Frequent flyer in pursuit of schism

David Marr writing in the Sydney Morning Herald about Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney:

The consecration of a gay man was seen from the first as an opportunity to be seized, a chance for “Bible-believing” Anglicans to build a new, purer church. That’s the mission GAFCON – the Global Anglican Future Conference – will be pursuing in Jerusalem. “I’m not saying to the Americans: ‘Pull your head in,’ ” says Jensen. “We said that five years ago, and that didn’t work. They will do their thing. But if they do do that thing, then their freedom frees us as well.”

Peter Jensen is a decisive leader of a breakaway faith that claims to represent half the keen Anglicans on earth. In this cause, he has spent his energy, intelligence, prestige and an

unknown amount of Sydney’s money. The city’s archbishops have been travellers in the past, but Jensen is a frequent flyer in the pursuit of schism, turning up wherever needed – Blackpool, Nairobi, the Red Sea and, later this month, Jerusalem.

But he does not represent Australia. Sydney is the oldest and richest diocese in the country. It’s growing more strongly than any other in the land. But in many eyes it’s hardly Anglican at all. Visitors from Melbourne worshipping in a Sydney parish might think they’ve wandered into a

protestant chapel: where are the crosses and vestments? What’s this demand that all believers be Born Again in Jesus Christ?

GAFCON is only step one. Most of the 200 or so bishops, after issuing a communique on the shape of the new “alternative communion”, will return to their dioceses and boycott Lambeth, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s meeting of all the Anglican bishops of the world, in July. Sydney’s six bishops have decided not to sit down with the Americans.

More bluntly, GAFCON is planning to collapse the church into a sort of Balkan confusion in which national branches turn their backs on each other, bishops dabble in one another’s territory, and dingo fences cut across the landscape to keep “orthodox” Bible-believing, homosexual-denouncing Anglicans safe on one side of the wire, and “liberals” on the other. If the split comes, it will shatter national churches as well as the international communion. It will be particularly messy for Australia.

Jensen speaks of the old Anglican Communion in the past tense. As far as he’s concerned, it’s finished. Lambeth can go on quarrelling about homosexuality, but the Archbishop of Sydney expects the subject will hardly be mentioned at GAFCON. That’s in the past. It is, after all, a bond between them. “To my mind we are just living in a new age. We’re in a different sort

of organisation. Now it’s exploring the possibilities of this different organisation that is now before us.”

There’s much more, including this interesting bit:

The Sydney bishops had still not made up their minds to boycott Lambeth after four weeks of “agonising and struggle” – the words of Jensen’s media officer Russell Powell – when Akinola announced their decision for them in far-off Lagos, telling a press conference he was not going to Lambeth – and nor were the bishops of Uganda, Rwanda and Sydney.

Jensen scrambled. He rang the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office to say the Sydney bishops were not coming. At some point the letter was signed and sent. Then Jensen made the decision public. But senior sources in the church say two bishops remain deeply troubled: “They were told to like it or lump it.”

Read the whole thing.

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