News

New splinter group refuses to leave
By Market-Place
July 1, 2008
Sydney's Archbishop Peter Jensen speaks to reporters at GAFCON press conference June 27 (PHOTO: GAFCON) Sydney's Archbishop Peter Jensen speaks to reporters at GAFCON press conference June 27 (PHOTO: GAFCON)

A new international alliance of Anglican conservatives will push ahead with plans to build a new set of Anglican structures, but is vowing not to leave the Anglican Communion.
The Global Anglican Future (GAFCON) conference in the Middle East has ended June 29 with a joint declaration which delivers harsh criticism of the international Anglican Church, but warns "We ... have no intention of departing from it."
Sydney's Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen, who was among the leaders of the conference, is continuing to argue the new alliance does not amount to a split in church ranks.
Archbishop Jensen is comparing the GAFCON endorsement of African Primates bringing breakaway US Episcopal parishes under their jurisdiction, with non-geographical Anglican dioceses in Europe.
"Well it's not a split," Archbishop Jensen told Australian ABC Radio. "It's true that in Anglicanism now there are two bishops in the same geographical area in Europe, for example. It's only imagination that makes this into a split."
According to organisers 1148 clergy and lay Anglicans from around the world took part in the 8-day conference.
The joint communique issued June 29 claimed the gathering was a "movement in the Spirit". GAFCON published its own 'Jerusalem Declaration' as a check-list of the "the basis of the fellowship" of its members.
The communique goes on to criticise the rest of the international Anglican church as "divided and distracted".
Many of the Anglican bishops who attended GAFCON are boycotting the once-a-decade Lambeth Bishop's Conference, now only weeks away.
The actions of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lambeth conference organisers also come under fire in the GAFCON statement.
"The bishops of these unrepentant churches are welcomed to Lambeth 2008. To make matters worse .. the Lambeth Conference has been structured so as to avoid any hard decisions.
"We can only come to the devastating conclusion that 'we are a global Communion with a colonial structure'."
The statement makes it clear the conference participants are rejecting the central role of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a point of unity for the Anglican Communion and instead have set out a new statement of agreed items of faith, titled 'The Jerusalem Declaration'.
Traditionally the touchstone of membership of the international Anglican Communion has been official recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury of each province or diocese.
The communique rejects this understanding.
"While acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury," the communique states. "We hereby publish the Jerusalem Declaration as the basis of our fellowship.
Archbishop Peter Jensen told ABC Radio: "I have never needed the Archbishop of Canterbury to recognise me to be an Anglican. That's a sort of colonial view of the world."
The 14-point check-list includes common Anglican understandings of the touchstones such as the Scriptures, Creeds, the Book of Common Prayer and the 39 Articles but also adds among essential "tenets of orthodoxy" an acknowledgement of "the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy".
Archbishop Peter Jensen told reporters at a GAFCON news conference June 27: "All around the world the sleeping giant that is evangelical Anglicanism and orthodox Anglicanism has been aroused by what happened in Canada and the United States of America."
But he said that GAFCON would not give any ultimatum to the Lambeth Conference. "We shall not tell them that, 'if you don't do this, then that'. The sheer existence of GAFCON poses a challenge to others in the (Anglican) Communion."