Keep It Quiet

Well done MJ posting on Thinking Anglicans on Wednesday, 25 June 2008 at 12:26pm BST for finding an interesting participant GAFCON blogger. The blogger is Pastor Barclay and his blog is called There Are No Dumb Questions. Indeed there are not, and one that isn't is what GAFCON will do on Wednesday, June 25, 2008.

Jerusalem GAFCON Day 3

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There are great things being wrought here for the orthodox Anglican body. We have been asked not to comment on our blogs about details, but let me say that we will not be disappointed at the end....and will, in fact be greatly encouraged by what the Holy Spirit is working in our midst.

As indeed expected. He goes on:

There are some who are here and hesitant...where many of us were 5-6 years ago. There are others who just want it all to be solved today. So those of us who have tasted the freedom of Godly leadership are having to be very gracious and patient with those who still want to fix the Anglican Communion from within. However, I am sure that all will be encouraged when the Spirit is done with us.

He is having a good time:

The worship is wonderful, the fellowship is amazing, the conversations are at a heart level, and God is good...all the time...

Pastor Barclay at 2:29 AM

I do think this tells us all we need to know. People who doubt my Religious Trotskyism label (no one has), the parallel with the Secular Trots, the Marxists, only have to read this simple entry.

Obviously, there is plenty happening out of the reach of the journalists. The participants who could blog content from within (trusted "pilgrims" in a midway inner sanctuary - not quite the core leadership) are asked not to blog about the details. However, keen to say something he does say they will not be disappointed. When Archbishop Nzimbi said there is as yet no final statement and drawing on the participants, the journalists being titbit feeders took the bait. A bit of history helps: there is no way this conference is going to do nothing or next to nothing. It is going to try and reshape the Anglican Communion - but autonomous Churches and geographical bishops won't have it.

Then we have had false Kremlinology. What about Sugden and Minns? That nothing has been heard from them says potentially more to support my view than against it; indeed one should never confuse the shop window display and the staff in the shop with the management meetings upstairs.

But Pastor Barclay indicates something else too - that history, those past disappointments. This is the evangelical mentality. Over and over again evangelical events have happened that have undermined themselves, never mind the strain of mixing with non-evangelicals. This is why they are going to do and sustain something this time that will not leave them disappointed. This conference is but the beginning.

I listened to Bishop Nazir-Ali's lecture and the question and answer session through the recorded Internet transmission. A key part was how they just would not accept the liberal element of the Anglican Communion except for regarding CS Lewis, Hooker, Herbert (?) as liberals. Otherwise they had gone off into the desert. I typed as he and they spoke (phew): I know Ruth Gledhill had her notes but I did my own and can compare (and mine are more comprehensive). Mine can be made more ordered rather than verbatim. There are some good points in it, usually from elsewhere (such as the secularisation in the household), but in the end it all comes down to the same thing, a narrower than many a theology and an official-like interpretation that excludes. He desires "a Covenant with teeth", but is surely aware of the reception such a Covenant has been getting - from Nassau to St Andrews and rejection of the tentative process of excluding and restoration.

Friends last night in the pub asked me is it all about homosexuality. I said no, it is that there are some hard right evangelicals in Anglican Churches in the West who are a minority and ineffective, but by allying themselves with the African Churches they can punch well above their weight, and to try and force everyone else to follow them. They want to take suburban churches which retained larger congregations and pull in car drivers from all around to then redistribute their money into an alternative structure that they manage. They are not quite like the Hagees of this world, like say a war with Iran to bring in the final days, or like the more bizarre satellite TV nutcases, but they do have a similar narrow theology.