Posted on 06/28/2008 4:19:27 PM PDT by DesScorp
Just minutes ago, conservative Anglicans announced what they are calling “The Jerusalem Declaration,” which states their intention to erect a new “fellowship of confessing Anglicans.”
"We grieve for the spiritual decline in the most economically developed nations, where the forces of militant secularism and pluralism are eating away the fabric of society and churches are compromised and enfeebled in their witness…Sadly, this crisis has torn the fabric of the Communion in such a way that it cannot simply be patched back together."...
The declaration is the unanimous product of the bishops and archbishops meeting here in Jerusalem, whose dioceses together encompass almost a majority of Anglicans worldwide. (There are others who are likely to be sympathetic to the pronouncement but not physically present in Jerusalem; together, they probably total a majority.)
The statement specifically declares that a new church should be established in North America to rival the “false leadership” of the Episcopal Church, as the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion is known.
Anglicanism is the third largest Christian sect in the world. I do not think it is an overstatement to call this the most serious split in the church’s 500-year history. This is extremely momentous news.
The once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, to which nearly all Anglican bishops are invited, will convene next month in England, the historic center of the Anglican Church. The Jerusalem Declaration is a shot across the bow of this “global Communion with a colonial structure,” and most conservatives are boycotting the English meeting. It is hard to see how this rift will be repaired.
(Excerpt) Read more at corner.nationalreview.com ...
Ping
I’m still hoping for reconciliation.
That’s a queer hope.
Started with a divorce. How ironic.
Oh my.
Ping for pinglists and comments.
The statement specifically declares that a new church should be established in North America to rival the “false leadership” of the Episcopal Church, as the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion is known.
Or, did he mean the more contentious:
The statement specifically declares that a new church should be established in North America to rival the “false leadership” of the Episcopal Church, as the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion is known.
I think it's the former, but I don't know.
Here’s to the hope of seeing Anglican Use parishes springing up everywhere!
As I understand it, there is an African Archbishop (is that the title?) who would make an excellent leader of this new conservative Anglican Church.
Or perhaps they might swim the Tiber.
What I don’t understand is regarding the Episcopal Church in the U.S. Is it part of the Anglican Church worldwide, such that this schism would cleave the whole into two pieces? Or is the Episcopal Church in the U.S. a separate entity, such that it would be more like three or four pieces?
Just curious.
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There are some excellent African clergymen who are a godsend to orthodox minded Anglicans. I hope they realize swimming the Tiber is an option - especially in light of what the TAC is doing.
Some day the fine Catholics of Africa and South East Asia are going to have to send missionaries to US.
They already are! There are several Asian and African priests in my diocese. They’re here not just because of the priest shortage, but because they’re thoroughly orthodox.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
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Humor: The Anglican Blue
Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15
Amazing the amount of ignorance, willful or otherwise, that persists in some churches. Is it ignorance or dishonesty that characterizes the self-professed one and only Bride of Christ?
According to one Brit Newspaper,one Anglican Bishop is heading RC
The Packie Anglican Bishop of Rochester in Kent is conservative, many could learn from him.
I think we might want to say Pakistani. I understand “Paki” is rather an insulting term.
I can remember six years ago when a young African man told a Lutheran Synod Assembly that in his country they teach:
• A Abstain if you are not married,
• B Be faithful if you are married,
• C Use a Condom if you cannot be faithful or abstain,
• D because otherwise you will Die.
What a reversal of history to see that the nations to which we once sent missionaries now send representatives to us; to proclaim the truths that we no longer have the courage to declare, and to uphold the historic faith that we no longer have the commitment to maintain!
Sad that it is necessary,
yet
Joyous that it is possible.
It’s a blessing.
I’m having a really big problem with the title of this article. First of all, there’s nothing “official” at all about the Anglican Church splitting IMHO. Also, I’ve just been on the Gafcon official website, and don’t see anything posted yet. This morning I received an email from Jerusalem that stated the following: “We will issue a very important statement on Sunday morning, the result of the work of many hands and hearts, but we are all sworn to secrecy until it is completely finished. “
I hope that we will all wait until we read the statement, and then see what is coming from it.
In the meantime, I continue to praise God for the Orthodox men in Uganda who gave our church refuge as we walked away from the Episcopal denomination. It has been a privilege for us to be under their watchcare.
STATEMENT ON THE GLOBAL ANGLICAN FUTURE
Praise the LORD!
It is good to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting. The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. (Psalm 147:1-2) Brothers and Sisters in Christ: We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, send you greetings from Jerusalem!
Introduction
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which was held in Jerusalem from 22-29 June 2008, is a spiritual movement to preserve and promote the truth and power of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ as we Anglicans have received it. The movement is global: it has mobilised Anglicans from around the world. We are Anglican: 1148 lay and clergy participants, including 291 bishops representing millions of faithful Anglican Christians. We cherish our Anglican heritage and the Anglican Communion and have no intention of departing from it. And we believe that, in God’s providence, Anglicanism has a bright future in obedience to our Lord’s Great Commission to make disciples of all nations and to build up the church on the foundation of biblical truth (Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 2:20).
GAFCON is not just a moment in time, but a movement in the Spirit, and we hereby:
- launch the GAFCON movement as a fellowship of confessing Anglicans
- publish the Jerusalem Declaration as the basis of the fellowship
- Encourage GAFCON Primates’ Council.
The Global Anglican Context
The future of the Anglican Communion is but a piece of the wider scenario of opportunities and challenges for the gospel in 21st century global culture. We rejoice in the way God has opened doors for gospel mission among many peoples, but we grieve for the spiritual decline in the most economically developed nations, where the forces of militant secularism and pluralism are eating away the fabric of society and churches are compromised and enfeebled in their witness. The vacuum left by them is readily filled by other faiths and deceptive cults. To meet these challenges will require Christians to work together to understand and oppose these forces and to liberate those under their sway. It will entail the planting of new churches among unreached peoples and also committed action to restore authentic Christianity to compromised churches.
The Anglican Communion, present in six continents, is well positioned to address this challenge, but currently it is divided and distracted. The Global Anglican Future Conference emerged in response to a crisis within the Anglican Communion, a crisis involving three undeniable facts concerning world Anglicanism. The first fact is the acceptance and promotion within the provinces of the Anglican Communion of a different ‘gospel’ (cf. Galatians 1:6-8) which is contrary to the apostolic gospel. This false gospel undermines the authority of God’s Word written and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the author of salvation from sin, death and judgement. Many of its proponents claim that all religions offer equal access to God and that Jesus is only a way, not the way, the truth and the life. It promotes a variety of sexual preferences and immoral behaviour as a universal human right. It claims God’s blessing for same-sex unions over against the biblical teaching on holy matrimony. In 2003 this false gospel led to the consecration of a bishop living in a homosexual relationship.
The second fact is the declaration by provincial bodies in the Global South that they are out of communion with bishops and churches that promote this false gospel. These declarations have resulted in a realignment whereby faithful Anglican Christians have left existing territorial parishes, dioceses and provinces in certain Western churches and become members of other dioceses and provinces, all within the Anglican Communion. These actions have also led to the appointment of new Anglican bishops set over geographic areas already occupied by other Anglican bishops. A major realignment has occurred and will continue to unfold. The third fact is the manifest failure of the Communion Instruments to exercise discipline in the face of overt heterodoxy. The Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada, in proclaiming this false gospel, have consistently defied the 1998 Lambeth statement of biblical moral principle (Resolution 1.10). Despite numerous meetings and reports to and from the ‘Instruments of Unity,’ no effective action has been taken, and the bishops of these unrepentant churches are welcomed to Lambeth 2008. To make matters worse, there has been a failure to honour promises of discipline, the authority of the Primates’ Meeting has been undermined and the Lambeth Conference has been structured so as to avoid any hard decisions. We can only come to the devastating conclusion that ‘we are a global Communion with a colonial structure’. Sadly, this crisis has torn the fabric of the Communion in such a way that it cannot simply be patched back together. At the same time, it has brought together many Anglicans across the globe into personal and pastoral relationships in a fellowship which is faithful to biblical teaching, more representative of the demographic distribution of global Anglicanism today and stronger as an instrument of effective mission, ministry and social involvement.
A Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans
We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, are a fellowship of confessing Anglicans for the benefit of the Church and the furtherance of its mission. We are a fellowship of people united in the communion (koinonia) of the one Spirit and committed to work and pray together in the common mission of Christ. It is a confessing fellowship in that its members confess the faith of Christ crucified, stand firm for the gospel in the global and Anglican context, and affirm a contemporary rule, the Jerusalem Declaration, to guide the movement for the future. We are a fellowship of Anglicans, including provinces, dioceses, churches, missionary jurisdictions, para-church organisations and individual Anglican Christians whose goal is to reform, heal and revitalise the Anglican Communion and expand its mission to the world. Our fellowship is not breaking away from the Anglican Communion. We, together with many other faithful Anglicans throughout the world, believe the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism, which defines our core identity as Anglicans, is expressed in these words: The doctrine of the Church is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular, such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. We intend to remain faithful to this standard, and we call on others in the Communion to reaffirm and return to it. While acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Building on the above doctrinal foundation of Anglican identity, we hereby publish the Jerusalem Declaration as the basis of our fellowship.
The Jerusalem Declaration
In the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit: We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, have met in the land of Jesus’ birth. We express our loyalty as disciples to the King of kings, the Lord Jesus. We joyfully embrace his command to proclaim the reality of his kingdom which he first announced in this land. The gospel of the kingdom is the good news of salvation, liberation and transformation for all. In light of the above, we agree to chart a way forward together that promotes and protects the biblical gospel and mission to the world, solemnly declaring the following tenets of orthodoxy which underpin our Anglican identity.
1. We rejoice in the gospel of God through which we have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because God first loved us, we love him and as believers bring forth fruits of love, ongoing repentance, lively hope and thanksgiving to God in all things.
2. We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.
3. We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
4. We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.
5. We gladly proclaim and submit to the unique and universal Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, humanity’s only Saviour from sin, judgement and hell, who lived the life we could not live and died the death that we deserve. By his atoning death and glorious resurrection, he secured the redemption of all who come to him in repentance and faith.
6. We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.
7. We recognise that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders.
8. We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.
9. We gladly accept the Great Commission of the risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, to seek those who do not know Christ and to baptise, teach and bring new believers to maturity.
10. We are mindful of our responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation, to uphold and advocate justice in society, and to seek relief and empowerment of the poor and needy.
11. We are committed to the unity of all those who know and love Christ and to building authentic ecumenical relationships. We recognise the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice, and we encourage them to join us in this declaration.
12. We celebrate the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and we acknowledge freedom in secondary matters. We pledge to work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide us.
13. We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.
14. We rejoice at the prospect of Jesus’ coming again in glory, and while we await this final event of history, we praise him for the way he builds up his church through his Spirit by miraculously changing lives.
The Road Ahead
We believe the Holy Spirit has led us during this week in Jerusalem to begin a new work. There are many important decisions for the development of this fellowship which will take more time, prayer and deliberation.
Among other matters, we shall seek to expand participation in this fellowship beyond those who have come to Jerusalem, including cooperation with the Global South and the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa. We can, however, discern certain milestones on the road ahead.
Primates’ Council
We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, do hereby acknowledge the participating Primates of GAFCON who have called us together, and encourage them to form the initial Council of the GAFCON movement. We look forward to the enlargement of the Council and entreat the Primates to organise and expand the fellowship of confessing Anglicans. We urge the Primates’ Council to authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and congregations and to encourage all Anglicans to promote the gospel and defend the faith. 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, and in a few areas for which overlapping jurisdictions are beneficial for historical or cultural reasons. We thank God for the courageous actions of those Primates and provinces who have offered orthodox oversight to churches under false leadership, especially in North and South America. The actions of these Primates have been a positive response to pastoral necessities and mission opportunities. We believe that such actions will continue to be necessary and we support them in offering help around the world.
We believe this is a critical moment when the Primates’ Council will need to put in place structures to lead and support the church. In particular, we believe the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America for the federation currently known as Common Cause Partnership to be recognised by the Primates’ Council.
Conclusion: Message from Jerusalem
We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, were summoned by the Primates’ leadership team to Jerusalem in June 2008 to deliberate on the crisis that has divided the Anglican Communion for the past decade and to seek direction for the future. We have visited holy sites, prayed together, listened to God’s Word preached and expounded, learned from various speakers and teachers, and shared our thoughts and hopes with each other.
The meeting in Jerusalem this week was called in a sense of urgency that a false gospel has so paralysed the Anglican Communion that this crisis must be addressed. The chief threat of this dispute involves the compromising of the integrity of the church’s worldwide mission. The primary reason we have come to Jerusalem and issued this declaration is to free our churches to give clear and certain witness to Jesus Christ.
It is our hope that this Statement on the Global Anglican Future will be received with comfort and joy by many Anglicans around the world who have been distressed about the direction of the Communion. We believe the Anglican Communion should and will be reformed around the biblical gospel and mandate to go into all the world and present Christ to the nations.
Jerusalem
Feast of St Peter and St Paul 29 June 2008
Where did you get this? I’m not doubting, just wondering.
http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/13784/#more
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/13787/
Thank you. At least I read that there is (was) confusion as to when it was supposed to be posted.
Now, to digesting it. Looks like good reading.
Thanks for sharing.
This article is really sad, because they, like many other media people, to me have missed the most important point. Gafcon needed to happen because too many (especially the TEC) were denying the fact that the Jesus is the One Way, and that his Word is our guide today just as it has been in the past. The “gay” issue is a tip of the iceberg.
I have now read the Declaration. I have some questions, but I’m sure we will be hearing a lot more in the hours/days to come.
“This article” meaning http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4231023.ece
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/13787/
Here is a link to the Declaration. I do not see a split.
See the link at post #29.
“The Anglican Church faces what is in effect a schism this weekend after the declaration last night of conservative evangelicals to create a “church within a church”. The new body, called the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, will have its own bishops, clergy and theological colleges.”
That sure looks like a split to me.
Ruth Gledhill is not the best source for things Anglican.
Read the Declaration itself.
“We cherish our Anglican heritage and the Anglican Communion and have no intention of departing from it.”
They will still be in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury who remains in communion with TEC and the ACoC.
The Church of England as a Celtic Church started as early as the 1st or 2nd Century—and as a formal organized entity dates at the latest to St. Augustine of Canterbury in the 500s. St. Patrick was from what is now Wales (or possibly Scotland) and he lived in the 400s, and there are records of British bishops at least as far back as the very early 300s. Since the authority of the papacy hadn’t fully developed yet, no fealty to the Pope, as Bishop of Rome, ocured until the King of Northumberland gave him his allegiance at Whitby Abbey in AD 664.
Hence Anglican historians rightly understand their Church not to have originated with Henry VIII, but rather more than 1000 years before, and originally a national church, independent of Roman authority.
Now sadly the reins of that organizational authority are with confused, weak or ungodly men (and women, when it comes to The Episcopal Church in the USA) pulling her members down after them into the Abyss.
Thanks be to God for the godly remnant—representing 1/2 or more of the Anglican Church worldwide, in Jerusalem this last week!
What I find most distressing is the fact that the GAFCON statement appears to deny Ecumenical Councils 5,6,7. 5 is important because it deals with the Three Chapters controversy, Monophysitism, and Origenism. Six is important because it condemns with the fullness of faith the Error of the Monothelite Heresy. 7 is is important because it condemns the error of the iconoclasts and affirms that anybody who says Christ can not be depicted in art is a Nestorian by definition. The Gafcon statement appears to allow Origenists, Monothelites, and Image-breakers into the communion.
Well, now there's a bit of cognitive dissonance. It's not a "shot across the bow" (i.e., a warning) if this is actually a definitive statement of a split.
It's interesting to contemplate what might happen with the American Conservatives if this actually takes place. There is a lot of self-regard among the American leaders of this movement ... they'll be looking out for themselves.
I think ultimately a new "conservative" Anglican body bodes ill for the African archbishops, who are once again going to be left out in the cold by American bishops who don't really want to be controlled by Africans who expect to exert control. The same weakness (no strong central control) that has weakened the current Communion will be propagated to the new one.
And then I think you'll see some pretty rapid fragmentation within the American body ... similar to the fragmentations that have accompanied all of the other Anglican splits over the last 50 years or so. There is a lot of potential for doctrinal controversy, and there will be a lot of jockeying for political advantage in the structuring of the new body.
One of the structural problems with the Anglican Communion is that there is no "leader" (similar to a Pope) who has any real authority to deal with Communion-wide issues such as have rent the church over the past several decades. It worked fine so long as there was broad agreement among and within the provinces of the Communion, but lack of central leadership has been a huge contributor to the growth of the difficulties we've been seeing.
The African Archbishop you have in mind is probably Peter Akinola, of Nigeria ... and he's been pretty nakedly ambitious to lead the split. I think he's a Godly enough fellow, but he has an agenda that many Americans either don't see, or ignore because it is convenient to do so.
Which brings us to the next point: American Anglican conservatives are just about as politically naive a group as you're likely to find anywhere on Earth -- the current difficulties with the Episcopal church are a rather stark testimony to that. The liberals didn't win, so much as the conservatives simply gave it all away without even realizing they had done so. Our response to liberal incursions has been about as well-managed and effective as Bush 41's re-election campaign.
IMO, the Americans see the Africans as a safe, but temporary haven until they can establish their own independent American province. Akinola (and others) see something a lot more permanent, with Africans providing most of the active leadership -- which is only natural, as the Africans comprise much the largest proportion of the Communion's membership. I think there will be friction there, as Americans balk at African attempts to control the direction of the Communion.
Akinola and many Africans are also described as a lot more socialist on many issues than I think the Americans understand -- and that, too, will cause some problems.
It might hold together, but really ... I have my doubts, because the Americans are probably not actually ready to accept the implications of what they're doing. Right now we know what we're against ... but churches need more than a common enemy to stay together. The history of previous American Anglican splits has not been encouraging in that regard -- lots of fragmentation, and little growth.
OK, so they mention Anglican doctrines as laid out in the 39 Articles, the Prayerbook, and the Ordinal ... but I don't believe the latter two are particularly common across the Communion; and the controversies of today are not really addressed by the 39 Articles, which were originally written in response to the Reformation controversies of the 16th Century.
I think an African view of what an "Anglican" is, will turn out to be quite a bit different from what the Americans (and others) will say it is -- and there will be trouble as a result. Just my prediction.
Not a divorce, more like “from now on honey your sleeping in the family room with the dog.”
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