THE Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, has defended the decision to hold the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in July this year, before the Lambeth Conference, as being “absolutely necessary”.
Writing in his column in the current issue of the Sydney diocesan newspaper Southern Cross, he says that the outcomes from the Lambeth Conference have confirmed in his mind “the wisdom of not attending”.
Acknowledging that “not all of you were comfortable about our decision not to attend Lambeth this year”, he argues that those who “say that we should have gone to Lambeth to make our voices heard . . . fail to understand how Lambeth was designed”. “The best way to make our voices heard in world Anglicanism . . . was to attend GAFCON instead.”
The time for “negotiation and patience is well and truly past”, he writes, in an implicit criticism of the Lambeth strategy of not reaching decisions. This continues a process “which has demonstrably failed to protect orthodox Anglicans, let alone deliver a return to biblical standards. Worse, it plays into the hands of those who believe that the longer time goes by, the more we will all accept the novel teaching.”
In the same issue, the prominent Sydney layman Robert Tong, a former member of the Anglican Consultative Council, who attended GAFCON, declares the Lambeth Conference was a “missed opportunity to address the crisis in the Anglican Communion”.
Lambeth has not taken the opportunity to discipline “theological innovators”; to act positively to stand with the parishes and dioceses now in litigation over property; to engage with GAFCON and the Jerusalem Declaration; or to redress the “now indefensible ‘England-centric’ nature of the Instruments of Communion”.
“The heartbeat of the Anglican Communion is now in Africa, not London or New York,” Mr Tong concludes.
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