Charles Raven on Burying the Bad News

This week a spokesman for Fulcrum, the ‘open’ evangelical’ grouping the in the Church of England, has claimed that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will fragment the Church of England, weaken its structures and polarise debate. Many might think that as far as the first two charges are concerned, the Church of England has been managing to bring these about quite effectively on its own without any help from the FCA in Great Britain and Ireland, but Kuhrt claims that the FCA needs to ‘bury good news’ and to substantiate this he buries the bad news.  Read more

Why I praise God for the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans

“The launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (UK and Ireland) on 6 July was an answer to my prayers.

I had feared that orthodox Anglicans, who share a common commitment to the essentials of our faith and a concern about departures from it within the Church of England and wider Anglican Communion, would spend more energy disagreeing over their different strategies for the defence and proclamation of the gospel than in supporting one another and working together for Christ in our church and nation. GAFCON gave me a glimpse of another possibility:…”

– Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe’s Church in Oxford, writes in The Church of England Newspaper – reproduced at Anglican Mainstream.
(GAFCON photo by Joy Gwaltney.)

Missionary Diocese

“In Tasmania in 2000, the question was asked, ‘Bishop, what would you like from the diocese as you commence your episcopate?’ – The answer, ‘A website for the diocese.’ The diocese obliged. A new openness to change was evident. However, the much deeper challenge came when the bishop shared the vision of ‘Every Tasmanian committed to Jesus Christ’, declared that the diocese be known as ‘The Missionary Diocese of Tasmania’, and challenged every Anglican to live as a ‘missionary disciple’.

These strong statements of missional intent highlighted the commencement of intentional deep change in the Anglican Church in Tasmania…”
– Bishop of Tasmania John Harrower has made available a chapter he wrote (PDF, Word) for the book “Facing the Future: Bishops Imagine a Different Church”, edited by Stephen Hale and Andrew Curnow.
(Photo: Diocese of Tasmania.)

bp-john-harrowerBishop of Tasmania John Harrower has made available a chapter he wrote (PDF, Word) for the book “Facing the Future: Bishops Imagine a Different Church”, edited by Stephen Hale and Andrew Curnow.

“In Tasmania in 2000, the question was asked, ‘Bishop, what would you like from the diocese as you commence your episcopate?’ – The answer, ‘A website for the diocese.’ The diocese obliged. A new openness to change was evident. However, the much deeper challenge came when the bishop shared the vision of ‘Every Tasmanian committed to Jesus Christ’, declared that the diocese be known as ‘The Missionary Diocese of Tasmania’, and challenged every Anglican to live as a ‘missionary disciple’.

These strong statements of missional intent highlighted the commencement of intentional deep change in the Anglican Church in Tasmania…”

(h/t and photo: Diocese of Tasmania.)