I was a little concerned to read today in the Brisbane times that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is being described as a breakaway or splinter group in the media.  As an Anglican of somewhat non-liberal tendencies, it’s more than a little annoying.  Actually just generally as a Christian it’s annoying because most people in the press reporting on churches and issues of faith seem to have absolutely no idea about most things.  I’m actually fairly convinced that most of them would have trouble naming more than two differences between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic or even what a Muslim believes other than that infidels should die.  But back to my topic.  The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans seems to be, for all intents and purposes, merely an alliance within the Anglican Church.  And I have, for your enlightenment, even pasted the link to their statement and the section where they say they are not breaking away.

http://acl.asn.au/reference-documents/gafcon-final-statement/

Our fellowship is not breaking away from the Anglican Communion. We, together with many other faithful Anglicans throughout the world, believe the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism, which defines our core identity as Anglicans, is expressed in these words: The doctrine of the Church is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular, such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. We intend to remain faithful to this standard, and we call on others in the Communion to reaffirm and return to it. While acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Building on the above doctrinal foundation of Anglican identity, we hereby publish the Jerusalem Declaration as the basis of our fellowship.

Further reading through their statements (there are some bullet points further down the page of the statement, for those who struggle with large chunks of prose), they aren’t that controversial.  They’re just reaffirming what the Anglican Church believes – the articles of religion, that the church should proselytize those who are not Christian, etc.  Although the big one is that they don’t believe that marriage can be between any one but a man and a woman.  Which is fair enough.  That is in the Bible after all.  One of the big issues that the Anglican church has struggled with of late is that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a horrid, weasely, dolt who seems to have no idea what the Bible or even the Anglican Church is and seems to enjoy making flagrantly unchristian statements in the misguided belief that they are popular or modern.  When considering that people are leaving the more liberal Anglican churches in droves, shows that they are neither popular or modern.

So by now some of you will have realized that I am in fact and evangelical.  Mostly.  Whilst I sympathize with the more conservative elements in the church who say we shouldn’t ordain people who are attracted to people of the same sex, and we certainly shouldn’t marry some one to someone of the same sex, I’m not so sure about this not ordaining women as bishops thing.  One of the reasons why I left the Presbyterian church after going there for 11 years, was that they didn’t have a very good perception of women.  They wouldn’t let them be elders, there was one on the committee of management at my church, but she seemed to be there to take the minutes of the meeting, and they certainly wouldn’t let a woman teach in the church.  They made a concession that women were allowed to teach other women and also children, but that’s far from being in any sort of position of power.  They also rather hypocritically sponsored women missionaries who were teaching men in other countries.  I hope that it is because they just hadn’t through about it, rather than they thought that men in foreign countries were lesser than Australians.

Needless to say I went back to the denomination I grew up in.  The church I go to now is still an evangelical church, encouraging out reach (practicing it more than the Presbyterian church) and having a thorough, Bible-based teaching.  It also has a female minister and women get elected to the parish council.  In fact there were women on the committee selecting our new minister who started earlier this year.  Whilst there are still some in the congregation who may thing that this is not ideal, they are far from vocal.  The other reason why I think that some one could not attend an Anglican Church and be opposed to women being in positions of power and leadership, is because of who our figurehead is.  You see the Archbishop of Canterbury is equivalent to the role of Prime Minister in the Australian government (but with significantly less power).  But the head of the church is actually the head of our government – the monarch.  So at the moment our ultimate head of the church is a woman.  Additionally the church was well built up and firmly entrenched, not by Henry VIII, but by his daughter Elizabeth I, who introduced things like the common prayer book.  So I do not support Anglicans who oppose women being in positions of power and authority in the church.  They are hypocrites or do not understand the church, its beliefs, structures and history.

Again, it is a divisive issue in the church, and I doubt the issue will ever be resolved but I don’t think that it can be lumped with other more controversial positions held by the more liberal factions in the church.

For those actually interested I have added a couple of links from Anglican sites and also one from the UK, which is a little more accurate than the ones in Australia.  I’ve also pasted the link to the 39 Articles of Religion, which is what Anglicans believe.  It is written in middle-English so may sound a little old fashioned, which is fair enough as it was written around 400 years ago (I love the use of the term Romish Church!)

Announcement of FOCA

Sydney Anglican Announcement

Guardian Article

What Anglicans Believe – 39 Articles of Religion