Church of England crisis: Mass defections loom as rebel faction appeals to English clergy

· Hundreds may be ready to leave Church of England
· Traditionalists' conference swamped by 750 delegates

• Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent
• The Guardian,
• Wednesday July 2, 2008

Hundreds of English clergy appear poised to defect from the Church of England to join a new conservative movement after a conference led by rebel archbishops was swamped with delegates in London yesterday.

The 750 delegates attending the meeting in central London were asked to pledge their allegiance to a 14-point manifesto issued last weekend in Jerusalem by the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon), a coalition of traditionalist clergy who have challenged the authority of the archbishop of Canterbury.

According to the conservative website, Anglican Mainstream, clergy and churchwardens are asked to "stand in solidarity" with Gafcon by registering their support online.

The popularity of the event caught organisers and speakers by surprise, as only half that number were expected. The attendance level, in addition to the 50 serving English clergy sponsoring the meeting, indicated the disillusion felt by conservative evangelicals.

Read it all at Guardian.co.uk

Gafcon can save Anglicanism

We are a response to the current authorities' unwillingness to check the flouting of Bible teachings and can lead it forward without a split

By Chris Sugden

• guardian.co.uk,
• Wednesday July 2, 2008

For five years, the Episcopal church in US, the Anglican church of Canada, and elements of the Church of England and church in New Zealand have acted precisely like the student unions of the 1970s and Militant tendency in putting facts on the ground and defying the authorities to do anything about it. Some bishops and others have been presenting a different Christian gospel, expressed in disobedience to the teaching of the Bible, and continue to persecute and harass those who resist and object.

If the current dispute is merely a matter of different perspectives and emphases, as the Archbishop of Canterbury suggests, why are the bishops who are promoting this different gospel driving people out of their churches and removing licences from priests such as Dr Packer?

Gafcon became necessary following the persistent failure of the current authorities in the Anglican Communion to do anything about this deliberate flouting of Christian teaching and decisions of the whole Anglican Communion and its leadership.

What would be an ideal response of the Archbishop of Canterbury? The Gafcon pilgrimage was about relationships above all else. The pilgrims came to meet with God, through prayer and worship, through study of his word, and pilgrimage to recall his mighty acts of redemption in history. They came to meet with each other in fellowship, Bible discussion, meals, and pilgrimage together. One presiding bishop of a dispersed Anglican group in America, the Reformed Episcopal Synod, said he now had a family.

An ideal response of the archbishop would be to focus on relationships: to meet with the primates' council of Gafcon on neutral territory: not at the Lambeth conference, which is already a compromised gathering since those who initiated this crisis, the consecrators of Gene Robinson, will be present, and since the issues are fundamental questions about the authority of scripture in the church.

Read it all at the Guardian.co.uk

Anglican Conservatives Step Back From Split Threat

by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

All Things Considered, June 30, 2008 · When nearly 300 bishops from Africa, South America and breakaway churches in the U.S. gathered in Jerusalem last week, the big question was: Will they declare schism from the more liberal churches in the West?

The answer turned out to be easy.

"We all sat around the table, and pretty well with one voice, we said, we are not leaving the Anglican Communion," Archbishop Greg Venables, who oversees several countries in South America, said from Jerusalem. "We are not going to break away and form another church."

There had been talk preceding the meeting of a theological divorce. The group did not split because, Venables says, "we are the true Anglicans."

"We don't accept that we can hand over the franchise of Anglicanism to people who suddenly, without consulting anyone, decided to create a new version of Anglicanism," he says.

Read or listen to the entire article at NPR

GAFCON Report by Cn Bill Gandenberger

GAFCON REPORT: Monday, June 30, 2008

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I am writing you on the last day of the GAFCON, or Global Anglican Future Conference, in Jerusalem. It has been a long 10 days since the Bishop and I arrived, with the bulk of my time spent in our hotel, working with the other delegates on a statement that will provide the groundwork for a new, biblically orthodox, mission-focused, global Anglican movement.

The Final GAFCON Statement, which has been bathed in much prayer, was received with joy this Sunday morning by the 1148 delegates representing perhaps 70% of the world’s Anglican Christians. It lays out in relatively simple language what we stand for, in terms of historic Anglican theology, with the Holy Scripture as the ultimate authority. The Statement contains a segment called the Jerusalem Declaration. In addition, it calls for a Primates Council (of archbishops) that will lead a new global Anglican structure. For North America this will include a new orthodox Anglican province to be formed by these Primates, initially made up of the Common Cause Partnership of which we are members. The GAFCON statement with the Jerusalem Declaration may be found at www.GAFCON.org and you may watch keynote speakers’ addresses and sermons at ANGLICANTV.org I would particularly recommend the address by Os Guiness, and the closing sermon by our own Archbishop of the Southern Cone, Greg Venables.

Personally I am delighted and encouraged by both the conference and its results. There is no question that the Holy Spirit has been here, guiding our deliberations in a miraculous way. I am sure that there will be questions about the content of the statement, and its intentions and subsequent actions and reactions, and the Bishop and I look forward to going through it with our clergy prior to his departure for Lambeth. Dates for such a gathering, probably at the Cathedral, are now being considered.

Although I did not go on any tours, I was able on Saturday to wander, visit and pray at various sites in Jerusalem, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (Calvary), the Church of St. Peter of Galicantu (cock-crow), the Upper Room, and the Western (Wailing) Wall. I had almost an hour to pray at the Wall for the Diocese of San Joaquin, our congregations, clergy and numerous individuals, placing numerous prayers on paper into the Wall itself. It was a sweet time with the Lord, who protected me from too much of a sunburn. I was able to explore the recently uncovered City of David and Pool of Siloam (see John 9) and my conference friend and I entered the first 50 feet of the Hezekiah Tunnel that is knee deep with clear rushing water. As it was Shabbat it was formally closed, but the Arab gatekeeper opened the various gates to let us in for about 10 minutes. (This may be on the tour that I help lead next April 29-May 8th.)

The Bishop is relaxing today prior to our pick up for the airport this afternoon. We are scheduled to take off at 11:30 PM, so please pray there are no delays, that our connections are made, and that the flights are uneventful.

Thank you for your fervent prayers. God has answered, and continues to answer, them in very powerful ways! May Jesus be praised!

Yours Faithfully in Our Risen Lord,

Bill+

Note: They have returned to Fresno safe and sound! VM+

GAFCON Final Statement

Sunday, June 29, 2008

STATEMENT ON THE GLOBAL ANGLICAN FUTURE

Praise the LORD!
It is good to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.
The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. (Psalm 147:1-2)

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, send you greetings from Jerusalem!

Introduction

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which was held in Jerusalem from 22-29 June 2008, is a spiritual movement to preserve and promote the truth and power of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ as we Anglicans have received it. The movement is global: it has mobilised Anglicans from around the world. We are Anglican: 1148 lay and clergy participants, including 291 bishops representing millions of faithful Anglican Christians. We cherish our Anglican heritage and the Anglican Communion and have no intention of departing from it. And we believe that, in God’s providence, Anglicanism has a bright future in obedience to our Lord’s Great Commission to make disciples of all nations and to build up the church on the foundation of biblical truth (Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 2:20). [the statement continues]

Read it all at GAFCON.org

ABC Responds to GAFCON Statement

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has responded to the final declaration of the Global Anglican Future Conference with the following statement:

The Final Statement from the GAFCON meeting in Jordan and Jerusalem contains much that is positive and encouraging about the priorities of those who met for prayer and pilgrimage in the last week. The ‘tenets of orthodoxy’ spelled out in the document will be acceptable to and shared by the vast majority of Anglicans in every province, even if there may be differences of emphasis and perspective on some issues. I agree that the Communion needs to be united in its commitments on these matters, and I have no doubt that the Lambeth Conference will wish to affirm all these positive aspects of GAFCON’s deliberations. Despite the claims of some, the conviction of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Lord and God and the absolute imperative of evangelism are not in dispute in the common life of the Communion [the letter continues]

Read it all on the Anglican Communion News Service

Conservative Anglicans form breakaway church in revolution led from the south

[Note: The title of this post, which was the Guardian's headline, is misleading. Conservative Anglicans are not forming a "breakaway Church". As the article describes below, they are working to preserve Anglicanism and establish reform within the Anglican Communion.]

"All around the world the sleeping giant that is evangelical Anglicanism and orthodox Anglicanism has been aroused by what happened in Canada and the United States of America. It was an act of folly." - Archbishop Jensen (Sydney)

Conservative evangelicals representing half of the world's Anglicans launched a new global church yesterday, challenging the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury and vowing to rescue people from the forces of "militant secularism and pluralism" created by a "spiritual decline" in developing economies.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, Foca, will sever ties with the main churches in the US and Canada, whose leaders they accuse of betraying biblical teaching. Foca architects will tomorrow go to the conservative evangelical church of All Souls, in central London, to discuss global Anglicanism and English orthodoxy.

Hundreds of disgruntled clergy, representing many Church of England parishes, will be in the audience and the speakers will include the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, and the Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi.

Great swaths of Anglican provinces, including Africa, South America and Asia, are furious with their counterparts in the northern hemisphere, accusing them of being in thrall to contemporary culture, with the ordination and consecration of gay New Hampshire bishop Gene Robinson acting as a turning point. The creation of Foca is a schism in all but name.

Outraged over the "false gospel" being promoted in the west, Foca pledges a return to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, ignoring 21st-century additions and interpretations. It will train its own priests by sending them to hardline theological colleges such as Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and Oak Hill, London, and will insist on more orthodox practices in its churches.

There will also be a primates' council, comprising senior bishops and archbishops who attended the Jerusalem summit that led to Foca's inception.

At a press conference Jensen said they would bring "order to a situation of turmoil" and help to deal with "the chaos caused in the Anglican church through revisionist activities". [the article continues]

Read it all at The Guardian