I can't help but laugh at critique of Tom's letter on StandFirm. For the crime of disagreeing with +Akinola, +Jensen and Sugden, Tom Wright is now declared unorthodox! I expect the book burnings will soon follow...

According to Ruth Gledhill everything is full steam ahead:

"This makes it sound as though change is on the cards but Paul Eddy, doing the PR for Gafcon, insists that nothing has changed. He says: 'The final details of venue, hotels are being finalised, a team was out in Middle East just last week with conference and hotel and transport reps, all according to plan. Full details to be sent out to non-Bishops March 1.' He continues, 'The timetable agreed at the beginning has always been that Bishops nominate clergy and lay folk and the official invites will be sent to non-Bishops on March 1.'"

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/01/dont-book-your.html

Considering +Akinola and Chris Sugden only met +Dawani on Tuesday 15th, either the 'team' was there even before that meeting, or arrived straight after +Dawani had expressed his concerns. So much for taking those concerns to the GAFCON leadership!

"THE ORGANISERS of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) insist that they will be holding the event in Jerusalem, despite strong protests and an alternative suggestion from the Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt Revd Suheil Dawani, and his colleagues in the Holy Land. Bishop Dawani says he learned about the conference from a press release."

I am embarrassed with their humility.

Look at the language used!

"We have heard that GAFCON has aroused considerable interest and enthusiasm"

(It's the sort of false optimism you get with job application webpages.)

Like - prepare for an adjustment. It will be an adjustment, though, no more.

I wonder what the logo will be?

I mean, are they going to Cyprus?

Assuming mid-June to be firmly in the tourist season, how do the GAFCON organizers anticipate, at this short notice, to find accommodation for the people they expect to attend their pilgrimage?

"I can't help but laugh at critique of Tom's letter on StandFirm"

Yes, but it's not funny. In the end the smallest lot of puritans will depart the Anglican Communion, and despite all the destructive squabbles in the last few years the rest of us will have settled nothing and will still be left with most of our biblical authoritarians.

If we have to have a split, can't it be a decisive one? This achieves nothing and we'll just spend the next 10 years going round and round the houses while most thinking people leave the sinking church.

Erika Baker --

I agree, but fear we are in a similar position to the post-Constantinnian church which took many years (& schisms) to "settle" things -- puritans keep walking away when they are not powerful enough to exclude others.

But the commenters on SFiF are quite right from their perspective -- I think the sad thing is the ongoing denial of N. T. Wright (& others) of the true nature of those with whom they have chosen to associate -- the surprising thing is that they should be so naive as to be surprised.

And surely no one really believed that Archbishops Jensen & Akinola really cared the slightest what the Bishop in Jerusalem thought of desired -- their course is fixed & who to any who get in their way.

I would say that it looks as if they are going to try to shift to Cyprus. Telling people not to book flights to Jerusalem on the advised dates is a clearer signal than having your PR tell everyone that nothing has changed. He will say that whatever happens.

Tom Wright forgets that GAFCON has Anglo-Catholic participants.

Furthermore because he is evagelical he doesn't
play on their varying and conflicting interpretations of Scripture.

"thought of desired" should be "or" (of course) -- some things spell-check won't help!

Andrew Brown -- you may well be correct -- I suppose after they have booked their accommodations, they will ask the Bishop of Cyprus what he thinks about hosting the GAFPIL (or not).

BTW -- interesting that Ruth Gledhill seems finally to have come around to your POV on the question of a schism (i.e, the Evangelical Global South "walking apart" rather than TEC & other "liberal" churches being expelled).

CANA bishop David Anderson, in his weekly AAC update, states - http://innocentdoves.blogspot.com/2008/01/aac-weekly-update-by-bishop-anderson.html -

"Those who are following the news about the planned GAFCON gathering will have read the "leaked" minutes of the confidential meetings which were held to discuss the event. Closer inspection reveals that the purported text "leaked" was not an agreed-upon set of minutes at all, and was not in fact leaked, but planted. Apparently, upon examination of the text in circulation, the words are those of a Janina Zang, a Missionary of USPG (General Secretary is Bishop Michael Doe), who is on assignment as Personal Assistant to Bishop Suheil Dawani. Her text seems written to achieve a particular aim, and the fact that the misnamed "minutes" were then suddenly in the hands of a number of hostile organizations, and given as well to a number of London journalists (as reported by Ruth Gledhill, London Times) seems well planned, and hardly a leak. It is finally, a non-event."

He basically accuses Ms Zang of writing a biased and inaccurate report of what transpired at the two meetings with +Dawani. Well, if that is the case, I must have missed +Jensen's and +Akinola's vehement protestations regarding the accuracy of these minutes. Their very silence can only be taken as signifying that these are indeed the conversations which took place.

No, Prior Aelred, they'll take the GAFPIL in Jerusalem and then were invited to make the GAFCON in Cyprus.

My bit on the wobble at http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/ including a piccy of Tom Wright.

Pluralist

You're article is interesting, particularly the desire for hard-right Zionists to precipitate Jesus returning in all his glory.

What a lot of people whitewash over is this vision involves Jesus murdering every soul on this planet, condemning the overwhelming majority to hell, and taking a select few to the rapture in a divine heaven.

If that isn't a genocidal fantasy, I don't know what else is.

Something that both the Christian Zionists and their complacent Jewish compatriots should contemplate is that they have an empty Jewish tabernacle of the ark in a museum.

They would all do with a close careful contemplation of what would make the Shechina think that permanent residence inside a human female was safer than her refuge that she had hid in until April 2005.

Any Jew with any brains and understanding of the bible and God should be terrified right now. That they aren't and that they think they can do unto the Palestinians as was done unto them by the Nazis says it all, really.

Thanks loads for the link to AB's 1998 Lambeth report. I suddenly recall George Santayana's aphorism: We who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.

To think that the real basis for this schism is not homosexuality, though that remains a dodgy wedge armament for tearing down all the house among realignment front runners of all sorts; but the ordination of women, and most especially, the underlying ethical-theological notions of equal worth in incarnation or embodiment, taken as nothing but a sharp jab at men, straight or not, who feel God must surely look upon the genitals; with high regard indeed instead of the heart.

The Andrew Brown report is a keep all right. I will read it every time somebody cites resolution 1.10 as the sacred mind of our communion, and as a holy call for policing and punishment. Yuppers, these are the same bishops who are now bringing us all the new improved worldwide communion, conservatively realigned. Rowan's comment earlier, to the effect that nobody is talking about having to believe in unintelligent readings of scriptures, well one wonders after reading Brown's Lambeth report from last decade.

You go Barbara Harris.

Right, there does seem to be increasing confusion among GAFCON's supporters now.

http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/01/gafcon-to-upstage-opnion.html

Either J. I. Packer is off message or it is wobbling on time and/ or place. There is clear inconsistency in the ranks.

The real Anglo-catholics in San Joaquim ( Southern Cone incorporated) should get together and form a rival diocese, which has a Bishop who will not go to GAFCON, and consort with an Archbishop who allaows grpae juice at communion and is about to release Lay presidency on the Anglican Communion.

I wish Bishop Wright had mentioned the Jensen Lay presidency time bomb in the hold of the Good ship GAFCON and the duplicity of inviting Anglo-Catholics to participate, who would not be even considered fit to clean St Andrews Cathedral in Stydney in normal circumstances.Wright treats GAFCON as an Evangelical monopoly.

By the way what are GAFCON, an American Construction company doing to protect their name. Lets form a legal defence fund now... I nominate Martin reynolds for treasurer.

Robert

There's no problem as to who does the cleaning. As long as they shut up and don't spout any teachings contrary to the divine revelation.

Goodness, if they had to exclude all unclean things, the men would have to clean up after themselves.

No, no,no,no,no,nohhhhhhh.....

Not another chequebook in the house!

I have been telling Robert Ian for some time now that this conference will not be happening as planned, it just may be that I will be right for a change!!

Flights from Lagos to Tel Aviv to suit the published dates are still available £460 return (before you get to the airport) on Ethiopian Air or £940 from Lufthansa via somewhere in Germany and it’s the same £1000 from New York to Israel while Londoners can get there for just over £300!

But its less than £200 to Paphos from Manchester on Easy Jet so perhaps Cyprus has the edge!

The point is that GAFCON is the legally registered Californian Construction company...see their website.

GAFCON (Anglican) could be infringing that name.
Do they know?/...any corporate lawyers out there?

Could you imagine TESCO not going to court ifthere was a Conference called THE EPISCOPAL SOUTH COALITION (TESCO).

The trouble with you liberals is that you are not litigacious enough!

"The trouble with you liberals is that you are not litigacious enough!"

Unlike the GAFCON organisers, the "real" people and companies out there might simply think that they're just not important enough to waste ligitation money on.

Or they might like the cheap PR - if you type GAFCON into Google the Californian company comes first on the results list. Not bad for them.

Should I have said litigious?

Hi Robert

When I contemplated what was being done to me in my local diocese, I did some research. It turned out that my story was not unique, either within my diocese, nor the global Anglican communion, nor just Christianity.

One possibility was to take the litigous path. Others had done it for less than I had experienced and "won" the case.

The problem was, it did not solve the problems in the priesthood.

They paid the monies, made the settlement and entered into contracts of silence in exchange for compensation.

The priesthood had no remorse and merely said amongst themselves that it proved how evil both the claimants and the secular society was that they had to pay compensation.

I chose the harder path. I chose to demonstrate how they behave in an irrefutable public arena, and demonstrate that my own case was not unique. Further, I went to the bible to demonstrate that such conduct is not condoned by God. It is an abomination for priests to vilify a character, damage their reputation both in a their parish as well the broader community, to interfere with their ability to earn an income in an honest way. Souls who are suffering come to churches for succour, it is an abomination when those churches choose to destroy souls to preserve their reputations. A double abomination when they do so knowing that a soul is vulnerable, without support or reserves.

Yes, I am a liberal that is not litigous. But I am a liberal that exposes corrupt churches and reminds the leaders of ALL faith communities (Christian and beyond) that God does not condone cruelty, especially by the hands of greedy selfish priests.

They can keep their money, I've still got a soul and a conscience and I know how many other souls they will now not attack lest they experience the same embarassment.

Yes. Litigious.

And while we're at it, can some of us sue Venables, Schofield, Akinola et al for their appropriation of the word "Anglican?"

Malcom: ...and of the word "orthodox" too!

Litigacious. Um, gracefull litigation?