The Sydney Morning-Herald reports that GAFCON has moved their mailing address to the diocesan offices of Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen. But, he says, collecting the mail doesn’t mean his diocese is becoming the home office for a breakaway movement.
The postbox address for the Sydney diocese and its bishops is the central contact point for the movement that emerged from a meeting of more than 1000 Anglican conservatives in Jerusalem last month.
Those supporting the movement’s call for a return to strict literal interpretations of the Bible have been invited to become members of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and send expressions of interest to the Sydney postbox.
Dr Jensen was appointed secretary to its primates’ council in London last month.
The diocese denies that Dr Jensen’s new position means the GAFCON movement will be administratively headquartered in Sydney. “The Archbishop is the secretary to the primates’ council, an honorary position. He does not have a vote on the primates’ council – which is assisted by an advisory board,” a spokesman said.
The prominent Melbourne liberal Muriel Porter said she regarded the movement as subversive and would raise the matter at a meeting of the general synod’s standing committee in Sydney next month. “The decision to host GAFCON is going to cause real concern among many Anglicans in Australia,” she said. “It is an alternative international Anglican structure rivalling the archbishop of Canterbury and the primates and all of the other bodies of the Anglican Communion.”
Robert Fordham, Australia’s lay representative on the Anglican Consultative Council, the international organisation of the Anglican Communion that is trying to resolve the tensions in the global church, said he would ask the archbishop to explain himself.
“To join an organisation as an archbishop and even more significantly have the diocesan office as the Australian headquarters of this organisation is a matter of grave concern,” he said.
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