The Gafcon Missionary Bishop for Scotland and Europe

GAFCON UK

Some helpful recent blogs and articles which explain and comment on the response of Gafcon and ACNA to the decision of the Scottish Episcopal Church to change their Canons on marriage:

1. Gafcon Chairman’s June 2017 letter, by Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, Gafcon

[…] Gafcon stands ready to recognise and support orthodox Anglicans in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe as the drift away from apostolic faith and order continues. For reasons of mission and conscience, we can expect to find a growing number of orthodox Anglican congregations needing oversight outside traditional structures, as is already the case with the Anglican Mission in England.

The creation of a missionary bishop for Europe is an historic moment. It is a recognition that the era of European Christendom has passed and that in this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation, a new start is being made by building global partnerships for mission.

 

2. The Gafcon Missionary Bishop for Scotland and Europe, by Phil Ashey, American Anglican Council

"[...] Canon Andy Lines’ consecration will not be irregular or invalid.  His Holy Orders in the Province of South America have been duly and lawfully transferred to, and likewise received by, the ACNA. He will be consecrated by acting primates, archbishops and bishops of the Anglican Communion. His consecration will fall within the historical tradition of faithful Bishops who have created order in the Church during times of crisis. These are times when faith and doctrine have been threatened by others’ failure to guard against false teaching—or worse, have actively promoted such false teaching. One can trace this all the way back to Athanasius and the crisis of Arianism in the early Church. Faithful bishops like Athanasius disregarded the boundaries and autonomy of Arian dioceses in order to consecrate Biblically faithful bishops for Biblically faithful Christians. The consecration of a missionary bishop by GAFCON for Europe is as much an emergency as the consecrations that Athanasius and other faithful bishops performed, and just as necessary to guard the faith and order of the Church and prevent spiritual harm to biblically faithful Christians."

 

3. New hope for traditionalist Anglicans in the UK, by Eno Adeogun, Premier (features interviews with Canon Andy Lines and Archbishop Foley Beach)

 

4. Make up your mind, Justin: Is ACNA a province or not? by James Gibson:

[...] Justin Welby sat back and did nothing to prevent the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) from apostasizing itself. As Archbishop of Canterbury, titular head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, he should have intervened long before the SEC voted to abandon the faith and embrace sexual revisionism. Had he done so, he would have been fulfilling his responsibility as a bishop to maintain the unity of the church. Instead, he completely abdicated that responsibility, leaving faithful Christians in Scotland as sheep without a shepherd and forcing one of his own episcopal colleagues in England to break communion with the Scottish church.

 

5. Welby told ‘we cannot agree to disagree’ on sexuality  Harry Farley in Christian Today reports that Lee Gatiss of Church Society, normally very positive about the Church of England, strongly criticizes the policy of “good disagreement” over a core doctrinal issue.

 

6. Preventing schism in the Church of England, by James Oakley:

[...] In January 2016, the primates decided how to treat a province that changed its canons on marriage. Instead of following through on that, Welby's solution is to have another meeting of all the primates. In other words, the solution is to talk some more.

…Now, this may give the impression that the Archbishop's long-term aim is to keep everyone talking. If we can simply keep everyone sat around the same table, talking and walking with one another, remain part of the same denomination in spite of our differences of opinion, then we have managed to maintain unity.

…His letter is highly critical of the prospect of Anglican primates consecrating a bishop to work in another province. There is not one word of censure for the actions of SEC that have triggered this sad but necessary development.

…The Archbishop has chosen to lay in hard against those who would cross man-made provincial boundaries, whilst remaining silent about blatant infringement of the revealed will of God, as spoken by Jesus himself.