Global South Anglican

We have extracted a part of the Archbishop of Sydney’s latest Presidential Address and post it below. For the full article, please read it here

GAFCON

As I look back over the tumultuous months of June and July - tumultuous for me at least - I am more certain than ever that the path we chose to take as bishops from this Diocese was the right one: it was right to attend the conference in Jerusalem, and it was right to stay away from Lambeth.

I was there when GAFCON was planned. In a hotel room in Nairobi were squeezed Archbishop Nzimbi from Kenya, Archbishop Orombi from Uganda, Archbishop Akinola from Nigeria, Archbishop Mtetemela from Tanzania, Archbishop Kolini from Rwanda. As well there were leaders from England, from the US, from Canada. It was December 2007, late, far too late to plan a major conference, let alone one in Jerusalem.

But we were late for a worthy reason - there had been hope against hope that a solution would be found to the problems in the Anglican Communion. They had placed their hopes in the Archbishop of Canterbury and the usual processes of the Communion. Now they believed that all those hopes had been dashed and there would be no solution offered, apart from more delay. The time had come to act.

Persistent attempts to portray GAFCON as a breakaway movement or an attempt to split the Anglican Communion are perverse, almost malign.

The ‘tear in the fabric of the Communion’ occurred in the events of 2003 with the appointment of a divorced and actively homosexual bishop in the United States, and the blessing of same-sex unions in the US and Canada. GAFCON represents a refusal on theological and pastoral grounds to act as though this major division had never taken place.

The Anglican Communion is, I believe, the third largest body of Christians in the world. It is vastly more important than we here often realise. It represents one of the chief ways in which Christians all around the world receive fellowship, missional help, and attention when they are persecuted or in other trouble. It is a highly significant entity, to be cherished and maintained, not torn apart. 

The aim of GAFCON is to renew and invigorate the Communion and to help bring order and peace out of the mayhem created by the American division.

What is actually at stake here? We all know that the flash point for the major disagreements has been over human sexuality. But it is facile to label this as merely a debate over sex. Sex matters. It matters very deeply indeed. Our personal identity is bound up with our sexual natures and behaviours. When Western culture took a decisive turn away from God in the middle of the twentieth century, it began on a path of experimentation with gender and sex which capitulated to corrupt human desires, our own and that of the world, with tragic consequences. The ‘right’ to free choice of who we are and how we behave is one of the idols of this age, as you will soon discover if you ever challenge it.

But fundamentally we are dealing here with a twofold contest of authority.

First God’s authority in the world, and his right to say where human happiness is truly to be found. Second, in the Church, we are dealing with Christ and his Lordship, that is with the gospel itself. When Christ draws us to himself by his Spirit, we are united in the fellowship or communion of his people. As the New Testament shows us, that unity is the unity of a Body, in which there is a variety of giftedness but in which all are equally valuable, and the life-beat of the whole is love. Christ is the Head of this body, the Saviour of it and the ruler of it through his word. Disobedience to the Head divides the Body and creates a fissure which disfigures. It is a failure of love.

Extremely powerful cultural forces have revolutionised the way we think about sex and gender issues. Not all of this revolution was bad for our human life. However, in some parts of the Christian world there has been a lack in spiritual understanding and hence capitulation to these forces which do not make for human flourishing. It is a capitulation, despite the clear teaching of scripture. Indeed the way was prepared by earlier debates in which we were constantly assured that passages in scripture are capable of many interpretations, all equally valid. Division was inevitable.

This capitulation is not surprising at one level. We had become so used to living in a Christianised culture that we assumed that culture and church would speak with one voice and that we could occupy a comfortably assured place in a world which conformed to our views.

But we are no longer in such a place. To be a Christian today requires a self-understanding that we will occupy a minority position, that we will be counter-cultural, that the majority will regard our views as bizarre at best. However uncomfortable we may find this, we cannot compromise over what the Bible really says about matters such as sex and gender.

What we need to know is, that the events in North America were only the culmination of a long contest within that the Episcopal Church in America over the authority of God’s word. For example, when Archbishop Goodhew visited the US in 2000 as part of an official fact-finding mission, he and the team reported with alarm how far down the road of sexual licence the church had gone and called them to return to Scripture.  The fissure in the Anglican Communion is the direct result of a last symbolic action in 2003, but it had been coming for a long time. No doubt it had its origins in theological liberalism taught in the seminaries and an unwillingness to discipline flagrant breaches of faith and order.

When scripture is defied, the tragedy of division is inevitable. Our conscience can do no other. That is why unscriptural practices such as the ordination of women to the priesthood have always aroused conscientious protest and division. In our own Australian Church we now have the women bishops, and although we all intend to stay as united as possible, the pain of division is permanent. Full Christian Communion entails accepting each others’ ministries. That is fundamental. We have now introduced into our Australian fellowship, and into the fellowship within many Australian dioceses, a very painful disunity, which affects our capacity to stand side by side for the cause of the gospel.

In the US church this division was contained temporarily, but in recent days it has become clear that those in favour of egalitarianism are going to make it impossible for those opposed to stay in the church. 

This is difficult, but the subsequent development in the area of sexual ethics was of such a clearly unbiblical nature, and of such grave spiritual consequences, that even more people became determined to protest against it, indeed to live in protest against it. That is a hard choice. We do not love conflict. But there comes a moment when we have no choice, or rather the choice is that which Joshua gives: ‘And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve…but as for me and for my house, we will serve the Lord.’ (Joshua 24:15).

The very Scriptures which urge us to unity, to stand together in the cause of the gospel, also warn us that there are moments when we must break unity to preserve the gospel and the spiritual lives of those in our care. For many in the US and Canada that was the moment, and they have followed conscience shaped by the word of God, painful though this is.

Can we stand back? There are two reasons why we may not. Paradoxically, the first is that of unity in fellowship. Those who have determined to believe and obey the Bible on this matter have not changed. They remain Anglicans. But they rightly can no longer have the same fellowship with those who have embraced unscriptural practices on matters which the scripture identifies as life and death.
For we are not dealing here with trivialities or matters of order. Jim Packer pinned it: he calls it ‘sanctifying sin.’ Those who bravely live out a protest, need our recognition and support. They need our fellowship to make up for the fellowship they are losing.

As a result of all this I have been privileged to meet and pray and work with outstanding leaders from the Americas - for example, our own David Short from Canada; Bob Duncan, deposed as Bishop of Pittsburgh as a direct consequence of his unwillingness to stay in fellowship with those who have left the scriptural standard; Archbishop Greg Venables of the Southern Cone who has broken all the boundaries of Anglican taste and good manners to provide recognition and support for Christians in Canada and the US; Bishop Don Harvey from Canada, a gentle man of faith who has come out of retirement to act as a bishop to the 20 or so congregations in Canada who have sought his care.

I have prayed with these men, late at night, on the phone, across the world;
I have shared with them;
I have agonised with them.
They are not firebrands;
they are not revolutionaries;
they loved the church they were in;
they are genuine Anglicans representing differing churchmanship;
they are men of principle.

They are like Professor Jim Packer, who is his eighties after a life lived in the distinguished service of Christ has found himself cut out of his own church by what he calls ‘practical heresy’. For him these matters are not a debating point. The church has practised heresy, and he must depart from it; it is that important.

The second reason why we cannot stand back is the danger of the spread of this theological fallout. In Jerusalem, the famous Christian sociologist Dr Os Guinness described what has happened in the US in term of an nuclear explosion. He saw the resulting fallout as having a global effect. The struggles in the US are already the same as are occurring elsewhere in the English speaking world and in Europe. It is madness to think that they will not also occur in Africa and Asia and South America. One of the reasons why great leaders like Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda has been so strong in his stand and his total unwillingness to attend Lambeth is his recognition that liberal theology is confronting his own Church and that he has an obligation to defend the Christians of his world against false teaching.

For him, going to Lambeth was not a matter of listening yet again to another point of view, as though what we are dealing with here is a mere matter of good manners: it was the question of having fellowship and hence offering recognition to those who have endorsed a deadly form of false teaching. I know that others whom we esteem highly chose to attend, and I honour their choice. It is not generally known that there were those who attended Lambeth who refused to take Holy Communion with others who were present. It is not generally known, because that was a private way of saying what I believe needed to be said publicly - the communion which was fractured in 2003 has not yet been repaired through the repentance which brings us back to the gospel and the scriptures. Not going to Lambeth was virtually the only way of making that plain.

Once I knew that Henry Orombi was not going to Lambeth, it was clear to me that I had to stand with him in that position. Not to be there spoke a thousand times more powerfully than attendance would have done. How could we share fellowship with those from whom David Short and Jim Packer had withdrawn?

What has happened as a result of the two conferences? Opinions about Lambeth have differed, though most participants seemed to have enjoyed the fellowship it provided and admired the contribution of Archbishop Williams. It was assumed from the beginning that there was no shift in the overall Communion’s views on Christian sexual ethics: they were still conservative and biblical. This matter was not allowed to come up for decisive debate. Indeed the Conference itself was deliberately set up in order to avoid making decisions or issuing declarations and the like.

Insofar as the crisis in the Communion was addressed, the solutions offered were much the same as we have seen hitherto - an Anglican Covenant which may or may not be acceptable, which could take a very long time to be ratified and which many say will not deal with the present crisis; a renewed call for moratoria on three activities which have caused offence, but a call which is ambiguous and seems to have been defied already by various Bishops who are not willing to go back on what has been done; and the provision of a Pastoral Forum to care for those who are objecting to theological innovation.

Nothing further has been heard about this Forum as yet and in the meantime Bishop Duncan has been deposed and the Diocese of Pittsburgh has seceded from the American Church - the second diocese to do so and there may be others. Court cases proceed apace. You could be forgiven for thinking that the strategy of those with any power in the Anglican Communion is a strategy of delay. Intentionally or not, it suits the notion that in the end we will all learn to live with the change. There will be a focus on theological education, and especially on hermeneutics in the hope that as many people as possible will be able to imbibe the wisdom of liberalism.

It is no accident that GAFCON’S title is a Global Anglican Future Conference, that it was held in Jerusalem and that it was for clergy and people. It is no accident that it endeavoured to include younger leadership. It is an awakening, a spiritual movement for the gospel and the authority of the scriptures within the Communion. It has sought to do two things as a matter of urgency: To save for the Anglican Communion those who have been forced to leave their original church; at the same time to address the fundamental theological and spiritual issues which are at stake in this whole matter.

Thus, following GAFCON a Primates’ Council has emerged, consisting of seven of the most significant leaders of the Anglican Communion. I am not a member of this, but I have been asked to act as the honorary secretary. They have waited patiently for over five years for help to arrive for Bob Duncan, David Short, Jim Packer and the rest. Nothing effective has been done and they have now concluded that nothing effective will be done. The Primates’ Council is willing to recognise and authenticate as Anglican, the ecclesial life of those Anglicans who have been forced to leave their original homes because of ‘practical heresy’, provided that the cause is grave enough, and provided that the approach is properly organised. In this way they hope to contribute to bringing order to the Anglican Communion and to bring into the Communion those who over the years have been excluded. 

As we turned to discuss what needed to be said and done at GAFCON in that Nairobi hotel room, I was struck by the wisdom of the African leaders. For them, one of the great themes of the Conference, indeed, its underlying theme had to be this - the Lordship of Christ and the transforming power of the gospel. What worries them most about western Christianity as they experience it, is not even our worship of sex and money. It is above all the absence of what Paul calls the power of the gospel, its capacity to alter human lives for good. It is not that African Christianity is perfect: far from it. They too have their troubles and deep failures. But they are sure of this - that there is no gospel without repentance.

They are missionaries, and mission was one of the great hallmarks of the experience that was GAFCON. They said ‘let us go back to what makes us Anglicans - our origins in the Bible and the Reformation. Let us think about our world without Christ and without hope. Now let us do all we can both to defend ourselves against the perversion of the gospel and to join together positively to advance the cause of the gospel throughout the world.

Yes we have major social problems which must be attended to. True, we are not the only faithful Anglicans. But the preaching of the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ must come first.’

And that was the GAFCON experience. It was not a bleat about the Americans; it was not a conference fixated on sex; it was a wonderful fellowship of Anglicans from so many places, who wanted to be Anglicans; who wanted to help their fellow Anglicans; and who wanted to see Christ glorified. How we sang! How some danced! How we talked with freedom and joy! How we wept! It was a conference which said ‘future’.

You see, it is perfectly possible to talk Jesus up, but not to preach the gospel. One night I watched a prominent Anglican giving us the gospel message on television. He spoke so well of Jesus I was delighted. But the Jesus of whom he spoke turned out to be infinitely inclusive. The promises were there, but not the demand.

And yet the real message of the real Jesus and his Apostles was a message of repentance - of despair when confronted with God’s law and our failure to keep it which turns to Jesus Christ; of that trust which surrenders all to him, which acknowledges him as Lord and Master of our lives; of that gratitude which willingly submits all our thoughts and our heart and our wealth and our family and our strength to him and him alone; of that humility which suffers the final indignity to the mind of modern man, the humility which sends all our sins to the cross of Christ for forgiveness.

If you have a gospel in which there is no repentance you do not have the gospel. If you have a life in which there is no on-going repentance, you do not have the Christian life; you have mere religion, powerless to save or to bless. If you have a church which is not willing to discipline and to call for repentance, you have a church which is built on some other foundation than that of Jesus Christ.

And so GAFCON was about the gospel and the gospel which calls for repentance, for transformation of life, for ongoing transformation of life, for walking in the light. Of course Lambeth was a fine conference; many fine relationships were forged; there was good prayer and Bible study and liturgy and Canterbury Cathedral and great processions and all that English hospitality can offer. But in my opinion to be committed to Lambeth only, was to say that this was going to be business as usual; that we accept the glacial speed of the Anglican authorities to bring order into a situation which in their hearts they seem to agree with. To support Lambeth alone is to say that these problems may solve themselves given time. GAFCON was held because time has run out - the orthodox Christians in North America need our help now, not at some far future time. And the fallout of liberalism is not going to wait for the next five years before it arrives in our churches. It is here now.

And what of us here? God through our Diocesan Mission has brought us to the great challenge of Connect 09. As Anglicans we are sharing the word of God in our culture. We are part of a world-wide movement. And we are measuring ourselves by the same gospel we find in the New Testament. For we are not somehow exempt from sin, or from cultural captivity, or from pride.

Last year we asked the Doctrine Commission for a report on the nature of congregational assemblies. I thank them for the report and look forward to discussing it. With its help we can certainly ask whether what we do in church sufficiently reflects the gospel. Take the confession of our sins and the declaration of forgiveness for example. In a church I was in recently, we had confession and forgiveness. The clergyman invented his own list of sins for us to confess; they sounded exactly what the uneasy conscience of a modern middle class person may dredge to the surface, if pressed hard to say where they had failed in the last little while. The declaration that we were all assuredly forgiven of these mainly imaginary sins was, if I remember correctly, perfunctory, but certain enough to make us all feel a lot better. Apparently God was pleased with us after all.

But this business of coming into the presence of the Lord is no light thing. And the business of assuring people that their sins are forgiven, is no light thing. These are the keys of heaven and hell, administered with great solemnity by the appointed preachers of God’s word. Woe to the one who casually assures us in the name of God that we are forgiven when we are not! By what right is this done? I have been invited to confess my sins in such a way that my sins are never identified and my repentance is never required. I was not aware that forgiveness was so cheaply offered; we would take more pains to mollify a fellow motorist than we give to thinking about our relationship with the living God.

In this Diocese, we claim to be Cranmerians - that is, the protestant Reformation has come down to us via Archbishop Cranmer, his thirty nine articles and the Book of Common Prayer. Let us study and incorporate what he taught us about our approach to God. In his great confession of sin, he identifies our sins not according to the standards of the middle-class conscience, but by the Law of God: ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws…there is no health in us…’ He does not pretend that a mere outward confession is what is required, but ‘He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel.’ And he gets us to pray for the gift of ‘true repentance and his Holy Spirit that those things may please him which we do at this present and that the rest of our life may be pure and holy…’

It is all very well for us to smugly criticise others, but if we fail to manifest the fruit of repentance and godly living we are hypocrites. How long is it since you have examined your own life, starting with the devices and desires of your heart? How many sins flourish there, secretly watered by you and never dealt with, never put to death, to use the violent and painful image of the New Testament? Greed, lust, covetousness, malice, jealousy, anger, hatred - these are some of the inward sins which need to be dealt with if we are to walk in the light. I think that they are present within us because I see them break out into ungodly displays often enough. But they start in the heart. Remember the great text that R.B.S.Hammond stood for: “Not everyone that saith unto Me, ‘Lord, Lord’, shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.”

‘He that doeth’ - R.B.S.Hammond, evangelist, the need of the world was on his heart and today we may still see the fruits of his labours for Christ. He reached out to the Sydney of his day; he connected because he knew that to follow Christ as Lord was the path of repentant obedience.

‘In Understanding Be Men’ - T.C.Hammond, evangelist, teacher of God’s word. He was absolutely fearless in teaching the word of God, however unpopular it may have been. That the world may think differently; that popularity may escape him, mattered not at all. He knew that to follow Christ was the path of repentant obedience.

Let me speak personally. GAFCON and Connect 09 have dominated my life this year. They are connected as the two Hammonds are connected and they demand the same things of us. I am not involved in these things purely in my own right as Peter Jensen. I have become involved as your Bishop.  I know that not all have agreed with my decisions and actions, especially in regard to GAFCON. Nonetheless, I have received great support and manifest prayer, for which I am very grateful.  But even if you had turned your collective back on these endeavours, although I always greatly respect the opinion of the Diocese, I would still have gone forward. Our city, our nation, needs the word of God and we need to connect with our community. Our Anglican Communion needs the GAFCON movement to help defend and promote the pure gospel of Jesus Christ in all the world. I have never worked such long hours or with such intensity - but I can say this - nor have I ever seen so clearly the Lord’s hand at work in blessing his people especially in Jerusalem.

As far as I can see, with such wisdom as the Lord has given me, these two great enterprises are of God. True, they both put us in a position of walking, acting and thinking at odds with the cultures around us, who will exert all their efforts, even through other members of the church, to stop us from doing these things. But they both seek to promote and defend the apostolic gospel; they both stem from the written word of God; they both demand of us faith in God’s promises and his over-ruling sovereignty. And they both demand of us repentant and obedient hearts, willing to serve the Lord for the sake of his gospel.

In the light of this, then, I can only say this to you: ‘choose you this day whom you will serve…’

‘As for me and my house, I will serve the Lord’.