Anglicans in Sydney in a time of conflict

These enthusiastic words came to be modified in the publicity of the conference and a number of bishops announced that they would be going to both Lambeth and GAFCON. In later publicity GAFCON, transformed itself into a pilgrimage to the biblical lands and denied it was an alternative to Lambeth.

GAFCON says it will develop as a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. As it establishes organisational arrangements it will face questions about its Anglican identity. Will membership of these organisations that set out to be an alternative Anglican future be compatible with membership of existing provinces in the Anglican Communion, or under the terms of the constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia.

GAFCON Primates have declared as a principle of conscience that territorial diocesan jurisdictions cannot stand in the way of gospel truth. But there is something of an oddity here in that some of the primates and bishops involved in recent cross-jurisdictional interventions have subscribed oaths of office in church constitutions that make this territorial arrangement a clear commitment.

So we have the unhappy sight of bishops who on oath are committed to observing this territorial jurisdiction at the same time breaking that same rule in other places.

The issue then becomes not just a matter of legal detail, but also of the honesty of those bishops. Given the kinds of institutional arrangements within which Anglicans work the easy separation between order and morality is not so easily sustained, as some seem to think.

The recent Sydney diocesan synod committed itself to the GAFCON declaration and Peter Jensen in his presidential address set the diocesan mission and its project of Connect 09 together with GAFCON as the way of the Lord to which he is committed and which he challenged his audience to follow as the way of the Lord.

Clearly the rhetoric for following GAFCON is winding up. If that means giving some place to the Jerusalem declaration as a way of reviving a commitment to theological truths to challenge a rather complacent Anglican way, then that is a good thing. You don’t have to agree with everything in the declaration to welcome it.

There are some things in it which are in my view theologically naïve and historically confused. But it can reasonably be seen to be trying to remind us that as Anglican Christians there are some pretty remarkable truths to which we are committed and which speak to the way we understand our condition and live our lives in faithful discipleship to Jesus Christ.

But, on the other hand the new and enhanced rhetoric might mean an intensification of the already strict control over diversity in the diocese. Will all clerical appointments be required to sign up to the GAFCON declaration, or the organisational actions of its council of Primates, of which Peter Jensen is the secretary? That might prove to be something very different from a good thing.

The GAFCON leaders claimed that what they regarded as their orthodox views have not been properly respected in the Anglican Communion. They therefore have had to act out in organisational dissent. To claim that at the global level and not to respect and engage with dissenters in your own immediate family is manifestly dishonest.

Fellowships and networks have served the church over many centuries. Mostly, however, they have worked within a respect for the ministries that have been lawfully appointed in the ecclesiastical structures of parishes, dioceses and provinces. This is not just a question of organisationalism, but of respect for other Christians and a sense of humility about our own perceptions of the particular ways in which our faithfulness is to be expressed. This is an aspect of the Anglican tradition of catholicity as mutual inter dependence. The GAFCON primates do not seem to be prepared to work in this way.

Organisational re-arrangement is by no means a bad thing in itself. But when dissent turns into organisational revolt in relation to arrangements that have been the subject of mutual agreement and long standing collaboration then that involves other issues of Christian conduct and virtue which no Christian can properly set aside. It would be a very great defeat if respectful and courteous catholicity turned out to be a victim in relations within the diocese of Sydney. It would somehow be a contradiction of the gospel in whose name the GAFCON movement began.