Gavin Ashenden

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Global South Anglicans make big effort to start cutting Canterbury ties that bind (Part I)

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Global South Anglicans make big effort to start cutting Canterbury ties that bind (Part I)

After a half-century of decline, the U.S. Episcopal Church has 1.5 million members, and its average weekly attendance was just above 500,000 before COVID-19 and 300,000 afterwards.

After decades of explosive growth, the Anglican Church of Nigeria claims about 18 million members (others say 8 million), and the Center for Global Christianity near Boston estimates it has 22 million active participants in worship.

Caught in the middle of these two trends is the Most Reverend Justin Welby, by Divine Providence the 105th Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and the "first among equals" among bishops in the 42 churches in the Anglican Communion. While his own flock claims 26 million baptized members, about 600,000 attend weekly services.

Now, Global South church leaders -- representing about 75% of Anglicans who frequent pews -- have decided that it's time to start cutting ties between the "Canterbury Communion" and the rest of the Anglican Communion.

“We have no confidence that the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the other Instruments of Communion led by him … are able to provide a godly way forward that will be acceptable to those who are committed to the truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency and authority of Scripture," warned the Global Anglican Future Conference, which met April 17-21 in Kigali, Rwanda. GAFCON IV drew 1,302 delegates from 52 nations, including 315 bishops.

Meeting together, leaders of GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches said they "can no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion, the 'first among equals' of the Primates. The Church of England has chosen to impair her relationship with the orthodox provinces in the Communion."

While this gathering in Africa drew little or no coverage from Western news organizations, Lambeth Palace released a brief response, noting that the Kigali Commitment statement echoed many previous claims about Anglican governance.


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There will always be an England? BBC helter-skelter cathedral report misses a crucial fact

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Let me state the obvious. This is one of those stories that people would worry about if it ran at a satire-news website like The Onion or, especially, The Babylon Bee.

It would fit either place since it combines British humor, pop culture and a 12th century cathedral.

But, no, this report is from the venerable BBC. And what a wild story it is, combining outlandish visuals with a solid hard-news angle that is perfect for religion-beat coverage. The only problem is that BBC totally omitted the serious-news content in this strange story. The headline states, “Norwich Cathedral: Bishop delivers sermon from helter-skelter.”

Helter skelter? No, we’re not talking about The Beatles song and there’s no link here, obviously, to the Manson Family. No, this is a story about a painfully hip bishop (#IMHO) and an oldline Protestant institution that is really, really anxious to pull a few people through its doors. Here is (hang on tight) the overture:

God would be "revelling" in the joy a "glorious" helter-skelter has brought to Norwich Cathedral, its bishop has told his congregation from its slide.

The fairground ride had been in the nave of the cathedral for 11 days. It was intended to give people a different view of the building, although some accused the cathedral of "making a mistake".

The Bishop of Lynn, the Rt Revd Jonathan Meyrick, delivered his sermon from halfway up the ride.

"God is a tourist attraction," he told his congregation during the cathedral's final service with the helter-skelter as a backdrop. "God wants to be attractive to us. ... for us to enjoy ourselves, each other and the world around us and this glorious helter-skelter is about just that."

The bishop had climbed to the top of the helter-skelter before edging halfway down the slide, where he stopped to deliver his sermon. He then received a loud cheer as he whooshed to the bottom.

On one level, this strategy worked, since cathedral officials noted that about 20,000 people paid a visit between August 7-18 and about 10,000 newcomers chose to slide down the helter-skelter.

The online version of this news story also did include a tiny note, and a quick hyperlink, to a traditional Anglican response to this rather unique approach to evangelism.


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BBC and Easter: If culture is upstream of politics, might doctrine -- for many -- be upstream of culture?

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BBC and Easter: If culture is upstream of politics, might doctrine -- for many -- be upstream of culture?

Ask most Americans to name the most important day on the Christian calendar and I'm afraid (as a guy who took a bunch of church history classes) that the answer you will hear the most is "Christmas."

That is a very, very American answer. As the old saying goes, the two most powerful influences on the U.S. economy are the Pentagon and Christmas. There's no question which holiday puts the most shoppers in malls and ads in newspapers (grabbing the attention of editors).

But, as a matter of liturgical reality, there is no question that the most important holy day for Christians is Easter, called "Pascha" in the churches of the East. I realize that St. Paul is not an authoritative voice, in terms of Associated Press style, but this is how he put it:

... If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Now, I am not here to argue about doctrine. What "Crossroads" host Todd Wilken and I talked about during this week's podcast (click here to check that out) was the fact that what religious believers affirm in terms in doctrine often plays a crucial role in how they live and act. Thus, it is often wise for reporters to ask core doctrinal questions in order to spot fault lines inside Christian communities, especially during times of conflict.

Here at GetReligion, I have repeatedly mentioned (some witty readers once proposed a drinking game linked to this) the "tmatt trio" of doctrinal questions that I have used for several decades now. Here is a version taken from some of my conversations with the late George Gallup, Jr.

* Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this happen?


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Does The Times get religion? A highly symbolic reader in England asks the question

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What should bloggers do in the age of higher and higher paywalls at major newspapers?

Frankly, we can't pay to read everything. You know? 

Yes, there are ways to take the URLs for stories and patch them into other programs and read the texts. But does that help the readers of this blog? We are committed -- as often as is possible -- to writing about news articles to which we can link, so that our readers have a chance to read the full texts for themselves (in part to see if our criticisms are valid).

The other day, I bumped into a pair of texts from The Times, as in London, that had been pulled out from behind that particular paywall. I was, of course, pulled in by the headline under which this mini-package ran: "The Times doesn't get religion."

The key text here was a piece about the meeting that the Archbishop of Canterbury has decided to hold in an attempt to deal with a host of doctrinal and discipline issues in his tense global Communion. Click here (and then here) to read some GetReligion pieces about coverage of this story. Can Archbishop Justin Welby save the Anglican Communion in any form that retains a true sense of Eucharistic Communion? 

The Times weighed in on that. First, let's look at a chunk of the Times piece and then we'll look at a really, really interesting letter to the editor that it inspired.

For more than a decade the Church of England has been consumed by backbiting and threats of schism as it debated the contentious issues of women bishops, gay clergy and scriptural literalism.


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