Wycliffe Wreckage and The Strategy

It's hard to keep up with the destructive goings on spilling out of Wycliffe Hall.

It is the college undergoing revolution in order to strategically tackle the open evangelicals first and then "the liberals". The revolutionary Dr Turnbull is having quite an effect: 40 per cent of staff members have left already with a management style of the bull in a china shop. I have updated my webpage about the goings on of this good example of a conservative evangelical strategy, to have the right kind of ministers trained to tackle the Church of England. There is the interview with Eeva John, who has written two letters at least about the dismissals, and Clare McInnes has gone public too, because she reckons the minutes of the governing Council meetings do not reflect what went on in terms of her own objections. The University of Oxford also thinks that Wycliffe Hall is no place for Oxford undergraduates and that, as a small place, it is particularly suffering from such tensions inside the Hall.

Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury visited The Episcopal Church (TEC) House of Bishops (HOB), and TEC HOB decided to extend its previous position it had agreed to (not to approve active gay relationship bishops, not to authorise gay blessings) in order to keep in with the Anglican Communion, and the Joint Standing Committee (with a tiny bit of dissent) has said well done. Some Primates (around the British Isles, for example) have said it has done enough as well. Nevertheless the Africans remain itchy, and many primates have not spoken yet. The Common Cause Partnership of dissenting congregations leaving The Episcopal Church has decided to try and work more closely together, despite some members being vehemently opposed to ordaining women, some in favour, and with lines of bishops going out to different Anglican centres of authority - it is incredibly messy and any new denomination a candidate for splitting itself. What matters is what these African provinces, which have said Canterbury is not so important, y'know, are going to do with their troops now they have been marched to the top of the hill. Are they going to declare not just TEC out of communion, but do as threatened and set up an alternative centre for an Anglican Communion made in their own image? An essential step for this is to declare the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York in league with the leadership of TEC and having assisted their lack of response (as they see it) to various demands. Every so often I take a look at Anglican Mainstream, just to monitor Chris Sugden's latest words of hostility, to see when the action is coming.

In other words, is Chris Sugden going to get on with it, like Richard Turnbull has made his start, in the world of the Conservative Evangelical trying to bring about a sectarian revolution in the Church of England - or outside it?