Showing posts with label Chris Sugden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Sugden. Show all posts

Saturday, September 17, 2011

AMIE DECLARES ITS INDEPENDENCE FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

At the website of Anglican Mission in England, Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden write as follows:
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.