground is now firmly in the hands of the Global South, so are the numbers.

GAFCON might have had only 303 bishops in Jerusalem, but they represent more than 75% of the Anglican Communion's church going worshippers. The 600 plus bishops at Lambeth represented less than 25% of the communion.

It is ironic that the largest bloc of bishops in attendance at Lambeth was The Episcopal Church USA with 127 bishops. The second largest contingent came from the Church of England, which registered 103 (39 diocesan and 64 suffragan/assistant bishops) people. The Episcopal Church has less than 800,000 church-going Episcopalians, the C of E a little over 1 million, the equivalent of two medium-sized Nigerian Anglican dioceses. The Lambeth conference had a budget shortfall. There was no budget shortfall for GAFCON attendees.

Communique

The Primates in their communiqué could not have been clearer. The Windsor Report has been breached. Any future Covenant will not resolve the present situation. Three new facts of the Anglican Communion must now be faced. "We are past the time when they can be reversed," they said.

"First, some Anglicans have sanctified sinful practices and will continue to do so whatever others may think. Second, churches and even dioceses affected by this disobedience have rightly withdrawn fellowship while wishing to remain authentic Anglicans. So-called 'border-crossing' is another way of describing the provision of recognition and care for those who have been faithful to the teachings of Holy Scripture. Third, there is widespread impaired and broken sacramental communion amongst Anglicans with far-reaching global implications. The hope that we may somehow return to the state of affairs before 2003 is an illusion."

Those are words Dr. Williams does not want to hear. "Any sound strategy must accommodate itself to these facts," said the primates. The primates talked of acute spiritual dangers associated with a compromised theology for those who wish to defend and promote a biblical gospel. They said the GAFCON movement will continue and that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will function as a means of sharing in this great task.

They went a step further and invited individuals, churches, dioceses, provinces and para-church organizations who assented to the Jerusalem Declaration to signify their desire to become members of the Fellowship. "For the sake of the Anglican Communion this is an effort to bring order out of the chaos of the present time and to make sure as far as possible that some of the most faithful Anglican Christians are not lost to the Communion. It is expected that priority will be given to the possible formation of a province in North America for the Common Cause Partnership."

They held out little hope that Lambeth 2008 had resolved anything noting that the three Moratoria would not be adhered too. (This week it was announced that Jeffrey John, a homosexually partnered Church of England priest and Dean of St. Alban's, would most likely be the next Bishop of Bangor, Wales with the full support of Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan.) Jeffrey John says he is in a celibate homosexual relationship. It should be noted that the Archbishop of Canterbury privately believes that active homosexuals in committed relationships are comparable to marriage in the eyes of God, a view unsustainable and unacceptable to Global South bishops and archbishops.

The GAFCON bishops noted that the Communion actually fractured in 2003, when fellowship was "torn at its deepest level." They blasted what they called the same strategies, which mean further delay and unlikely results. "Indeed, delay itself seems to be a strategy employed by some in order to resolve the issue through weariness." They said the Anglican Covenant will take a long time to be widely accepted and may have no particular force when it does. The idea of "moratoria" has never dealt with the underlying problem as is shown by the equivalence of cross-border care and protection of the sexual sins which have caused the problems.

In short, they concluded that there was nothing new to recommend that they should change direction away from the Anglican Communion as it is now being led by a fatally flawed archbishop. "If the Panel of Reference did not work, it is unclear how the Pastoral Forum will succeed."

Four North American bishops, who serve under the canonical authority of the Primates of the Anglican Church of Kenya, the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), the Anglican Church of Rwanda, the Province of the Southern Cone and the Anglican Church of Uganda, weighed in saying they supported the GAFCON primates and noted, without comment, that they now had some 300 congregations, more than 450 clergy and an Average Sunday Attendance of 50,000.

Congregationally that's the equivalent of seven small Episcopal dioceses, five medium-sized dioceses and three very large dioceses (These figures are based in 2005 Red Book figures.) - no small achievement when you consider that there was nothing before 2000 when the Anglican Missions in the America's (AMiA) was launched on the North American scene. The ASA figure of 50,000 should not be scoffed at either. That's the equivalent of 13 small dioceses, five mid-size dioceses and/or three large dioceses.

They also noted that "pernicious litigation" initiated by The Episcopal Church against fleeing parishes falls far short of what is needed and until it ceases no formal agreements can be entered into with the Episcopal Church.

Recent litigation events in the Dioceses of San Joaquin, Virginia and Los Angeles would indicate that they are correct in their assessment. No word has come out of New York's headquarters from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori or from her attorney David Booth Beers indicating litigation will cease. What now?

Within the next two months, two dioceses - Ft. Worth and Quincy - will formally move to end their relationship with the Episcopal Church. When they do, it will signal the end of Anglo-Catholicism in The Episcopal Church. While there will be isolated parishes here and there in TEC that remain staunchly Anglo-Catholic, such as the one parish in the Diocese of Bethlehem, St. Stephen's, Whitehall and the dozen or so parishes in the Diocese of Louisiana, for example, Anglo-Catholicism as a body of belief and dioceses will be gone forever. Anglo-Catholic priests have been drummed out of dioceses like Long Island, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania while Evangelical priests are not welcome in liberal and revisionist dioceses.

Moderate bishops Like Paul Marshall (Bethlehem) and Charles Jenkins (Louisiana) will still afford a safe place for those remaining catholic congregations, but should they retire or resign it is doubtful that their successors will be so inclusive. Bishop William Wantland was the last great Anglo-Catholic Bishop of the Diocese Eau Claire. That diocese has since gone into serious decline. One notes the fate of Anglo-Catholic priests in dioceses such as Pennsylvania and Long Island. The "seven sisters" in the Diocese of PA are no more. Revisionism brooks no opposition.

Evangelicals

The Diocese of Pittsburgh with its Evangelical catholic bishop Robert Duncan poses the greatest single threat to Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori. She, like Salome, would like to hand him his head on a platter after the next meeting of the House of Bishops. Whether she is successful, remains to be seen.

Duncan's diocese is very conflicted but a clear majority want to leave. It is set to vote to leave TEC, but the liberals will fight tooth and nail to retain the properties if he does. There is an assortment of conservatives who do not want to leave The Episcopal Church, which makes the going tough for this bishop.

He is also the orthodox lightning rod as Duncan is the Moderator of Common Cause Partnership. He will undoubtedly be the titular head of the new North American Anglican province when it is finally born. When it is, it will be recognized by the GAFCON primates, but not by the Archbishop of Canterbury thus causing even greater consternation to Mrs. Jefferts Schori and the Episcopal House of Bishops. They will see it as an enormous threat to them as it plants a flag for orthodox Anglicanism right at their back door. (Orthodox Canadians already planted the flag of faithful Anglicanism with the ANiC along with its two other Common Cause Partners in Canada, the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Coalition in Canada.)

Bishops John-David Schofield, Jack Iker, Keith Ackerman, and Robert Duncan all now believe there is no hope of reversing the direction of the Episcopal Church and they want out. A number of retired bishops like C. FitzSimmons Allison, Alex Dickson, William Wantland, Ben Benitez and Ed MacBurney, to name but a few, share that view.

But what of those evangelical (some are evangelical catholic) bishops who plan to stay in The Episcopal Church? What will bishops like John W. Howe (Central Florida), James Stanton (Texas), Mark Lawrence, (South Carolina), William Love (Albany), James M. Adams (Western Kansas), Ed Leidel (Nthn. Indiana), et al, do as the noose of revisionism tightens around them?

You can be sure they will not be left alone. They can expect frequent visits from the likes of Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, whose penchant for stirring up trouble is now legendary. Mrs. Jefferts Schori is not above stirring the waters of discontent herself, happy to grasp any liberal straw that might be found in orthodox dioceses to create a wedge for pansexual acceptance and will move to inhibit a bishop on whatever flimsy canon she can find to oust the orthodox incumbent. (Look what she is doing to Bishop Duncan. She wanted him gone without a trial and was thwarted being unable to find the three senior bishops in the HOB to agree with her).

English religion writers of secular newspapers, (with some exceptions) and neo-conservative bishops like Tom Wright (Durham) just don't get it. They think American liberals and revisionists are reasonable people who can be dealt with reasonably. They also think that what goes on, on this side of the Atlantic, won't affect them. It is so naive as to be laughable.

The recent "marriage" of two priests in a London parish by a leading English cleric using a bastardized version of the Book of Common Prayer marriage service moved way beyond anything that has ever happened in The Episcopal Church. (Rites have still not been officially approved in TEC). Furthermore, if Jeffrey John, the Dean of St. Albans should become the next Bishop of Bangor, that Welsh province (on English soil) he will only be a used condom behind Gene Robinson, the homogenital Bishop of New Hampshire.

It is naïve beyond words to believe that anything will change the direction of Western pansexual Anglicanism at this late stage in the ecclesiastical game.

The Lambeth Conference was such a huge failure that even some revisionist bishops now recognize it. Washington Bishop John Chane opined in an editorial on the conference describing it as "the turning point that wasn't. 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.'

The Anglican Communion must face into the hard truth that when we scapegoat and victimize one group of people in the church, all of us become victims of our own prejudice and sinfulness." Activist homosexualists and lesbians like Louie Crew and Susan Russell said Dr. Williams betrayed the cause for sexual liberation and therefore betrayed the New World Anglican order being born from the theological loins of John Shelby Spong. Orthodox Anglicans would agree with the liberals and revisionists at this point, so GAFCON is born. There is no way Rowan Williams can win. Chane is right; there is no middle way anymore, if there ever was one. The Elizabethan Settlement is dead. A new post-colonial Anglican Communion is emerging in the Communion even as The Episcopal Church is disintegrating.

The GAFCON primates were right to conclude that Williams has cast his lot with the church's left wing on faith and morals. He will not change his views; he has made that very clear. That he can hold private views on homosexuality, but maintain a public posture of orthodoxy on homosexuality will not wash with the Global South. They will never accept that sort of theological schizophrenia.

God is not mocked; the Anglican Communion is reaping what it has sown. This harvest of hate, fear, frustration, loathing and alienation on both sides, brought about by the promotion and acceptance of sexual sin, is the death knell of the Anglican Communion as it is presently constructed.

In GAFCON, the end is the beginning. It is only a matter of time.

END