We are a week into the Lambeth Conference – the once every 10 years conference of Anglican Bishops from around the world. Not all of the bishops are attending this conference – over 200 and some due to their belief that they cannot be in contact/communion with those they believe to be heretics or those who associate with such bishops.
The last Lambeth, I was all over it. Any bit of news or commentary I read. This time, I’m not. I think I am simply burned out on all the controversy, all the hypocrisy, all the misrepresentation and accusation, all the crap (a technical term, don’t you know). I’m surprised. I think, “I need to read up on what is going on!” I start to, and then just get this feeling of not wanting to even begin.
I’ve followed the Facebook reports and blogs of friends of mine that are at Lambeth as workers and volunteers. Their impressions are great, as are their pictures. But the “hard news,” really the selective reports of the regular ideological blogs, I just can’t work up an interest.
Too bad. I’ve been praying for the bishops and for the Communion. I hope the Holy Spirit’s influence will be allowed, present, perceptible, real in the experience of those involved.

As Lambeth gears up, the Bishop of New Hampshire preached at St. Mary’s Church, Putney, in the south London-based Diocese of Southwark. There were two protestors, and one was a man in the service who attempted to shout down Bishop Robinson as he began his sermon. The following quote begins here from an ENS article entitled: Church need not be afraid, New Hampshire bishop tells Putney gathering.

Two demonstrators were also present, one carrying a placard outside the church and handing out leaflets saying the Bible prohibits homosexuality and one attempting in the church to shout down Robinson as he began his sermon.
Shouting “Repent! Repent!” the demonstrator was eventually drowned out by the congregation, which rose and sang…” He was escorted out by ushers.
“Pray for that man,” resumed Robinson, his voice shaking slightly. “Fear is a terrible thing. How sad that the Anglican Communion would threaten to tear itself apart over two men or two women who choose to make a Christian family together.”
Noting that several times in the New Testament, the words “be not afraid” and “fear not” appear, Robinson said “the Anglican Communion is going to be fine. Will it change? Probably. Is it going to be easy? Probably not.”

Here is the rub in my opinion: For the most part, this is not about fear! For some, yes, but for most I don’t buy it. For most people in this mess who oppose homosexuality it is because they believe it to be wrong – simply contrary to the will of God. If we continue to try to make their beliefs and their actions to be wholly based on fear, we are misunderstanding them.

A good essey written on Anglicans Online by The Rt Revd Pierre W. Whalon, Bishop in Charge of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe on what is needed beyond Lambeth. The good bishop provides a good overview of some of the distinctive aspects of Anglicanism that are worthy of preservation, even if under great strain right now.
The essay: Peering Past Lambeth

One thing to consider concerning the African Anglican provinces and their conceptualization of the expression of the Christian faith beyond their creation by Anglican-Evangelical missionary societies is this: perhaps the greatest growth in numbers of Christians of both indigenous and foreign denominations in Africa is among the very American “Prosperity Gospel” organizations. Within the South American context, American Pentecostals and Charismatic denominations and organizations predominate. American missionary endeavors have been very, very successful, even in influencing non-Evangelical or non-Pentecostal/Charismatic churches. These dynamic and explosive movements cannot help but influence Anglicanism within African and South American provinces, particularly when many Africans see themselves as being in competition with Islam. This seems as culturally bound on their own part as is their accusation that Northern Hemisphere or “Western” Anglicans have capitulated to the same culture concerning homosexuality.
I think we can see the influence in the very Evangelical leanings of the GAFCON statement, particularly in its denial of the centrality of the See of Canterbury as being essential to true Anglican identity. In their formulation of Anglicanism, it ceases being a “Church Catholic” and becomes just another “Protestant denomination” that follows Anglican liturgical norms. This new denomination will be predominately Charismatic and American-Evangelical and if Anglo-Catholics are tolerated, it will be only a shallow toleration.
Their insistence on following the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 (very Protestant) and especially the Thirty-Nine Articles (not only quite Protestant, but quite Calvinist/Reformed) make this move even more apparent.
Someone commented on the posting of the Jerusalem Declaration by Ruth Gledhill of the TimesOnline (UK) that, “This is the Oxford Movement in reverse… which wanted to get back to the 1549 [BCP].” and “There are so many holes in this document, and so much self deception… it is hard to believe that this forms a credible basis for unity and orthodoxy. It avoids key areas…and is a mockery of the 39 articles, when it includes bishops who openly repudiate the injunctions in the articles.”
The titled of Gledhill’s piece is: “A very ‘Anglican’ schism.”
I don’t see traditionalist Anglo-Catholics lining up to follow this new denomination-in-the-making, despite their agreement on many things moral and Scriptural. But, when groups have a common enemy and scapegoat upon which to focus, it often breeds strange bed-fellows.
Dan Martin writes good stuff about all this.
Finally, this one line from the Gafcon final statement kind of amazes me:

“We can only come to the devastating conclusion that ‘we are a global Communion with a colonial structure.’”

The whole “colonial” thing just doesn’t hold water. It is a politically-correct statement (ironically used by conservatives) as an attempt at justifying a rejection of the See of Canterbury as the center of Anglicanism. The reason they stress this, IMHO, is only because the ABC has not done what they have demanded him to do. If he had (or would) he would be heralded as a great Archbishop, upholder of the true faith, and all this talk of rejecting the See of Canterbury would never be heard.
Aside from that, in my mind “colonialism” necessitates forced acceptance of “stuff” from the colonizing entity upon the indigenous society. This has absolutely not happened! If it had, the “Western” provinces would be insisting that the “Global South” provinces accept our culture, our standards, and the stand taken by a majority of Anglican members in these provinces that homosexuals may well be brought into the structures of the Church without violating a more correct understand of the Scriptures. No one or no province has done this. Within the historical structures of Anglicanism, no one could. This is the difference between the old, historical Anglican Communion and the new “Anglican” organization that is developing. The new organization will impose itself upon all the provinces under it’s domain. It may truly be a world denomination, but it will be one more akin to the Church of Rome than the Anglican Communion.
Text of the Final Gafcon Statement

I preached a sermon yesterday from the Old Testament (we are in the process of switching to the Revised Common Lectionary, but yesterday the reading was still from the BCP Lectionary – Isaiah 2:10-17). I preached on haughtiness and pride and the trouble it gets us into.
I read the final statement from the “Global Anglican Future Conference” (GAFCON) in Jerusalem . It was expected that this conference would set the stage for actual development of an alternative international Anglican organization/Church, and while the statement states that they are not leaving the Anglican Communion they have in fact embarked on such a path if we take historical Anglican structures to be the rule.
Haughtiness and pride (perhaps hubris and vainglory are better terms) will always win-the-day when ideology (whether political, social, or theological) becomes the god unto which we give ourselves. Among the leadership of those Anglican provinces and organizations that insist on pushing their notion of “correctness” based on identity-politics and political-correctness (dressed up in the language of social-justice) regardless of the outcomes and also those provinces and organizations that demand strict adherence to a particular form of the faith and the capitulation of all to a particular Scriptural interpretation and moral perspective (dressed up in language “reform” or of purity of devotion and theology), among these groups their social and theological ideology blinds them. Vainglory, pride, haughtiness rule because humility requires admitting that each of us and our understandings and our organizations could be wrong and that we all need to compromise. Anglican comprehensiveness is defeated by the results of the attitudes and actions of both groups, both sides, both perspectives.
No one wins, despite their want to believe so. The cause of Christ always looses. Our faith is a faith that rests on relationship – our relationship with God as we strive to love God with all of our hearts, all of our minds, and all of our souls. It rests on relationships as we strive, with God’s help, to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we descend to defining the faith only by our pet creeds, tenants, or declarations, we deny the essence of what Jesus did – he restored the possibility of relationship. He didn’t create a new religion. We did.
Read more here:
Ruth Gledhill from the TimesOnline gives us, “Gafcon: a longer look.”
Guardian UK by Riazat Butt:
Conservative Anglicans form breakaway church in revolution led from the south
Conservative Anglicans form global network

I listen to part of a press conference this afternoon/morning from GAFCON. Archbishops Venerables and Jensen were the “panel” to which questions from the media were directed. I hear and read a lot from Venerables and Jensen these days, but little from Akinola.
Riazat Butt, the religion writer from the Guardian (UK), writes a very interesting article entitled, “At Gafcon, who calls the shots?” asking why white, Westerners now seem to be the public face of GAFCON when this was supposed to have been Akinola’s and Africans’ day. I think this observation and her questions carry weight, primarily because Butt is a she, non-white, non-Christian (she is Muslim), and with difficulty can be dismissed as simply a “white, male, Westerner” being all “colonial” towards the “diminished” rest-of-the-world.
She writes:

It was Canon Vinay Samuel, from India, who accused Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury of not trusting the intelligence of developing churches. The situation is hardly any better at Gafcon, where white conservatives are slowly but surely calling the shots and squeezing their African brothers out of the picture.
The eight-day gathering… was set to be the Archbishop Peter Akinola show, until his unfortunate use of the word apostate had the more media savvy prelates cringing into their prayer books.
The explanation given was that Akinola came from a different cultural context and didn’t fully understand the impact of what he was saying. The same explanation was given for the African archbishops’ silence on acts of torture.
Akinola, previously described as a luminary of the conservative movement, has now been hidden away until Sunday afternoon…
Gafcon has not been the first time that western clergy have stepped in on behalf of the African primates. Where does interpretation stop and manipulation start? There are concerns over the way the African archbishops project themselves and such a guiding hand is, at best, good public relations and, at worse, patronising. If these men are held in such high regard then they should speak in their own words, without any help.”

I wonder the same thing. A situation arose where North American and British leaders of the Church who are absolutely opposed to homosexuality found in their brethren in parts of the Global South, which now has numeric superiority over the “West,” like-minded determination to forbid the entire Church from accommodating people in same-sex relationships in their midst. What they failed to realize, IMHO, and because particularly Americans fail to recognize from the beginning the significance of “culture,” is that while these non-Western bishops will fight with them, the non-Westerners have very different understandings of all manner of things that will rub Western sensibilities the wrong way.
Now, the apparent gulf of difference between Western and African culture and sensibilities are becoming more and more apparent. The white, male, Western anti-same-sex-relationship bishops and leadership are re-asserting themselves because the culturally-different, straight forward, and uncompromising statements by some of the Global South primates/bishops and leaders won’t really fly in the West, thus weakening the Westerners’ overall position in their home provinces.
She continues:

In the fateful press conference – regarding torture – Akinola said that what was permissible in one culture was not permissible in another, without realising that same-sex unions have become the norm in western society and should therefore be accommodated in the same way that discriminatory legislation and treatment of homosexuals are par for the course in some African countries.
If the white bishops can turn a blind eye to polygamy and persecution then surely the courtesy should be returned. Gafcon is heading for a clash of civilisations, with the northern and southern hemispheres each trying to assert their superiority. And that’s before you get to the rumour about Gafcon being a done deal months ago, with little or no Nigerian input, or the rivalries between the Nigerians and Ugandans, with them trying to out-do each other when praying.

Perhaps like-mindedness between Western “conservatives” and Africans regarding issues of morals and Scriptural interpretation, but certainly disparate understandings of how it is all applied within social and political contexts – very, very different social and political contexts.