Look who came to dinner...GAFCON and ACNA

The Living Church now has posted the attendees at the GAFCON Primates meeting at a hotel near Heathrow Airport.

The players from GAFCON, according to TLC are: Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda; along with the Rt. Rev. Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney (Australia). Jensen is not one of the GAFCON Primates, but the secretary to the group. The Bishop of Tanzania is not present.

The Living Church reports that, "joining the archbishops in the three-day meeting are

the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh in the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone and the archbishop-designate of the ACNA;
the Rt. Rev. Jack L. Iker, Bishop of Fort Worth in the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone;
the Rt. Rev. Charles Murphy; the leader of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA);
the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, Bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America and one of his bishops suffragan,
the Rt. Rev. David Anderson;
the Rt. Rev. John Guernsey, Provincial Bishop Suffragan for the Anglican Church of Uganda;
the Rt. Rev. Bill Atwood, Bishop of All Saints Diocese in the Anglican Church of Kenya;
and the Rt. Rev. Don Harvey, leader of the Anglican Network in Canada.

All the players from the Common Cause Partnership are there save anyone from the Reformed Episcopal Church.

The agenda, according to George Conger of TLC is to "discuss the formation and strengthening of the Fellowship of Confession Anglicans (FCA), the formation of the ACNA, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s proposed Anglican Covenant, and the on-going divisions within the Anglican Communion."

Please note the Anglican Covenant is now called "The Archbishop of Canterbury's proposed Anglican Covenant." This of course makes it easy to link the Anglican Covenant, already suspect of being too liberal, with the Archbishop of Canterbury who is held in increasing disregard by GAFCON.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (oddly called here the Fellowship of Confession Anglicans) is an odd business. It's website is shiny on the outside and rather lacking in content. Perhaps the real secret hand shake stuff is elsewhere. The Archbishop of Nigeria seems to think FOCA is a great success, but there seems little sign of it. The GAFCON / ACNA / realignment crowd is always glad to give numbers, but no numbers here.

In a previous blog I suggested that this GAFCON Primates meeting would do:

(i) They have already had a rather gloomy sense of the whole Anglican Covenant enterprise given the Anglican Communion's slow response to their demands that The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada be drummed out of the corps because of their unrepentant attitudes. Their lack of response to the Covenant Design Committee's questions is significantly greater than the general lack of response. They will mostly dismiss RCDC.

(ii) The strategy for dealing with the ACC and the June start up for ACNA will no doubt be high on the GAFCON Primates agenda. Moderator Robert Duncan of the Common Cause Partnership and Archbishop- designate of the soon to be established Anglican Church in North America will be meeting with the GAFCON Primates at their invitation. Remembering that the Jerusalem Declaration requires the repudiation of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada and by inference anyone who supports either church, and the decision by the Church of Nigeria to recognize ACNA, there is little need to guess where things will come out. The only question is whether the rest of the GAFCON crowd will buy in with Nigeria at this point or wait for a while more.


(iii) When the Anglican Consultative Committee meets in a little less than three weeks they will have a crack at the Anglican Covenant third draft, called the "Ridley Cambridge Draft" and less affectionately the RCDC. There they will no doubt be told by the GAFCON representatives that RCDC is so weak as to be irrelevant and so Anglo-centric as to be an insult.

(iv) GAFCON will push for the Primates as the governing board of the Anglican Communion as a communion of churches, make the Archbishop of Canterbury a titular head of church and the President of the Primates, elected among themselves, as the de-facto head of Communion. GAFCON leaders will press for a covenant with "teeth."

With the whole episcopal house of the emerging Anglican Church in North America meeting with GAFCON Primates, we can be sure the press is on for the GAFCON Primates to buy the package now.

When delivered to the ACC the package will need to be refused and its contents sent back to GAFCON Primates who will no doubt know what to do next. Start a new Anglican whatever.