Friday, April 16, 2010

Anglicanism has lost its integrity, conservatives say


From The Church Times-

THE Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) Primates Council has bracketed the UK with Kenya and Uganda as nations “where Christian views are marginalised and ignored”.

England is also defined as an “Associate Participant”, along with Australia, New Zealand, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Communion Partners of the Episcopal Church in the United States, in the “Fourth Global South to South Encounter” to be held in Singapore later this month.

The Council, which constitutes the Primates of Nigeria, West Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the Southern Cone, together with the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, and the leader of the Anglican Church in North America, Archbishop Robert Duncan, was meeting in Bermuda as guests of the American businessman Emmanuel Kampouris (News, 9 April).
Absent from the Bermuda meeting was the Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Revd Henry Orombi. He demanded of the Archbishop of Canterbury last week that the Primates of the Anglican Communion should meet urgently, without the American and Canadian Primates, and with an agenda set by the participants.

In a three-page letter sent to Dr Williams last Friday and released to the press, Arch bishop Orombi hints at a double standard in the treatment of Primates and complains that the responsibility of the Primates is being diminished.

He commends the “clarity and honesty” of the President Bishop in Jerusalem and the Middle East, the Most Revd Mouneer Anis, who resigned in February from what became the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion (SCAC) (News, 5 February). Archbishop Orombi does not recognise the SCAC, and has not attended meetings since its failure, as he sees it, to uphold the “hard-won agreement” of the Primates at Dar es Salaam in 2007.


He does not say he has resigned from the committee, but declares: “I stand with my brother Primate, Bishop Mouneer Anis, in his courageous decision. Many of us are in a state of resignation as we see how the Communion is moving away further and further into darkness.”
Archbishop Orombi protests at a perceived shift in the balance of power from the Primates. He tells Dr Williams that the SCAC was “adopted by yourself, with your approval and the approval of the ACC”, and charges it with “granting itself supreme authority over Covenant discipline in this latest draft”.

The rest-

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=92964

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