Folks,

The article in SMH today (1/7/08) had the following:

A Melbourne sociologist, Professor Gary Bouma, said the movement would have little support beyond Africa and some conservative parishes in Canada and the US, and the prospect of losing property and superannuation would bind leaders such as Peter Jensen to the fold.

The superannuation issue is simply untrue and I have sent the following to the SMH:

As the former Chairman of Anglican National Super, the superannuation fund covering over two thousand people across Australia, I would like to assure Archbishop Peter Jensen that, despite Melbourne sociologist, Professor Gary Bouma’s comments in SMH 1/7/08 (’Breakaway move puts Jensen in a bind’) that his superannuation is in no way at risk by his participation in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON).

Indeed I wish to assure the Archbishop that the Fund will continue to look after his retirement savings as well as the retirement savings of every other fund member and simply ask that the Archbishop continues to show wise and godly leadership as he has done for us all in Jerusalem this past week.

Professor Bouma’s comments are ill-informed, unfortunate scaremongering.

James Flavin,
Former Chairman, Anglican National Super.

Thanks James, helpful information.

I only wish Rowan Williams was as strident in his opposition to the consecration of practicing homosexuals as bishops as he was to the Jerusalem Declaration!

Herald didn’t like my letter.

I’d take it personally except right through this SMH has shown it doesn’t like letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

I have been reading some reports in the media.
I found this interesting in The Guardian in the report from the now very frank and no-nonsense Archbishop of Canterbury:

· This article was amended on Tuesday July 1 2008. Rowan Williams referred to the possibility of renewing the existing structures of the Anglican communion and not, as we incorrectly said, its teachings. This has been corrected.

If the media will make quick corrections on statements from the Archbishop of Canterbury, will they offer the same courtesy to the incorrect reporting on the other side?
(Edited to put this in)
The artcile is here.

My impressions of statements about innovations from part of the Anglican Communion from the Archbishop of Canterbury is that he says something, and then is very slow to implement it.

So does that mean he is now saying his dislike, but will act very slowly when parts of the Communion make a stand on existing regulations, but also make a comment about the way his office is now to be seen in post-colonial Anglicanism?

Robert Denham - 02 July 2008 05:09 PM

If the media will make quick corrections on statements from the Archbishop of Canterbury, will they offer the same courtesy to the incorrect reporting on the other side?

Obviously there has been no incorrect reporting on the other side.

Abp Rowan Williams says some things that I believe are important for us all to consider positively:

“The ‘tenets of orthodoxy’ spelled out in the document will be acceptable to and shared by the vast majority of Anglicans in every province, even if there may be differences of emphasis and perspective on some issues. I agree that the Communion needs to be united in its commitments on these matters, and I have no doubt that the Lambeth Conference will wish to affirm all these positive aspects of GAFCON’s deliberations. Despite the claims of some, the conviction of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Lord and God and the absolute imperative of evangelism are not in dispute in the common life of the Communion.”

and

“It is not enough to dismiss the existing structures of the Communion. If they are not working effectively, the challenge is to renew them rather than to improvise solutions that may seem to be effective for some in the short term but will continue to create more problems than they solve. This challenge is one of the most significant focuses for the forthcoming Lambeth Conference. One of its major stated aims is to restore and deepen confidence in our Anglican identity. And this task will require all who care as deeply as the authors of the statement say they do about the future of Anglicanism to play their part.”

and

“I believe that it is wrong to assume we are now so far apart that all those outside the GAFCON network are simply proclaiming another gospel. This is not the case; it is not the experience of millions of faithful and biblically focused Anglicans in every province. What is true is that, on all sides of our controversies, slogans, misrepresentations and caricatures abound. And they need to be challenged in the name of the respect and patience we owe to each other in Jesus Christ.”

and

“An impatience at all costs to clear the Lord’s field of the weeds that may appear among the shoots of true life (Matt.13.29) will put at risk our clarity and effectiveness in communicating just those evangelical and catholic truths which the GAFCON statement presents.”

I believe there is deep wisdom in what Abp Rowan has said here and we all need to take stock before any precipitous action is taken.

The funniest thing about what Rowan Williams says on this subject is that people still think it’s worth listening to.

Pure comedy gold, I tell you.

I really appreciate the respect Gordon. 

My view is the GAFCON is seeking to implement a purity code within the Anglican Communion, and it will be no more successful than the purity code of the pharisees was in Judaism - indeed their approach to the faith and TORAH was repudiated by Jesus.

I’m not sure that political success is a very good measure of whether a particular course of action is a good thing or not. If political success were the criteria for judging something, we would have to judge that Rowan had done the wrong thing.

But perhaps political success is not the right way to measure things, especially when the cause of liberal Christianity is so clearly unsuccessful at this particular moment of history. If I were a liberal Christian, I’d be keeping very quiet about political success just now.

Anyway, the essence of good comedy is timing, and Rowan has pulled it off spectacularly, just by continuing to do what he’s always done—nothing at all, but in an impressively confusing way.

Derision is not argument, Gordon.

Indeed your own argument about “success not being a good measure of whether it is a good thing” could be used, in your words, to prove that the “cause of liberal Christianity” that is so clearly unsuccessful might actually be onto something.  I think it is the evangelicals that seem so intent on “success”.

Assertion isn’t argument either.

The Bible asserts certain things, and liberalism derides those same things, and that’s what’s being played out in the current discussion. There really isn’t a lot of room for argument, but that hasn’t bothered either side in the past and shouldn’t bother either of them at the moment.

Argument has a useful function in developing clarity from time to time, but the time for argument is now past. Let the Lambeth liberals move on, and let the Jerusalem Anglicans continue with the authority of Scripture, and both groups will be happier for it. The liberals have taken the broad way, and may God speed them on it.

When the Windsor Report came out I was one of the few on Standing Committee who defended it. I felt that the best way forward was to operate within the existing structures and, as ++Rowan said in his recent statement, reform them.  I was wrong.

As Peter Jensen said in his speech yesterday at Langham Place, time is our enemy. Conservatives are told that we must be patient, allow the process to run its course etc. Meanwhile, the revisionists are continuing in their provocative, aggressive and unrelenting behaviour. A TEC bishop kissing his male partner at a press conference as the celebrate the legalization of gay marriage in California, Gene Robinson becoming a ‘June bride’ and, in BC/Westminster David Short being subject to those deepest invective. The calls for patience ring awfully hollow.

All the while ++Rowan appears to be more concerned with the structures than with the issues. The speed with which he condemns GAFCOM and provides a detailed critique while failing to show any such concern over the actions of TEC is galling.

John, Jesus did not criticism morality or moral codes. He condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. To suggest that Jesus repudiated morality or moral codes, if that is what you are saying, fails to recognise that he implemented his own moral code that exceeded the demands of the Torah and internalized them.

Caricature isn’t argument either.

I work in an ecumenical organization in which AOG people work alongside Baptists, Catholics, Anglican and Uniting Church people, seeking to express God’s presence and love in government schools.  In this environment we don’t use caricatures to “deride” those who approach the Scriptures differently from ourselves.  We refrain from calling one a fundamentalist and another a liberal because these words are wrapped up with so much imputed meaning that is not present in the words, and because we can’t be sure the hearers or readers will understand them in the same way they are uttered.

I may have my differences of opinion with what might be caricatured as “Sydney Anglicanism”, but I want to listen to those I know and those I don’t know, and I definitely do not want to send them off with “God speed.” Your reference to “Lambeth liberals” and “Jerusalem Anglicans” is a most abysmal misrepresentation of the very broad range of views represented in very Diocese and Province of the Anglican Communion.

You imply that liberals have no respect for the authority of Scripture.  This is a view I challenge.  I am no champion of John Shelby Spong, and I disagree with many of the positions he proposes, but one thing I do know is that he, and many others you might regard as liberals, is a deeply committed follower of Jesus and believes firmly in the Bible as something we need to fully understand.  It is not something that can be discarded or disregarded.

I am sorry that you so easily write off the many Christian people whose views of scripture differ from your own.  The Church of God is much bigger than that.