Gafcon: 'There will be no split'.

Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, primate of Kenya and leader of that country's four million Anglicans, confirmed last night that there will be no split at Gafcon. See our news report. This is significant because he is heading the committee that is drawing up the final communique that will be issued on Sunday night. It also confirms the word here that the agenda is now reform from within, as we reported earlier. The figure that is crucial in all this is not based in Africa at all, although he is in the Global South. The formidable Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, pictured here at Gafcon, has become the key player on the Anglican conservative wing, shifting the emphasis from the US conservatives to the South. Significantly, Pittsburgh bishop Bob Duncan, who heads Common Cause, isn't even here, although he was in Jordan and looked after the Pakistani and Sudanese bishops who weren't allowed into Israel after the others left to be with Archbishop Akinola. Bishop Duncan's address in Jordan has been emailed out widely.

This is what Archbishop Jensen told a press conference at Gafcon:

"What the Americans did in 2003 and what the Canadians did was to rip the communion. If we're talking about schism and the breakup of the communion – that's where it starts and that is where the responsibility is. What GAFCON is doing is saying that given that new state of affairs, how now can we live together and how can we sustain the highest level of communion and work well together. My way of putting it is to say that the British Empire has now ceased to be and the British commonwealth of nations has come into existence or the nuclear family has turned into an extended family. This is the new reality. I don't hear GAFCON saying or GAFCON being a further cause for schism."

"We're looked forward to this immensely. Already the gathering of the initial team has been an extraordinary, bracing occasion and one which we have enjoyed thoroughly. I am looking forward to an extraordinarily interesting and rather exciting conference I have to say and you may be interested to know that I personally, speaking for myself now, personally wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury just a couple of weeks ago to assure him of my prayers for Lambeth and for the successful outcome of the Lambeth conference and he has now written to me and assured me of his prayers for us and his prayers for a successful outcome of this conference as well. So I think that's worth knowing when we talk a great deal about things like schism and so forth."

Of equal interest is David Marr's 4,000-word feature in the magazine of the Sydney Morning Herald, that I can't find online, and I better not post in full for copyright reasons, but which I have here and which includes these pars:

"The church I was ordained in is not the church I am in now," Peter Jensen declares with brisk resignation. He puts himself among the true "orthodox" Anglicans defending their faith against the temptation to drift with the times. The archbishop insists it's bigger than sex. "That is a presenting issue that has really opened up the whole chasm between those who will come to terms with their culture at the expense of Biblical authority and those who won't." He holds out no hope for the old worldwide church. "Unlike some other people, I believe this is permanent. I don't think the Americans will step back from that. Not for a moment."

'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."

The archbishop is careful not to use the "split" word. It has terrible legal consequences. After New Hampshire, when some very wealthy US Anglican parishes split from their bishops to demonstrate their devotion to the Bible and their hostility to homosexuality, the courts told them they were free to go wherever God called them - but they had to leave their property behind. Jensen knows he can't take the immense wealth of the Sydney diocese into a new church. "I can't. I'm part of a constitution, which is virtually unchangeable, of the Australian church. I wouldn't want to. I love the church. It would be bad for Christianity, bad for the gospel." The property is a set of golden fetters. "There couldn't possibly be a division in the sense of a legal division," says Jensen. He talks expansively instead of an old empire evolving, families scattering, ties loosening, but with friendship and regard somehow surviving. "I think there is going to be an evolution in the Anglican Communion. It has occurred. And what the Future Conference is going to work out is how to live best within that evolution. That's its business."

"I am responsible for the Anglicans in the boundaries of the diocese of Sydney," he says but he flatly denies there's a binding Anglican tradition that bishops stick to their own patch. "Every bishop in the Anglican Church has an interest, of course, in what goes on elsewhere. Most of us have many connections with people elsewhere ... Sometimes those ministries will jump over boundaries." Nothing has earned Jensen so much ire in the Australian church as the Sydney strategy of jumping boundaries to "plant" congregations of "Bible-believers" in surrounding Anglican territory. He, on the other hand, patrols his own boundaries vigorously. Women priests are forbidden. Single men can't expect to be given a parish and no openly gay priest will find employment in the diocese. Visiting Anglican luminaries with uncomfortable views are not allowed to preach. Gene Robinson was in Sydney late last year for a private visit that went unnoticed by the press. He did not ask for permission to preach or celebrate communion. He knew it wouldn't be allowed. He didn't meet Jensen.

Across that swathe of Africa, homosexuality remains taboo. In northern Nigeria where Sharia law prevails, homosexuals are stoned to death. In the rest of the country they face 14 years in prison, to which Akinola would like to add another five years for belonging to gay organisations, advocating gay marriage or watching gay movies. "Homosexuality seeks to destroy marriage as we know it," he told The Christian Science Monitor last year. "When God created man, he saw man was alone and added a female mate for him. Why didn't he pick one of the baboons, one of the lions to make his partner...?"
Jensen has distanced himself once or twice from Akinola's abuse, but he has no theological quarrel with the man. The Sydney archbishop commends those Global South Christians who stand shoulder to shoulder with Islam in absolute hostility to homosexuality. He seems happy for Islam to call the shots for Anglicans worldwide - in order to speed evangelism and save Christians in Africa and South-East Asia from being "denounced and traduced and vilified because of the action of the North Americans ... It could be that the Americans may have been less up-front about all of this if they had thought about the impact on worldwide Christianity."

'Christian leaders in the Middle East begged the bishops to stay away. Bishop Suheil Dawani of Jerusalem told Jensen face to face that his flock found "issues of peace and dialogue between the different faith communities of the Holy Land were far more important at this time than issues of homosexuality". Jensen and Akinola rode over local objections, tweaked the rhetoric, scheduled a pre-pilgrimage caucus of GAFCON leaders over the border in Jordan, but stuck to plan.Lambeth proved harder to enforce. Several Global South prelates broke ranks and let it be known they would be going to the shindig in Britain. Back home in Sydney, Jensen met resistance among his five assistant bishops. He concedes each was free in theory to sign or not, "but I think they would regard themselves as being bound by cabinet solidarity". One of them was given the task of drafting a letter to Rowan Williams that all would sign. They agonised over this all through January without reaching a resolution....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." My calls to those men were flick-passed to Jensen's office. Powell informed me that everyone, including Jensen, was upset not to be going. "But the bishops are gladly united in the decision that has been taken."

There is much more but the last paragraph especially is fascinating. Clearly there was a chance the Sydney bishops would come to Lambeth, but Akinola forced their hand and they are staying away. How many other bishops are at Gafcon and not coming to Lambeth, but would secretly like to me at Kent next month? The heart for a schism is just not here at Gafcon.

But we are here at Gafcon, and it is clear that the mantle of leadership has fallen on Archbishop Jensen. With all those lovely pies to have fingers in in England - Wycliffe, Oak Hill (whose principal is here), St Helen's - does anyone seriously think this man wants to walk away? No, he is building an impressive empire from within and none of us should underestimate. Anyway, I like worship at St Helen's. The music is great, it feels good. It is full of highly-intelligent doctors from St Bart's. (The hospital, that is!) This is what gets the people in and in an age of a declining liberal centre, finding a Christianity that still works is important.

At Gafcon, the 300 or so bishops, and that includes probably a dozen or maybe more from the American continuing churches, are visibly impressed by Archbishop Jensen and it comes over in what they say. The change of tone is significant. The rhetoric is still high, but it has become more, somehow, recognisably 'Anglican'. In other words, although they would resist strongly calling it this, compromise is in the air.

I asked Archbishop Nzimbi at the press conference to talk about the communique. Will there be a split?

'I cannot think of anything better than maintaining the faith. The faith remains to me more important than the other positions I have. Gafcon is going to help the Anglican Church. We are still Anglicans.

'Lambeth passes resolutions. No action is taken. It becomes something which cannot have authority... It is one of the instruments which is not giving results.'

In other words, what they are looking for is authority and leadership. They are not getting it from the figure of unity or the instruments of community, save in one respect. Love or loathe his views, and I fall Anglican-style in the middle here, Achbishop Jensen is one of the few in the Church outside Africa who can lead and who possesses authority.

Archbishop Henry Orombi, of Uganda, also at the press conference last night, took over at this point: 'What we are meeting for here is not to plan to walk away. We are meeting to renew our commitment, to renew our faith, to get a sense of direction of what we can be as Anglicans. We do not want to start a new Church.'

So there you have it folks. There will be no schism. The Anglican in me is delighted. But what do I tell my newsdesk?

See Dave Walker at the Church Times and Thinking Anglicans for more links on what is happening here. There is also a slideshow up of the Sydney diocese delegates to Gafcon.

 

Comments

[saint]

Oh well, once again Marr (whose article you cited elsewhere) was wrong. There's Jensen wearing a clerical collar.

[J Pearce]

Monologistos,

You really didn't get the point, did you?

They had a set of goals and they led their respective organisations in the pursuit of those goals. And they succeeded - up until a point, when events beyond their control overtook them.

In the case of Mugabe, he has yet to be unseated. He is achieving the goals he has set himself. Therefore, by any dispassionate assessment, he is a good leader.

This doesn't mean he isn't a murderous scumbag who's destroyed his country and people in the process.

But thats not the point.

Which you didn't get anyway.

In regards to Gafcon, clearly Akinola and Jensen inspire those around them and sympathetic to their views - and as such, attract followers to their cause. Thus, they wield considerable political power within the Church and this makes them good leaders.

That doesn't mean they aren't quasi-fascist medievalists. They are. But it shows how desperately short of self-belief many Christians appear to be, if they choose to place their faith in two power-hungry ideologues who promise division and strife.

[Malcolm+]

It might also be noted, Robroy, that moneys given to the Diocese in Jerusalem from American sources have been given openly and transparently.

I contrast that with moneys given by the American millionarire and neoconservative activist Ahmonson, which have generally been well hidden and required Jim Naughton's fiscal forensics to uncover.

Bribes, in my limited knowledge of such thigs are generally given in secret, not in the open.

[monologistos]

"Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Milosevic, Mugabe…were/are all good leaders."

No, they were not. Good leaders do not lead their people down the path to destruction.

[Malcolm+]

Robroy continues with his slanders.

Many dioceses in the Global South have recieved substantial financial support from various dioceses i North America.

Are you suggesting that Henry Orombi might be "pro-gay" if he hadn't been getting, in his own words, "so very much money" from American rightwingers?

You have nothing to offer but slander and hate, Robroy.

[robroy]

A correction to my note, it was GAYLE Harris of Massachusetts at the enthronement.

To dispel Malcolm's ad hominem objection: From http://tinyurl.com/5trqv6, "Since 1996 the diocese has received over $22 million from the United States, primarily from the dioceses of Los Angeles and Washington---two of the most liberal in the American Church." It was Dawani arranged the companion diocese relationship with Bruno/LA over the objections of other clergy in Jerusalem. One of his clergy even declared Dawani, "excommunicated." Clearly, Dawani is being propped up by liberal left lucre.

[J Pearce]

Malcom +, an excellent point.

Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Milosevic, Mugabe…were/are all good leaders.

This doesn't make them good men.

[pendennis88]

No one who has been listening and paying attention has had much reason to expect a formal division. By the same token, I wouldn't doubt something is going to happen that TEC and other revisionist provinces are going to object to greatly, either.

[Craig]

Just to be clear on a point of detail, there is no impediment to a single man becoming rector of a parish in the diocese of Sydney other than the preference of the nominators.

[David Palmer]

Ruth,

I'm glad to see you have begun to see the measure of Peter Jensen, and you are right - the links between Sydney Anglicans and the Reform crowd are very strong, and always have been. Sydney Anglicans (and Presbyterians too) visiting the UK always make for All Souls and/or St Helens. I thought Nazir Ali speech (via your report) very impressive, but maybe stretched not a few of those attending?

[Fr Mark]

Chris: do you ever think you might sound a little smug, gloating over the situation of the C of E? If I were RC, contemplating the current implosion of the RC Church throughout Europe would probably inclining me a little more to a tone of humility.

[Chris Gillibrand]

When is a splinter not a split? At very least one can say, a splinter group (from the Catholic Church) splinters.

The reality is that the whole occasion only proves the fissiparous nature of Protestantism in general and Anglicans in particular.

Marriage and love, unity and truth, you can't have one without the other.

[Malcolm+]

I frequently disagree with Alan Marsh, but this comment was spot on:

"The Anglican Communion urgently needs leadership from bishops who were not formed in ivory towers, and men like Jensen and Orombi are coming to the fore precisely because leadership is not coming from Lambeth."

If there is a leadership vaccuum, those who step into the breech are not necessarily the most desirable leaders.

Robroy, however, having run out of anything intelligent to contribute, is back to his old slander - any Anglican in the Global South who disagrees with the schismatics must have been bought.

Robroy, can you not even concede the hypothetical existence of a Global South Anglican who disagrees with Akinola, Orimbe et al simply because he disagrees with them? Or is such an idea too complex for you to grasp?

[Alistair]

“It is not the Church's mission to drift with the tides and storms of secular opinion - especially when that opinion is generating broken societies.”

So the church’s mission would appear to be clinging on desperately to the outdated musings of one ignorant and primitive tribe living under Roman rule a couple of thousand years ago?

Jamie, you seem to think like Nazir-Ali that the world was a perfect place before the 1960s. There were no prisons before 1960 because there was no crime. There was no sex before marriage, no abortion, no divorce, no adultery, no poverty. Everyone went to church twice on Sundays and believed every word they were told by the CofE, and we all lived happily ever after.

Except that it wasn’t like that at all, was it?

It is 'secular opinion' that is driving equality in society today , while the Churches continue to demand exemptions from equality laws and the right to discriminate against people they don't like. Secular opinion too is driving social justice, while the Churches squeal for special privilege, as with the CofE report last month.

Bits of our society may be “broken”, to lapse into that horrible politician-speak, but by no means all of it. However, “broken” bits have always existed, even when the CofE enjoyed massive power and privilege. It is interesting that if Akinola & Co had their way, society would still be “broken”, with the massed ranks of their Christian followers intent on persecuting and discriminating against homosexuals.

Or maybe you think it’s OK if society is “broken” along that fault line, because your god says so?

[Dr. Mike Homfray]

But what they seem to be suggesting is not a complete separation but an organisational set up which would be essentially as church within a church, selecting who in the larger organisation it is likely to want to associate with.

I see that as simply a recipe for 'more of the same', with the inevitable eventual split from each other just delayed rather than shelved. I can't see the CofE being able to handle another few years of the current wrangling.

[Alistair]

“The tragedy of the Church of England is that it has generally chosen as its bishops either career clergy, or those whose thinking has been formed in academic seminars, expressing tentative ideas and conclusions, all carefully nuanced with a cloud of Hegelian theses and antitheses.”

And quite possibly those with a somewhat tenuous belief in "god".
After the former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, had hit the headlines (a man who said unequivocally in a TV interview that he did not consider the virgin birth, the resurrection or the miracles to be historical facts) a poll was taken of the country’s 31 diocesan bishops. Two out of three agreed with another of Jenkins’ views, that it was not necessary to accept the divinity of Jesus to be a Christian - can you imagine an imam saying it's not necessary to believe the angel Gabriel appeared to Mohammed in order to be a Muslim? Half of the bishops polled agreed they shared similar doubts about the miracles, and one in three denied a belief in the Virgin birth and the physical resurrection. One recalls the fate of the Rev Anthony Freeman, sacked from his post in Sussex for expressing such views.

You either believe this stuff or you don't. Once you start picking the elements, and the lines from scripture, that you want to believe and you don't want to believe, you end up with problems, as indeed you do in deciding which bits are an issue of context, wich are literal and which are allegorical. The inevitable result is the current shambles.

In Drop the Dead Donkey episode 48, 1996 "The Godless Society":

Helen Cooper: "For heaven's sake, what sort of Bishop is it who doesn't believe in God?"

Henry Davenport: "An Anglican one"

[J Pearce]

"The Sydney archbishop commends those Global South Christians who stand shoulder to shoulder with Islam in absolute hostility to homosexuality. He seems happy for Islam to call the shots for Anglicans worldwide…"

So what we are witnessing at Gafcon is nothing less than the birth of a neo-fascist Chrsitian movement, designed to mirror the puritanical zealotry already present in Islam. Neo-fascist? Well if we take the following:

"In the rest of the country they face 14 years in prison, to which Akinola would like to add another five years for belonging to gay organisations, advocating gay marriage or watching gay movies."

And we substitute the word "gay" with "Jew"…I think we can all see where this is going.

Akinola and Jensen actively support de-humanising and abusing homosexuals. This much is absolutely clear. This is a quantam leap away from the wrangling in the C of E over whether gays should take part in marriage ceremonies - it is more akin to the systematic anti-semetic campaigns waged in Germany in the 1930's. And we all know where that led. It appears that Jensen, Akinola et al wish to emulate their medieval Catholic forebears in their pursuit for puritanical cleansing.

To a lexicon which already houses the term "Islamofascist", I think we can now, without doubt, add the term "Christofascist".

[robroy]

The last thing that Dawani of Jerusalem wants is for word to get out in the community that he is in the pocket of arch-homosexualists (Bruno, Sisk and Barbara Harris were co-consecrators at his "enthronement".) Are his objections believable or risible?

[anon]

Ruth

" In northern Nigeria where Sharia law prevails, homosexuals are stoned to death"

That's awful. How many homosexuals have been stoned to death? Does Archbishop Akinola support sharia law? Does the Church of Nigeria?

"In the rest of the country they face 14 years in prison, to which Akinola would like to add another five years for belonging to gay organisations, advocating gay marriage or watching gay movies"

Can you point me to the statement where Archbishop Akinola said this? All I can find is this one where his spokesman denies this?

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2006/2/28/washington-bishop-condemns-proposed-nigerian-law-primates-role

"A spokesman for the Church of Nigeria, Canon Akintunde Popoola, disputed this characterization, arguing Bishop Chane misconstrued the text of the bill and Archbishop Akinola’s role in the legislative process"

[Stephen Marsden]

'There will be no schism. The Anglican in me is delighted. But what do I tell my newsdesk?'

Just tell them that it's been postponed (at the request of Christina Rees) until early July, in York.

(Unless, of course, the General Synod does the decent - not to say rational - thing.

[Dr Alan Marsh]

The tragedy of the Church of England is that it has generally chosen as its bishops either career clergy, or those whose thinking has been formed in academic seminars, expressing tentative ideas and conclusions, all carefully nuanced with a cloud of Hegelian theses and antitheses. At the end of the day they cannot make up their own minds, let alone propose a course of action.

Doctrine and mission have been sacrificed in favour of a nicely mown crease, a straight bat and the middle stump. Whether or not anyone is actually playing, or watching.

The Anglican Communion urgently needs leadership from bishops who were not formed in ivory towers, and men like Jensen and Orombi are coming to the fore precisely because leadership is not coming from Lambeth.

Heaven knows what this summer will bring with the remainder of Gafcon, and the forthcoming Lambeth Conference. I hope all the Gafcon leaders attend, and play their part in shaping it for the future. And if the present leadership of the Communion can't or won't lead, then the Conference should choose someone who will. There are two outstanding candidates in England, and many more worldwide.

[David Keen]

Thankyou for that very honest final comment - unfortunately if everything at Gafcon, Lambeth etc. is reported through the 'will the church split' or 'should Williams go' lens, most of what is really going on will be missed. I noticed on Thinking Anglicans that a transcript from a GAFCON press conference only covered the questions about homosexuality, as if nothing else mattered.

I must admit I'm curious Ruth as to how much editorial pressure - or peer pressure from other journalists - there is to find stories which match with the 'schism' or 'terminal decline' scenarios for the CofE? I don't know how candidly you can answer that one!?

rg writes: no pressure really, the only real pressure is for stories. the anglican story is changing at the moment, that is very visible here.

[Dave]

Ruth,

The article is here

[Obadiah Slope]

Here is David Marr's story
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/archbishop-says-no-to-reforms-writes-david-marr/2008/06/10/1212863623804.html

[Jamie MacNab]

So, the Anglicans seek leaders with authority. That is what some of us have been saying for decades.

And those leaders (if they can be found) need to restate the principle that we are 'in this world but not of this world'. It is not the Church's mission to drift with the tides and storms of secular opinion - especially when that opinion is generating broken societies.

[joe]

Well it at least appears to not match up to the facts - there is a schism, it already exists.

And I'm struggling to see any biblical basis for suggesting that one bunch-of-men-in-pointy-hats is more authentically Christian than another bunch-of-mostly-men-in-pointy-hats meeting elsewhere.

Maybe all we've proved is that there is no place in the church for bishopric, and that anyone who seems to be overkeen to occupy that position is singularly unqualified to fill it.

[Vicki]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/06/10/1212863623804.html

I think I found the fulltext of the article (says a retired librarian)