Archbishop Rowan Williams Responds to the Gafcon Declaration

Our Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams can be criticized for many things, but this response to the GAFCON final declaration is excellent, and points to several problems with the recent declaration. I echo Tobias Haller at In a Godward Direction by giving the Archbishop a hearty "hear here" for this response. Have a read...

from the Anglican Communion News Service...

Archbishop of Canterbury responds to GAFCON statement

Posted On : June 30, 2008 5:04 PM |
ACNS: ACNS4417
Related Categories: Lambeth

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

However, GAFCON’s proposals for the way ahead are problematic in all sorts of ways, and I urge those who have outlined these to think very carefully about the risks entailed.

A ‘Primates’ Council’ which consists only of a self-selected group from among the Primates of the Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion. And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries is fraught with difficulties, both theological and practical – theological because of our historic commitments to mutual recognition of ministries in the Communion, practical because of the obvious strain of responsibly exercising episcopal or primatial authority across enormous geographical and cultural divides.

Two questions arise at once about what has been proposed. By what authority are Primates deemed acceptable or unacceptable members of any new primatial council? And how is effective discipline to be maintained in a situation of overlapping and competing jurisdictions?

No-one should for a moment impute selfish or malicious motives to those who have offered pastoral oversight to congregations in other provinces; these actions, however we judge them, arise from pastoral and spiritual concern. But one question has repeatedly been raised which is now becoming very serious: how is a bishop or primate in another continent able to discriminate effectively between a genuine crisis of pastoral relationship and theological integrity, and a situation where there are underlying non-theological motivations at work? We have seen instances of intervention in dioceses whose leadership is unquestionably orthodox simply because of local difficulties of a personal and administrative nature. We have also seen instances of clergy disciplined for scandalous behaviour in one jurisdiction accepted in another, apparently without due process. Some other Christian churches have unhappy experience of this problem and it needs to be addressed honestly.

It is not enough to dismiss the existing structures of the Communion. If they are not working effectively, the challenge is to renew them rather than to improvise solutions that may seem to be effective for some in the short term but will continue to create more problems than they solve. This challenge is one of the most significant focuses for the forthcoming Lambeth Conference. One of its major stated aims is to restore and deepen confidence in our Anglican identity. And this task will require all who care as deeply as the authors of the statement say they do about the future of Anglicanism to play their part.

The language of ‘colonialism’ has been freely used of existing patterns. No-one is likely to look back with complacency to the colonial legacy. But emerging from the legacy of colonialism must mean a new co-operation of equals, not a simple reversal of power. If those who speak for GAFCON are willing to share in a genuine renewal of all our patterns of reflection and decision-making in the Communion, they are welcome, especially in the shaping of an effective Covenant for our future together.

I believe that it is wrong to assume we are now so far apart that all those outside the GAFCON network are simply proclaiming another gospel. This is not the case; it is not the experience of millions of faithful and biblically focused Anglicans in every province. What is true is that, on all sides of our controversies, slogans, misrepresentations and caricatures abound. And they need to be challenged in the name of the respect and patience we owe to each other in Jesus Christ.

I have in the past quoted to some in the Communion who would call themselves radical the words of the Apostle in I Cor.11.33: ‘wait for one another’. I would say the same to those in whose name this statement has been issued. An impatience at all costs to clear the Lord’s field of the weeds that may appear among the shoots of true life (Matt.13.29) will put at risk our clarity and effectiveness in communicating just those evangelical and catholic truths which the GAFCON statement presents.

© Rowan Williams

from Father Jake: "The Schism Has Been Postponed"

From Father Jake Stops the World blog...a very helpful rundown of some analysis of the GAFCON meeting/pilgrimage/conference in Jerusalem....

"The Schism Has Been Postponed"

Yesterday, Ruth Gledhill offered this report from GAFCON:

Several of the bishops in the audience in Jerusalem last night are drawing up secret plans to form a “Church within a Church” in an attempt to counter Western liberalism and reform the Church from within...

...The aim is not to split with the worldwide Anglican Communion, which counts 80 million members in 38 provinces, but to reform it from within.

Formal ties will be maintained with the Archbishop of Canterbury but fellowship members will consider themselves out of communion with provinces such as the US and Canada.

Members of the fellowship could attempt to opt out of the pastoral care of their diocesan bishop and seek oversight from a more conservative archbishop, either from their own country or abroad.

The success of the fellowship in averting schism will depend on the response of the local leadership...

Jim Naughton clarifies what most likely caused such a shift in goals:

...So the leaders of GAFCON are attempting to dress up strategic failure as the dawning of a new phase of their march toward victory, hoping that the media will bite. After five years of schismatic maneuvering, they have said, in effect, that they will associate closely with some Anglicans while trying to make life miserable for others--a state of affairs in no way different today than it was last month, last year or last decade...

Tobias Haller has come to a similar conclusion, while reminding us that postponing the schism is going to play havoc with the plans of one of our local break away groups:

...The leaders also appear to be grasping that the revolution and reformation of Anglicanism is going to take longer than they thought. Rather than a turning point, GAFCON will be the continuation of more of the same, as the leaders continue to work from within at the glorious reform of the Anglican Communion. Perhaps they are realizing at long last that there is not the impetus for a split they may have thought there was. As the whole independence effort by CANA in Virginia was to prove there was a “division” in the Anglican Communion (and The Episcopal Church) — after all, the judge said so, so it must be true! — the language of “working from within” will be of little solace to those who were, quite literally, banking on a split...

Mark Harris suspects this temporary backing away from schism may be part of a more long-range plan to grab the entire Anglican "franchise":

...So I don't buy the notion that the realignment gang is opting for a more modest option...not yet. The take over of the Anglican Communion is a long term process and if the realignment crowd must rest a while in the world of accommodation, where it claims to be a fellowship of real Anglicans within the shell of the remnants of the old, so be it.

But that fellowship will be working to remake the Anglican Communion into a world wide church with a head elected by a curia (read Primates) who will for sure demand to be representative of blocks of people, so that in effect the Global South Primates group will dictate the terms of office and elect the Metropolitan. They will work for a Covenant with a clear disciplinary code and separate out the sheep from the goats early on - don't sign don't come. From the front end they will exact an entry fee consisting of agreement to a statement of belief, or a covenant, or some other screening device...

Today, Riazat Butt reports that Peter Jensen of Sydney, who seems to be emerging as the leader of the GAFCONites, has confirmed that there will be no schism in the near future:

...Jensen is seen at the conference as the bridge between the hardline conservatives who want nothing to do with liberal churches in the US and Canada and those who wish to stay in the communion despite profound ideological differences over the ordination of gay clergy. It is agreed among the clutch of westerners at the conference that the real power will lie with the Australian delegates, not those from Africa...

...He also expressed doubts about the long-term prospects for Gafcon. "This is a coalition of people who would not necessarily work together. Will it work? We don't know." He insisted there was not a schism, but confirmed that there would a "structure within a structure", which would allow clergy and congregations to opt out of liberal churches and join more conservative groups.

I tend to agree with Mark's take on what is happening. Quite possibly the strategy has shifted from schism to going after the whole Anglican "franchise." I don't think it is going to work, any more than it did back when David Anderson was using the same line about TEC.

I suspect that they know such an attempted coup is not going to work, but they hope this ploy will keep their supporters in line by dangling a "new" strategy on which to hang their hopes (even though it is really a continuation of an "old" strategy, slightly repackaged). They hope this will buy them some time, maybe a decade or so, to get their ducks in a row. They can continue their plum picking forays in North America, until the time is finally right to form some new denomination which will be free of gay cooties.

It could make the next few years "more of the same," which is unfortunate, although the longer this is prolonged, the fewer Anglicans who will be left that agree with their take on things. In twenty years, not too many folks will still be listening to rhetoric that is so obviously the last gasp of a dying world view.

I'll let this Guardian editiorial have the last word:

...The issue on which all of this currently hinges is the status of openly gay people. Over the past half century, civil society in many parts of the world, including ours, has broken free from the long tradition of hostility and discrimination against gay people - and both society and individual lives are immeasurably the better for it. Now, inevitably and rightly, the same process is taking place in the churches, with pressure for the election of openly gay clergy and bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions. In the past, the church has managed such issues by covering them up. But on this issue in these times, that is no longer possible.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has battled to hold both his church and the wider communion together in the face of these pressures. That is one of his jobs - and it has not been a dishonourable effort. Yet it seems clear that it has only delayed an inevitable - and ultimately necessary - confrontation over this issue. Dr Williams has not, contrary to the views of Archishop Akinola, led the church into this. But, now that it is coming, he has a profound responsibility to lead the church out of it, happily and without fear. The question facing Anglicans - and facing other religious groups too - is whether theirs is a faith that is loving enough to treat gay people as equals. If the communion cannot hold together in the face of this question, then so be it. Unity matters as long as the cause is a good one. If the cause is not good, then maybe nor is the unity...

Banned from Gafcon...

From the London Times, story by Ruth Gledhill...

The eight men and women pictured here are on the official list of those to be denied entry to Gafcon should they try to show up. 'Not allowed in' it says at the top of the page, given to security officials at the conference. 'The Gafcon 8' as they have been christened, they are Colorado Bishop Robert O'Neill, Nigerian gay activist Davis MacIyalla being embraced by the Church of England's Rev Colin Coward, Louie Crew, Susan Russell, Scott Gunn and Deborah and Robert Edmunds. Bishop O'Neill is staying with Jerusalem primate, Bishop Suheil Dawani, who never wanted the conference here in the first place. Father Edmunds is Bishop Suheil's new chaplain, meaning, as Jim Naughton comments on Thinking Anglicans, that an Anglican meeting is banning entry of the bishop's chaplain in the bishop's own diocese.

Should these or any other activists attempt to breach the security around the conference at the Renaissance Hotel in west Jerusalem the 1,100 delegates have been instructed to start singing the hymn: 'All hail the power of Jesus' name.' In reality though security is extremely tight. Ex-military men from Israel are guarding all the doors, with two assigned purely to guard the Archbishop of Nigeria, Dr Peter Akinola, for the entire week.

Update: A Facebook group, I want to be banned by Gafcon too! has been started by Episcopalians and Anglicans upset to have been left off the list of the banned and within minutes it has acquired more than 50 members and is still growing.