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Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
'Open Evangelical' with Liberal; when push comes to shove Open Evangelicals will be allies of GAFCON, not PECUSA.

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Last week I was present at a meeting of the Church of England Evangelical Council at which the forthcoming Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans day (6 July) was discussed. All of us who were present were asked to help raise awareness of the event and to encourage as many as possible to attend – hence this email.

For those of you unsure as to the purpose of FCA and this gathering, my understanding is as follows. It offers a cross-party forum for those concerned to preserve orthodox faith and doctrine, a committedly Anglican framework for addressing the issues of the times and a means of demonstrating support for those in other parts of the Communion who are being persecuted because of their stand on matters of historic faith and understanding.

FCA is a movement for orthodox Anglicans – organised by evangelicals, Anglo-Catholics and charismatics. FCA wishes to maintain unity and is avowedly not separatist.

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Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
when push comes to shove Open Evangelicals will be allies of GAFCON, not PECUSA.

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
FCA is importing an argument we in the CofE simply don't need to have, and therefore there's no need for the FCA to organise within the CofE.

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Ah - so it's OK for PECUSA to pick off orthodox parishes in the US... 'They came for the Communists but I wasn't a communist...' We know that liberals can't be trusted - they've proved that with their resort to institutional power to enforce their new doctrines having grown within the church because they weren't similarly treated when they proposed such things from a position of weakness. Which is why Evangelicals have always defended the patronage system with the CofE despite its illogic in theological terms; it allows us to get on with the real work of the church in the parishes

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Test everything. Hold on to the good.

Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.

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All of us who were present were asked to help raise awareness of the event and to encourage as many as possible to attend – hence this email.

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Originally posted by Jon G:
More as protestant schismatics in tat.

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Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
FCA is importing an argument we in the CofE simply don't need to have, and therefore there's no need for the FCA to organise within the CofE.

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Ah - so it's OK for PECUSA to pick off orthodox parishes in the US... 'They came for the Communists but I wasn't a communist...' We know that liberals can't be trusted - they've proved that with their resort to institutional power to enforce their new doctrines having grown within the church because they weren't similarly treated when they proposed such things from a position of weakness.

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Originally posted by Arrietty:
Is this necessarily a personal endorsement?

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All of us who were present were asked to help raise awareness of the event and to encourage as many as possible to attend – hence this email.

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seems to imply that he's sent it because he was asked to as a member of that committee.

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Originally posted by Arrietty:
Is this necessarily a personal endorsement?

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All of us who were present were asked to help raise awareness of the event and to encourage as many as possible to attend – hence this email.

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seems to imply that he's sent it because he was asked to as a member of that committee.

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The basic narrative promoted by extremist evangelical Anglicans in the UK is this. "There are a few schismatic members of parishes and dioceses in the US and Canada who have attempted to transfer, uncanonically and irregularly, the buildings and property of their parish or diocese to an overseas bishop or province. Of course they knew that both the canons and the longstanding practice in all Anglican bodies required them to seek permission first of the competent authorities, but they chose, for their own reasons, to disregard both the canons and the practice that prevails throughout the Anglican Communion. Evangelical extremists misrepresent this sad episode, for their own ends, as one of faithful Christians under persecution by nasty libruls.

Extremist evangelicals also promote a large number of distorted and sometimes downright false stories about ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada, including the one about the "Buddhist bishop." Thew Forrester, about whom these stories circulate, is not a bishop at all, his election having been refused consent by a majority of TEC's Standing Committees, but not on the grounds that he was a Buddhist. That's a deliberate misrepresentation of his interest in the techniques of Zen meditation, an interest shared by Thomas Merton and others.

Extremist evangelicals have gotten away with such misrepresentations, because the reflex anti-Americanism of so much of the British Establishment ensures that their stories are listened to greedily, with itching ears. [See Ruth Gledhill, passim.] And now your home-grown extremists are about to bring to the Church of England its very own schism, because when push came to shove, you wouldn't do what the extremists told you to do, and kick all the North American libruls out of the Communion. Well, the road to salvation doesn't lead through Canterbury, ha ha!"

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Originally posted by Fool on Hill:
Personally, I think the Bishop has tried to tell the story from a particular perspective to try to help us to understand the position from which an email like this can be written.

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My question on the email I received is about the phrase 'avowedly not separatist' - there are too many of these rather closed internal discourses at the moment, which don't sound convincing to those outside - because it seems from outside that this is a separatist move, and that the number of organisations is increasing (Reform, Anglican Mainstream, FCA) without any real sense of why another one is needed.

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Originally posted by Mike T:
CPAS aims to work across the evangelical spectrum - on the Trustee body (which I'm on) we have folk who would align with Reform, New Wine & Fulcrum as well as a number who would simply see themselves as evo (without an identifying adjective!). ... As such, given that GAFCON draws together a signficant (and probably growing) number of evos, from both conservative & charismatic streams (amongst others) then drawing attention to it, as John has done in his email, is not about endorsing all that it stands for (we haven't discussed what we think about that - I suspect we would have similar differing views as Trustees that mirror the wider evangelical debate) ...

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Originally posted by sanityman:
It's certainly news to me that Open Evos would see the whole GAFCON thing as a 'cuddly' non-political and non-divisive element.

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Originally posted by sanityman:
AFAICS, any anti-ECUSA rhetoric has been imported from the dissenting elements across the pond.

- Chris.

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Originally posted by Grammatica:

If Right-Wing Modernists want to fight to control the Church, using the Modernist weapons of PR and mass propaganda, well then, they will, and have, and do.

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If +Pete is on the right-wing, I hesitate to think where I am!

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

And still no-one has adequately explained why the FCA are organising in the CofE.

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Originally posted by Dubious Thomas:
I recall Bishop N. T. Wright linking his critique of TEC with his critique of G. W. Bush's foreign policy, identifying both as examples of American arrogance and unilateralism.* And, as a Canadian living in the United States, I have been struck that the animosity directed against TEC seems much sharper than that directed against the Anglican Church of Canada (even the bishop of New Westminster). Bashing Americans for "imperialism" and "neo-colonialism" just plays better than bashing Canadians with such language.

* The irony was that most of the American "reasserters" (such as the folks at Truro Church) supported Dubya's foreign policy.

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Originally posted by Pete173
The debate on this thread is about whether a mainline and well-respected mission agency in the CofE which services parishes of all persuasions should be recommending folk to attend FCA.

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But I suspect that those who turn up at the launch will mostly be at the Reform and FiF end of things. I'd be surprised if it got big support from New Wine or other non-Fulcrumites.

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Originally posted by sanityman:
From what I've read of him, +Tom is a considered and nuanced man, and not a rabid anti-American ideogogue. The really nasty stuff I've heard against +KJS I've heard from Americans.

- Chris.

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Originally posted by Qupe:
And that 'moderate neutral open evos' who value broad church, like myself, will be pressured into moving to a more extreme position. Maybe we need to start up a rival 'Proud to occupy the middle ground' movement...? (only kidding...!)

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Originally posted by Jon G:
For all Pete173's explanations, CPAS must have known that any perceived support of FCA would alienate many people who themselves identify as "orthodox" Christians in the Church of England.

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Originally posted by Grammatica:
Odd, Matt Black. I was under the impression that Biblical inerrancy, "Signs and Wonders" Pentecostalism, and Young Earth Creationism were 19th century innovations. Augustine, as we know, wrote against the last of these; the second was universally condemned by Church Fathers and authorities, and the first -- well, no one read anything in its "literal and grammatical sense," detatching meaning from its community of interpreters -- until Modern times.

St. Paul's endorsement of marriage was at best tepid, and the Primitive Church much preferred celibacy to heterosexual activity. Marriage has been one of the Seven Sacraments in the Catholic Church since the Middle Ages, but the Anglican Church held in the Thirty-Nine Articles and again in the Lambeth Quadrilateral that only two Sacraments were instituted by Christ and necessary for salvation. So the emphasis on heterosexual intercourse in marriage as the foundational sacrament, instituted at the Creation, which characterizes modern Evangelical theology, is historically odd to say the least.

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Originally posted by Dubious Thomas:
I was simply pointing out that someone who IS as "considered and nuanced" as he could easily employ anti-American rhetoric in pursuit of his argument. It is also worth noting that the kind of equation he drew (if I recall correctly) between TEC's ordination of Bishop Robinson and Dubya's foreign policy just wouldn't be drawn by American critics of TEC. The rhetoric about "neo-colonialism" and "imperialism," etc. is coming from outside of the United States, since the American TEC dissidents, being politically right-wing, just don't use this kind of language. "Neo-colonialism" is something left wing American eggheads and Ugandan bishops talk about!

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Originally posted by Arrietty:

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Originally posted by Jon G:
For all Pete173's explanations, CPAS must have known that any perceived support of FCA would alienate many people who themselves identify as "orthodox" Christians in the Church of England.

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I'll certainly be asking my CPAS contacts what's behind it and whether it indicates a change of direction from CPAS, but until I've done that I'm assuming it's one person being rather naive rather than CPAS suddenly going off down the FCA track.

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Originally posted by Mike T:
What is intriguing is the amount of fear that seems to be around that we are in danger of being 'hijacked'. No chance (by any pressure group!)

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Originally posted by Mike T:
John's email (as he made plain) was simply in response to a general request at CEEC to encourage people to attend (not least, I suspect, to enable them to hear the debate & make their minds up on first hand knowledge). Nothign more than that should be read into it!

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For those of you unsure as to the purpose of FCA and this gathering, my understanding is as follows. It offers a cross-party forum for those concerned to preserve orthodox faith and doctrine, a committedly Anglican framework for addressing the issues of the times and a means of demonstrating support for those in other parts of the Communion who are being persecuted because of their stand on matters of historic faith and understanding.

FCA is a movement for orthodox Anglicans – organised by evangelicals, Anglo-Catholics and charismatics. FCA wishes to maintain unity and is avowedly not separatist.

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