GAFCON - Why Bother?
It was easy for me. I was invited. And what could I do? The leaders of the world wide Anglican Communion wanted my opinion. What was I to say? It would have been impolite to refuse! Actually, I was there to carry Richard Coekin’s bags. I did it poorly but fortunately he travels light.
But what about us? I suspect that some of us struggle to get excited by the ecclesiastical events of the last few days. Some may have described the Global Anglican Futures Conference in Jerusalem as momentous but perhaps we don’t share the enthusiasm. Perhaps we’re totally unconvinced that anything significant has taken place. An initial response to that would be to note that the BBC and all the major newspapers have been reporting on this conference. Church leaders from this country are clearly rattled and have come out strongly against it. Peter Tatchell, the Gay Rights campaigner, was at All Souls Church on Tuesday to protest about GAFCON’s reassertion of biblical sexual ethics. Some major players clearly think that something happened that’s worth reporting, commenting on and opposing.
However, even if others are engaged with this issue we may feel disconnected for a number of reasons. Chief amongst them are probably these four.
1. We may feel that the issues are too confusing to understand
The media keeps saying that the evangelicals [or traditionalists as they call us] are being schismatic and it’s about gay sex. But evangelicals keep saying we’re not leaving and it’s about the authority of the Bible. Who shoudl we believe? The world of Ecclesiastical Politics, Canon Law and the Formulary Documents of the Church of England is not something with which we’re overly familiar! It’s all so bewildering. But in essence it’s very simple. There are two churches in the Church of England. On the one hand, there’s the faithful church of the Bible and on the other hand, there’s the revisionist church of the culture. Those represented by the GAFCON movement want to live by the Bible and change their lives. The Liberal Revisionists want to live by the culture and change the Bible. No one really disputes that despite the Bishop of Southwark’s best attempt in the Guardian this week. The question is who does the Church of England belong to? A week of seminars on Anglican Identity established well beyond reasonable doubt that the foundational documents of the Church of England say that it’s a biblical church. So it belongs to the orthodox and not the heterodox. And so it’s ours! The trouble is that the revisionists rule the roost and they won’t give it back. They’re like a cuckoo that’s flown into our nest and is pushing the rightful owners out. Of course, we could just walk away. Some have. But it’s our nest. Our faithful Anglican forefathers gave it to us. It’s a nest with money, buildings and opportunities to preach the gospel tied up in it. The Jerusalem Statement says in effect, ‘it’s ours and we’re not going anywhere’.
2. We may feel that GAFCON is an irrelevance to our own church life
Many of our congregation don’t count themselves as Anglicans. They may not even realise that in attending CCB they belong to a Church of England church! This is probably for the following three reasons.
We’re financially independent from the Church of England. Though our staff team has had their theological education paid for by the Denomination, we now receive no money for staff housing, pay or pensions. Our church buildings and ministry costs are borne entirely by the congregations and the Co-Mission Initiative. Though we’d like and value their support, we don’t look to the Church of England for the wherewithal to resource gospel ministry.
We’re structurally independent from the Diocese of Southwark. There have been recent attempts made to ‘regularise’ Dundonald as a Fresh Expression [even though it’s 16 years old!]. But the Diocese seems in no great hurry to progress things. I have not been invited to the Deanery Chapter meeting of local clergy. I have not been ordained as a Presbyter by the Church of England though I have been ordained as a Deacon by the Church of England in South Africa. I have not received a Bishop’s Licence to exercise ministry in his Diocese. We live in hope that our new Assistant Pastor’s situation will be different. But we’re not holding our breath. And so, we don’t really look to the Diocese to legitimate our gospel ministry. We just get on with it.
We’re spiritually independent of the Bishop of Southwark. As a result of Tom Butler’s refusal to distance himself from the House of Bishops’ Statement on Civil Partnerships, the churches of the Co-Mission Initiative in the Diocese of Southwark are in temporarily impaired communion with our Diocesan Bishop. We are awaiting his repentance, his removal or his retirement. I’d prefer the first but I pray for all three! And so we don’t look to our Bishop for the spiritual leadership we’d like to receive to encourage us to keep going in our gospel ministry.
And therefore given our lack of dependence on the formal structures of the Church of England, we might wonder what on earth a global gathering of Anglican leaders, the vast majority of whom we’ve never met or heard of can offer us.
3. We may feel that GAFCON is an unnecessary inflammatory action
In the book that accompanied the conference The Way, the Truth and the Life there’s a chapter written by the Archbishop of Nigeria entitled A Most Agonizing Journey Towards Lambeth 2008. It details the repeated neglect of the legitimate concerns of Orthodox believers and the failure to discipline those with a revisionist agenda by the Archbishop of Canterbury. No Jesus following, Bible loving Christian can read that chapter and think that the actions of GAFCON are precipitate. There’s nothing impulsive or impetuous about the actions of the GAFCON Primates in taking counsel and drafting the Jerusalem Statement. This is a carefully considered response that proposes action entirely consistent with true Anglicanism. It could well be that in the months and years that follow we’ll be turning to these men and asking for their help. And they’ve committed themselves to encouraging and supporting us.
Sometimes we British are reticent to make a fuss or cause a scene. At times that’s wise. Some of the time it’s weakness. This is not a time for weakness. It’s a time to be biblical and contend for the truth. If there’s to be a gospel witness in the Church of England for our children and our grandchildren we need our leaders to defend the gospel, oppose liberal novelties and press on with ministry and cop the flak. That’s what leaders do. They lead from the front and show us the way. We need the GAFCON Bishops because they help us to see clearly that now is the time to act. They remind us that Anglican Evangelicalism is like a frog in a kettle unaware that the temperature is gradually getting hotter and we’re being boiled to death. They put some steel in our backbone and encourage us to recognise that we must repent of our sinful compliance with heterodoxy and contend for the truth.
4. We may feel that GAFCON is a distraction to our evangelistic ministry
And you’d have a point. People will not be brought to faith in Christ through political statements. They’ll be brought to faith through hearing the gospel of salvation. The Jerusalem Statement will not do the work of evangelism for us. But it has at least defined the true gospel and defended it against false gospels. And so it’s reminded us that the biblical gospel is the news of the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ and transformation through the work of the Spirit. Anglican Statements don’t always do that!
Of course, some of us will need to be involved in this sort of political activity if we think that the Church of England is still worth fighting for. It’s still the best boat to fish from. As congregations therefore we’ll need to encourage, embolden and support those who are involved and stand with them as they get vilified by the press and attacked by the church authorities.
Conclusion
In actual fact GAFCON could be very significant for our own local church ministry. GAFCON will not do it for us. That’s true. But, it ought to make it possible for us to continue doing one thing that we hold dear. The Jerusalem Statement supports church planting.
Under the heading The Global Anglican Context the statement argues that to fulfil the mission given to the Church by the Lord Jesus in his Great Commission, ‘will entail the planting of new churches [italics mine] among unreached peoples and also committed action to restore authentic Christianity to compromised churches’. And in articulating the future, in a section entitled The Road Ahead, the statement reads, ‘We recognise the desirability of territorial jurisdiction for provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion, except in those areas where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or are preventing its spread [italics mine], and in a few areas for which overlapping jurisdictions are beneficial for historical or cultural reasons’. In other words, Church planting is an inevitable consequence of mission and not even Bishops should oppose it. If they do then the GAFCON Primates Council will endeavour to provide us with the support we ask for.
This is crucial for us because as things stand, it’s problematic for Classical Evangelicals to exercise gospel ministry or to be appointed within the Diocese of Southwark. This means that some parishes have in effect become geographical ‘no-go’ areas for the gospel. If that were true of a country then, for the sake of the glory of God and the salvation of sinners, we’d launch a missionary organisation. The recent rediscovery of church planting across traditional parish boundaries addresses this problem. It means that an Anglican Evangelical church, for example, can provide a gospel presence where the parish church is, say, Liberal Catholic in its theological convictions. Given that authentic Anglicanism is Evangelical we ought to expect the wholehearted support of our leaders. That’s not always been the case. But now it is. It’s just that they’re different leaders. They’re the leaders we’ve been praying for. Though we wouldn’t let some of the Bishops in the Church of England teach in Sunday school, these guys are the real deal. And we need to back them.
This is great, but I think you have oversimplified the situation. Is it really as simple as there being two sides, with people either firmly on one or the other? It seems disingenuous to imply that people who don’t agree with Gafcon *all* want to “live by the culture and change the Bible”. If people think it is that simple, they will get even more confused if they ever come across an evangelical who doesn’t agree with Gafcon. And such people do exist–they will come out of the woodwork if they haven’t already.
And as for point 2, you have explained why people might think this is irrelevant, but you haven’t tried to convince us otherwise!
Comment by Phil Craig — July 5, 2008 @ 9:58 pm
Phil- The difficulty is the third group you are describing seem to be pretending that nothing is going on and everything is fine. If you won’t support Jim Packer, Who are you going side with?
I am sympathetic to what you say but is there really some sort of third way which you seem suggest is possible. The politics of all this is unattractive and only time will show if it advances Gods kingdom. Sometimes it does feel like power play and we all know how unpleasant this is in a work context.
I have learnt from my own mistakes if I was dealing with confrontation this is not how I would do it but I am not a church leader.
I have made my own observations, I am obviously no historian, theologian, academic and not wise to all the politics of the anglican communion. But you’ll be pleased to hear that won’t stop me from having my say.
I have reached the conclusion that the anglican/evangelical dilemma is exacerbated by the anglican form of church government, which nobody wants to change. Liberal/Anglo Catholic/Evangelical or otherwise. Ultimately that is what Gafcon seems to be about providing Bishops for evangelical clergy. I note it is a problem for those clergy who don’t want women bishops. So the problem isn’t going to go away and there is the potential for problems even with Gafcon Episcopal oversight.
The account Perks gives of the co-mission set up leads me to conclude we are not in the anglican church structure and never have been.
So the question I have been asking is why now? Surely this is not the first time evangelicals should have had reason to seek alternative Episcopal oversight. At best this is 20 years too late but more like 40-50 years. I say too late because our society doesn’t care about what the established church has to say or any other church for that matter. People have absolutely no reference points to this debate. I was young at the time but I don’t remember evangelicals doing anything when the Bishop of Durham denied the bodily resurrection and most of the Bishops in England backed him. The liberals have got more liberal to the point of I don’t what you call their behaviour.
In previous centuries Gafcon wouldn’t have been possible because of the cost and time involved with travel but as we all know the world is smaller, global communication is easier. I would have thought Gafcon happened down to good organisation and the communication we now have in the 21st century. It wouldn’t have been possible for previous generations of evangelical anglicans. So in 2008 it is not a big deal to fly a South American Bishop to oversee clergy in Canada.
Comment by Tom Stanbury — July 8, 2008 @ 5:53 pm
You’re right, there are basically two sides. But I am wary of saying that if someone is on side x, they are fundamentally the same theologically. For example, Gafcon included a lot of Catholic-types who would probably take issue with Packer on a whole load of things. It’s probably possible to side with Gafcon theologically but not ecclesiologically (I agree with you that this is more about church governance than anything)…it’s not that there’s really a third way in all this, but I think we should be wary of oversimplifying things.
But I think people do care what the established church says, though less than before. Giles Fraser and Tom Butler are in the Guardian all the time. Nazir-Ali gets quoted whenever he says something about Islam, and Rowan Williams’ views are regularly referred to even on issues unrelated to the current crisis in the Anglican church. The CofE role in people’s lives, be it only hatch/match/dispatch, and what a vicar says in a pulpit, are still significant in people’s lives. Less so for our generation in yuppie London, perhaps, but the CofE still has a lot of influence in our culture.
Comment by Phil Craig — July 21, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
Maybe I have overstated the situation regarding our society’s view of the established church. But it is certainly different to our parent’s generation. My parents grew up with the Church of England being involved with their education it was part of family and social life. I think this was fairly typical of most post war middle class families.
So when my dad was taught scripture at prep school it really was being taught bible stories. Perhaps not a bible overview as we know it.
The extent to which the C of E is involved with my non christian friends is by my observation over the last 10 years just their marriages and christenings. And in those instances they weren’t interested in the clergman’s view of Rowan Williams etc or anything, just as long as he didn’t mess anything up. This is tragic. I know you can’t judge the world by my mates but if you were to ask them who Nazir-Ali was you would get some amusing responses. Is he the young asian boxer going to the olympics?
The influence of the established church is no longer there but I do pray this would change. But Gafcon is not bothered whether the church is established or not. I guess by our choice of church neither are we!
Comment by Tom Stanbury — July 22, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
Phil
Let me take your first set of comments one by one. You said, ‘I think you have oversimplified the situation’.
In response - sometimes for the sake of clarity we need to do that! But I don’t think I’ve unfairly represented the heart of teh conflict within the Anglican Communoin or the Church of England.
You said, ‘Is it really as simple as there being two sides, with people either firmly on one or the other?’
In response - no it’s not that simple, as you well know. Regrettably evangelicalism is tribal and so there are ‘parties’ within it. Liberal evangelicals and classical evangelicals, like myself would disagree on some important issues. And so in this debate, there is another group; the Fulcrum crowd. Some of whom might agree with Classical Evangelicals on the issues but disagree over the tactics. To my mind, I think the time for waivering is over. By the unwillingness of some to oppose the liberal revisionist agenda they are in fact advancing it. They may be doing so unwittingly but the effects of their spiritual pacificism are disastrous. The New Tseatment is clear; we are to contend for the truth; graciously but firmly. My impression is that some of those who would have found the political tacts of Reform unpalatable and too confrontational are beginning to see the writing on the wall. The vote for the Consecration of Women Bishops has made it clear that there’s no room for those evangelicals who disagree with women’s ordination. We’re being squeezed out.
The so called evangelicals who want to find a third way; the way of compromise rather than contending are letting the side down. And I think that Peter Jensen is right when he says that they need to choose whose side they’re on.
You write, ‘And as for point 2, you have explained why people might think this is irrelevant, but you haven’t tried to convince us otherwise!’
Response - GAFCON reasserts that we’re Anglican even though we’re on the periphery of the Denominational Structures. That’s because Anglicanism is defined confessionally and not structurally. It’s not irrelevant that we’re outside. We are already where many may have to be. Especially if they contend and get kicked out of their buildings, lose their wages and so on. But that won’t mean that they or we are no longer Anglican. It may mean we’re more Anglican than those that remain! I’d argue that it does!
Comment by Richard Perkins — July 22, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
Tom
Thanks for your comments.
I’m not sure we want a situation where we’re flying in Bishops or Archbishops from other countries to be our Bishops. We’re temporarily out of communion with our Diocesan and the gospel ministry is going ok isn’t it. The function of Denominational Bishop has been fulfilled by senior people within the evangelical constituency who’ve encouraged me and us at CCB. I’d love to have a Bishop like, say, Peter Jensen who preaches the gospel in public and shows me how to do it, authenticates and ordains our staff so that they can have wider ministries in the Church of England and someone who prays and supports me and my family. At the last Reform Conference it was suggested that we needed to consecrate our own Bishops who nevertheless remained in their own churches and yet provided some degree of spiritual oversight to our congregations. I’d be supportive of that initiative.
As for the discussion about whether we’re in the Anglican Church structure I’d say that we’re knocking at the door but that they won’t let us come in! I’d like to come in. But I won’t come in at any cost. Integrity matters and I won’t compromise just to get the nod from the establishment. Jesus didn’t.
Comment by Richard Perkins — July 22, 2008 @ 4:52 pm
Tom–you’re right, it is totally different to how it was. It is a side point, really. But the last census still found a huge number of people identifying themselves as Christians–even if they just use the church for marriages or whatever, they pay more attention to the established church than any other Christian institution. When does anyone write about the Baptist or Methodist view on things? In the English press (I can’t speak for the whole of the UK), reported Christian views are still mostly Anglican or Catholic. Fighting to reform the CofE, rather than leaving it, it much more than merely “gaining influence” in society for the gospel but I still think this is a relevant part.
Perks–we know it isn’t simple, but I have in mind other people who know very little about it apart from what we tell them. It is confusing that there are evangelical churches who do not support Gafcon, especially when people who some of us find helpful–like Tom Wright–oppose it.
We can’t just say they aren’t stepping up to the plate in gospel proclamation. We need to demonstrate clearly, based on evidence, that the CofE structure as it stands restricts the spread of the gospel. I just think that this is a very sensitive issue for many and we need to be measured and careful in how we discuss these things.
Comment by Phil Craig — July 23, 2008 @ 2:32 pm
Phil
I guess my question to you concerning evangelicals who oppose GAFCON is, ‘What will make you contend for the truth in the way that the Bible encourages us to?’
The Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright opposes GAFCON. He’s misunderstood many of the things that it stands for. But why won’t he join? If he’s en avangelical and is concerned about the direction of teh C of E why won’t he sign up. He doesn’t have to. But neither does he need to voice his opposition. There comes a time when we need to ask, ‘Tom, whose side are you on? Because it seems to me that your stance appears to be facilitating the biblical revisionists with whom you’re in close contact within the House of Bishops’. He not only opposes a movement that stands for the rediscovery of biblical authority within the Coomunion but he also continues to oppose one of the most thriving and arguably most sigificant evangelical plants in his Diocese. What kind of evangelicalism is that? He can write all the definitive books he likes but it won’t be those that he’s remembered for in years to come. Far more important will be whether he’s a man of his word. He promsied in his consecration vows to drive away erroneous teaching. Why don’t I see him quoted i the press doing that? Why is it only denouncing the conviction evangelicals? It’s disgraceful.
One thing I’m trying to think thourgh is whether in actuality, it’s incumbent upon people like him to welcome and facilitate church planting in his Dicoese. The existing churches simply cannot reach the unreached in that neck of the woods. He needs more churches, as do all Dioceses. It’s not necessarily the case that church planting steals people form other churches and so how do we account for their growth. Conversions. Kingdom growth - that’s what we’re after and he ought to back it with all the resources at his disposal when it happens.
There’s a sense in which measured and careful discussion is what’s got us into this mess. There comes a time for action if it’s not the wholesale revision of the Bible’s teaching on sexual ethics and the denomination approved isolation and rejection of those with complementarian views of gender roles, when will we act? If nothing makes us angry enough to act I wonder whether we really believe it with any conviction. Consider this, if there was someone at nursery putting poison into Digby’s milk bottle I’d act and demand that others act. I might also physically do some damage to the culprit but I wouldn’t recommend that as a course of action in Eccesiastical disagreements! What I wouldn’t do is have a polite conversation about whether they ought to do that. I wouldn’t wait ten years for repentance whilst other children are affected by that poison. Why do we think that false teaching is any elss damaging? On whose authority do we reject the clear word of God about refuting error and contending for the truth? Could it be that we think that a little false teaching won’t really poison anyone?
perks
Comment by Richard Perkins — July 24, 2008 @ 11:16 am
Thanks Perks, that’s very helpful (and I mean that!).
By measured and careful I didn’t mean we hold back, but that we shouldn’t let our frustration lead us to misrepresent people or the situation. I find myself doing that all the time–and when someone asked me yesterday what all this Gafcon stuff was about I was very aware of this. It’s not easy to explain it in a nutshell if someone doesn’t know about it.
Comment by Phil Craig — July 24, 2008 @ 12:43 pm