Dear Friends

we have just published the Fulcrum Statement on AMiE.

please use this thread for discussion.

blessings, Jody

How much do we know about AMIE? The GAFCON press release has appeared in several places but the only first had report of the launch I have seen is Charles Raven's.

 I am intrigued by the "secret ordination of three unnamed English ordinands which recently occurred without public announcement in Kenya." This reads like a newspaper story. Does Fulcrum have any further information on this? Are you saying more than "three English ordinands who had been ordained in Kenya without much publicity were introduced to the meeting"? Were they ordained with a bunch of Kenyan ordinands and given the same publicity locally?

Fulcrum speaks of "consultation among evangelicals and with the Church of England rather than by unilateral actions". This is easy people like Graham Kings and Tom Wright to say as insiders. From the pew the view is rather different. Bishops are imposed on us by the Crown. Our vicars won't say boo to them as they value their pensions and of course have sworn the infamous oath of allegiance. Colin Coward seems to know how many bishops are homosexual but won't well us who they are. Bishop's used to speak their mind but now they keep their doubts to themselves. I find the Anglican Church in Wakefield diocese quite stultifying and have recently sought gospel fellowship elsewhere. I have not heard or read a credible profession of faith from our bishops. I welcome AMIE. As a layperson I want to know where I can find gospel fellowship. My message to AMIE is "bring it on."

Dave

Glad the statement calls for dialogue etc..... but is this not a call for institutional unity with and respect for false teachers?  Not priorities, to say the least ...in the bible.

Institutional unity? What's that - is that not the person (Nersen Pillay) who continually refers in his broken record to the 'mind of the communion'?

As regards the statement: I am not an Anglican, but I know plenty enough inside who will argue just as strongly for inclusive ethics regarding sexuality, and so would I - and if you believe in indabas and the like as processes, then you are going to have them with people who disagree completely and directly. Thus you get the entryism of the GAFCON people and all their methods, most of which have had the impact so far of a pinprick. The strategy was given at the now infamous Reform lecture by the Wycliffe Principal before he started removing people: that the liberal evangelicals as they see them form a barrier, and the real opposition is those who disagree on sexuality completely and directly. So when are you going to realise that you need a Neil Kinnock, otherwise you will have the outsiders on the inside.

Let us hope that AMIE will resist the temptation to see itself as the one and only arbiter of true teaching.

Let us hope it will also avoid following the Anglican Mainstream strategy of "the worse, the better"

Among the AMIE names already published there are reasons both for hope and for concern.

Pluralist

If Reformed believers must now practice entryism, it is because they were expelled from the Church in the Great Ejection of 1662. Some doubt that the Church of England has never recovered from this.

Dave

I think the first of the affirmations raises crucial questions:

What is a "biblically based respect for order"?

it seems that order has already broken down, most recently with the inability of the Archbishop of Canterbury to convene the Primates in Dublin.  I would appreciate a thoughtful piece on what Scripture says about order within the church, comparable to the well crafted piece on Women and Authority.  The launch of AMiE is said to have followed several years of negotiations with C of E leadership, presumably an impasse was reached and the leaders of AMiE feel they are acting in obedience.  

In Canada, a similar impasse has been reached.  Following our House of Bishops' meeting in April, only 6 bishops signed a document committing to respect the Windsor Moratoria.  This leaves the majority of Canadian Anglicans having to choose whom to obey.  The Covenant is clear that no province can be compelled to bring its teaching in line with that of the Communion, but that mutual recognition requires mutual accountability.

What is "proper regard to the authority of the Church of England structures"?

Many Fulcrum forum threads have raised the concern that we as Anglicans lack a coherent approach to false teaching.  It would be very helpful to see the Church of England develop strategies for conflict resolution that could be shared in other provinces.  Looking to our foundational documents, the XXVIth article does envision circumstances where a minister might need to be deposed.  How can we address leaders whose actions have broken the trust given them?  

I would also like to address some of the challenges that follow the affirmations:

Fulcrum fully and unambiguously supports the full establishment of women bishops whilst also supporting the creation of a society for conservative evangelical opponents which will not compromise this crucial development. The nature of this society, however, is radically different.

The ACNA is currently working out its position on Women's Ordination.  ACNA's archbishop is recognized as a Primate by the GAFCON primates.   ACNA includes  many women priests in its Canadian diocese (Anglican Network in Canada).  

The creation of a panel of bishops who “aim to provide effective oversight in collaboration with senior clergy”. This represents the creation of a structure of alternative episcopal oversight apart from the Church of England.

Aren't the bishops named in the AMiE launch statement members of the C of E?  Alternative episcopal oversight within a national church was suggested by the Windsor report for North American churches.  As the Covenant process unfolds, what will be the relationship between dioceses who wish to continue to be recognized within the wider communion and those who do not abide by the House of Bishops' report on Human Sexuality?

I think we should follow Richard Bews advice:

We must trust that comment on this development will focus on what has actually been said and done – the strategy, and the commitment to remain in the Church of England – rather than base its evaluation on conjured-up hypothetical suppositions about what might or might not happen in the future.

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2011/06/30/anglican-mainstream-column-for-cen-on-amie/

Even if Fulcrum is not jumping the gun many posters on ""Thinking" Anglicans" are!

Dave

AMiE would appear to be lumping together a number of important issues including conflicts over church-planting, disagreements over homosexuality, difficulties with bishops over ordinations and the concerns of evangelicals opposed to women bishops.

The conflict is much deeper than these issues.  The conflict revolves around the definition of the Christian faith.  To isolate these particular areas of conflict is to trivilaize the nature of the conflict.

All these do need to be addressed.

How?  You can talk all you like about 'addressing issues' but everyone knows that none of those issues will be satisfactorily addressed.  You can't square the circle of female bishops.  How do you then hope deal with homosexual bishops?  And what about apostate bishops of whatever sexual orientation?  Talk can't solve problems that are by now burned into the ideological DNA of the organization.  The problems cannot be solved by earnest dialogue and compromise.  There are essential mutually-exclusive principles at stake, and those principles cannot be surrendered with integrity by either side.

To address them with integrity, however, they need to be treated separately and by working through consultation among evangelicals and with the Church of England rather than by unilateral actions.

Since the CoE is becoming relentlessly TECified, this amounts to a call to wait patiently for the executioner.  As more and more revisionist bishops get appointed, who is going to listen to the needs of those who hold to a theology that revisionists are actively seeking to exterminate?

We therefore call upon those evangelicals who have started down this new path to talk with Fulcrum and the full breadth of evangelicals who share many of their concerns but who question their strategy. We believe that only in this way can those who have launched AMiE hope to secure what they claim they wish to find, a goal to which Fulcrum is also committed - a way forward together in mission as evangelicals within the Church of England.

I'm not sure what talking with Fulcrum and sharing concerns is supposed to accomplish.  It's not like Fulcrum doesn't already know those concerns.  This seems nothing but a tactic to divert people from taking action that threatens the institution of the CoE.  "Get them to do something useless.  Make them feel better by letting them vent."  In the end, nothing will get done.

Whatever the current plans of the AMiE, it will become the genesis for an alternate Anglican presense in England.  It cannot be otherwise.  The CoE is becoming more and more like TEC with each passing year.  It is absolute fantasy to think that conservatives are going to hang around indefinitely while this metamorphosis occurs.  They must eventually leave.

When people are given no acceptable options, they create their own options.  No amount of talk and discussion is going to deter them.  Two mutually-exclusive religions are fighting for control, and it seems the revisionists must eventually win.  So the conservatives must leave.  The CoE will have to live (or die) with the consequences.

carl

Thank you Carl,

You state the problems well. The position of Evangelicals in the Church of England has certainly not geot better since Reform was frounded in 1993. The problems are now more pressing than they were then. On this subject as on others Fulcrum calls for more discussion. This has little chance of sucess and in the mean time the work of the Gospel is impeded. What has changed since 1993?

1. George Carey has been replaced by Rowan Williams. Some of Dr Carey's views were closer to Fulcrum than Reform but he was held in high regard throughout theevangelical camp. It has always been difficult to decipher what Rowan Williams stands for. One wishes that the clarityof expression he leart in politcs had carried over to his theology where obscurity seems to be a virtue.

2. The Cof E has declined in numbers. It is now understaffed and under resourced. It seems to be preparing for the liquidator. 

3. A passion for church planting has spread to the Conservative Evangelicals from the Charismatics. On the old model evangelicals who did not play the CofE version of the post code lottery were allowed to meet quietly in their own homes but their ministry was limited to those areas cordoned off for evangelicals by parish boundries. Now they want to meet together in their own neighbourhood and evangelise their neighbours. Cergy who reject their vision of the gospel with the support of like minded bishops are able to impede their faithfulness to the great commission.

Things have got worse in the last twenty years and Fulcrum is not offering anything to improve the situation. 

Dave

From the Church Times.

The chairman of Fulcrum, the Revd Stephen Kuhrt, said: “What is sad is that most of these things are unveiled suddenly, almost always in secret. It usually turns out there has been a huge amount of planning, and something is unveiled to almost create facts on the ground.”

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=115024

I don't understand how you unveil in secret so I assume this is a misquote.  They decide what to do, make some preparations and then announce it. I do not understand the criticism. If they had issued a press release in January saying this year we plan to do this that and the other, they would have been equally criticized. Perhaps I should criticize the bishops recent secret meetings on homosexuality. Its all nonsense.

Dave

John Richardson reminds us of the way Fulcrum was launched http://ugleyvicar.blogspot.com/2011/06/fulcrums-listening-ear-to-amies.html Ho Hum !

Dave