The Most Rev. Foley Beach, Primate of the Anglican Church in North America and Chairman of GAFCON writes from Sydney:
Yesterday I received a letter from Archbishop Justin just moments before the invitation was reported online. I read the online report first and was disappointed to see that the original “news” source had furthered a partisan, divisive, and false narrative by wrongly asserting that I left the Anglican Communion. I have never left the Anglican Communion, and have no intention of doing so.
I did transfer out of a revisionist body that had left the teaching of the Scriptures and the Anglican Communion and I became canonically resident in another province of the Anglican Communion. I have never left. For the Anglican Church in North America to be treated as mere “observers” is an insult to both our bishops, many of whom have made costly stands for the Gospel, and the majority of Anglicans around the world who have long stood with us as a province of the Anglican Communion.
Once I have had a chance to review this with our College of Bishops and the Primates Council of the Global Anglican Future Conference I will respond more fully.
The announcement from the Anglican Communion News Service cited by Archbishop Beach is printed below:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is inviting leaders of other Christian Churches to send observers to next year’s Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops. For next year’s event, invitations are being extended to a greater number of Pentecostal and Evangelical Churches and bodies than at previous Lambeth Conferences. A Lambeth Conference spokesperson said that this was to “recognise their importance in the changing face of world Christianity.”
The invitations include those Churches in Communion with the whole Anglican Communion – the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht, the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (the Philippine Independent Church), and the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar. They also include some Lutheran Churches in North America and Europe, which are in Communion with the Anglican provinces in those regions.
Representatives of more than 30 other Christian Churches are being invited to attend as ecumenical observers. These include Churches and Communions with which Anglicans are in formal dialogue, such as the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Lutheran and Reformed Churches and also multi-lateral bodies such as the World Council of Churches and the Global Christian Forum.
In addition to leaders of Churches in Communion and ecumenical partners, representatives from Churches formed by people who left the Anglican Communion are also being invited to send observers. These churches – the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), the Anglican Church of Brazil and the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa (REACH-SA) – are not formally part of the Anglican Communion but are recognised to different extents by some of the Communion’s provinces.
The Lambeth Conference takes place once every 10 years. The Archbishop of Canterbury invites all eligible bishops from the 40 Anglican Communion provinces, or member Churches, to take part, as well as the bishops from the five extra provincial dioceses – Ceylon, Portugal, Spain, Bermuda and the Falkland Islands. Recent Lambeth Conferences have been attended by a number of ecumenical guests and observers who attend sessions of the conference and may be invited to speak, but do not vote.
The Lambeth Conference 2020 – God’s Church for God’s World: walking, listening and witnessing together – will take place at the University of Kent in Canterbury from 23 July to 2 August. The Lambeth Conference is one of the four Instruments of Communion, or unity, within the Anglican Communion. The others are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates’ Meeting, and the triennial Anglican Consultative Council.
The next meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council – ACC-17 – gets underway in Hong Kong on Sunday (28 April).
This is exactly what I was expecting that Justin Welby would do. I really think that GAFCON should speak with one voice on this matter and reaffirm that they will not attend if the pro-homosexuality bishops and provinces are invited.
A huge insult to conservative Anglicans around the world! Let us stand with Archbishop Foley’s clear & strong response! Boycott Lambeth 2020!
I’ll be praying for discernment for Archbishop Foley.
Personally, I agree with Thomas below, and hope all the Gafcon bishops will stand by the decision previously made not to attend if the pro homosexuality bishops and provinces are invited.
Does any one know if Brother Justin has chosen to follow the format of the previous event by the use of these indaba groups? Seems like all these groups have done previously is to diffuse the potential for good debate by splitting everyone up, and thereby avoiding a central meeting where the real debate needs to happen. Well, that’s my opinion anyway..
Let me humbly submit that you should read the above press release again.
There is nothing inclusive about what Justin requested. He continues to treat the ACNA and GAFCON as outsiders, asking them to send observers. Justin did not ask them to come and PARTICIPATE, certainly not the ACNA, but to OBSERVE, along with observers from a host of non-Anglican bodies. If anything, perhaps he wishes to drive a wedge between the ACNA and the rest of GAFCON, certainly he hopes to hold off any breaking away of conservatives, but there is nothing unifying here.
Further, consider Justin’s track record. While more than any other ‘principle’ behind his actions has been the manic drive to prevent any form of schism in the Communion, he has reneged on agreements he’s made with conservatives time and time and time again. That will not change.
We can be yeast to leaven the loaf? How? Our voice has been present in Lambeths past, in Primate Gatherings, in many venues, and agreements have been made. And broken. Every time. This ‘invitation’ seems the most obvious of all, the ACNA is relegated to being nothing more than an Observer, and it feels like GAFCON are to be like children who are to be seen and not heard. If the loaf has not risen before I don’t see how it can be expected to rise now.
I think now it’s time for US to rise, and to stand on principle. Archbishop Foley is right.
I agree with almost everything you’re saying, but even Jesus said that if a town rejects God’s word, then you leave it and kick the dust off your sandals as a sign.
I think Justin’s sole motivation is to hold the Communion together. Nothing else matters. Not any kind of actual reading of the Word of God, not agreements he’s made, not a brand or school of doctrine or theology, he’s only about holding the Communion together. And as long as he holds a meeting, whatever he calls it, and nearly everyone shows up, he’s happy.
I’m fine with proclaiming the Gospel to the Church of England and the worldwide Communion. I think absence would speak louder than words in this case, though.
Until Justin sees failure in his course, he won’t change his course.
Well said.
[…] has provoked the following response from Archbishop Foley Beach of […]
I will trust the discernment of ++Foley and the CoB more than my own.
But as for myself, I think ++Foley’s attendance would be an insult to GAFCON bishops who stay home.
If Welby has just invited an observer, let ACNA send a simple priest to observe (I’d even prefer a deacon!). Maybe Canon Phil Ashey can be the official observer from ACNA. But no bishop.
[…] Read it all. print […]
[…] report triggered this ungracious press release from Foley Beach, Archbishop of ACNA and chairman of […]
Canterbury has got it wrong again! Archbishop Foley is The leader of the majority of the Anglicans in the world. As I’d suggested in a previous post, this invitation must, in fact, happen in the reverse: ABishop Foley must convene a Worldwide Conference in 2020 and invite ABC and his cohorts as observers.
I agree (and pray) with all the commentators here that ABishop Foley will stand with the decision of the GAFCON Bishops not to attend Lambeth 2020 (unless the rotten lot repent for the cleavage caused to the communion by sinful decisions).
The decision to participate or not to participate on the part of other affiliates is their prerogative and is not relevant to GAFCON and the ACNA Bishops. But I pray that they too will not fall prey to the trap of being observer invitees, whose presence will be counted and interpreted as consenting, if not obliging spectators of the Welby-headed narrative of the ”anglican communion”.
This Sunday past, I joined a charity organization that collected money at traffic lights to raise funds for an orphanage in Afghanistan. As I did this for almost five hours, I couldn’t but think of the enormous amount of money that is being wasted for Lambeth 2020 for a lousy “conversation in good disagreement” ?.
As Dr. Terry Watson Jr. says below, it is Beach who is the leader of the largest portion of the Communion, not Welby.
I note that Welby is inviting observers from the Lutheran bodies which have departed from the faith. Lutheran bodies “in communion” with ECUSA are not where believers should worship.
Welby is irrelevant. He leads an apostate church. Do not attend. Welby needs to repent and call his church into repentance.
The cat is among the pigeons now!
Or, as a we might say in Australia, the fox is among the chooks*. Or the kookaburras are dispersing the galahs.
* commonly but erroneously called “chickens” amongst the uninitiated.
Of course I agree with his grace, Archbishop Foley, but what I found interesting is that he considers the ACNA to be part of the Anglican Communion, something many people have said no longer matters, or is irrelevant.
“I have never left the Anglican Communion, and have no intention of doing so.”
Usually, in forums such as this, most orthodox Anglicans and ACNA members have said to heck with the Anglican Communion, so this is very interesting to me.
As numerous Gafcon and Global South statements make clear, the several provinces of Gafcon (without counting ACNA, or the Anglican Church of Brazil or other continuing churches) contain the majority of the Communion’s communicants and baptised members. Add the rest of the Global South orthodox provinces, and it totals out to over 70%. The Global South, as ++Mouneer Anis said 10 years ago (and oft repeated in GS and Gafcon statements) “is the Anglican Communion.” Why give it up?
What is being ignored are the formal structures which are set up specifically to maintain western elitist hegemony over the Communion.
The point that ++Foley is making is that neither he, nor any other bishop of ACNA, left the Anglican Communion. There is no such statement anywhere. In order to remain in communion with the majority of provinces, the HAD TO leave TEC, since TEC is no longer in communion with 15 of the AC provinces, and in impaired communion with another 15. In fact, at no point in time did the ABoC formally dissolve the communion between the bishops and clergy that left TEC (in any ceremony or document I can find record of). He just (apparently) decided, as a matter of personal opinion, that the 2.5 million people who have left TEC over the last 50 years are ex-communicated by his see due to their maintaining orthodox doctrine which is now outlawed under TEC canons.
I don’t know, alpha. I just thought it was interesting to read Archbishop Foley’s comment. My impression in the past had been that those who left TEC didn’t consider themselves still part of the Communion. It would appear, in the Archbishop’s case at least, that he feels ACNA is the legitimate representative of the Communion in the US, regardless of what Canterbury feels, something that Nigeria, Sydney, and others might also believe.
I hope Archbishop Foley declines – what an insult !. Conservative Anglicans are the True and Faithful ones and we are still in the Anglican Communion ! – even more so than those who think they are Anglicans, They divert from the Bible anytime they want to “do their OWN thing” in society and expect all to follow down their road to destruction – NO THANKS ! We remain the only Anglicans true to the Faith …
[…] has been given to invitations to the new province in North America (ACNA), although the response from its Primate shows the problems faced even in describing such decisions without causing offence. This […]