Conservative Anglican leaders are close to merging the two wings of the conservative movement in the Anglican movement to provide strong opposition to the Liberal provinces in the Anglican Communion. This major development occurred at the Global Anglican Futures Conference (Gafcon) meeting in Kigali Rwanda.
The Gafcon Primates (heads of national churches) will be invited to a Cairo meeting of the Global South primates in May to further their in-principle decision to merge.
The Global South has concentrated on building up the links between provinces of the Anglican Communion, while Gafcon has been more of a campaigning and evangelism group. But there has always been an overlap in membership of the two groups. which amounts to a clear majority of the Anglican communion.
“You may be aware of the primates of Gafcon and Global South came together yesterday.” James Wong Primate of the Indian Ocean, told the Heart of Gafcon livestream. “And, we agreed now that we have to start thinking about love and unity within the steering council of Global South and the Primates Council of the Gafcon movement. So already we agreed that we ought to come together.
“And this is why in sermon this morning, I also preach about the need of, uh, coming together in love, but especially the need of coming together to confirm the knowledge of a Bible.”
In a dramatic moment during a plenary session seeking input into the conference statement, a delegate from Uganda suggested that Gafcon and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) should “speak one language.”
The room, full of the clergy and lay delegates, erupted in loud applause and cheers.
After a break, a suggested summary list was on the big screens around the Kigali Conference Centre. But, unfortunately, the Gafcon GSFA issue was not on it.
But then the chair, Tasmania’s Bishop Richard Condie, assured the meeting that he would undertake the message to the Primates and ensure it would be heard.
“We are planning for that,’ said Justin Badi Arama, chair of the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans.
“We are dreaming that, and we are go moving towards that. And, it is all our prayer that we will see something new within the Anglican communal in the nearest feature. My hope and prayer is that the two may become one,”
Archbishop James Wong, Primate of the Indian Ocean has accused the Archbishop of Canterbury of making contradictory statements about homosexuality. “Um, we were being attacked as being a church of homosexuals, Wong said.
“So I brought this concern to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he said to me, you tell them I have nothing to do with homosexuality. And the Anglican Church will never accept, he will never accept, anything to do with homosexuals.
“And then at the [Church of England] General Synod he approved with their bishops the amendment for the blessing of, people homosexual living in marriage life, in partnership. So there is a dichotomy between what he told me to tell the people in Madagascar and what he did later at the General Center in England.”
Rennis Ponniah, the former bishop of Singapore and General Secretary of the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans, said that Gafcon and the Global south still needed to reach out to the “revisionist provinces. ”There is this aspect of winning back the people of God, even if they’re nominally the people of God. But God is saying, at this time, I will make you a light to the nations. So I think there’s a lot for us, the Orthodox, to think about what God is saying to us at this particular point in time. So we’ve been, in a way giving attention rightfully to clear teaching and to the state of the House, Israel, if you like, but the nations are waiting, and the darkness is growing. So I think both Gafcon and Global South Fellowship of Anglican churches will be praying and thinking through and keeping the gift of communion.
“So we will work on collaborating. We can work together. We may need to lay a strong foundation, stable and robust.
“So they [Gafcon] have invited us, global south leaders to this conference. We will invite them to our first assembly in Cairo, uh, next year, May 28th to 31st. So there are some already fixed dates mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but I think the process has begun.”
A different take , possibly more cautious, came from Archbishop Foley Beach, chair of Gafcon suggesting that the Global South is “Church” and Gafcon is “parachurch”.
“The Global South and Gafcon Primates have met and,we’re looking at exactly what that [a re-ordered communion] would mean, and we don’t know yet. Because so much of all of our identities have been wrapped up in being part of the the Canterbury Communion. And, now we can’t do that.”
But in expressing a hesitation in bring the two groups together he said, “The real issue is our core values are are somewhat different in the sense of what we do. And I’ve been trying to think of an analogy that would describe it. Well, and I don’t know if this works around the world, but in my background in the States, we have the church, and then we have parachurch ministries, and they overlap a lot. Gafcon, I would view more like a parachurch ministry in the sense that we’ve been focused on mission; we’ve been focusing on getting the gospel out. We have a special charism of, of rescuing people and providing leadership for them. Global South’s Focus has been on structure, having to create an ecclesiastical, synodical representation, a place where Orthodox can feel at home in a province.
“We’ve never sought to be a church, so to speak. We’ve sought to be a movement. And does that resonate with, with you guys in, in Australia?”
Foley Beach does have a point, although the para-church analogy may not be apposite – after all both groups are contained in one denomination. But the mind-shift to being an alternative communion raised the question, “is a communion a Church?
The significant moment: the James Wong Interview
Livestreams
Conference sessions will be here
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