Readers, can you help me? I present to you four statements. If you can reconcile them, I would be interested to see how. I am quite sincere.

From the GAFCON Final Statement (Jerusalem Declaration, #4):

We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.

From the 39 Articles (Article XVIII):

The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

From a recent statement of the Bishop of Forth Worth:

It has been a joy to participate in the GAFCON experience in Jerusalem, and I welcome and endorse the proclamation that has been issued at the conclusion of our week of deliberation and prayer.

From the Customary of the Diocese of Forth Worth (Section III):

The Blessed Sacrament is to be reverently reserved (generally in one kind) in a tabernacle or aumbry in the church. This reservation is indicated by a Presence Lamp (or Sanctuary Lamp), which is kept burning at all times.

I just don’t see how Anglo-Catholic worship can be reconciled with GAFCON theology. I’m interested to know how it’s possible.

No, I’m not talking about 7WD, though I could use a copy editor. Much to my chagrin, I find typos and grammar “issues” too regularly here. I guess I should get in the habit of reading what I’ve written before I hit the “Publish” button. But I digress.

I’m thinking our Presiding Bishop needs a copy editor. She seems to be an even-handed leader, remarkably free of anxiety in her speech and writing. One bishop described her style in the House of Bishops as “dispassionate.” That’s a good thing. So you’d expect someone like this to be carefully balanced in her writing just about all the time.

Her response today to the GAFCON statement has a glaring gaffe. She refers to their statement as an “emission”, as in “Much of the Anglican world must be lamenting the latest emission from GAFCON.” That word choice is regrettable. It needlessly demeans people, and it undermines the rest of her very reasonable statement. Had she simply said “latest statement” from GAFCON, her overall purpose would have been accomplished more effectively. If a good copy editor had seen the text first, this simple mistake might have been corrected.

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Contrary to the impression that some people have, not everyone in ECUSA is liberal and not everyone in the “Global South” provinces is conservative. More to the point, there are plenty of people who would like to move past all these categories. Many of us would like to focus on the work of the church in worship, evangelism, formation, and mission.

Here’s a case in point, showing that not everyone in Uganda is on board with Archbishop Henry Orombi’s agenda of schism:

Archbishop Henry Orombi found time last week to attend the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) in Jerusalem.

There, according to press reports, and in line with the traditionalist objectives of the conference, “the Archbishops of Uganda and Nigeria attacked the Archbishop of Canterbury’s failure to discipline the US Episcopal Church for consecrating an openly gay bishop (Gene Robinson) in 2003.”

Internal Anglican politics have no interest for me. But what does interest me is that busy Orombi should be worrying so much about what is happening in faraway USA, spending days on something irrelevant for Uganda in Jerusalem, when he should be giving priority to his domestic agenda.

And surely topmost in that agenda is the corruption that is here, there and everywhere in our country.

Yes, there are things more important than the “crisis” in the Anglican Communion. It seems that more and more people are wanting to just get on with life and discipleship.

This is nothing to do with anything in particular today. It’s been sitting in my RSS clippings folder, so I thought I’d post this today. It’s a video that’s inspiring, provocative, and beautiful.

I would like to think this will be my last GAFCON-themed post. There are more pressing matters, after all. But today Archbishop Rowan Williams has responded to yesterday’s final statement from the gathering in Jerusalem. In this statement, conservative primates have appointed themselves sole guardians of the “real” Anglican faith, rejecting all previous and present Anglican authority. You might expect Williams to have other thoughts and indeed he does.

He message is gracious, noting first that most of the GAFCON statement would be agreeable to nearly all Anglicans. In my initial response to the statement, I should have noted this myself — rather than merely noting the disagreeable bits. In any case Williams asks us to assume the best of those who would subvert the authority of the Communion. But he then criticizes the statement on several fronts.

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When it comes to parish ministry, in can be important to monitor the angle that mainstream media takes on religious stories. I can tell when some reporter has written another schism-coming-and-ECUSA-is-about-to-be-punished article. People at coffee hour might ask, “What happens if we get ‘kicked out’?” I always say (a) that’s not going to happen and (b) it wouldn’t affect parish ministry and (c) I’d be sad at any additional division in the Church.

In any case, it’s worth glancing at a few articles that have appeared prominently on websites today. They’re likely to be in newspapers tomorrow. I’m not going to add much additional commentary on these articles or the recent GAFCON statement, other than what I’ve already said.

• Reuters has this: “Conservatives say not quitting Anglican Communion.” Lots of quotes from David Anderson and Archbishop Akinola. No balancing quotes from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the ACO, or ECUSA.
• There’s an AP story, but I’m not linking to it. AP has behaved very badly, attempting to collect licensing fees from anyone who quotes more than five words, and no blog should link to them.
• The NY Times has this: “Anglicans Face Wider Split Over Policy Toward Gays.” More balanaced than the Reuters article, and includes a quote from NY Bishop Mark Sisk.
• Uganda’s government paper, New Vision, reports that the schism has been accomplished: “Anglican church splits over homosexuals.”
• In the UK, the Telegraph has: “Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sidelined by new global Anglican movement.”

The faux newspaper illustration is courtesy of the Add Letters newspaper headline generator.

My friend and colleague here in Little Rhody has started a new blog. I encourage you to add “Videtur quod” to your RSS reader. Father John Alexander is a sharp thinker and a gifted priest. He is considerably more conservative than me, and he is a model of grace and generosity. A few years ago, the Providence Journal did a hatchet job on Bishop Geralyn Wolf. Thinking they’d get some explosive quotes, they contacted Fr. Alexander. Though he does not recognize women’s Holy Orders, he was magnanimous toward our bishop. That’s because he practices Christian respect, not because it’s trendy to talk about baptismal vows, but because it is the Christian thing to do.

There’s not a lot of content on his blog yet, but I fully expect he’ll have some good stuff there in the days, weeks, and months to come. I know that I won’t agree with everything he writes, but what he offers will be challenging, thoughtful, and well articulated.

If you’re around Providence on a Sunday, you might like to visit his parish — St. Stephen’s. It’s got beautiful liturgy, solid preaching, and great music. That’s the new blogger in this photo, celebrating mass. Of course, I wish St. Stephen’s allowed women priests, but we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one for now…

Visit his blog, and visit his church.

I’m glad the MadPriest is back.

Today, before I checked my RSS reader, I hadn’t given a thought to GAFCON. Here’s what happened today in one parish priest’s ministry:

• I opened the church so a florist could get in to prepare for a wedding.
• I officiated at said wedding, and saw much joy and celebration. I preached on John 15 and the sacrament of marriage, and I think the patristic writers would have found nothing surprising.
• I visited a family grieving the loss of a man who was husband, father, and grandfather.
• I paid someone’s electric bill so their electric service could be restored. While doing that, I developed a special hatred for National Grid’s automated telephone system.
• I spoke with a family who are looking for a church. They’ve been wanting to find a church, but can’t quite get motivated make it on a Sunday. They’ll be in soon, they say. I believe them.
• I finished up our weekly announcements, since the parish administrators were out this week. I had to write a few notices for upcoming parish events and ministry opportunities.There’s a lot going on.
• I visited a woman who may or may not be near death — and I spoke with her family. We said prayers together.

In all this, no one asked me about my views on the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson. No one wanted to know if CANA should be able to take ECUSA property. No one asked me if I was bothered by something some Episcopal Church leader has said or done recently.

Instead, there was a regular hunger for the Good News — the news that God’s love is manifest to us in the life of Jesus Christ and in his teachings. The Good News is that God can bring the dead to new life. The Good News is that God provides. The Good News is that God offers us salvation. Those are the things that count. Focus on anything else is mere distraction from the essentials.

Our Christian commandment for this earthly life is clear. It was the message of the wedding sermon: “Love one another as I have loved you.” That’s what really matters.

Over at the Episcopal Cafe, Jim Naughton says this:

Step back from the details of this particular document for a moment, and consider the nature of GAFCON. It has brought together bishops from some of the poorest countries on Earth to deliver the residents of some of the richest suburbs in America from living in a Church to which they cannot dictate terms. Zimbabwe is on fire. Darfur is bleeding. Ethnic strife and pandemic disease rage across the African continent while these bishops devote themselves to rescuing the Episcopalians of Orange County, California and Fairfax County, Virginia from persecution that does not exist. And how will they achieve this? By calling the world to faith in the Gospel as it was delivered to them by representatives of an empire that conquered their homelands, stole their resources and denied their ancestors even the most basic human rights.

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or weep.

Maybe a bit of both.

A final draft of the GAFCON statement hit the blogosphere this evening. (There’s a raging controversy over at StandFirm about the accidental violation of an embargo that reveal this document a day early.) Others have already commented on the text. I want to single out just a few bits with some early thoughts. Tomorrow, after the final version is approved, I may have more to say.

It’s a thoroughly protestant and evangelical spin on Anglicanism. It is not historic Anglicanism. The people behind GAFCON are strongly united in their opposition to the sacramental inclusion of GLBT people in the life of the church. Beyond that there is great diversity. Some of these people support women’s ordination, while others oppose it. Some are Anglo-Catholic, while others are low church evangelicals. A few of them even support lay presidency in the Eucharist. I don’t see how these diverse views will survive when they have left the Anglican Communion and the taint of ECUSA. What will unite them? How will they make room for Anglo-Catholics on one side and ardent low church Sydney Anglicans (where chasubles are canonically forbidden, it seems)?

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This one has been wandering around the Interwebs for a couple of years, but it makes me laugh every time. Enjoy!

By the way, Ann gets the credit for this one too. Wow!