JERUSALEM | There will be no conservative-led schism within the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola told traditionalists attending the Global Anglican Future Conference Tuesday.
The weeklong gathering of 300 bishops and 700 clergy and lay leaders at the Renaissance Hotel hoped to offer a way forward for Episcopal and Anglican churches divided over homosexuality and biblical authority but unwilling to secede from the 77-million-member Anglican Communion.
“We are Anglicans by conviction and have no intention to start another church,” the Nigerian archbishop said.
While remaining steadfast in their opposition to what they termed the “apostasy” of the Episcopal Church, the leaders of the conference, also known as GAFCON, offered an olive branch to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams by pledging to work within the constitution and canons of the Anglican churches to resolve the crisis.
“Anglicans we are, Anglicans we’ll remain until the Lord shall return in glory,” Archbishop Akinola said.
GAFCON has drawn criticism from liberal church leaders. Washington Episcopal Bishop John Chane told National Public Radio last week that GAFCON was the “death rattle” for conservatives angered by moves toward the normalization of homosexuality within the Episcopal Church.
However, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda called the gathering of traditionalists “a new Reformation” that would take Anglicans “back to the Bible.”
“What was driving this is not politics, it is a passion for the Gospel,” said Bishop Martyn Minns, the former rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va., now a member of the Nigerian House of Bishops. “The words of politics had so far been absent from the deliberations.”
Organizers of the gathering - representing some two-thirds of the 55 million active Anglican churchgoers in the world - see GAFCON as the start of a confessing church movement within the denomination. Archbishop Akinola specified this would “liberate and set participants, particularly Africans, free from spiritual bondage” imposed by the “Episcopal Church and its allies.”
“Having survived the inhuman physical slavery of the 19th century, the political slavery called colonialism of the 20th century, and the developing world economic enslavement [of today], we cannot, we dare not allow ourselves and the millions we represent be kept in religious and spiritual dungeon,” he said.
Archbishop Akinola faulted Archbishop Williams for not quickly resolving the crisis, saying Archbishop Williams “was not interested in what matters to us, in what we think or in what we say.”
Archbishop Akinola skirted a question of whether Archbishop Williams is guilty of apostasy. “We are not able to agree on certain things,” he said.
In response to a question on gay marriage in the church, Archbishop Akinola said the innovation shows the church’s failure to maintain standards.
“Whenever there is a crack in the wall, you cannot stop the reptile from creeping in,” he said. “If the church had been faithful, we would not be in that mess.”
The conference got off to a rocky start. A meeting scheduled for June 19-21 in Jordan for conference organizers and bishops from Pakistan, Sudan and other Muslim countries that discourage travel to Israel was abruptly moved to Jerusalem after Jordan refused entry to Archbishop Akinola.
Archbishop Akinola reported that he and the organizers had passed through customs and immigration at the Jordanian border, when an immigration officer asked him to step into his office. Even though he was traveling on a Nigerian diplomatic passport and his entry had been approved earlier, the officer demanded to know the name of the archbishop’s mother, the date and place of his seminary training and other personal questions.
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