During the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries we have seen time and again that when a revolution has occurred those who were formerly in charge (who are now holed up in a bunker somewhere or have fled the country) still claim that they are the government and issue orders on that basis.
The most spectacular example of this sort of delusion was the fact that after the Kuomintang regime led by Chiang Kai-shek lost the Chinese civil war in 1949 and fled to Taiwan, it still claimed to be the sole legitimate government of the whole of China, a claim which it continued to maintain until the end of the 1980s, even though it no longer had any factual basis.
I have been reminded of these stories of deposed regimes unwilling or unable to face reality as a result of reading the statement issued by Lambeth Palace in response to ‘The Kigali Commitment’ issued by GAFCON IV on 21 April.
The statement runs as follows: ….
This statement gives the impression that it will be the Archbishop of Canterbury and the three other Anglican ‘Instruments of Communion’ (the Lambeth Conference, the Primates Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC)) over which he presides that will determine the future course of world Anglicanism.
Having been at GAFCON IV in Kigali, I can say without any shadow of a doubt that this claim is as mistaken as the claim by the Kuomintang that they still ran China.
As we were frequently reminded at GAFCON IV, the churches represented by GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) represent the vast majority (some 85 per cent) of worshipping Anglicans around the world today, and both these bodies have now completely rejected the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Instruments of Communion and intend to reset the Anglican Communion themselves.
The last straw for them has been the support given by the Archbishop of Canterbury for proposals by the Church of England’s House of Bishops to permit prayers of blessing for same-sex couples (including those in civil same-sex marriages).
The position of the GSFA on the matter was made clear in its press statement on 20 February. This declared: …
What all this means is that the revolution has occurred. The Primates of GAFCON and the GSFA will work together to reset the future of worldwide Anglicanism on their own terms and as things stand at the moment, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Instruments of Communion will have no say in this at all.
Lambeth Palace needs to ‘wake up and smell the coffee.’ As an English Anglican, my experience at GAFCON was deeply sobering. The churches to which the vast majority of Anglicans belong feel completely betrayed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and by the Church of England as their mother church.
Their leadership role in the Anglican Communion is now over and the only way in which they can retain any degree of credibility among the orthodox majority in the Communion is if the proposals brought to the Church of England’s General Synod by the House of Bishops in February are withdrawn and the Church of England instead re-affirms its commitment to the orthodox position on marriage and human sexuality laid out in Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
If this does not happen, the only Anglicans in England who will be able to remain in full communion with the orthodox majority in the Anglican Communion will be those who continue to reject the Church of England’s new position.
The revolution has taken place. The old Anglican order has gone, and Lambeth needs to accept this reality.
Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
Read it all at Christian Today
