Hi, I'm Hugh. I've just spent 3 years studying at the University of Sussex, I now work as a church apprentice in Brighton and do part time web design. This blog is serves as a place to share my thoughts on life, theology and anything else that interests me at the time...
I love when Driscoll gives those little quips - he describes Billy Graham, John Stott, J.I. Packer and Francis Schaeffer as “The Four Horseman of Evangelicalism”. He says this in a 20 minute interview with Sydney Anglicans (Peter Jensen possibly). There’s also loads of great video content based around GAFCON.
So GAFCON have released their statement here, which basically just affirms that which the Anglican church has always believed.
Rowan Williams has responded to it in his own statement.
Firstly, it smacks of arrogance to say this is not ‘colonialism’ but at the same time to assume he has authority to speak on behalf of the whole Communion, and with more authority than African Bishops who have more Anglicans under their oversight.
Second, the quote below highlights the difference between Williams viewpoint and Biblical Christianity:
A ‘Primates’ Council’ which consists only of a self-selected group from among the Primates of the Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion. And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries is fraught with difficulties, both theological and practical – theological because of our historic commitments to mutual recognition of ministries in the Communion, practical because of the obvious strain of responsibly exercising episcopal or primatial authority across enormous geographical and cultural divides.
Williams speaks of theological problems, but notice he does not appeal to Scripture, or even to the Creeds or the Articles. He appeals to historic traditon, this is not a theological argument!!
So it seems my post reporting on Jim Packer’s comments while speaking at Holy Trinity Eastbourne have caused a little bit of a stir in the virtual and real-life press. Few people were interested with Packer’s insightful analysis of Liberalism, or his thoughts on the future of the Anglican church, but on one sentence - “I would say with great respect Archbishop, I believe that the way of wisdom is for you to resign.”
The story has been mentioned by Martin Beckford in the Telegraph, Ruth Gledhill in The Times and on the Church Times Blog. It’s also been discussed on Peter Kirk’s blog. Now personally I don’t think it’s a huge story by any means, but it just goes to show how the media has changed, I can blog something which otherwise would go unheard outside its original audience, isn’t technology good?!
You can listen to Dr. Packer’s talk yourself, and the question time.
How he’s been enjoying GAFCON and why he won’t be going to Lambeth…
There’s loads of other videos there, little snippets from the conference including Vaughan Roberts.
Last night I went to Holy Trinity Eastbourne to listen to Dr. J.I. Packer speak, the title of his talk was ‘Lessons to be learned from the Canadian Church Experience’. This comes in response to the rumblings in the Anglican church and the personal experiences of Jim Packer and other Canadian ministers in dealing with their liberal Bishop, Michael Ingham. 3 months ago I blogged about these issues, Packers De-licensing and his response to Ingham.
With that background in mind Packer set out to define 4 terms involved in the current debates:
Dr. Packer went on to give the basic facts about his situation in the Canadian church, the history, how it happened and how things stand now. He highlighted the changing situation, that Bishops are no longer just theoretical heretics but are heretics in what the practise. He referred to Acts 27:27, Paul in the storm and used this as a metaphor to speak of being faithful through the storm in the hope of reaching land.
Big Jim then addressed 4 questions in conclusion…
The question-time that followed came up with the usual questions from slightly ‘un-balanced’ folk, and a few good ones - “Dr. Packer, if you could have 5 minutes with the Archbishop of Cantebury, what would you say?”…
Packer stated that Rowan Williams’ views about homosexuality (documented before becoming A of C, and not changed since) mean that he is not qualified to lead the Anglican Communion and enforce rules layed down at Lambeth in 1998. Big Jim was clear, “Rowan Williams should resign”!
It so happened that earlier in the day I’d done some computer training with the Holy Trinity office staff, so as payment I got 3 free Packer books - God has Spoken, 18 Words, and Growing in Christ… good times.
The future of the Anglican church is uncertain, but it seems inevitable that in the coming months things will start to move… the Lambeth Conference happens next month, but happening right now is GAFCON - Global Anglican Future Conference! This is essentially an ‘alternative Lambeth’, for 300 orthodox Bishops from the Anglican Communion.
Colin Slee (Liberal, gay-agenda-pushing, Very Revd.) described GAFCON on Radio 4 as a “a very small group” - Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Southern Cone, Sydney, plus others - this represents at least half of the Anglicans worldwide.
Wallace Benn, Bishop of Lewes, and Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester are members of the GAFCON leadership team and are there in Jerusalem now. You can watch events unfolding at GAFCON as they are streamed live, see below…
In other news Wallace Benn has been very rude to me, he said in reference to my lovely girlfriend, and I quote - “It’s obvious that God must have given her to you… there’s no way you could have got her yourself!”
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