Traditionalists are set to form a “church within a church”, keeping in formal relation with the Archbishop of Canterbury but severing ties with the progressive wings of the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada.A communiqué being prepared by pilgrims to the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) will call for new structures to support conservatives and likely formalize a break with the Episcopal Church.
The changes Gafcon sees are new structural relations between Anglican churches including a break with the progressive wing of The Episcopal Church, a common approach to reading the Bible, a new catechism and a new Book of Common Prayer shared by conservatives across the Communion, Nigerian Bishop John Akao said.
The “centre of Anglicanism has shifted from Europe to Africa,” Sydney lay leader and member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference, Robert Tong said. Past pan-Anglican gatherings had been jamborees where we “were all scouts together,” Mr Tong said, but the rise in influence of African Anglicanism meant a change was in the works for what it meant to be Anglican.
“It’s a question of doctrine or structure. Which of these makes one Anglican?,” AMiA Bishop John Rodgers, former Dean of the Trinity Episcopal School Ministry, said. Both views were contending for control of the meeting, which will set the future course of the conservative movement within Anglicanism, he noted.
On the opening night of the conference, Archbishop Akinola stated Gafcon had “no intention” of starting a new church and that he would remain an Anglican, leading many observers to believe the powerful Nigerian Church had pulled back from threats to break up the Anglican Communion.
However, the archbishop’s colleagues explained that being an Anglican did not mean loyalty to a church system centring round the Archbishop of Canterbury, but to a set of theological principles.
In 2005 the Church of Nigeria altered is constitution to reflect this view, removing references to the Archbishop of Canterbury as the focus of fellowship and replacing it with a confessional statement.
The new constitution stated Nigeria would be in fellowship with those who shared a common faith, drawn from the Bible and the historic creeds and formed by the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of Religion, church spokesman Archdeacon AkinTunde Popoola confirmed.
This was the context in which Archbishop Akinola was speaking, a Nigerian bishop explained, speaking off the record as the final conference communiqué has not been completed. However, the Archbishop of Rwanda, Emmanuel Kolini, summarized this view, noting that “Lambeth is irrelevant to us,” referring to the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The “Gafcon Church” will require “appropriate” and “more permanent structures” to support “those faithful Anglicans who live and serve in provinces that have abandoned the traditional teaching of the Bible,” Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi said on June 26.
These changes were necessary, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester said, as the Anglican ways of ordering the church no longer worked “because in the end they were based on English good manners. In our world we have found that English good manners are not enough.”
The conference concludes Sunday.
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