Per Christum Catholic Blog

It has been a busy summer for me (we are currently slowly moving to a new house, and cleaning the old place, and I have been visting family in there a lot too), so I haven’t been following the recent Anglican news like I usually do. This is a big moment for Anglican conservatives, as GAFCON just met in the Middle East. GAFCON stands for the Global Anglican Future Conference, and was made up of conservative Anglican leaders throughout the world. Some predicted that it would result in a new, separate Anglican communion (conservatives have been predicting this about every meeting since 2003), but in reality it resulted in a call for a continuing movement of conservatives that may eventually more to set up a separate ecclesiastical stucture. What they actually did at the meeting was a release a statement (Anglicans of all stripes are good at releasing statements…and coming up with Acronyms!). The statement essentially upholds Scripture as containing all things necessary for salvation, the first four ecumenical councils and three creeds as expressing the church’s rule of faith, and states that the 39 Articles are authoritative for Anglicans today.

I applaud conservative Anglicans for sticking together and staying tough amidst the calls to meld into moral and theological mushiness. However, GAFCON seems to be Reformed in approach, and not very Catholic (as Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans would define the term). This is not surprise, and is something I have been saying for awhile, which is that “conservative” Anglicanism worldwide is mostly a reformed, almost Calvinist, movement. When the supporters of GAFCON speak of a “reformed Anglicanism” it is true in more ways that one.

Of course, Rowan Williams is not too happy about GAFCON, neither is Episcopal Presiding Bishop Schori, and it looks like Anglicanism is going to be more fractured than ever. Some conservatives seem to want to play out the dispute within the structures of Anglicanism (which is a bit like slowly beating one’s head against a brick wall), and others prefer just to leave the connection to Canterbury and the English crown (which doesn’t really make one Anglican then, does it?), and neither option is ideal.

Sometimes I play out in my mind what I would do if I were an Anglican today. How would I respond? Where would I go? Honestly I probably would see myself being forced to choose between a Reformed movement or a liberal establishment, neither which would be satisfying, and probably look elsewhere, which is what I did in 2004.