1/25/2008

GAFCON venue.

The Global Anglican Future Leadership Team posted the following earler today:

"We have heard that GAFCON has aroused considerable interest and enthusiasm. We would encourage those who are planning visits to the Holy Land to coincide with GAFCON to await the announcement of the venue and the exact start and finish dates before making final plans"
The GAFCON Leadership Team

As many of us know, for all intents and purposes if the venue is Jerusalem, the arrival place is the airport in Tel Aviv (Ben Gurion International). But then, the announcement also says "planning visits to the Holy Land to coincide with GAFCON..." All the announcements to this point have said that GAFCON would include and be wrapped in the Holy Land visit of a pilgrimage.

So what we have here is the suggestion that the venue for GAFCON may not be Jerusalem, may not be on the dates proclaimed, and may be separated from the exercise of visiting the Holy Land.

June 14-22 has been the widely posted dates of this conference. So what now?

Did the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East and the Bishop in Jerusalem finally make a dent in the leadership of GAFCON who seemed to exhibit no end of arrogance in marching right in and taking over?

We shall see. Meanwhile, GAFCON started by inviting people from every province, and now talks about people from twenty countries coming. It started by saying Jerusalem is the only place to meet and the time is certain. Now time, place, people are all less certain.

What is certain is that this conference, on Anglican Future, is a product of so-called "orthodox" Anglican Primates and fellow travelers, with its primary strength from bible-belt Anglican Africa and the Southern Cone, along with lots of help from dissenters in the US.

Their real agenda is that to which Bishop Anderson aludes in his message to the American Anglican Council this week: the formation of an post-Canterbury, post-Lambeth organization for post Anglican Communion Anglicans.

They could meet anywhere, any time, an that would be their agenda.

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