The Anglican Church’s moderate centre is being pressured as never before — by evangelicals opposed to gays and traditionalists opposed to women’s ordination. The crisis is unprecedented since the Reformation devastated the Roman Catholic Church in England in the 16th century.
The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a rival Anglican Communion, was started in Israel last week at a conference of conservative Anglicans from around the world — the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon)
In the “Jerusalem Declaration” conservative bishops, mainly from Africa and Asia, stated: “We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.”
On Tuesday, nearly 800 clergy and lay leaders from the Church of England took the first steps towards forming a “church within a church” to be an evangelical stronghold against the ordination of gay people.
The clergy met at All Souls Langham Place, in central London, a prominent evangelical church, where they were invited to sign up to the declaration rejecting liberal doctrines.
As the wider Anglican Communion fragments over homosexuality, England’s established church is also moving towards a crisis over the consecration of female bishops.
However, Cape Town’s Archbishop Thabo Makgoba this week dismissed talk of a looming split within the Anglican Church in Southern Africa over the same issues.
The minister in charge of Christ Church in Kenilworth, Cape Town, Duncan McLea, who attended Gafcon said the movement was in line with traditional Anglican beliefs as prescribed by the scriptures.
“If the official view of the church was changed, which is very unlikely, then I think there would be groups that would seek different leadership,” he said.
“We want to listen to the gay voice and some people interpret that as the church will come around and bless gay unions.”
The Dean of Cape Town, Rowan Smith, said that if the issue of homosexuality were ignored at the 15th Lambeth Conference in England later this month, it would be like “ignoring the bull in the room”, but said there was no split looming in the South African Anglican Church.
“I think our experience with apartheid has made us circumspect about excluding people,” Smith said.
Gay people are welcome in the Anglican church but “at this stage clergy are not allowed to bless gay marriages”, Smith said.
Makgoba said: “God has people on two sides and we bring both sides before God. Our views are informed by the journey of the faithful we lead at the time.”
On Tuesday, it was revealed that more than 1300 British clergy, including 11 serving bishops, had written to the archbishops of Canterbury and York to say they would defect from the Church of England if women were consecrated as bishops.
In the letter to the symbolic head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and John Sentamu, the signatories give warning that they will consider leaving the church if two crucial votes are passed to introduce female bishops this weekend.
The signatories to the letter — who represent 10% of all practising clergy in Britain and hundreds of recently retired priests still active in the church — will only accept women bishops if they have a legal right to separate havens within the church.
These would offer opponents of female bishops a network of parishes where they could worship under the leadership of exclusively male clergy.
In the letter, the traditionalists said that they were writing “with sadness” because of a failure to offer them ecclesiastical integrity and security.
“We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England which has been our home.
“We do not write this in a spirit of making threats or throwing down gauntlets. Rather, we believe that the time has come to make our concerns plain, so that the possible consequences of a failure to make provision which allows us to flourish and to grow are clear.”
At the same time, 1276 female clergy, 1012 male clergy and 1916 lay church members who support women bishops signed a statement objecting to the prospect of “discriminatory” legislation to safeguard opponents.
In an effort to assert his authority on the wider Anglican Communion, Williams hit back at the evangelical rebels this week, warning them that their new structures lacked legitimacy and urging them to “think very carefully about the risks entailed”.
Archbishop Peter Jensen of the Sydney diocese in Australia told the meeting in Jerusalem that sex was at the heart of the debate.
He said: “Sexual immorality leads you outside the kingdom of God, just as does greed. It is not a second-order issue.”
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