Archbishop Foley Beach shoots down speculation that ACNA would attend the upcoming Lambeth Conference. Says Abp. Beach: If the invitation itself was a power play on the part of the Anglican Communion Office, it clearly failed.
Very interesting. Sort of a change of direction since Archbishop Duncan spent several years trying to be ++Rowan Williams' best buddy - to no avail.
I've been expecting some organizational fireworks as the Lambeth conference and the GAFCON conference in Kigali draw near. Both want to be seen as the "official" Anglican conference, and whatever guidance comes out of these conferences as the "official" Anglican line. But this was always a hopeless dream. By numbers GAFCON is far larger than the Lambeth-led Anglican Communion, and that disparity grows by the day. The center of gravity in the Anglican world has long since passed to Africa, so that's where the final dispensation will probably be achieved. I think even the Lambeth-aligned African churches see the writing on the wall; their theological convictions are already more closely aligned with GAFCON, and I expect this gap to widen after the two conferences complete. Now that Australia's Anglican split is a fait accompli, GAFCON has redoubts in all the anglophone nations, and is dominant in Africa. I can't get a read on GAFCON's footprint in Asia, but it seems to be expanding. Given this reality, I don't think anyone in GAFCON is inclined to accept Lambeth as a normative influence over the church. The issue of homosexual marriage is not the only point of contention, either. The homosexuality debate obscures the deeper issues of Biblical authority, church practice, and the importance of the historic creeds and confessions (particularly the 39 Articles and the Athanasian Creed).
There is now a clear counterweight to Canterbury in the Anglican Communion. Hope springs. Asia has both the old liberal provinces, and the new firebrand orthodox ones. The old legacy Anglican presence in countries like Japan is very small; there are like 5 Anglican japanese in the whole country. Which is great, because that Province is utterly heterodox and compromised (let's remember that the first 'woman priest' in our history was a 'temporary' and 'provisional' ordination in Japan, in the 1940s. On the other hand, the last 60 years have seen a gargantuan Anglican growth in Southeast Asia, in the last 60 years. What's behind them is the Diocese of Singapore (really the Province of Singapore). It is an incredibly fierce orthodox Anglican juggernaut with an annual missionary budget of $1 million. They have planted Anglican provinces in the entire Southeast Asia. You now have entirely new provinces planted in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and they're growing rapidly. None of those are in any way heterodox; Singapore never had women deacons, let alone anything worse. Singapore isn't involved too much in western issues so you don't see them taking sides in the Gafcon - Canterbury debates, but very soon it is likely they'll be forced to choose. You can regularly see Singapore deans, archdeacons, and often the bishops, at the ACNA Assemblies and missionary conferences, and meet them in person. You can even volunteer as a missionary in Southeast Asia, which is what they're recruiting for right now.
I should probably introduce myself in the new members thread before jumping in but I saw my country mentioned and I had to ask what might be perceived as a silly or basic question so do forgive me if it is! What is the state of Anglican missions work around the world? I ask because I am surprised that $1m would be a budget that merited particular mention. I am a member of the Cathedral in Singapore and I believe our church alone devotes USD1-1.2 million yearly to missions outreach. Hailing originally from an Assemblies of God church that devoted approximately double that amount to missions yearly (though it was a larger church) this seemed like a good though not extraordinarily impressive figure for this most crucial of tasks.
I rest my case. The more liberal provinces have no missions whatsoever. This has been the case, in the US at least, for the entire 20th century, when the Episcopal Church created one centralized Missionary Society and subjected all missions projects to it. Over time, individual enterprise and ingenuity was suppressed in the interests of centralization. Then when liberalism came, the word from on-high told everyone in the Missionary Society to alter its understanding of mission accordingly; and where any last missional energy was left, now it was gone. ACNA, since 2008, has been highly active in missions. As I mentioned, we regularly host the upper hierarchy of the Diocese of Singapore in our missions conferences; since we don't have a legacy buildings in some parts of the country, church planting is highly encouraged and supported. Our primate regularly visits our missions gatherings, and most of the bishops provide active support for missionary endeavors. It's nothing as big as you guys yet, but the impetus is there.
I think you have Japan confused with the Hong Kong province. Florence Li Tim-Oi was the first woman to be ordained in the Anglican Communion, during WW2, and I think the story of the church resisting Japanese oppression and unifying around a woman even in the 40s where the role of women in society was very different, is a great show of the resilience of Anglican Christian faith. In the face of persecution we have the flexibility to worship meaningfully in whatever way remains open to us. She resigned after the war was over and men could preach in Macau again. As an Australian, this is news to me? The conservative elements of the Anglican Church of Australia are in control right now, they just dominated the General Synod a few weeks ago on issues of gay blessings, pastoral care for queer students in schools run by the church, and a range of other issues. There's literally no incentive for them to break off and do their own thing - at least in Synod they're in the majority and the controlling party in the church.
Yes that is true but neither can a woman be a priest. It is better to have morning and evening prayer than to have a not real priest. But I am not going to start the whole woman ordination debate for the 100th time.
I think most orthodox Anglicans, in Australia as elsewhere, understand that this is at best a holding action. The bishops are going wobbly, and it won't be long before the province follows. This is the archbishop doing this. That's not a positive sign. GAFCON already has an organization on the ground in Australia, and it's a going concern. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Sydney diocese lead the charge to GAFCON sometime in the next few years (depending on what comes out of Lambeth and Kigali).
That's the one I was thinking of yes, thank you. Women's ordination (and feminism more broadly) have been the first expressions of transgenderism in history, long before the recent LGBTQPP madness. We've prepared the ground decades ago, when women started to be 'fathers'. This is never okay or acceptable under any extenuating circumstances. If we want to stop transgenderism, it's more than just undoing the recent LGBTQPP madness; we have to excavate and disinfect the last 5-6 decades of spiritual sickness in the Church. During the last some hundreds of years, when people have gone to missionary areas, in far remote places, sometimes there has been no Sacrament for over a year. Sometimes we needed to air-drop a priest into the location and minister to dozens of parishes. The Church has methods of dealing with administering the sacrament; one of those solutions is not to violate God and Nature and everything sacred. It depends on how we interpret the recent Synod. And I'm by no means an expert on Australian church politics so please correct me if I'm wrong. The way I read it, yes the progressives failed to gain a foothold of blessing gay unions; BUT the traditionalists have also lost, in that the Church failed to affirm that marriage is a union of man and woman in holy matrimony. It came close to passing, by 1-2 votes I think, but still failed, because of the progressive bishops: https://forums.anglican.net/threads/general-synod-marriage.4725/ And I think what @Ananias refers in regards to the split, is this: https://virtueonline.org/whither-australian-anglican-church https://virtueonline.org/statement-gafcon-australia Here's an article about this from as far back as 2016: https://virtueonline.org/australian-anglican-church-throes-schism Yikes. This is why women's ordination must be defeated.
With respect, this is schismatic fluff. The conservative elements within the church are pretty happy with their wins. Splitting doesn't make sense when you're in the drivers seat, they'd be giving the car keys to the minority for free. If a schism is inevitable the conservatives can comfortably wait for the progressives to split, they're not under any pressure right now, nothing is actually happening that they're mad about, even in the super progressive dioceses. The motion you're talking about was rejected by the bishops for this line "Any rite or ceremony that purports to bless a same-sex marriage is not in accordance with the teaching of Christ and the faith, ritual, ceremonial and/or discipline of this Church." This is not a statement that marriage is not between a man and a woman. It's a statement on the mechanics of blessings. They agree clergy cannot officiate same sex marriages, and the 2017 doctrine that "marriage is an exclusive and lifelong union of a man and a woman" holds. However, it is held by many bishops that it is in accordance with the teaching of Christ, the discipline of the church and tradition that a minister can bless things they don't necessarily agree with. Clergy have blessed war machines in wartime, monarchs who live sinful lives, cruise ships filled with debauchery. If two life-long parishioners enter into a civil union together the priest may bless that union as a symbol of hopefulness that they find love, joy and happiness together - without actually supporting the union itself. The same as blessing a war machine to protect the lives of the vulnerable, the sinful monarch to hold the nation together, the debaucherous cruise ship so it finds safe passage and does not sink. Sure, the conservatives were looking for more. It's not the kind of devastating loss that drives a schism, they won on large, and it appears that the majority of bishops still agree with the conservative position based on other rulings (such as Sydney's push to boot school principals that don't enforce moral purity codes from their schools), they just don't agree with treating blessings on same-sex unions differently than blessings on literally anything else.