At last - some serious talk about 'realignments'. The sooner they happen, the better - time to rejoice as the so-called Communion meets an all too overdue end.

For Rowan Cantuar, there's a split a-comin'.

If he doesn't do as the GS hierarchy demands, he splits the AC.

If he does, he will split the CofE.

Andrew Goddard (about whose piece, I---not having time to repudiate it point-by-point---will just describe w/ that great British phrase, "Rubbish") is clearly cheering on the latter. :-(

Lord have mercy!

I find Goddard's piece excellent. Like it or not there is going to be serious realignment in the AC as it can no longer contain what has elsewhere been variously described as either conjoined twins, a church with two religions etc. That also means that provinces will have to deal with realignment and adjust canons to a more pastoral accomodation than the so called "inclusive church" folk seem to be willing to do. I find the Kigali folk still willing to work within the structures of the Anglican instruments of unity. They push the envelope but I am delighted that they do so. Anglican realignment is a reality as it does reflect both the change in the balances of power in the AC as well as a desire to return to the Apostolicity of a reformation Church.

Bishop Jenkins of Louisiana made trenchant comment regarding the US situation. He writes: -
"... our inability or unwillingness to see the pastoral context of Canon Law and to respond therein has crippled the ability of the Episcopal Church to reply creatively to the disagreements in which we find ourselves as regards the living out of human sexuality, the place of revelation, and the nature of authority. We cannot say that ours is simply a pastoral matter and assume that we can solve the problems by honest conversation. As valuable as is such conversation, we must find the courage to move beyond honest exchange to a pastoral solution, which involves a Canonical adjustment to the reality in which we live." http://edola-bishop.blogspot.com/

Honest conversation seems impossible at this point. May we be bold enough to find a pastoral solution with canonical adjustment. The way we are headed - at least in the US - is litigious, polemical and downright destructive.

"sources said a number of archbishops may refuse to attend the Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly summit of bishops held in Canterbury"

This is called a shakedown in more honest circles.

Some of these bishops have refused table fellowship with our current Presiding Bishop and some have announced that they 'cannot recognize' our PB-elect as a Primate, so what will be lost if they stay home? They have, as far as I am concerned, already left the Communion.

I expect ++Rowan will atttempt some kind of compromise arrangement - separate but equal altars? Haven't some of us been down THAT road before?

I bet they all show up and find various ways of being obnoxious and then will stage a Great Wallkout anyhow.

No concession short of ++Rowan not inviting TEC and Canada will suit.

And do you know what happens when you give in to shakedown artists and bullies? They just turn around and want more.

All in all, an EXCELLENT development—from my perspective, anyway.

Williams and the CofE are very soon going to have to choose: the TransAtlantic connection, and all of its 427 years of common history and common memories; Or, rejecting these ancient ties, joining with rapidly proliferating neo-Puritan, neo-Calvinist fundamentalists of the recent ex-colonies of the Global South. Fence sitting is no longer an option.

There is a lot of detail about how this communion is travelling on an ever bumpier road, but I rather see it as just the way a general development is working out. In the 1960s and 1970s there was much talk of structural ecumenism, which failed largely because of traditionalists within denominations and Churches. The arguments that formed the old denominations seem ever more irrelevant, the problem being that the arguments are now within denominations. The gay issue is the one that Anglicanism as a Church or denomination is feeling the crunch, but there are a succession of issues. I tend to think that those denominations formed as a result of some ecumenism (like the URC) weaken traditionalists and find more tolerance: problem being that Anglicans have given rise to people and groups going off elsewhere (whether Puritans, Methodists or whomever). The issue is how to manage it.

The way not to manage it is a Covenant. To create a Covenant to bind people together is to create alternative Covenants. The hardliners really won't be satisfied with one emerging from Rowan Williams' directed efforts, once we start reading and obeying new texts, including key movers in the global South , nor will liberals and radicals. The US woouldn't, nor Scottish Episcopalians, or the Welsh, or Canadians... But of course some parishes and dioceses will, just as in England some won't. The result of a Covenant is that by trying to bind when the organisation is spinning, that it will simply break.

I had a go at one possible outcome: http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/relthink/fschurches.html#covenant

The best option, whatever the importance of eucharist, is federation - as loose as possible. It may not work. It could still mean different Anglican Churches in some cities. All a Covenant will do is make it obvious on the noticeboard: this Parish follows A B or C Covenant.

If there are such awkward splits, it will mean it is easier to join with Methodists, URC, Baptists and so on who are at the end of the spectrum occupied. The problem with forming new denominations, of course, is the cultural capital invested in forming the previous ones, in styles and views of ministry. But if there are splits, watch the theological arguments against excluding others (say due to ministry) rapidly fade away as belonging to yesterday's arguments. Still a bumpy ride.

Andrew Goddard's analysis is unsurprising. What's worrying is that he seems to have such a prominent role to play in Fulcrum. Fulcrum was established, if I am not mistaken, in the light of the Jeffrey John affair to be an evangelical alternative to Anglican Mainstream and their fellow-travellers in Reform. AG was one of the central figures in Anglican Mainstream, along with several other members of the staff of Wycliffe Hall. Now, it seems, Fulcrum has lurched to the right. Who repositioned it ?

Ian

I liked your posting and you rightly point out the understated issue of pastoral care. While power brokers try to eschew the move to fellowship to GLBTs and those who would love them (including their own parents), GLBTs continue to exist and have pastoral needs. The needs of God's flocks are not changed by shepherds squabbling, but while the shepherds are having meaningful discussions in the shelter of their temples, the sheep are lost in the wilderness with no shepherds looking over them. I sing praises to God that some shepherds have looked at the temples and looked at the flocks in the field and decided that their calling is to attend to the flocks, and they have gone looking for the lost and broken are trying to bring them back to safer pastures. Let the well groomed shepherds squabble, I say, as long as they stay in their temples, they are not interferring with the real shepherds who are doing God's work where it should be done, in the real world.

"a desire to return to the Apostolicity of a reformation Church" -- Ian Montgomery

Surely, this is self-contradictory.

To quote Saint Irenaeus,
"Wherefore it is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church,—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the certain gift of truth ...
But those who cleave asunder, and separate the unity of the Church, [shall] receive from God the same punishment as Jeroboam did." -- Against Heresies Book IV Chapter XXVI

"One bishop, one Church" is the antithesis of what reformers preach, those in the GS included. The result is "semper dividandum!"

I agree with JBE. I went to the launch of Fulcrum. It was intended to be about strengthening the evangelical centre. Now it is just another arm of Anglican Mainstream. Pity, because many of the people who set it up expressly didn't want it to become that.

Pluralist, thanks for sharing your perspective on the dynamics from the 1960s until now. I think you are correct that the traditionalists objected then and they object now too. The difference between then and now is that AIDS has lifted the cover of the rug that used to hide the breadth of human sexual activities. AIDS infections have exposed the extent of down-low men and other dynamics.

There are those who want a "pure" uncontaminated communion, and they should be allowed to develop that communion. But that communion should not have the right to fetter or squash a communion that wants to deal with ALL of God's children.

Being humiliated is part of being God's servant. Look at Jesus in the lead up to the crucifixion, and look at King David's retort to Michal in 2 Samuel 6:19-23. King David makes it clear that he is unfazed by personal humiliation, provided he has God's blessing. King David chose to rejoice in God's blessings over attempting to placate vanity.

As a fellow member of the Fulcrum leadership team I think I should say to JBE above that Andrew Goddard is playing no more or less a role in the Fulcrum leadership team than he always has, and I think that what has appeared from the Fulcrum leadership team as a whole, or from individual pieces by its members has been extremely consistant, so I would refute any suggestion of a 'lurch to the right.' The evidence is on the Fulcrum site. Click through from Andrew's article.

I hope people appreciate that it is an attempt to engage in debate (and was, I believe, as a matter of courtesy sent to Giles Goddard prior to publication - such details are important in contentious issues). The point being that unless this debate is had, openly and honestly with one another then there is no hope for the preservation of anything resembling the Anglican Communion at all.

This brings me to J.C. Fisher's unfortunate comment. May I suggest that if your only possible response is to throw brick bats it is better not to comment at all. To 'rubbish' the attempts of others in serious debate is to debase the debate altogether.

I agree with Andrew that there were points in the Inclusive Church article that were serious misrepresentations, and we were right to challenge them. I don't ask you to agree, but I do ask you to engage properly.

Simon's clarification about Andrew's role and history with Fulcrum is helpful. But having looked (briefly) at the Fulcrum site, there seems to be a clear discrepancy between Fulcrum's history and the sorts of things it is now saying. If sexuality is not a first-order issue, as Fulcrum said in 2003, how can it now justify supporting those who wish to elevate its doctrinal status in 2006? Andrew's article is a whole-hearted defence of the Akinola faction of the Global South. I suggest that does not sit comfortably with Fulcrum's vision of itself as a home for the moderate evangelical.

I agree that some kind of a split is likely, but I can not rejoice at the possibility. And I agree that ultimatums like this need to be ignored. People will do what they have to do. But we should not be taking any joy at the diminishment this will bring to all of us.

The leadership of Fulcrum were pretty naive if they thought they could just tread water on questions of sexuality, while they got on with what they considered to be the 'important' issues. The world doesn't stay still. The British government forced the issue with its 'civil partnerships' for homosexual couples, and plenty of gay clergy in England seem to have availed themselves of this newly created status - without so much as the General Synod exploring, debating and deciding. And 'Inclusive Church' have also forced the pace, with its outspoken advocacy of homosexual relations and CPs. Did Fulcrum see this coming in 2003? Neither the C of E as a whole nor Fulcrum could expect the GS churches to stand by and watch while the C of E morphed fitfully into a version of ECUSA. Not that that could really happen, because the largest churches in the C of E are conservative evangelical or evangelical-charismatic, and many of them are quite prepared to pull the financial plug on the institution they subsidize. If you want change, you had better proceed by stealth and obfuscation, not by revolution and confrontation. But now the GS is calling that bluff.
What exactly is Fulcrum's raison d'etre and goal? To avoid the stridency of Reform? To preserve a churchy kind of Anglican evangelicalism when everyone else is ditching robes and liturgy? To be 'stiff for the Church of England' and disapproving of conservative mavericks? To broker in women bishops? Some of them do want to give the imprimatur to gay marriage (as Simon Butler said on the Fulcrum forum). The nettle must be grasped - or it will go on stinging you.

The louder the new conserved preaching gets, the more I suspect that GS and neocon TEC leaders are feeling anxious, maybe, about two things. One, might be speed. The other might be a worried sense that their constant tunneling to the right in all important things could collapse out of its own extremities.

Speed in conforming the worldwide communion is essential, at least so far as official meetings, documents, and related institutional phenomena goes. So we now hear Lambeth 1.10 and Windsor treated as legal-penal court rulings which must be enforced by old and new penalties which are always so deeply important to penal religious frames.

Conforming real live people will of course take much longer than conforming institutional processes and positions. Some unconformed people still might not leave right away, even if a strict convenant or confession is agreed.

Strong and maybe long-standing relationships of local tolerance and affection will have to be disciplined, informally or even formally, so that people get some allegedly tough love going by dumping their teen or adult kids, as well as their other family members, as well as their neighbors, back out on the steps. How odd that Canterbury can pledge to the language of welcome while captilizing still on the most traditional heterosexual privileges to define away the worth and ethical meanings of adult LGBTQ relationship commitments.

Very intellectual and principled people may wish to say a fond farewell before joining opposites sides in what new conservatism intends as cultural and church civil war. Surely if the new rightwing Anglican church views are right as the definitive Anglican views, then conforming external society and legal-penal institutions will eventually have to be as important as conforming inner church life?

So we come to a second possible rightwing anxiety, that sooner or later people will get tired of maintaining the traditional extremes for boxing up sexuality and human nature. Black/white categorical hermeneutics/frames always fall afoul of real people in real situations. Often because categorical approaches shoot themselves in the foot, so to speak, by wittingly or unwittingly omitting any considerations of inner life and human motivations, let alone phases of human life cycle development.

Why omit all of that, which has to come into play in any sexuality, let alone ethical, let alone total religious frame? Because it introduces nuance, range, meaningful changing differences across time, and all the vivid colors which are not only black or white, categorically.

Fact is, in many post-technological countries, citizens are already tired of interfering with their LGBTQ friends, family members, or neighbors. It isn't good for work. It certainly is not doing any good in government institutions who end up having to spend inordinate amounts of time/money/resources to police victimless adult sexual crimes which in fact educated people often no longer consider to be crimes.

The Vatican is now struggling to reassert the received legacy crimes against nature frames, and the more flat earth theories are repeated in different contexts as the bottom line answers to everything, the less powerful they actually become, because they always try to definitively answer the question by totalistically redefining the question in the received legacy flat earth maintenance directions. But the body of empirical studies which have to be erased or forgotten is large and still growing.

Harping on queer life is always in danger of wearing thin, and especially so when it has to be enforced by legal or penal Anglican institutional processes, involving real people in real local churches or neighborhoods. The new conserved believers who will most readily volunteer to be the parish reps who tell LGBTQ people and their families, face to face, that they are not all that welcome after all because they refuse to turn aside from ethically committed adult partnerhood and parenting (often often a decade or longer years' standing) - well those volunteers may not be Lambeth and Windsor compliant, shall we shay, in their abilities to listen, beginning with the empirical research literatures on the competence and decency of exactly those very Queer Folks whom the church wishes to so negatively conform to its flat earth legacy views in definition of them.

If the split comes, it will be useful to all the rest of us as a glaring example of just where this sort of closed-minded legacy thing typically leads, institutionally. Take a splitter to lunch, then, afterwards, since we will probably all still be assigned to common professional or other work teams in research institutes, hospitals, universities, big and smaller companies, and the like. And we will still be sharing the cities and our local neighborhoods. And we will still all be living together on this little planet that is now fighting for its own existence.

But what a pure and unmitigated new blessing, that we will no longer be attending the same Anglican churches.

Where were all the "orthodox" bishops back some years ago when we had bishops openly denying the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Birth? Nothing was done to inhibit those bishops (both in the uSA and Britain). But now, God forbid, a gay bishop sets off all the alarms. Why can the Faith be questioned without impunity, but no one dare suggest anything regarding a new look at ancient morals?

Roy

They were still denying Spirit as late as February 2005. Pity they hadn't read the OT. It pisses God off when they ignore Spirit or attack the Faithful Holy One (as promised to David Isaiah 55:3 and Psalms 89:24). Plus they forgot who annoints moshiach ben David (aka Jesus) e.g. Psalms 110:3. Then there's the problem of what happens when they are so self-absorbed that they won't even listen to the Faithful Holy One e.g. Hosea 11:12 Maybe they might want to spend some time contemplating God's vision Zechariah 8 is as good a starting point as anywhere.

Drdanfee

Your anger is righteous but be comforted that these souls' blindness and deafness is from God. They can read the holy texts but the words are meaningless to them. Thus they become even more and more discredited as the rest of the world can understand the texts, even in everyday language but they can not.

Their glamour is further tarnished as it becomes clear that they can not bring peace to the world because they they can not bear to bring peace and dignity within their own commuion. Their deception and suppression not only loses trust internally, it repulses and pushes away outsiders who eschew any illusions that these people can be trusted.

drdanfee - not sure you are correct that "neocon TEC leaders are feeling anxious" because, if they need encouragement, they just need to call up Jeffrey John to learn what the ABC is likely to do to Griswold et al (that is, Griswold et al are likely to be ditched because they have had decades to prove themselves and only produced decline at home (0.7m members and shrinking to prove that!) and schism in the global organisation) You really think the ABC is going to choose Gene Robinson over "Alpha" churches? This just ain't going to happen.

Kurt - sorry but 427 years of history is not enough to make the ABC ditch 75m Anglicans worldwide to fit in with ECUSA's (hijacked) agendas.

Roy - you are dead right - there should have been a much stronger response to heretic "bishops" in the past than there was.....maybe people have learned their lesson from the decline and havoc those heretics caused.

NP i love your hilarious spoof postings !
I've rumbled you! You really mustn't take the piss like this --your carichature of deranged biblicist hasn't taken me in.

It's lovely of you to bring this kind of cheer here!
I am becoming addicted and find I can't wait for your next bon mot ! Have you a website ?

And, I've guessed what NP means...wot an I like ?!

Ian M I agree with you on Giles Goddard -awesome !

'The nettle must be grasped - or it will go on stinging you.' (Steve Watson. on Monday, 9 October 2006 at 2:27pm BST )
I love this Steve W. --it has the feel of an olde saying. But how true it is !
This gay nettle stops stinging once grasped, I found. (It may take time, but there are various balms at hand, including sharing, listening, discussion, tears & finding a place where paryer is or 'has been valid' (TS Eliot).

I think this is true for straight family, friends, neighbours and colleagues of gay folks, too. To change the metapohor somewhat , they may find their reaction more like taht of Naaman on being invited by Elsisha, to bath in the Jordan 'when my home rivers are so much purer' !

It has taken straight folks a hell of a long time to come round---and as more of my life is behind me, --looking ahead, I am unprpepared to take the kinda crap I did take for my first few years / decades...

Fulcrum and other nice white, middleclass, churchgoing folks, heterosexuals -its time to grow-up Time to get real! OR NOT --the choice is yours but I'm not counting on yous any more......and in case, it escpaed your attention --must of us aren't.

We are getting on with our lives.( you know : love,sex, marriage, mortguages,kids maybe, divorce maybe....but hopefully creating oikos of joy and peace and healing and laughter).

Conserve your beds of nettles.....

Recipe for nettle salad or suffle --anyone.....

Kurt - sorry but 427 years of history is not enough to make the ABC ditch 75m Anglicans worldwide to fit in with ECUSA's (hijacked) heretics caused.”NP

You think so? I think that you will be sadly disappointed. More than that, this is the type of split that can help CofE moderates to understand that the fundagelicals in their midst are a disloyal element growing like a cancer inside of them—just as their murderous Puritan ancestors were 400 years ago!

Kurt - go ask Jerffrey John what happened to him.
(I do not rejoice in his treatment but it shows you where the ABC is going)

The "CofE moderates" -think you will find they are very comfortable with Fulcrum,, Duncan et al - not Gene Robinson

laurence - glad to spread a little happiness!

"go ask Jeffrey John what happened to him."

Come now, we all know what happened -- he was publicly humiliated and betrayed by his best friend.

It reminds me of a story I once read in the Bible.

Anyone spot Lionel Shriver's article in G2 yesterday (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1891709,00.html)?

"The National Association of Evangelicals passed a resolution this year deploring an "epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church". The founder of Teen Mania keened in the New York Times this weekend, "We've become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe ... Everyone in youth ministry is working hard, but we're losing." Evangelicals claim that, if current trends continue, the adult "Bible- believing Christians" in the US will come down to 4% - in comparison to 35% of boomers, and 65% of the second world war generation.'

any postings on their way about declining evangelical congregations?????

well, David, I only know Anglican churches in London and the growth in conservative and charismatic evangelical churches is amazing - children, teenagers, students, young families...the lot.

it is great to see the power of the message

NP: that's not quite the question I asked - because GodUK plc is likely to be a bit behind the cusp in the States, it was a specific question to our transatlantic subscribers whether that outbreak of self-examination alleged in the New York Times was reflected on the ground.

If that is the case, an urgent debate seems called for - if evangelicalism in the States is no longer 'pulling 'em in', shouldn't we be thinking why this might be, and whether there are lessons to be learned? An awful lot has been said about the faliure of (so called) liberalism, but if evangelicalism is now falling prey to the same forces of apathy, disengagement and rejection...?

Isn't the trouble that young people (and older people) find that Churches don't take their spirituality, 'inner life' and feelings seriously. But nor do they take their embodiment and especially sexuality, and human and spiritual aspirations seriously either. These 'issues' are barely addressed. There is no language developed to explore these diverse areas.

But also Churches whose model of the person emphasises 'depravity' fail to address both people's sense of guilt or fallible and anxieties, as well as failing to appreciate their capacity for growth, creativity, altruism and experiences of the numinous and of the aesthetic. People's ethical sensibilities are not appreciated and ethical exploarions facilitated.

The individual's yearning for intellectual, spiritual & ethical integrity goes unrecognised (and therefore unmet).

These considerations when coupled with the irrelevence of so much worship and Church life,
and the demands Churches make on people, to conformity of thought and behaviour mean that most people have to look elsewhere to have these needs recognised and perhaps met.

This at least has been my personal experience as a seeker, and as one called to attempt enable people, within the limitations of the Church.

I have discovered :
music and art to be moving and spiritually engaging (cf the recent Kandinsky show at Tate Modern);
writers & artists take relationships,spirituality,& (w)holy living with profound concern;
gay groups, venues & 'cruisers' often offer consideration & thought without pretension to being the Body;
Quaker silence runs deep & attempts to follow Jesus' teaching are heartening;
loving & living with one man for 33 years surpasses all my hopes and calms my fears;

'invoked or not God will be present'........

David - yes, I made a different point - because I care most about what is happening on the ground here in London.

Sure, it is important to look at trends in other places.....

although, when I raise decades of liberal decline on this site, I am told that nos do not matter and almost that the churches were always meant to be die out slowly.....I will not use this defence!

NP:

If the argument was that evangelicalism was growing because it offered an uncompromising Gospel which attracted people, whereas 'liberalism' was dying because it sought to accommodate itself to the spirit of the age, then as soon as there is serious evidence that an evangelical approach to the Christian faith is also failing big-time, it's a call to re-examine previous premises.

'Liberals' have posted arguments about declining numbers, and not infrequently been taken to task for their lack of numerical success. What does the evangelical wing of the Church have to say about the possibility of the failure of the Evangelical experiment? The traditional response was that those churches which were not full were insufficiently conservative — but if this US material is to be taken seriously, I don't think this stands any longer.

So: if evangelicalism IS starting to die off in the US, why is this?

David - I agree that is a question for American evangelicals......we do not have theat problem in England