A Canterbury Tale
by Gerald Bray
GAFCON II has come and gone, and a great time was had
by all 1300 participants, including over 300 bishops, who represented
twenty-eight of the Anglican Communion’s thirty-eight provinces. It sounds
impressive and in many ways it was, but statistics of this kind conceal as much
as they reveal. Many of the bigger African provinces turned out in force, but
representation from the developed world was patchy and at the episcopal level
almost non-existent. Much as it wants to be a movement for the renewal of
worldwide Anglicanism, GAFCON is a bit like the curate’s egg—good in parts. Its
leadership is committed, its followers are loyal and expectant, but its
influence remains limited to the sorts of people who would support its aims
even if it did not exist. It has not yet reached out beyond its predictable
support base, and unless it does so, the energy that has gone into it will be
dissipated and it will go the way of other initiatives that never got anywhere.
Having said that, there is no
denying that GAFCON has come a long way in a short time. The improvised
character of GAFCON I has gone and in its place has come a much more
sophisticated and responsible organisation. No other group of Anglicans could
stage an event with as broad a participation, and that alone ought to persuade
people to take it seriously.
Unfortunately, things do not work
like that in the real Anglican world. The archbishop of Canterbury could not
attend but he was good enough to find time in his diary to make a quick trip to
Kenya just before it opened, and to send greetings to it on a video that was
played to the assembled delegates. He meant well, and those who met him
testified to the warm relations that they had with him. Unfortunately
everything he said and did betrayed the fact that the English church
establishment had been outflanked and had effectively missed the bus. The
official communiqué from Lambeth Palace stated that the main reason for the
archbishop’s visit to Kenya was to express solidarity with the victims of the
Westgate Shopping Centre atrocity the previous month, but laudable though
sympathy for them was, it was an implausible excuse. The archbishop did not
rush off to Peshawar to show his support for Christian victims of Muslim
terrorism in Pakistan, nor would anyone have expected him to.
Unless of course, GAFCON had been meeting there at the same time… In the end things got so bad that Lambeth Palace was citing the baptism of Prince George as a reason for the archbishop’s non-attendance, as if the royal family would not have been willing to find a more convenient date for the ceremony. The impression left is one of incompetence and dysfunctionality in which almost any excuse to downplay the significance of GAFCON has been eagerly seized on and exploited for far more than it is worth.
The archbishop of Canterbury means well and there is no doubt that
his heart is with GAFCON in many ways. He told the delegates that he wants its
aims to be those of the Communion as a whole and there is no reason not to
believe him. But if he is going to occupy the place that the Anglican Communion
assigns to him and exercise the kind of influence for good that he undoubtedly
wants to, he will have to get with the programme, as the Americans say. GAFCON
is not just one more Anglican organisation, like the Mothers’ Union, that can
be flattered and pacified by an occasional nod from the hierarchy. It is a
renewal movement that wants to make its agenda that of the church as a whole,
and it will expect Justin Welby to nail his colours to the mast. It is a
wonderful opportunity for him to assume the leadership of the Communion and use
the GAFCON base to bring about the kinds of changes that he wants to see, but
will he take it? One is reminded of Louis XVI in the early years of the French
Revolution. The Third Estate handed their much-needed reforms to him on a plate
and begged him to be their leader, but Louis, good man that he was at heart and
eager to please, lacked the vision and the courage to fulfil his historical
destiny and so paid the price for misplaced loyalty to a lost cause. Will
Justin Welby come to a similar end, and for the same reasons?
The stark nature of the problem can be seen by comparing Dr.
Welby’s video message to GAFCON with the address given by its chairman, the
archbishop of Kenya. Both speeches were positive and upbeat, but Canterbury’s
looks decidedly anaemic next to Kenya’s. Dr Welby told the delegates that they
must strive for holiness, which is true and encouraging. He mentioned that in
many places there has been a sexual revolution in the last generation, but
inexplicably failed to add that for Christians, holiness means confining sexual
activity to what it is meant for—heterosexual monogamy. Coyness on so obvious a
point as this is not a good sign. The archbishop of Canterbury wants to seek
harmony and reconciliation among people who hold very different views, but
there are limits to such a vision and in his address the archbishop of Kenya
made it plain what those limits were.
It is obviously true, as Canterbury said, that Christians disagree
about many things and that we have to live together. But it is also true that
there is a core of beliefs that cannot be compromised, and as Kenya did not
hesitate to point out, it is there that the rub lies. What is dividing the
Anglican Communion is not a disagreement between Christians who hold different
opinions about secondary matters, but a titanic struggle between believers and
apostates who want to call themselves ‘Anglicans.’ This is very hard for the
English establishment to accept, but it is a fact that cannot be denied. The
crisis is particularly acute in the Western provinces, where the corporate
culture of the church reflects the prevailing trends in society. It is no secret
that the advanced countries of the West have abandoned their inherited
Christianity for atheism. The pride and arrogance that comes from economic
success and technological progress has led many to adopt beliefs and practices
that go completely against the teaching of the Bible, which is discounted and
publicly derided, even by people who claim to be members of the church.
Students of history know that this cannot go on forever—sooner or
later there will be a reckoning, when the pride of man will be knocked low.
Pontius Pilate no doubt thought that the Roman Empire would last forever, but
even as he passed judgment on Jesus the barbarians were beginning to stir and
the seeds of ultimate collapse were being sown. Does anyone in Europe, America
or Australia seriously think that China, India and Africa will subsidise a
decadent and immoral West indefinitely? Can they not see the writing on the
wall? And do Anglicans in particular not understand that GAFCON draws its
strength from these modern ‘barbarians’ (pardon the term) who will eventually
triumph? The African primates sense this, and with prophetic grace they are
calling their erring brothers and sisters in the developed world to repent
before it is too late. To their minds, the appearance of an archbishop of
Canterbury who is on their spiritual wavelength is God’s final call to the
Western provinces to get on board before the catastrophe strikes, and they
expect their warnings to be heeded.
Nobody should be in any doubt about this. If the Anglican Communion is to survive, and if its witness to the developed world is to be faithful to the Gospel, its Western branches will have to eat humble pie and conform to what GAFCON sees as necessary. If that does not happen, then GAFCON and its supporters will go their own way and the rest of the Communion will be left high and dry. This is what the archbishop of Canterbury needs to take on board as part of his own strategy for renewal. Trying to balance the orthodoxy of GAFCON with the heresies of those who disagree with it will not work. A choice must be made, and the GAFCON way, though not perfect, is still the only one that has anything to offer the church as a whole.
The GAFCON leadership, for its
part, needs to take stock of its position and develop its own strategy for its
dealings with the wider Communion. Here it can learn a lot from the failure of
the evangelical wing of the Church of England to make any serious impression on
either the church or the nation, despite its numbers and enthusiasm. Like
GAFCON, English Evangelicals have been great organisers. Between 1967 and 2003
they were able to gather four NEACs (National Evangelical Anglican Conferences
or Congresses) which were well-attended and apparently successful. They also
put together a Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) and an Anglican
Evangelical Assembly (AEA), producing a kind of shadow General Synod within the
wider church. Unfortunately the only effect of this was to create an added
layer of meetings where people have ended up discussing very little at great
length. Those involved are fully occupied with this and think that what they
are doing is important, but nobody else pays any attention. Meanwhile, the real
government of the church has fallen into the hands of liberals who have used
their influence to pass legislation that guarantees a permanent second-class
status for Evangelicals, who now run the risk of being shut out of the church
altogether. In particular, the liberals have ensured that nobody who opposes
women’s ordination (or especially their consecration to the episcopate) has any
hope of entering the church’s hierarchy, and that new ordinands may have
trouble even finding a curacy. It is small consolation to be told that they can
always be elected to CEEC instead.
For the rest, see:
http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_127_4_Editorial.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment