Normally, Sunday is a sleepy news day in the Anglican communion. Not today, as several Anglican leaders put down markers about the future of the Communion.
The Archbishop of Canterbury writes to his home Diocese about his hopes for the upcoming Lambeth Conference:
But what I most hope and pray is that we emerge from the quite intensive programme with the two main goals taken forward – having gained more confidence about our Communion and having helped to give bishops more resources for their primary work of serving the Church in mission.
But what we can say a bit about is the way in which the business is going to be done. The programme, devised by a very gifted and dedicated international team, responds to the widely felt concerns that we ought to get away from too ‘parliamentary’ and formal a style. It’s going to be important that no-one goes home feeling they haven’t ever been listened to. So it’s important to devise structures that guarantee everyone has a chance to be heard. It’s also crucial to build the sort of trust that allows deep and passionate differences to be stated and explored together, with time allowed for getting past the slogans and the surface emotions.
Read it all here.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, there were two notable addresses to the GAFCON conference. First, the Right Rev’d Suheil S. Dawani, Bishop of Jerusalem, urged the participants to act with humility toward unity in Anglican Communion:
I look forward to the Lambeth Conference which is so important to our ongoing life together and for the mission of the Church. Since its inception in 1867, the Lambeth Conference has been the setting for invaluable dialogue about many aspects of our Church’s life, particularly in relation to the changes in the world around us. Together, we have dialogued at Lambeth about war and peace, about industrialization and ecumenism, about poverty and disease, about the faith and order of the Church, and about how together we can overcome the injustices of our world. Throughout its history, the Lambeth Conference has dealt with many difficult issues. At times these issues looked as if they might divide us, but they did not because we persevered in prayer and fellowship, together, with respect and patience.
It is in that same spirit that I welcome you here to this Cathedral Church.
The very stones of this holy city of Jerusalem teach us patience and humility. This city has seen tragic events throughout the centuries, at times leveled to the ground, at times raised again to new life. We are on holy ground.
So all Christians must come here first and foremost as pilgrims—and I note that you say your coming here to Jerusalem is a “pilgrimage.” Pilgrims here do not bring decisions with them. They come here to seek prayerfully the decisions God wants them to make. And God will always surprise us. God has not finished with us or with our Church yet. God the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth, and we who come here as pilgrims must be open to the Spirit’s leading, open to God’s surprising revelation to us.
I pray that as you meet in this holy place, you will all be open, in real humility, to the Spirit’s guidance and that you will continue here in a spirit of peace, reconciliation and goodwill.
Read the full text here.
Finally, the Right Rev’d Peter Akinola, Archbishop of Nigeria, gave opening remarks at GAFCON that took on the Archbishop of Caterbury, as well as the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada:
The last major meeting that considered this issue was the Primates’ Meeting in Tanzania in February 2007. After long and painful hours of deliberations the primates gave TEC a last chance to clarify unequivocally and adequately their stand by 30th September, 2007.
Strangely, before the deadline, and before the Primates could get the opportunity of meeting to assess the adequacy of the response of TEC and in a clear demonstration of unwillingness to follow through our collective decisions which for many of us was an apparent lack of regard for the Primates, Lambeth Palace in July 2007 issued invitations to TEC bishops including those who consecrated Gene Robinson to attend the Lambeth 2008 conference.
At this point, it dawned upon us, regrettably, that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not interested in what matters to us, in what we think or in what we say.
. . .
As the Lambeth Conference 2008 approached and invitations were being sent out as though it was business as usual, some of our Provinces counselled the Archbishop of Canterbury to consider shifting the date[7] until the time for a meaningful fellowship and healing of relationships could be discerned. In addition, it would give the provinces of the Communion space to conclude and ratify the draft Anglican Covenant. Rejecting all entreaties, Lambeth Palace chose not to be bothered about that which troubles us; decided to stick to its own plans and to erect the walls of 2008 Lambeth Conference on the shaky and unsafe foundations of our brokenness.
We cannot succumb to this turmoil in our Communion and simply watch helplessly. We have found ourselves in a world in which Anglican leaders hold on to a form of religion but consistently deny its power. We have a situation in which some members of the Anglican family think they are so superior to all others that they are above the law, they can do whatever they please with impunity. As a Communion we have been unable to exercise discipline. In the face of global suspicion of the links of Islam with terrorism, Lambeth Palace is making misleading statements about the Islamic Law, Shari a, to the point that even secular leaders are now calling us to order! We can no longer trust where some of our Communion leaders are taking us.
Repeatedly, those of us in the leadership team of GAFCON have been advised by all levels of our ecclesial structures to avoid a vacuum. All our bishops and wives who would normally look to the Lambeth Conference for fellowship but now could not along with senior lay leaders and selected clergy to whom Lambeth authorities are not willing to listen should meet in another forum for prayerful deliberation on matters critical to our common life and mission. Thus GAFCON is a rescue mission.
Our beloved Anglican Communion 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 and for all delivered to the saints’ from those who are proclaiming a new gospel, which really is no gospel at all, {Gal 1.} In the wisdom and strength God supplies we must rescue what is left of the Church from error of the apostates.
Read it all here.
So what does this all mean? Ruth Gledhill thinks that GAFCON participants are seeking change from within the Anglican Communion, and not a schism:
Anglican bishops meeting in Jerusalem are planning to form a “church within a church” to counter Western liberalism and to reform the Church from within.
Senior sources told The Times that the most likely outcome of the divisions over homosexuality and biblical authority was an international “Anglican Fellowship” that would provide a home for orthodox Anglicans.
. . .
The new fellowship could have a leadership of six or seven senior conservative bishops and archbishops, such as the Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Right Rev Bob Duncan — who chairs the US Common Cause partnership that acts as an umbrella for American conservatives — Archbishop Henry Orombi, Primate of Uganda, and the Church of England’s Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali.
The aim is not to split the worldwide Anglican Communion, which has 80 million members in 38 provinces, but to reform it from within. Formal ties would be maintained with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, but fellowship members will consider themselves out of communion with the US and Canada.
Read it all here.
News reports of GAFCON include the Telegraph, and Reuters. Thinking Anglicans has a good summary of the news from GAFCON here.