The ordinations of three young Englishmen by the Archbishop of Kenya in June and the launch of the Anglican Mission in England was a "game-changer". It marked a turning point after four and a half years of discussions with and proposals to Lambeth Palace. These discussions were to seek a way of providing effective Episcopal oversight to those for whom this had become problematic in the Church of England.
The launch of AMIE and the establishment of its panel of bishops indicated that we would no longer play the game of Church of England politics as defined by the Church of England Establishment.
....
It has a different view of women in ministry that does not seek to compete as though it is a matter of power and status. It has a different view of marriage and sexuality which is not based on the interchangeability of the genders. AMIE resists the disaggregation of the issues as though they are all separate. It analyses the current malaise as a gradual process of destabilizing biblically faithful Anglican witness and ministry.
The writers use the analogy of the Arab Spring for the launch of their "game-changer" plan. The members of the AMIE group appear to see themselves as akin to the oppressed people in the Middle East.
And all along I thought it was women and LGTB persons who were the oppressed in the Church of England and that Archbishop Rowan Williams leaned over backwards to appease the anti-gay and anti-women folks. How mistaken I was!
H/T to Nicholas Knisely at The Lead, who says:
Much of this is familiar to people who remember the first moves of the AMIA movement here in the US back in 2000 and the subsequent irregular ordinations of Chuck Murphy and John Rodgers to the episcopate. This latest essay makes clear that the new organization in England is also planning to ignore the rules of the Anglican Communion when they get in the way of their goals.Yes, I believe I've seen this movie already.
This is the oppressed group in the CoE? Tell that Revd. Canon Jeffrey John!
ReplyDeleteRight.
ReplyDeleteHo-hum, another Protestant sect. {Yawn}
ReplyDeleteNo they aren't oppressed! It's much worse than that! They're persecuted!! Oh, well.
ReplyDeleteWhat are they so afraid of?
ReplyDeleteIT,
ReplyDeleteflippantly or seriously?
Flippantly: the last women who told them off for being ignorant puffed up pratts were their mothers and they're not ever going to allow a woman to tell them that from the pulpit. And lesbians have turned away from puffed up pratts completely, so they are also hated. And gay people have never joined the puffed up pratts club in the first place, so they have to be excluded too.
Seriously? I wish I knew! It would potentially be easier to find a counter strategy if one could actually understand this nonsense.
What struck me as I read the statement is that the writers mention 'Anglican', 'the Bible', and 'biblical', but they never once mention God, Jesus, or the Gospel.
ReplyDeleteI am intrigued by something that most of your regulars will not, I am sure, have noticed, which is that none of the prominent "conservative Anglican" sites I have checked (SF, T19 & D Virtue) has yet to utter a peep on this. Guess consensus on handling this has yet to emerge.
ReplyDeletewv "socat"
The problem may be that their mothers did not tell them off for that, Erika.
ReplyDeleteMimi,
ReplyDeleteColin Coward made just that observation in this latest post on the Changing Attitude blog.
Lapin,
Cherchez la femme? I should have known that it would be them wimmin's fault somehow :-)
Mimi,
ReplyDeleteColin Coward made just that observation in this latest post on the Changing Attitude blog.
Lapin,
Cherchez la femme? I should have known that it would be them wimmin's fault somehow :-)
Lapin, you're one of the few who reads the conservative sites, and I'm glad you do to keep us informed. The various groups may not yet have decided on the proper response. Once they do, they'll stay on message.
ReplyDeleteErika, cherchez la femme, indeed. Who will rid us of these meddlesome women?
In fact only about half a dozen sites have covered the story so far, the AMiE post and a small group of "liberal" Anglican blogs - Thinking Anglicans, The Leade, Wounded Bird & Fr Ron Smith's Kiwianglo.
ReplyDeleteEveryone else seems to be dumbstruck, as well they might be.
Kiss of death to the Covenant, I would guess.
Lesley Crawley has it too on Lelsey's Blog.
ReplyDeleteKiwianglo's post is very good.
ReplyDeleteKiss of death to the Covenant, I would guess.
Lapin, I'm not so sure.
I'm curious to see the response from Canterbury and York to the AMIE statement.