GAFCON’s ideas are “ridiculous” and “deeply offensive” says the Bishop of Durham, the Rt. Rev. N.T. Wright in a BBC radio interview. “To be told that I now need to be authorised or validated by a group of primates somewhere else who come in and tell me which doctrines I should sign up to is not only ridiculous it’s deeply offensive.”
One salutary effect of GAFCON is that it has awakened the British public to the fact that conservatives attempting to take over the Anglican Communion mean business. The British press has been simultaneously hyping and decrying the right wing’s campaign, and support for an inclusive Communion has come from unlikely quarters.
Canon Kearon states, “Working with the summaries of the fruit of Indaba arising from each group, it will be their duty to generate a common text which reflects authentically the Indaba.” The text must reflect the mind of the bishops attending the 2008 Conference.
The Rev. Terry Martin, better known as Father Jake to tens of thousands of fans in the Anglican blogosphere, announced last night that he is
More than 650 bishops have registered for the Lambeth Conference. That’s slightly more than three-quarters of the invitees. A small number of sees are vacant, and some bishops simply cannot attend, so it is difficult to say which absentees are boycotting, and which simply aren’t coming, but the boycott may account for some 20 percent of potential attendees.
Sometime in the 1980s a shift happened within churches and in ecumenical gatherings, both formal and informal. The focus of women’s language about church participation, both at the grass roots and among professional theologians, shifted from a “Please, sir, may I have some more” approach to a different angle: “We are church and have always been church.”
[Benjamin] Franklin was also among those Deists who remained open to the possibility of divine intervention or special providence in human affairs. . . . Unlike radical, or anti-Christian Deists, Franklin perceived that organized religion could benefit society by encouraging public virtue as well as by promoting social order.
Every Ephraimite seeking to cross the river is questioned by the Gileadites. If they cannot pronounce the word “shibboleth” correctly, thus proving themselves aliens, they are slaughtered, and the Scriptures recalls that 42,000 Ephraimites are killed as a result.
I do not believe the Anglican Communion is paralyzed by a false gospel. While we recognize that our relationships are bruised and broken the gospel calls us to be reconciled, to pursue healing and to seek the counsel of the Holy Spirit. It calls all those in leadership to use their authority “not to hurt but to heal, not to destroy but to build up” and “to unite the church in a holy fellowship of truth and love.”
Brian McLaren – who will be at Lambeth July 19-24 – is quoted in this CNN story on Obama’s move to mobilize Christians on the