Anglican "crisis" addressed at global leadership conference

Church leaders representing 40 million Anglican churchgoers met this week to discuss the “crisis” in the Anglican Church.

The three day meeting, organised by the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, brought 200 clergy and laity from 30 countries together in London to address what they criticised as the attempt to “turn Christianity merely into a movement for social betterment”.

They said it was clear that the leadership in England had failed to hold the 77 million-strong worldwide Anglican Communion together and suggested that the Archbishop of Canterbury should in future be replaced with an elected chair.

Keynote Address

Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, leader of Kenya’s 13 million Anglicans and Chairman of the Primates Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, gave the keynote address. He said:

“Some sections of the Anglican Communion have been echoing the words of the serpent; ‘has God really said…?’ And their strategy has been to continue this dialogue endlessly in order to wear down resistance while all the time pursuing their self determined mandate of radical inclusion.

“While we should never shirk the hard work of biblical exposition, we can never disregard the plain teaching of the inspired text. It is that text, that Archbishop Cranmer was so keen to have available in the English languages in every parish church and translation of the scriptures into ethnic languages has been fundamental to the cultural transformation that the gospel brought in Africa and the rest of the world.

“So we must act in obedience to what the Lord requires and, knowing our weakness, in continual dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a truth which is precious to some of us through our roots in the East African Revival when the spirit of God renewed the church bringing a humble walk with God- conviction of sins, a thirst for God’s word, a simple lifestyle and an unquenchable desire for evangelism. It is these qualities that we need to animate our Global fellowship as we move forward together. As a powerful movement of renewal and transformation for that is what we are.

“We need to recover the vision of the Anglican Reformers, of ordinary believers knowing scriptures and being nourished by biblical teaching. Equally we need leaders, lay and ordained, able to give a robust defence of apostolic faith in the global public square. If we do not, secular ideologies which have so powerfully shaped liberal and revisionist Christianity in the Communion will tighten the grip. The Lord our God cannot allow it. He calls us to move on.”

Source

The address can be read in full here >