The heart of GAFCON
“At the heart of GAFCON is communion.
When I became Archbishop of Sydney in 2001, I had a lot to learn. Even though I had been ordained for over thirty years by then, had lived in England for three years and had been the Principal of a theological College with students from many places in the world, there was so much that I did not know.
Two of the many things I had to discover through experience may sound strange and you may wonder where I had been all my life. But I suspect that many of us are in the same position…”
– GAFCON General Secretary, Dr. Peter Jensen, on The heart of GAFCON.
Bishop Greg Venables is new Primate of South America
“The Bishop of Argentina, Greg Venables, has been re-elected as the new Primate of the Anglican Church of South America. …”
– Report from the Anglican Communion News Service.
GAFCON website updated
GAFCON has a revamped website.
Cornhill Sydney moves to Moore
“In what is great news for the training of preachers and Bible teachers in Sydney and beyond, Cornhill Sydney will relocate to the Newtown campus of Moore College from the start of 2017. This new location will facilitate closer partnership, with the common goal of better equipping men and women in Bible exposition, and especially those who are charged with the critical role of preaching…” – More good news from Moore College.
Same-sex marriage plebiscite bill blocked by Senate
“The Federal Government’s bid to hold a plebiscite on whether to legalise same sex marriage has been defeated in the Senate.
The proposal was voted down a short time ago in the Upper House 33 votes to 29.”
– report from ABC News.
GAFCON Chairman’s Letter October 2016
Archbishop Nicholas D. Okoh, Primate of All Nigeria and Chairman of the GAFCON Primates Council, has released this Pastoral Letter, reflecting on developments in October 2016 –
“The call to be peacemakers is also a call to evangelism because peace with one another cannot be separated from peace with God, and peace with God cannot be separated from faithfulness to the biblical and apostolic gospel of God. I therefore warmly commend the Global South Chairman, Bishop Mouneer Anis, for his bold warning about the ‘ideological slavery’ which some Western Churches seek to impose on the Global South by using their money and influence to promote teachings which overturn the bible and offer a false gospel.
Many of us were therefore deeply disturbed that the Presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church (TEC), Michael Curry, was a prominent member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s delegation in Rome, despite the fact that the Canterbury meeting of Primates in January this year had resolved that, among other things, TEC should not be involved in representing the Anglican Communion in ecumenical or interfaith relations.
This incident is just the most recent of many failures which the Cairo Communiqué describes as ‘the inability of the existing Communion instruments to discern truth and error and take binding ecclesiastical action’. We need alternatives. …”
– Read it all on the GAFCON website.
Light trumps darkness
“Reformation trumps Halloween. In fact it’s no contest.
For reasons unclear to me we’re being enticed by a dark festival of American origins that brings stocks of evil and bizarre to shelves where weeks before fresh food or other cheery merchandise sat. In supermarkets and $2 shops throughout Australia, the dark, the gruesome, the macabre and the scary hold sway.
Why witches hats, ghoulish masks and spider webs? As if swinging with the breeze, parents bend to accommodate this strange festival, children are attracted to it and society is the worse for it.
By strange coincidence, the same weekend as Halloween, the Presbyterian Church of Australia celebrates light. …”
– Presbyterian Moderator-General John Wilson on the light of the gospel, as rediscovered by Martin Luther.
Bishop of Egypt calls for prayer and advocacy after ‘hostile takeover’
“The Bishop of Egypt, Dr Mouneer Anis, has called on Anglicans to pray and advocate with their local Egyptian consulates and embassies after a court ruling effectively subsumed the diocese into a separate denominational body. …
Through ACNS, Dr Anis is asking for Anglicans and Episcopalians to pray for the Church in Egypt. ‘we feel deprived from our legal rights and our role as a church, and our freedom, may be compromised,’ he said. …”
– Read it all at the Anglican Communion News Service.
Encouragement from the Pressies in Queensland
The latest issue (4/2016) of Pres Life, the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in Queensland, is now available. It’s a 1.6 MB PDF file.
Rejoice with those who rejoice at the Lord’s salvation in Christ, and join with them in praying for the progress of the gospel in that state.
Russian Patriarch concerned about liberalisation in Church of England
“On October 18, 2016, His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, met with Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury at the Lambeth Palace in London. …
Patriarch Kirill drew Archbishop Justin Welby’s attention to the Russian Orthodox Church’s concern over the liberalization of the Church of England’s teaching on church order, particularly, the ordination of women as priests and bishops and on the family and morality. His Holiness Kirill expressed hope that the Church of England will oppose challenges of the modern world and seek to preserve the Gospel’s teaching. …”
– from The Russian Orthodox Church. Photo: Lambeth Palace.
The Open Letter from Evangelicals to C of E Bishops: a commentary
“On Wednesday 12th October a letter was sent to the College of Bishops, signed by nearly a hundred evangelical leaders, making it clear that “further changes to practice or doctrine” on sexual ethics would result in serious damage to the Church of England. The letter isn’t titled. There was no sophisticated media strategy involved in getting it out, other than asking signatories to make it more widely known.
There was initially some confusion about whether it was meant to be kept ‘in house’ among the evangelical constituency, or publicised in the wider media. The organisers, led by John Dunnett of CPAS and some of the committee of the Evangelical Group on General Synod, then let it be known that it is a public letter.
The issue is considered to be of sufficient urgency that it can’t just be a private communication with Bishops, but must also be a signal to the wider church. …”
– Andrew Syme at Anglican Mainstream, provides some commentary about that letter.
Letter to the Church of England’s College of Bishops
“I am publishing here, with permission, a letter that has been sent to all members of the College of Bishops prior to their next meeting to decide what proposals to bring to General Synod in February. …
First, this is not a PR exercise. Although the sending of the letter has been reported in Christian Today, it has not been circulated to media outlets, unlike some other previous letters. It is intended to be an honest communication to the bishops of the concerns of the signatories and others like them.
Secondly, it attempts to give a clear outline of the major theological reasons why this is felt to me such an important issue. …
Thirdly, it is striking that the signatories come from the whole range of the evangelical constituency, including ‘open’, ‘charismatic’ and ‘conservative’ evangelicals. These are people involved in key initiatives in the Church at the moment, and although they do not claim to represent the groups they work for, there will be many others who share these concerns. …
The Church of England is at a crossroads in her calling to bring hope and transformation to our nation. The presenting issue is that of human sexuality, in particular whether or not the Church is able to affirm sexual relationships beyond opposite sex marriage. But the tectonic issues beneath, and driving, this specific question include what it means to be faithful to our apostolic inheritance, the Church’s relationship with wider culture, and the nature of the biblical call to holiness in the 21st Century. …
We do not believe … that it is within our gift to consider human sexual relationships and what constitutes and enables our flourishing as sexual beings to be of ‘secondary importance’. What is at stake goes far beyond the immediate pastoral challenges of human bisexual and same-sex sexual behaviour: it is a choice between alternative and radically different visions of what it means to be human, to honour God in our bodies, and to order our lives in line with God’s holy will.
At this crucial juncture, as our bishops pray and discern together regarding how the Church of England should walk forward at this time, we urge them not to depart from the apostolic inheritance with which they have been entrusted. …”
The letter has now also been published at GAFCON UK’s website.
Synod approves gay marriage booklet
“Sydney Synod has expressed deep concern about moves to remove gender from the marriage act and has authorised the distribution of a booklet outlining the consequences of same-sex marriage for families and society.
Debate on the third night of Synod was led by Bishop Michael Stead, who chairs the Archbishop’s Plebiscite Task Force and the Dean, Kanishka Raffel. …
‘… the Task Force was convinced of the need to provide resources for Sydney Anglicans. The booklet “what has God joined together?” is the first such resource. The booklet aims to engage, equip, and embolden Sydney Anglicans to be a part of the debate on same-sex marriage.’…”
– full report from SydneyAnglicans.net.
Draft Australian Same Sex Marriage legislation unveiled
“Today the Federal Attorney-General, Senator the Hon George Brandis QC, released an Exposure Draft of the legislation that would, if it were to pass the Federal Parliament, introduce same sex marriage to Australia- the Marriage Amendment (Same-Sex Marriage) Bill. There is a good summary of the provisions of the legislation in a press release issued by the Attorney-General. This follows the introduction on 14 September 2016 of an enabling Bill to allow a plebiscite, a popular vote, on the matter to be put to the Australian public, the Plebiscite (Same-Sex Marriage) Bill 2016. That Bill has not yet received any substantive consideration by the Parliament.
Earlier today the leader of the Australian Labour Party Opposition, Bill Shorten, announced that his Party would be voting against the enabling Plebiscite Bill when it reaches the Senate…”
– At Law and Religion Australia, Neil Foster takes a look at the draft Same Sex Marriage legislation.
Statement from the Global South Primates and GAFCON Primates Council Concerning Same-sex Unions
This Statement has been posted on the Global South Anglican website. We reproduce it here in its entirety –
“Statement from the Global South Primates and GAFCON Primates Council Concerning Same-sex Unions
6th October 2016
1. We acknowledge that God is the Creator of the whole cosmos and of humankind. Male and female, God created them in his own image and likeness to know him, worship him and share in his glory and love.
2. We affirm the dignity and value of every human being, as each bears the image of our gracious God. We recognise that humankind’s rebellion against God has tainted that image, but not eradicated it. Yet every person is precious to God.
3. God’s message of hope is therefore addressed to every man, woman and child around the globe, that they might be redeemed, restored as image bearers of God through the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and inherit eternal life.
4. As we proclaim the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to a broken and wounded world, we acknowledge our own failures and weaknesses in the light of God’s word, the Bible. As God’s love was declared to us, before we loved God, so we declare God’s love to those who neither know him nor love him. Yet our love for God is both to believe and obey, and so our message is to call people to repentance and love for God, that they might be forgiven and live their lives in accordance with God’s pattern for humankind as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.
5. We recognise that the brokenness of our world produces many aspects of human behaviour which are contrary to God’s good design. These include slander, greed, malice, hatred, jealousy, dishonesty, selfishness, envy and murder, as well as fornication, adultery and same-sex unions. In addressing the issue of same-sex relationships, we are not minimizing the sinfulness of other forms of behaviour that are contrary to God’s character and pattern for humankind. Rather, we are addressing an issue that continues to be contentious in both the Church and society and that strikes at the very heart of biblical authority.
6. We affirm that the clear teaching of Jesus, and the Bible as a whole, is that marriage is an estate for all people, not just for believers. It is a holy institution, created by God for a man and a woman to live in a covenantal relationship of exclusive and mutual love for each other until they are parted by death. God designed marriage for the well-being of society, for sexual intimacy between a husband and a wife, and for procreation and the nurturing of children (Genesis 2:18-25).
7. We contend that sexual intercourse between two persons of the same sex is contrary to God’s design, is offensive to him and reflects a disordering of God’s purposes for complementarity in sexual relations. Like all other morally wrong behaviour, same-sex unions alienate us from God and are liable to incur God’s judgment. We hold these convictions based on the clear teaching of Scripture. We hold them not in order to demean or victimise those who experience same-sex attractions, but in order to guard the sound doctrine of our faith, which also informs our pastoral approach for helping those who struggle with same-sex impulses, attractions and temptations.
8. In this respect, the Church cannot condone same-sex unions as a form of behaviour acceptable to God. To do so would be tampering with the foundation of our faith once for all laid down by the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2: 20-22; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11; Jude 3).
9. Any pastoral provision by a church for a same-sex couple (such as a liturgy or a service to bless their sexual union) that obviates the need for repentance and a commitment to pursue a change of conduct enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit, would contravene the orthodox and historic teaching of the Anglican Communion on marriage and sexuality. Such pastoral provisions, while superficially attractive in giving a more humane and socially acceptable face to the church, actually hide the contravention of doctrine involved. We must be faithful in guarding the good deposit of the gospel, in all its gracious gifts with all its covenantal obligations as well, not for the mere sake of orthodoxy but out of genuine love for God and our fellow human beings.
10. Our faithfulness to God and knowledge of his love empowers us to offer sensitive and compassionate ministry to those who are sexually broken in the area of same-sex attractions and unions. Our pastoral approach is to accept people for who they are, just as God accepted us for who we were. We oppose the vilification or demeaning of those who do not follow God’s ways. We affirm that every person is loved by God, so we too must love as God loves. Our role is to restore them to God’s divine patterns by inviting them to receive the transforming love of Christ that gives them the power to repent and walk in newness of life. We rely on the Holy Spirit’s power to reveal to them the measureless goodness of God and the greatness of God in setting the captive free as a new creation.
11. We recognise that discipleship involves growth and while we long for all new believers to come to maturity in Christ, we know that this is a process. For those who are same-sex attracted, the path of discipleship and living in conformity with God’s Word can be difficult. We commit ourselves afresh to care pastorally for them as members of Christ’s body, building them up in the Word and in the Spirit, and encouraging them to walk by faith in the paths of repentance and obedience that lead to fullness of life (John 10: 9-10).”
– Source, Global South Anglican. PDF version here.
Photo: Global South Anglican, which has also posted this Communiqué.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…