Category Archives: Evangelicalism

High Noon at the OK Corral: GAFCON Primates meet the Archbishop of Canterbury


It is time for plain speaking: The Episcopal Church in the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada have prostituted the Christian faith and authorized that which God has anathematized.

The hour of reckoning has arrived. How the Archbishop of Canterbury responds will determine much. Early signs are not good. Whether the views of the Archbishop or his staff, the official Lambeth statement about the meeting tomorrow between six archbishops is terse if not defiant.

Ruth Gledhill writes, TimesonLine “Today Lambeth Palace, although not the Archbishop of Canterbury in person, has at last made a comment on this, and the comment at first glance seems to make it clear that this new province will not receive formal recognition any time soon. In fact it appears pretty brutal in its dismissal of the Common Cause initiative. Hong Kong, don’t forget, was recognised extremely fast once its three dioceses decided to seek independence.

Lambeth Palace says: ‘There are clear guidelines set out in the Anglican Consultative Council Reports, notably ACC 10 in 1996 (resolution 12), detailing the steps necessary for the amendments of existing provincial constitutions and the creation of new provinces. ‘Once begun, any of these processes will take years to complete. In relation to the recent announcement from the meeting of the Common Cause Partnership in Chicago, no such process has begun. This comes as the five Gafcon primates, Archbishops Akinola, Venables, Nzimbi, Kolini and Orombi, fly into London this afternoon and prepare to travel to Canterbury tomorrow, Friday, to meet Dr Williams to discuss the new province among other things.’

The meeting has been arranged at the request of the five primates. Next month, I understand, the Gafcon primates will then meet with the primates of the Joint Standing Committee, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori of TEC and Archbishops Morgan of Wales, Aspinall of Australia, Orombi of Uganda, Anis of Egypt and Dr Williams. At this meeting they will present the plan formally to the primates for consideration at the Primates Meeting which begins in Alexandria, Egypt the following day. But it is not at all clear whether this presentation will incorporate a formal request for recognition or not.

Apparently, the big question that is being asked inside the power structures of the Anglican Communion is: ‘Do they want recognition?’ Is there a desire to maintain unity or not? This is not at all clear, and so far the guidance from both sides on this is a bit fuzzy.

Read the rest of this entry »

With Archbishops Akinola, Venables, Nzimbi, Kolini and Orombi riding into town, it is literally high noon at the OK Corral. The fact is the Arcbishop and his staff do not determine who is, or who is not, recognised in the Anglican Communion. Let me explain what is going to happen next, although I make no claim to the gift of prophecy.

1. Conservative Evangelical organisations such as Anglican Mainstream, SAMS, Church Society, the Fellowship of Word and Spirit, Crosslinks, New Wine, REFORM, and probably Forward in Faith, CMS and the CEEC, will all recognise the new Anglican Province of North America, either immediately, or in the next few weeks. They are already working together with Common Cause partners, formally or informally, within the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. This Fellowship already includes whole Provinces, Dioceses, Bishops, clergy and laity. What representatives or Bishops within the Church of England have to say or threaten is now really quite irrelevant. After Gene Robinson was consecrated the die was cast. The showdown in Canterbury tomorrow became inevitable.

2. A majority of the Primates meeting in Alexandria in February (who thankfully are still orthodox) will recognise the new Province of North America. No question.

3. The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) will be tasked with completing the administrative processes necessary to give the recognition that is already there, legal status. Liberals on the ACC and Jefferts Schori especially, will do everything they can to stall or circumvent the will of the Primates, but time, history and the majority of Anglicans worldwide are not on their side.

4. TEC will be expelled from the Anglican Communion. OK, that was not prophecy just wishful thinking on my part.

“Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.” (1 John 2:18-20)

The Church and the BNP

With the leaking, last month, of the names, addresses and occupations of the 12,000 members of the British National Party (BNP), media attention, such as the BBC and Guardian, has focussed on the handful of police officers, teachers and soldiers so identified. While membership of the political party is entirely legal, certain occupations are banned from being members of the BNP.

While I deplore the threats and attacks that ensued, I am encouraged by two aspects of the incident.

1. Membership of such parties is still perceived to be an embarrassment to the majority of people in Britain.

2. Given legitimate concerns over evidence of institutional racism and anti-semitism within the Church, I am relieved that so few Christian leaders were listed. Ekklesia claims five were identified.

“Further investigation has shown that one of the “Revs” appears to have gained his title through Universal Ministries, an online service which “will ordain anyone, at no charge, for life.” Another had previoulsy said he had joined the BNP by mistake and left the party – although blogs on the internet elsewhere suggest he changed his mind and joined the party again.

It has been previously suggested that the BNP is seeking to gain ground by playing on false fears about race and immigration, and by seeking to exploit the mythology of a white ‘Christian Britain’.

The BNP has also attempted to exploit hard-line Christian conservatism by seeking to set up a body claiming to be a ‘Christian Council of Britain’, by scaremongering about Muslims, and by getting in on anti-Jerry Springer opera protests promoted by the controversial group Christian Voice – which has since distanced itself from them.”

According to Haroon Siddique, writing in the Guardian,

“Ben Wilson, a spokesman for the Church of England, which is not a public body under the Race Relations Amendment Act, said it had seen “no evidence” that any serving vicars were on the list, despite media reports.

“The church’s General Synod passed a motion in 2004 stating that any political movement that seeks to divide our communities on the basis of ethnicity is an affront to the nature of God revealed in creation and scripture and is a grave danger to harmonious community relationships; consequently voting for and/or supporting a political party that offers racist policies is incompatible with Christian discipleship.

He said: “It would be difficult to take any formal action against a vicar on the basis of their alleged membership of the BNP, as membership of any lawful political party is excluded from the grounds for complaint under the clergy discipline measure.”

The best piece of reporting on the relationship between the BNP and the Church has been written by Richard Bartholomew. He identifies three ministers and records the comments of one thus:

“I’m furious. I used to be on the mailing list but I have never been a member. I don’t know why my name has gone out on the list and I’m now considering the action I am going to take.”

There may indeed be others who were ‘relieved’ that they too were not outed. Nevertheless the tally of church leaders associated with the BNP, while just a handful, is, in my opinion, one handful too many.

Revd Dr John Stott on Christian Zionism

“I am glad to commend Stephen Sizer’s ground-breaking critique of Christian Zionism. His comprehensive overview of its roots, its theological basis and its political consequences is very timely. I myself believe that Zionism, both political and Christian, is incompatible with biblical faith. Stephen’s book has helped to reinforce this conviction.”

Revd Dr John Stott, Rector Emeritus, All Soul’s, Langham Place, London, the principal framer of the Lausanne Covenant (1974) and founder of the Langham Partnership International (author of more than 40 books including Basic Christianity, The Cross of Christ, The Contemporary Christian, Evangelical Truth and New Issues Facing Christians Today, and eight New Testament expositions (Acts, Romans etc.) in the ‘Bible Speaks Today’ series published by IVP).

John Stott also wrote the foreword to In the Footsteps of Jesus and the Apostles and allowed his sermon on ‘the Place of Israel’ to be included in Zion’s Christian Soldiers

My Top 5 Books on Social Justice: Tony Campolo in Christianity Today


Rich Christians in An Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity Ron Sider

Continues to make the evangelical community aware of what the Bible says about our responsibilities to the poor, and calls Christians to do something about it.

Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? Stephen Sizer

A comprehensive survey describing how Christians have embraced a theological perspective that has encouraged justice for Jews, but has also led to the oppression of Palestinian people and extreme hostility between Christians and Muslims worldwide

The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical Shane Claiborne

If you want to get a glimpse of what radical obedience looks like when lived out by a Red-Letter Christian, then this book is a must.

God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It Jim Wallis

A New York Times bestselling book offering an alternative to the polarizing politics promoted by many in the religious culture wars. Wallis helps us find unity with a politics that addresses the needs of the poor and oppressed.

The Prophets Abraham J Heschel

Provides rich insights from the Hebrew prophets as they empathized with the pathos that God shows upon seeing the oppression of the poor.

See Christianity Today

A foot in many camps – a reply to Stephen Kuhrt

by Chris Sugden in the Church of England Newspaper November 21 2008

In his CEN article last week, Stephen Kuhrt argued that the 57 member CEEC is not representative because 28 members belong to what he defines as one, conservative, stream.  Stephen argues, as does Graham Kings in a parallel article in the Church Times last week, that there are three streams in the Evangelical Constituency and any organization claiming to represent that constituency needs to reflect them in proportion.

PROPORTIONALITY

Arguments about proportionality encourage a particularly narrow view of ‘representation’. Like MPs and Bishops, CEEC members – drawn as Stephen’s piece shows from different types of ‘constituency’ – are there to represent the whole constituency.  That should be common ground about how we understand the ‘Evangelical Constituency’ to be made up.

Stephen speaks of ‘three streams’:  but why (only) three?  How do we know their relative strengths?  The usual way is by elections – to see which groups win support. Even accepting the argument for proportionality, applying it in the evangelical constituency is problematic. The categories overlap. Many, but not all, conservatives are charismatics. There are different kinds of charismatics and conservatives, just as there are different kinds of points of view in Fulcrum.  Fuclrum itself illustrates the difficulty. Its strap-line refers to ‘The Evangelical Centre’.  But what is the ‘centre’? Identifying the centre requires an agreed definition of the limits of the range – the meaning of ‘Evangelical’.

DEFINING IDENTITY

A representative organization like CEEC needs some means of establishing what makes it distinctive so that it can be seen who and what it represents.  When an organization consists, as many do, of a number of viewpoints, defining its identity is difficult. This is particularly so when some who agree on some points but disagree on others find allies with those on the outside who are in fundamental disagreement with the view of other members of the first organization.

Continue reading

Audio Recordings of the All Souls GAFCON Consultation

GAFCON Jerusalem Report Consultation, 1st July 2008

Orthodoxy & Effective Mission : Archbishop Henry Orombi
Orthodoxy & Global Connections : Archbishop Greg Venables
Orthodoxy & Personal Experience : Dr Jim Packer
Questions to the Panel – Henry Orombi, Peter Jensen, Greg Venables & Jim Packer

More photos of All Souls

Audio Recordings of GAFCON Jerusalem

Audio recordings of the presentations made at the Global Anglican Futures Conference in Jerusalem. (the videos are accessible here)

1. Welcome Address: Archbishop Akinola

2. Opening Sermon: Archbishop Orombi

3. The Gospel and Secularism: Dr Os Guiness

4. The Nature and Future of the Anglican Communion: Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali

5. The Gospel and Religion: Professor Lamin Sanneh

6. Genesis 12: The Promise of God: Archbishop Akrofi

7. Exodus 24: The Presence of God: Revd David Short

8. 2 Samuel 1:1-17: The King of God: Revd Vaughan Roberts

9. The Jerusalem Declaration

10. Closing Sermon: Jesus Christ is Lord: Archbishop Venables

Photos taken at GAFCON may be viewed here

Listening and Learning in the Middle East

What it means to act as an advocate for global engagement. Christianity Today

Lynne Hybels

What struck me most as my Arab driver artfully maneuvered the roundabouts and winding streets of Amman, Jordan, was the sense of timelessness in a city made of stone. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Amman boasts a 5,000-seat amphitheater built in the 2nd century that is still in use today, and a Christian church built in 326 A.D. On the modern, western side of the city, the gleaming white stone repeats the ancient theme in stately homes, five-star hotels, and a massive, blue-domed mosque in which nearly 3,000 worshipers gather in prayer.

But it was Arab Christians, not architecture, that had brought me to Amman. I spent the next five days in a secluded retreat center listening to lectures and talking with men and women whose stories shook my understanding of what it means to be a Christian in the Middle East. Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding sponsored the gathering and billed it as an opportunity for American and European Christians to “listen to the church in the Middle East.” The conference brochure should have come with a warning: “You will leave this place feeling sick at heart, and your tears will continue to fall long after you return home.”

Read more