In response to Nick Baines and further to 'anonymous contributors' on the Fulcrum forum, I don't mind who knows that I am Soapy Sam.

You see how the Fulcrum forum works: one is prompted for a nickname on signing up, and most contributors choose one which isn't their actual name.  That's why 'Soapy Sam', and not because I particularly wish to be anonymous.  Particularly not, given that Nick Baines thinks it's an issue.

My name is Paul McKechnie, and I'm an Associate Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, in Sydney, Australia.

Follow-up question on gay bishops, since Nick Baines is positive that there were some at GAFCON, too.  (There are fine lines here and I can't draw them:  by 'gay' I'd mean 'homosexual and sexually active' and wish to exclude e.g. 'celibate bishops, not attracted to women, who once did something they  now regret'--but, who can tell, by mere guesswork?)

The question is, if there are as many gay bishops as Nick Baines thinks, including at GAFCON, why are they letting Gene Robinson stew as the 'only openly gay bishop'?

A second matter concerns Primates and possible deposition, and relates to why I think Nick Baines' answer on the Fulcrum forum deals with imponderables.  A Primate might say to another bishop any of these things:

I advise you to go to GAFCON;

I strongly advise you to go to GAFCON;

Go to GAFCON, or you'll regret it;

Go to GAFCON, you worm, or, so help me, I'll see you deposed and begging on the street.

... and we aren't going to know which, except if actual proceedings (or unaccountable resignations) result.  With all respect to Nick Baines, even if a bishop, or more than one, has hinted to him that unfair pressure was applied, it's still a matter of hearsay--and I don't think there's any proof that more unfair pressure was applied to bishops to go to GAFCON than was applied to others to go to Lambeth.

Accordingly while admitting that Nick Baines knows more about bishops than I do, I don't think he's made good his case for believing that, 1.  There are gay GAFCON bishops, but they are suppressed more efficiently by their superiors than gay Lambeth bishops, and, 2.  American bishops are being deposed, but the situation is almost the same--certainly morally equivalent--on the GAFCON side.

1.  Nick Baines writes of  'the gay contingent at GAFCON'.  I don't know who he means.  I wouldn't ask him to out someone who doesn't want to be outed, but could he please respond and add evidence of the existence of this gay contingent?

2.   Nick Baines writes of the threat of deposition of bishops by autocratic Primates.  I'm not a cleric let alone a bishop, so I don't have the inside knowledge he must have, and I haven't seen this reported.  Would Nick Baines please say what bishops, outside the USA and Canada, are being threastened with deposition by what Primate or Primates?

'Liberal evangelical', historically, is a perfectly comprehensible term.  If someone claims it today (I don't know that they do), I assume that person is proud of it.  Me, I wouldn't describe anyone as either 'evengelical' or 'liberal' if I thought there was a chance that person might take offence at the epithet. 

Geoffrey Hoare writes of:  '... seeking partners throughout the world in order to sustain the possibility of broad, relational graceful, generous, inviting catholicity. One of the first steps would be a move to begin planting churches in England ...'

OK, bring it on.  But it's easier to talk about mission than actually to do it.

For people like us, nersen, there's no such thing as 'signing up' for GAFCON, or for Lambeth:  they are both things for bishops.  At GAFCON they spoke of setting up a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans which lay people could join, and clergy who aren't bishops, but recent web searches don't seem to suggest that it's active yet.

I don't see that it helps to speculate whether one kind of evangelical or another will ever understand the Church of England.  Though I suppose that's what's been done, with people's livelihoods at stake, at Wycliffe Hall.