For responses to the communique from the GAFCON Primates' Council, see the following sites:

• Living Church
• Preludium
• TitusOneNine
• Thinking Anglicans
• Stand Firm
• Pluralist 

On first reading, it seems to me that:

• the meaning of 'The Council will consist of Primates assisted by an Advisory Board' implies that the Council is wider than that first envisioned at GAFCON. Peter Jensen is not a Primate, and after GAFCON he made that clear, but the widening of the Council to include an Advisory Board means that he is now on the GAFCON Primates' Council.  
• it was a good decision to drop the 'o' from the acronym of the 'Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans' -  making it clear that it is now FCA. In which case, why not call the GAFCON Primates' Council the FCA Primates' council? This would avoid the brand link with the Global South Anglican movement, which is clearly much wider than the 6 primates who have signed up to the present communique - five from Africa and one (from England) from the Southern Cone of South America. Perhaps it may be better to leave the GAFCON brand as a 'one off conference' and move forward with the FCA brand?
• John Martin's point, registered on this forum earlier today, about the secretariat being based in Sydney, rather than in Oxford, may well be significant. It is interesting that it has been privately reported that the first draft of the GAFCON communique from Jerusalem included the setting up of a GAFCON secretariat, but that that was deleted from the final edition of the communique. One has now been established.
• Why did only six  primates of the Council sign and not seven? The report from the Living Church site does not answer all the questions raised by this fact.
• Why the delay of seven days after the meeting before the communique was published? It may be that the seventh Primate, of the Province of West Africa, was being contacted. Archbishop Justice Akrofi has not signed. 
• the polite reference to  the Global South Anglican leaders who were not present at GAFCON is encouraging.
• at least the Anglican Covenant is mentioned - even if it is in somewhat dismissive tones - which is a move forward from the GAFCON communique where it was not mentioned at all.
• at least the door is left open on the Pastoral Forum, even if it is also mentioned in dismissive tones.
• Greg Venables, in the report of The Living Church, implies that the GAFCON/FCA Primates will attend the Primates' Meeting in early 2009. This is encouraging.
• the naming of the five bishops who are canonically bishops of the African provinces of Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya, as 'US Bishops' is a misnomer. They may be American citizens, but they are canonically not 'US Bishops' - or does this nomenclature imply that their canonical status, in the end, is not that significant?

On the fine print: I notice the Gafcon Secretariat has a Sydney PO Box address.  (a)  So is there a continuing role in Gafcon for Chris Sugden? and (b) is there a Jensen "unseen hand" even if the Archbishop of Sydney is not a signatory to the statement?

The communique from the first GAFCON Primates' Council meeting, which met in London 20-22 August, has been published today seven days later, GAFCON site, 29 August 2008.

What do people make of it and of the delay in its publication?

Thanks, Pete. You say:

And presumably the proposal to invent a Faith & Order Commission is in itself an admission that the current instruments aren't working?

Exactly. In his letter to the Primates of the Anglican Communion, 'The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today', written in June 2006, soon after the General Convention of The Episcopal Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated:

There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment... for this to survive with all its aspects intact, we need closer and more visible formal commitments to each other. And it is not going to look exactly like anything we have known so far... We have some very hard work to do to embody this more clearly. The next Lambeth Conference ought to address this matter directly and fully as part of its agenda.

That, two years later, is exactly what is happening. Note the phrase, 'we need closer and more visible formal commitments to each other'. This was elucidated by the Archbishop in his Presidential Address to the  Lambeth Conference last Sunday, in terms of 'intensification'. I commented on the significance of this word on this forum thread last Wednesday.

The choice at the Lambeth Conference is not between the GAFCON split and a boring 'continue as we are' Anglican Communion. It is clear, and the Archbishop has made it plain for two years, that we can't continue as we are.

The choice is between the GAFCON split and the new shape of the Anglican Communion - renewing and expanding the instruments of unity - which is emerging from the Windsor Continuation Group. The latter reflects especially 'Communion Conservative' thinking and some 'Communion Liberal' thinking, and this is the most hopeful sign of the Lambeth Conference holding the Communion together.

'Federal Liberals' in The Episcopal Church and elsewhere are not happy with this new emerging shape. It may be that 'Federal Conservatives' - especially 'Non-Canterbury Federal Conversatives' are also not happy with having a realistic conservative alternative to GAFCON.  

A key question will be whether some 'Federal Conservatives' will join with the 'Non-Canterbury Federal Conservatives' (who have boycotted the Conference already) in rejecting this new emerging shape (and have already been vociferous in their rejection of the Covenant), or whether some will be part of the new shape. I hope for the latter.

BTW, Pete, it's great to have your 'extra mural' input into the Lambeth Conference... I'm copying this comment onto the 'Lambeth Conference' forum thread, so let's continue there.

Which means that the issue that may well need to be addressed in relation both to Gafcon and Lambeth is - "How much do the four instruments of communion retain their credibility?"

1. The Archbishop of Canterbury retains it for me and I guess for most Fulcrum evangelicals, and for a huge majority of the wider communion, but he has only grudging support from some liberals and downright hostility from some in both pro-gay and pro-Gafcon camps.

2. The Primates' Meetings are difficult and expensive to convene, and many on both ecclesiastical left and right are deeply suspicious of them. They also bear the problem that some primates will agree with a line and then walk away and do something different.

3. The ACC is loved by those who believe that bishops, clergy and laity should all have a voice (ECUSA polity), but many don't trust the bureaucrats who run it, and see it as a politburo.

4. And the Lambeth Conference - we wait and pray, but the jury is out.

Others may not share this analysis, but it does say to me that the instruments of communion may no longer work to hold us together - and I think that is what Gafcon are saying, too. So to those who ask "By what authority is Gafcon speaking?", the answer must surely be "by the authority of those provinces and dioceses who have voluntarily entered into a new series of instruments of communion, because they don't think the old ones are any longer fit for purpose". The Gafcon instruments would be based around a confessional approach - adherence to the Jerusalem declaration - and an approach of mutual fellowship. They are different from the Anglican Communion instruments, but they arguably supply mechanisms for filling the current vacuum that allows the North Americans to play fast and loose.

And presumably the proposal to invent a Faith & Order Commission is in itself an admission that the current instruments aren't working?

Thanks, Obadiahslope (aka John). Perhaps, as a Defender of the Faith of Sydney (DFS) on this site and others, you could comment on the following extraordinary quotation from the Common Cause Partnership  (CCP), Anglican Communion Network site, 24 July 2008:

The intention of the CCP Executive Committee is to petition the Primates Council for recognition of the CCP as the North American Province of GAFCON

So is GAFCON being recognised as a church by the Common Cause Partnership?

This is a very serious question. The above petition implies that it is.

How can you have a province of GAFCON, if GAFCON is not a 'church' or a 'communion'?

A ‘fellowship’ does not have ‘provinces’. A ‘communion’ or a ‘church’ does. It seems that a ‘church within a church’ does too…

The serious questions raised by the Archbishop of Canterbury and by Tom Wright, about the authority which GAFCON claims for itself, are well founded.

Anglican Mainstream has published an 'EFAC commitment' following the meeting of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion at Trinity College, Bristol, 8-10 July 2008. It gives the headline 'Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion ‘heartily endorses’ GAFCON declaration'. There is not a list of names of those present.

In reading the 'commitment', this headline is misleading. The 'commitment' 'heartily endorses' the Jerusalem Declaration (of GAFCON) but does not mention at all the rest of the Statement of GAFCON, which surrounds the 14 points of the Jerusalem Declaration, and which goes on to outline the strategic way forward of alternative episcopal oversight.

The commitment states: 'We heartily endorse the fourteen points of the Jerusalem Declaration of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) and, like those at GAFCON, are fully committed to remaining within the Anglican Communion, and to bearing joyful witness to evangelical distinctives.'

It is worth noting that the GAFCON petition, which Anglican Mainstream has been urging people to sign, mentions both the 'Jerusalem Declaration' and the 'Statement on the Global Anglican Future'.

'I stand in solidarity with the Jerusalem Declaration and Statement on the Global Anglican Future.'