THE Church of England is a church "infected by the world, that
is unbelieving like the world, that is as immoral as the world,"
the chairman of the Fellowship of Confession Anglicans (UK and
Ireland), the Revd Paul Perkin, told the GAFCON conference last
week.
In a speech on Tuesday of last week, Mr Perkin cited statistics
suggesting that one in every four male clerics did not believe in
the Trinity, or in the Holy Spirit, or that "Jesus died to take
away the sins of the world." The principal of Oak Hill Theological
College, the Revd Dr Mike Ovey, told GAFCON that the C of E had "an
increasingly worldly view of grace, a cheap grace in which
repentance is redundant".
At a briefing for journalists on Tuesday, leaders who attended
the conference set out how alternative oversight for those who
share their concerns about the Church's leadership might work.
While the Nairobi Commitment recognises the Anglican Mission in
England (AMiE) as "an expression of authentic Anglicanism both for
those within and outside the Church of England", Dr Michael
Nazir-Ali, a former Bishop of Rochester, suggested that other ways
of offering oversight would emerge, particularly after the
publication of the Pilling report, which he suggested could be a
"red line" for "many people, and for some bishops".
The Vicar of Harold Wood, the Revd David Banting, who attended
GAFCON, spoke of how a previous diocesan bishop had agreed to
become a patron of Changing Attitude: "What does that do for the
local parish? We are confused," he said. "There was a distancing
between ourselves and that diocesan bishop. Our church wanted to
say: "you have moved; it is harder for us to submit to the sort of
leadership you would give.'"
The chairman of AMiE, the Rt Revd John Ellison, said that it was
"extraordinarily difficult for Anglicans in other parts of the
world to understand how the Church of England can give such
confusing signals about what it believes and what direction it is
taking."