GAFCON update
From GAFCON's website:
Akinola also emphasised that GAFCON is not going to break away from the Anglican Communion. “We have no other place to go, nor is it our intention to start another church.”
Who really knows what will actually unfold; a break could still come to pass. "The spirit is willing" but Akinola's comment, and the GAFCON site's giving that comment such high profile, seem to confirm suspicion that our Separatist brothers and sisters have lost momentum. If so, why? I do not suppose rhetoric of separation was insincere. Rather, if indeed the momentum for separation has waned, it seems the prospective leaders of the anticipated separation must have realized they held "losing hands": the costs of separation at this time outweighed the benefits. Perhaps not enough English--and American--evangelicals were on board.
Anyhow, failure to separate is dangerous to GAFCON partisans, inasmuch as a large measure of their strength comes from those who expected a separation now: true blue believers. Delay might disappoint them and further weaken the GAFCON faction--if the disappointed separatists are permitted to disengage from the drama of the Anglican Communion.
Thus, it seems to me that the leaders of the GAFCON faction will have an incentive to keep tension and conflict going. That will mean more negative hyperbole, more efforts to seduce rectors and bishops, more attempts to prise away parishes and dioceses amidst high-profile, international purple events: more of the same, at least as shrill if not even more urgent. And it will mean, perhaps, the GAFCON faction will have an incentive to participate at the Communion level in the formation of a covenant. I would not be surprised to see those who can still attend Lambeth with street credibility intact do so. To be brief, the survival of the AC does not mean peace in our time.
posted by The Anglican Scotist @ 1:11 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
And it appears this "one-church" language may well undo the basis for the "separation" in the CANA court case, no? The CANA parishes were banking on the reality of a "division" under the Virginia law. Without the division (even though, in a peculiar twist of Solomonic reasoning, the judge has already determined a division has happened) CANA folks have no reason to have such "separate" parishes. Look for little amusement with what looks like prevarication from GAFCON.
I am thinking GAFCON and +Akinola/Minns are not co-terminus. +Minns surely had a stake in the "split" as that is what his attys argued in the 57-9 portion of the Va litigation. But, given the timing of "no split" and Judge Bellows' decision based on the record as it existed, it may not be legally relevant even if poltically embarrassing. This might be so even on appeal if , the record of the trial court is considered closed and the appeal based solely on its content.? This, discussion may, of course be entirely academic. We await the decision on the constitutionality of 57-9 EmilyH
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