tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post3351285420702141479..comments2023-12-15T21:49:46.651+01:00Comments on Pluralist Speaks: GAFCON and Common CausePluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-89340111856830667282008-05-13T17:10:00.000+02:002008-05-13T17:10:00.000+02:00It is my view that it is quite the other way aroun...It is my view that it is quite the other way around. The people I mix with in the pews, and those ordained who lead congregations, are by and far mixed, from liberal to evangelical to Catholic, but it is these New Puritans who act and behave like the Militant Tendency, with centralised Trotskyist type organising. The analogous thing to do would be to cut them out, but rather than being a Kinnock Rowan Williams has consistently shown a weakness to them, leading from behind. The liberals have had a continuous impact on the Churches, though matters have reversed in recent decades. A political analogy may be there a formation of the SDP, the effect being to bring the Labour Party back over the territory held by the SDP. Except that liberals by and large don't leave, don't form their own, a strength that is also their weakness.<BR/><BR/>I suggest that GAFCON will have an intitial conserving effect on Lambeth and Anglicanism, that will soon be lost as a Covenant of any effect fails to go through.<BR/><BR/>The numbers are irrelevant because the GAFCON ones are concentrated and are likely inaccurate anyway. Its form of Christianity simply does not extend in sufficient bulk into the West, and is opposed even by numbers of evangelicals.<BR/><BR/>As for decline, this includes evangelicals, and is a phenomenon far broader than TEC or the C of E, and raw projections can see a number of denominations structurally collapse in the UK in some decades time, denominations which include bulk numbers of evangelicals.<BR/><BR/>The liberal approach simply is not going away. How it organises into the future is as yet unclear but perhaps not dramatically different from now for some time.Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)https://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-8715002871677636992008-05-13T10:56:00.000+02:002008-05-13T10:56:00.000+02:00"Militant" rejected Kinnock's reforms in the Labou..."Militant" rejected Kinnock's reforms in the Labout Party....so what? Should he have dropped his reforms???<BR/>If Labour had listened to a small, left wing minority we would now be in our 29th year of Tory government and Labour would be dead.....<BR/><BR/>If the small, left-wing element of the AC had any growth or strength, people may listen....but it does not....average TEC congregation's have less than 70 with an average age of 66!! (not very "diverse")<BR/><BR/>Liberals are the equivalent of "Militant" and Rowan Williams may well be the AC's Kinnock i.e. the man from the left who has to cut out the extreme left for the sake of the party......and its long-term survival....and health and unity.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Given theological arguments for liberal innovations have been inadequate and convinced so few, nobody really cares what a small and shrinking minority in the AC wants re the covenant...get it?<BR/><BR/>GAFCON - 35m Anglicans' bishops<BR/>Lambeth - 15m and shrinking<BR/>Very embarassing for the ABC!<BR/><BR/>You will see the ABC go a lot further to keep the AC together - it ain't going to be sacrificed for small, dying TEC and its client provinces....it just ain't worth losing the AC for "provinces" that will not even exist in 50 years given their current rates of decline......sorry, harsh facts but facts nonetheless.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com