http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2011/07/28/john-stott-and-global-anglicanism-vinay-samuel/#more-49248
John Stott and Global Anglicanism – Vinay Samuel
In the fifties and sixties of the last century John Stott and Jim Packer with others clearly defined the identity of evangelical Anglicans and biblically faithful Anglicanism. This process enabled evangelical Anglicans to have a space in the midst of a church which they saw as expressing principled comprehensiveness. None of the various elements that made up the Anglican church seriously denied the fundamentals of the faith.
Stott and Packer and their colleagues defined the space for evangelical Anglicans and this was taken up throughout the Anglican Communion to the extent that it existed then. It was still the Church of England writ large and English evangelicals were able to define what evangelical Anglicanism was and the space it occupied throughout the Communion. The vehicles they used were organisations like Eclectics, the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion, the Church of England Evangelical Council, and their own writings and preaching.
This all came to full expression in the Keele Congress of 1967. What was important about that conference was not a decision for evangelicals to seek for places in the formal leadership of the Church of England: Stott and Packer never aspired to that. What was important about the conference was that it gave evangelical Anglicans in the UK but also around the world the confidence that they could be Anglican and evangelical. They enabled evangelical Anglicans to resist the pressures to opt out of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.
What is the legacy of Keele? It is not the place of evangelicals in the church of England governance structures. Keele’s legacy was the global self-identity of orthodox Anglicans as evangelical. Evangelical Anglicanism developed in a dramatic way – globally . I was General Secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion in the eighties. I saw this development before my eyes. While EFAC groups grew in England and North America and Australia, in Africa there seemed no need for them: for the Church of Kenya was evangelical; the Church of Uganda and Rwanda, fresh from the inspiration of the East African Revival was charismatic and evangelical. The Church of Tanzania had both evangelical and orthodox Anglo-Catholic roots.
Where there was biblical evangelical and orthodox faithfulness, the churches grew. Where these elements were not present, the church died, as in Japan. The result today is that two-thirds of the non-western Anglican Churches are biblically faithful Anglicans of the evangelical variety. This is the fruit of the identity and space forged for evangelical Anglicans in the Communion by the Keele Congress. Keele and its products validated the possibility of there being evangelical Anglicans in a liturgical Church that was seen as Catholic of liberal.
As a result the Church of Nigeria for example could grow as an evangelical Anglican church. The first time this reality came to global prominence was the 1988 Lambeth Conference. It was there that the African Bishops in particular were able to make a united stand for calling for a decade of evangelism. That was their idea. Then in 1998 they made a stand for orthodoxy in the communion’s teaching on sexuality. Then in 2008 they boycotted the Lambeth Conference and held GAFCON. It is not possible to understand these developments without understanding the emergence of Global non-western Anglicanism that is fundamentally orthodox. Since 1988 they have been slowly taking responsibility for the whole Anglican Communion.
This responsibility has been exercised carefully in the years since Lambeth 1998. There the non-western orthodox Anglicans took responsibility to safeguard the orthodox teaching of the communion on marriage.
When this was challenged in the years after 1998, again and again the orthodox primates ensured that the primates meetings and the ACC again and again affirmed Lambeth 1.10 and called for order and discipline.
It was the Global South orthodox Anglicans who made these calls, not anyone else. It was when they came to the conclusion that these calls were not being heeded, and the decisions made were not being acted on, that they decided they had to take action themselves and define what Anglicanism was. Chris Sugden has outlined these steps as they have been set out by Archbishop Akinola. The result was the GAFCON conference and the Jerusalem statement and declaration which defined Global Anglican identity as a matter of orthodox and biblically faithful belief.
And this Global Anglican identity was not achieved by drawing ever tighter boundaries around a narrow conservatism has some have suggested. While justification by faith and substitutionary atonement are indeed central for evangelical understanding they do not completely define it: non-western global Anglicans have assumed these and also focused on the bible’s teaching of the kingdom of God, the ministry of reconciliation and the gospel ministry among the poor.
Meanwhile, in the USA and the UK, while evangelical Anglican churches were growing from strength to strength, liberal leadership dominated the establishment. And increasingly this leadership dropped the pretence of orthodoxy and moved away from the fundamentals of the faith. Liberalism is not static. And despite often appearing to be on its last legs, it has in face renewed itself by as Jim Packer says “ by sucking into itself the concerns of the culture and reshaping its account of Christianity around them”. He goes on to say that :”This liberalism knows nothing of a God who uses written human language to tell us things, or about human fallenness that makes redemption necessary. Liberalism sees the world’s emerging concerns as God’s agenda for the church. In following this agenda the church will inevitably leave the Bible behind at various points.”
The question for us here today is this: if that is the liberalism we are facing, and if that liberalism is shaping the leadership of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion Office, then what GAFCON is saying is that it is not prepared to see the Anglican Communion go that way.
From presentation given at the Reform Conference October 2008 'Where is Anglicanism heading?"
Stott and Packer and their colleagues defined the space for evangelical Anglicans and this was taken up throughout the Anglican Communion to the extent that it existed then. It was still the Church of England writ large and English evangelicals were able to define what evangelical Anglicanism was and the space it occupied throughout the Communion. The vehicles they used were organisations like Eclectics, the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion, the Church of England Evangelical Council, and their own writings and preaching.
This all came to full expression in the Keele Congress of 1967. What was important about that conference was not a decision for evangelicals to seek for places in the formal leadership of the Church of England: Stott and Packer never aspired to that. What was important about the conference was that it gave evangelical Anglicans in the UK but also around the world the confidence that they could be Anglican and evangelical. They enabled evangelical Anglicans to resist the pressures to opt out of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.
What is the legacy of Keele? It is not the place of evangelicals in the church of England governance structures. Keele’s legacy was the global self-identity of orthodox Anglicans as evangelical. Evangelical Anglicanism developed in a dramatic way – globally . I was General Secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion in the eighties. I saw this development before my eyes. While EFAC groups grew in England and North America and Australia, in Africa there seemed no need for them: for the Church of Kenya was evangelical; the Church of Uganda and Rwanda, fresh from the inspiration of the East African Revival was charismatic and evangelical. The Church of Tanzania had both evangelical and orthodox Anglo-Catholic roots.
Where there was biblical evangelical and orthodox faithfulness, the churches grew. Where these elements were not present, the church died, as in Japan. The result today is that two-thirds of the non-western Anglican Churches are biblically faithful Anglicans of the evangelical variety. This is the fruit of the identity and space forged for evangelical Anglicans in the Communion by the Keele Congress. Keele and its products validated the possibility of there being evangelical Anglicans in a liturgical Church that was seen as Catholic of liberal.
As a result the Church of Nigeria for example could grow as an evangelical Anglican church. The first time this reality came to global prominence was the 1988 Lambeth Conference. It was there that the African Bishops in particular were able to make a united stand for calling for a decade of evangelism. That was their idea. Then in 1998 they made a stand for orthodoxy in the communion’s teaching on sexuality. Then in 2008 they boycotted the Lambeth Conference and held GAFCON. It is not possible to understand these developments without understanding the emergence of Global non-western Anglicanism that is fundamentally orthodox. Since 1988 they have been slowly taking responsibility for the whole Anglican Communion.
This responsibility has been exercised carefully in the years since Lambeth 1998. There the non-western orthodox Anglicans took responsibility to safeguard the orthodox teaching of the communion on marriage.
When this was challenged in the years after 1998, again and again the orthodox primates ensured that the primates meetings and the ACC again and again affirmed Lambeth 1.10 and called for order and discipline.
It was the Global South orthodox Anglicans who made these calls, not anyone else. It was when they came to the conclusion that these calls were not being heeded, and the decisions made were not being acted on, that they decided they had to take action themselves and define what Anglicanism was. Chris Sugden has outlined these steps as they have been set out by Archbishop Akinola. The result was the GAFCON conference and the Jerusalem statement and declaration which defined Global Anglican identity as a matter of orthodox and biblically faithful belief.
And this Global Anglican identity was not achieved by drawing ever tighter boundaries around a narrow conservatism has some have suggested. While justification by faith and substitutionary atonement are indeed central for evangelical understanding they do not completely define it: non-western global Anglicans have assumed these and also focused on the bible’s teaching of the kingdom of God, the ministry of reconciliation and the gospel ministry among the poor.
Meanwhile, in the USA and the UK, while evangelical Anglican churches were growing from strength to strength, liberal leadership dominated the establishment. And increasingly this leadership dropped the pretence of orthodoxy and moved away from the fundamentals of the faith. Liberalism is not static. And despite often appearing to be on its last legs, it has in face renewed itself by as Jim Packer says “ by sucking into itself the concerns of the culture and reshaping its account of Christianity around them”. He goes on to say that :”This liberalism knows nothing of a God who uses written human language to tell us things, or about human fallenness that makes redemption necessary. Liberalism sees the world’s emerging concerns as God’s agenda for the church. In following this agenda the church will inevitably leave the Bible behind at various points.”
The question for us here today is this: if that is the liberalism we are facing, and if that liberalism is shaping the leadership of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion Office, then what GAFCON is saying is that it is not prepared to see the Anglican Communion go that way.
From presentation given at the Reform Conference October 2008 'Where is Anglicanism heading?"
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