Read Jenny Te Paa’s closing address to the USPG [United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel] annual conference that concluded last week:
I have, on one hand, become especially afraid of those very few bishops and archbishops of this our beloved Communion who have demonstrably indicated their unwillingness to serve the common good, and also in a sense to betray their own baptismal and ordination vows by refusing to participate in eucharistic worship with other baptised Anglicans in their insistence that God loves only some, and who further insist that there is indeed a portion of humanity who are not worthy of full respect, dignity or inclusion.
I have not, on the other hand, been unduly distracted by the clamour of these aggressive alarmists because, as one immensely privileged to move around the Communion, what I also bear witness to serves to relativise everything, and so it is with absolute confidence that I can say there are far more Anglicans getting on with the pressing business of being God’s mission
people than there are those fretting over whether or not inclusion is a gospel imperative.
I have believed and have been saying for some time now that for the sake of the Communion it is imperative for us all to look beyond the vitriol, the hysteria, the noisy gongs, instead to notice anew all that has and all who have actually remained constant, to notice anew all those whose dedication, sacrifice, service and commitment to God’s mission has not altered and will
not ever be altered one tiny bit no matter how many threats, claims and abuses are being made at the level of male church leadership struggles. I have been encouraged to look again at the exemplary work and witness of many thousands of unsung Anglican men and women, young and old, lay and ordained, those whose lives of selfless mostly voluntary service, will not
and cannot ever be disrupted by the prospect of schism, by legal claims and counter claims or by indecently ferocious doctrinal arguments.