GAFCONK Cookbook

Leadership Conference, London 2012 of GAFCONK/ FCAFF

Archbishop El Cid Wahahbalula
Chairman’s keynote address
Monday 23rd at St Marks Battersea Drop

A Global Communion for the sixteenth Century:

Praise the Lard!

Now it is so good to be with you all once again as we gather from over thirty countries to do some plotting in our quest to grab the steering wheel of the Anglican Communion. What a joy this is. We are indeed a global communion for the sixteenth [16] century.

The Lard is going to lead us and give its guidance in getting a bit more slippery in how we overcome the continuing crisis which afflicts our Communion. I want to flame my address with some words of recipe which I believe are a particular word from the Lard for us right now.

To get a bit hard I am going to refer to the profit Formica®, a High Pressure Laminate (HPL) manufactured through fusing multiple layers of impregnated kraft paper under high pressure and temperature to create a hard wearing, durable and hygienic surfacing material.

This will give us something really solid to work on as we design our next steps for everyone else.

He has showed you, O man, what is good.

And what recipe is required of you?

To fill jugly and measure Percy

And get your peas out of your pod.

What's the recipe today Jim?

This is the greatest question facing us this week. We know the will of the Lard, because they don't and we do. God does not play games with us - no he cooks. He is the big recipe mango in the sky. It's not about our ingenuity or imagination, although it is. He does not play games with us. He cooks through the scriptures of recipes. We just obey ourselves and start cooking Let's see those red tomatoes held high.

What does the Lard require? Basically, some more familiar recipes. Go to the supermarket and buy some predictable and familiar lines.

I want a pound of sugar, a quarter of tea, some carrots for Mrs Bunny,

And something extra special for tea, a great big pot of honey.

Some jars of jam, some slices of ham,

A doughnut and a bun,

And a great big packet of Ricicles

Is sure to be lots of fun!

We can then trot them out. Cooking is not escapism, but facing things as they are in the confidence that God will act. The crisis we face is also an opportunity knocking. Eat your greens, Hughie. The orange can be traced back many years. The unprecedented challenges to Anglican identity forced upon us by the revisionist cookbooks mean an historic opportunity to rediscover the distinctive sixteenth century Anglican Reformers and their grub.

God will choose his own time, but we will help him along by giving history a push. An modern oven speeds just things up or use a log fire.

We cannot treat this as simply an institutional crisis. The breakdown of the existing governance structures of the Anglican Communion is a symptom of a deeper problem. The recipe we have been given simply doesn't hold the pudding together. And the first course is a mess. The Anglican pottage no longer commands confidence. Yucky dick.

If it were merely an institutional problem - the knives, forks and spoons - then we would have expected that the heavy investment made in Anglican Covenant would have brought a resolution. The Anglican Covenant was "Fatally flawed!" It had become clear that it was little more than a form of words to disguise conflict rather than resolve it. But the liberals saw that off, and let's give them the glory. So  now with the rejection of the Covenant, even in the Church of England itself, there's no more just messing with the spoons and forks - you've got to get the ingredients right. The heart of the crisis we face is not institutional, but spiritual.

Formica can ask ‘what does the Lard require?’ It requires better ingredients. Am I making myself clear? Is the washing up done?

Remember 1998 when a minority including Rowan Tree tried to represent a minority view, to bend the word of God to fit the fashionable ideas of their cultural context when they should have bent to our cultural context?

That's where it went wrong - tolerating minorities. Their strategy has been to continue dialogue endlessly in order to wear down resistance while all the time pursuing their self determined mandate of radical inclusion. They want us to use our intelligence to extract ‘deeper truths’ of God’s revelation concealed below the words themselves, and that will never do. We want to use the stupid route of reading off the ink of the page. If it says 'half a pound of tuppenny rice', that is what it means.

Translating into different languages never alters meanings, does it? And what's all this grammar of obedience tripe? Search me. The ‘grammar of obedience’ is a theological Trojan horse for profound disobedience. It produces undercooked grub.

When we met in Jerusalem we were able to have a small committee in a back room of conservatives who produced a text for everyone to sing about and get cooking. Compare that with Lambeth 2008 which was all talk talk talk like where can you find the toilets to wash your hands. No shared mind and no attempt to resolve the substance of the fundamental doctrinal and ethical differences which have been so destructive to our uniformity. Back to Mrs Beeton, that's what we say. And Delia Smith is about the only revision we'll accept.

In Jerusalem we got cooking, including on the mountain top. But we have to come down from the mountain top to actually eat the grub. Formica lets us do this and we will: it is not a matter of following our subjective dreams and feelings, but being true to the views concocted in previous centuries to which we give priority - let the sixteenth century reign again!

This for me is a personal truth and so there is mine and then yours and yours and so on. It is these qualities that we need to animate our Global fellowship as we move forward together. As a powerful movement of renewal and transformation for that is what we are.

OK, we have been a bit slow. We did set up a rival Church in America - a bit of a messy dog's dinner we admit. Last year, it became clear that provision need to be made for England too. The Anglican Mission in England was formed. It'll be a bit tricky stealing the family silver tea service in England, but we can think of a few dioceses where churches might ignore the incumbent bishop. Chuck us out we dare you!

We mustn't get infected too much by cynicism and pragmatism that can creep in when issues of power and influence are at stake. Being a Religious Trotskyite though does need a bit of deviousness. But as well as being vigorous with the spoon we can be kind when we use it to tap people on the head.

We are not setting ourselves up above the recipes, but recognise that the food finds us and there are lots of varied recipes around the world. So what is the recipe today Jim?

1. The northern cookbook should now be replaced by the southern cookbook, and spread a few seeds into the mix. We will decide not just the recipes but who controls the cookbook and who operates the oven.

2. We should open some bottles of wine and put them in a new wineskin. This will give us a bit of a tipple. We can build a new wine cellar and call it after the old one. We then control all the wine.

3. We must resist the temptation to be lazy. We have to do the theological heavy lifting so essential to get the food into and out of the oven. Don't forget to use oven gloves or a thick cloth folded over. The food has to be good old sixteenth century fayre, nourished by biblical recipe teaching straight off the page. Equally we need our own cooks, chosen by us, from our cookery colleges, otherwise we'll just have more secular ideologies shaping liberal and revisionist fast food from the other cooking colleges.

Don't forget the big cook-in in 2013.

Meanwhile let's hope we get a godly leader of God's people for the next Archbishop of Canterbury. After all, not all the candidates are godly. If we don't approve, we won't accept it. We'll try to elect a chairman anyway, for the Primates Meeting, run from our special Primates Council.

Better to Prepare?

I'm wondering if it isn't better to prepare for a service less not more... Sunday I did prepare hymns so that we had a Unitarian version of the Seafarer's Hymn (for those in peril...) - it appears in no hymnal because the original has a trinitarian structure. This followed the rumoured to be Titanic hymn. Two others were non-themed liberal singalongs. The sea was a subtheme only. I read out two passages from Donald Coggan on preaching, with the analogy of the music maestro and highly skilled costly performance that is to 'get out of the way' and let the composer come through. Preaching isn't to be like the River Meander he said, but to do something. So I preached. Other Churches preach the gospel, I said, so the idea is the best preacher lets the Holy Spirit come through. And just in case they don't preach the gospel, the sermon in the Eucharist service is followed by reciting the creed. Obviously Unitarians are limited to opinions: we are in that sense religious humanists. But the equivalence is to say something that causes the best of reflections in people listening in developing their own thoughts, making their own growth. And I said this without any notes. Due to operating the music equipment, I was sat, and said this into the microphone on a table from where I'd conducted the whole service.

Next week is my service and I've written about uniformity verses unity, and using the Baha'i Faith as an example of uniformity (and therefore every leader faced a split, and covenant breakers all along the way). Those who syncretise into a 'higher' religion end up producing just one more religion. The Baha'is do not have male-female equality (also intolerant of homosexual partnering), they do not accept science so that there is no religion-science dispute (e.g. they accept "something like" evolution because Abdul Baha didn't accept Darwin), and as for independent search for religion - once you sign up you accept the infallibility of the texts of Baha'u'llah, Abdul Baha and the writings of Shoghi Effendi and the democratic centralist commands of the male-only Universal House of Justice. You only get unity if you can mature enough to have diversity, and mature religions gain a spectrum that in part allows for and accepts change (whereas the Bahais are a late nineteenth and early twentieth century snapshot of limited modernity coupled with some premodern religious inheritance). Perhaps Non-Haifan Bahais (covenant breakers and those who grew weary of the administrative and financial burden) might show a way forward regarding diversity.

But these are many points, and a script to make them, whereas my homily unscripted was straight to the point and without detail.

When it Turns Nasty

In the continuing Anglican wars over homosexuality, a number of clerics have made a more positive sound, one in favour of (the still unequal) civil marriage for gays and lesbians (Thinking Anglicans reproduces). That's to the good. So is a reminder of the possibility that Jesus could have had gay orientation himself, first highlighted in recent times by the late Hugh Montefiore. One context now is a huge amount of damage being done on the Fulcrum pages so that its leadership has tried to calm things down with a further thread. One of those who has changed her mind recently also appeared to ask for some tolerance. One ordained contributor to give his experience as a gay man has had his ministry, even his Christianity, trashed by one contributor in particular but by more in actuality.

I knew this would end in tears, simply by those who regard the Bible as a rule book and who keep quoting the 1998 Lambeth Conference 1:10 resolution as if it is uncontested law. It is usually backed up by the present (retiring) Archbishop of Canterbury affirming this as 'the Mind of the Communion' and that if he says this with a different private opinion then this must be right. Keep repeating something and argument becomes blocked, keep repeating something and it is as if true. There is no Mind of the Communion, and nothing has such authority, and that resolution was concocted in the teeth of division and opposition assisted by an incompetent now former Archbishop.

When training to be teachers we were told that a technique to block an unruly pupil who wants to question decisions is to use the broken record technique, which is to repeat the same point back to every point and wear down the pupil in order to enforce the decision.

The broken record seems to be this: that the Bible is a consistent revelation of the mind of God and Christ, so that if Paul says something then it's as good as Christ saying something, and it is all of God anyway. It is surface read, so little is given to academic biblical criticism, but this still comes through doctrinal eyes (the New Testament itself involves a mixture of doctrines). That doctrine developed after the Bible doesn't seem to matter to these folks, in that they read it back in; that there were different cultural contexts (and indeed from today) seems not to matter either when supernature is involved. Biblical critics argue whether there is even a 'fall' in the Bible - the Jews and Eastern Christians don't seem to think so, but evangelical Christians depend on it as an explanation for temptation against God to be overcome. You then get resolutions in support of a surface view, to be quoted, like a QED. Just repeat.

On this basis, then, the Bible is a book of rules. There is some ambiguity about the role of women, so wriggle room allows some toleration of variation on inequality. But when it comes to gay sex, there is no text in support and enough against and on this basis the rule applies and makes a definition of whether you are a) evangelical or not or even b) whether you are Christian or not.

To be for God is to be against sin, and at the very minimum is a required celibacy; but better still is for the individual to undergo techniques for sexual reorientation because it should follow that gay orientation is unwanted. To fail to do at least one is to prefer sin over God and this further defies the position of the Church, both Anglican and wider afield. You are just about allowed sexual orientation because that is like experiencing a sin to steal or murder, and we all have dislikable tendencies and experiences to overcome. Then comes the emphasis that this is the only way to be Christian, and furthermore those who insist on another view should be shunned and isolated - rejecting those 'brothers' who claim to believe but do not actually believe. The homosexual issue is thus the issue on which to judge whether the other person is in or out of fellowship. That this is sheer intolerance is irrelevant to those who follow the scriptural rule book.

Some go on further than this with a very Puritan predestination belief in the wrath of God, as if the sociology of knowledge has not changed since pre-Enlightenment days. They don't even seem to have caught up with Thomas Aquinas or Richard Hooker and the incorporation of reason and observation (never mind science). It's all revelation and rules.

To gay people, in or out of loving and active relationships, who are active Christians too, this becomes utterly offensive. Some are simply laying down the law and causing, with persistence, ruptures in the broader Christian community.

I can't very well pitch in because I don't take the label Christian and certainly do not regard the Bible as normative. The Bible knows nothing about science, or about sexuality - it's pretty hopeless regarding history too. It does not supply this kind of information. To turn a cultural and theological set of books (with some included that need not have been, and some missing that could have been added) is simply ridiculous. Even if one accepts some forms of supernatural causality, the Bible is open to levels of (even positive) criticism that render its use as a rule book impossible.

The point is, however, that people are determined to have this war. They are determined to alter institutions to reflect the divisions of these viewpoints. In my view, the intention of unity in such a situation, in which a former gay inclusive theologian as Archbishop also applies 'the rules' internationally (as in that Advent Letter of 2007), thus bending over backwards to his one time opponents (he is theirs if they are not his) was never going to succeed.

The way to tackle this is establish your grounds for toleration and the general bases for biblical use and build in flexibility for change. Have that and then defend it. Then let the people who insist on fighting do their own thing - let them carry out their threats and departures, to see if they will and how much they do. They will be the ones who have to leave. At least then there is a chance that Christianity will not be associated so completely with bigotry and intolerance.

If not, then these new definers of Christianity will slowly remove the tolerant, almost one by one, and in frustration, anger and bitterness. Even Fulcrum, that played the Archbishop's misdirecting card, and has included some moderately worded exclusion of its own, has become shocked. It is a very nasty, inhuman, intolerant part of the Christian religion in play.

(Meanwhile two dioceses have voted in favour of the Covenant. Too late!)

Making a Hymn Available

Theology isn't everything with hymns; some express sentiment simply through singing and relating to a longstanding traditional hymn and tune. There's an obvious reason the following hymn (before alteration) hasn't appeared in Unitarian hymnals, because its core verses are trinitarian and about salvation. So add in some of those extra verses and change a few words, and it is a usable hymn. We in Hull should be able to use it:

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

Eternal Father, Lord of hosts,
Watch o'er the souls who guard our coasts.
Protect them from the raging seas
And give them light and life and peace.
Grant them from Thy great throne above
The shield and shelter of Thy love.

Lord, guard and guide the ones who fly
Through the great spaces in the sky.
Be with them always in the air,
In darkening storms or sunlight fair;
Oh, hear us when we lift our prayer,
For those in peril in the air!

O Unity of love and power!
Our brethren shield in danger’s hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe'er they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from air and sea.

From William Whiting, 1860; Mary
Hamilton, 1915; George Jenks, 1955.

Screech!

It's the Amber Light (was Green) for the Church in Wales/ Yr Eglwys yng Nghymru, with the amber light replacing green due to the position since taken up by the Church of England. Well, in my Highway Code (Rheolau Ffordd Fawr) the next light after amber is Red. It wants the Anglican Consultative Council (and not some still enthusiastic bureaucrat) to say as to what now with the Covenant process. Try stuck somewhere in Offa's Dyke (and that's a ditch, not a lesbian - Clawdd Offa).

Fictional Predictive

News Analysis by Harry Tickpaper

The appointment of the Revd. Arundel Boreang Alice as Website and Publicity Officer for Lambeth Walk Palace and this has led to speculation as to whether there is a shoe-in coming for the Archbishop of the North, John Sendmehome, to become the new Archbishop of England, replacing Rowan Tree who retires shortly.

At the same time questions exist as to the legitimacy of the current appointment system and method.

The Rev. ABA, as he likes to be known, used to work for John Sendmehome as his publicity guru. He has since been a staunch defender of his previous boss, using his own Wolves Hampton Expressions website. The question is whether this appointment does indicate who is to be the next ABE, or whether JS still is too old to qualify.

Some people regard JS as a lightweight self-publicist who is always telling jokes. Recently he opened a Footwear Convention in York and said, as part of his speech to the gathered business people, "Talking about drinks: do you know how to make a fruit cordial? Compliment his shoes." A few people laughed.

The issue arises as to the Appointments Commission, sometimes called by its detractors the Croney Appointments Commission, works, deep in the bowels of the Church in England. It is known to be highly secretive and uses secret handshakes and finger-twiddling signals to indicate progress to those in the know. Look out for bishops in cathedral services twiddling their fingers and scratching their cassocks to get an idea as to who is really the frontrunner in the race that no one really wants to win.

But this year there is a further concern about the legitimacy of the AC or CAC after a leak to stop the Rev. John Jeffrey becoming the bishop of Southwark Farm some years ago by deliberately revealing him as a front-running candidate. The Archbishop of the North then tried to pinpoint a liberal sympathiser Coleen Asleep as the leaker to damage John Jeffrey's chances, by saying that it would do "her candidate" no good at all. But after she died her diary came to light that showed how it was certainly ot her. An Inquiry into the leak was set up, chaired by Lord Fidgety, but was covered up as - it is said - he had pinpointed the Archbishop of England himself (or one of his staff acting with or without his permission) as the leaker. Indeed it is said that the inquiry was set up as a sop to critics at the time without ever having any intention to publish.

The problem is that this has all questioned the legitimacy and probity of the Appointments Commission until a name can be given as to who was the leaker - and so far no one is prepared to be declared as the leaker whether true or sacrificially. Recently John Jeffrey wrote to a Church newspaper questioning the legitimacy of the Appointments Commission, which opponents on John Sendmehome's side likened to having his day of revenge.

One argument in favour of John Sendmehome as the next Archbishop of England is that his appointment would keep the leaking enquiry closed.

Recently John Sendmehome called the Prime Minister a "second rate dictator" because the PM wants to extend civil marriage (only) to gay couples. JS said that, "We are pastors and he isn't even a pasty" Inventing history, JS continued, "Marriage was invented by the Church and people and you cannot overturn what is so embedded in what ordinary people can only understand. A man found his wife in bed with a woman and said, 'What are you doing?' and she immediately said to her same sex lover, 'There you are - I told you he didn't understand the first thing about sex.'" It is also thought that John Sendmehome wants to bring back the Covenant at the earliest opportunity and might want a streamlined decision making system (one that avoids the dioceses). However, despite these recent leanings and behaviour, and all the gossip, alleged revenge and speculation, African Churches - with their literalist and magical beliefs - have indicated that they would not be able to work with JS because he has 'gone native' in England and is too associated with the legacy of Rowan Tree.

Asked for a comment last night, Archbishop Sendmehome said he had "little to say at this sensitive time", but added, "I did have a large gay following but then I slipped down an alleyway and lost him." The telephone then went down because I couldn't be bothered to interview him any further.

Good Riddance

Orombi in Uganda is resigning as well. Good, couldn't come too soon - not that he'd be replaced by anyone better. This is from an interview he gave on 15 April in The Independent News published in Kampala, first of all answering why he's going a year early:

Some people think you have to retire when things are hard, when you are sick, or worn out. But that's not retirement. That's completion of work. For me, I'm moving on to accomplish things that I would need energy to do. That's really why I'm moving on a year early.

An idea of his self-assured arrogance is given here:

What sort of things would you say you could have done differently or given more time to?

None. Every leader has got a calling by God...

Then there is the nub of the issue, of his breaking away from other Anglican Churches:

Unity for the Anglican Communion is not going to come back easily. The Western church and the African church are no longer walking on the same premises. The African church is still a Bible-believing church. Its congregation responds, worships, is growing. You will never say the same about the church in Europe, not even in America.

We don’t interpret the Bible the same way. Whereas for them they’re influenced more by the status quo in terms of the modernised way of interpreting sexuality, we still, as believers, understand sexuality from the creation story, from our cultural background, which to them is all mixed up.

I think because we are a vibrant church, we see things more clearly than they do. And I suppose that the more you grow old, the less teeth you have, the dimmer your eyes, the more hard-at-hearing you become. That’s the church in Europe and America.

It is all mixed up if you cannot see that the biblical creation story is a myth. The Bible is no more informed on sexuality than it is on science or indeed on doing history. We are evolved in common with apes, and like other higher animals some fancy and mate with their own sex. If someone wants to do some 'natural theology' then the normality of such attraction is a consequence of all of the most successful species in evolution: where evolution includes variation and difference, maintaining minorities, because, then, the species can cope better with rapid environmental change. You never know when variation produces positive even unintended and indirect consequences.

Later on he is asked and replies:

You’ve also mentioned that the British hegemony over the Anglican Church is over. If Rowan retires, how do you see chances of Uganda’s own John Sentamu replacing him?

Unfortunately, it’s only the Anglican church of England that [elects Archbishop of Canterbury] then imposes it on the Anglican Communion. So, as for personality, we can’t say anything. We take what they give us. So if he can work with us, we can work together. If he can’t work with us, we are mature enough to say no.

Struth. The idea that they could not get on with Sentamu, after his behaviour in the back rooms of Anglicanism, and recent expressions about marriage, seems bizarre (and why this Revd. Arun Arora, already in place as the next Communications Director, doesn't get the serious criticism of Sentamu) - but that's the extent of the difference between Sentamu and Orombi. Perhaps the following question, like a piece of underarm bowling for Orombi, ought to be asked of John Sentamu or indeed Rowan Williams Mark II:

Gay people and their supporters insist it’s their right to love people of the same sex. Are human rights incompatible with faith in God?

There’s nobody who respects humanity more than God. This other human rights movement is totally a different agenda. If they were talking about human rights per se, don’t I have the right to exercise my faith and believe the way my faith teaches me? These guys will say no. Do it the way we want you to do it. That’s not human rights. That’s imperialism. We Africans need to begin to understand some other new approach of subjecting us to the thinking of the western world. When they coin it to be human rights, you can never get better human rights and justice than what’s in the Bible. It’s the same Bible they reject.

Has he read the Bible recently? It's a catalogue of war and rape and slavery and relative ignorance. Paul says some equalitarian things about the Kingdom of God (and you could extend the sentiment to relationships) and then someone else later in his name decides that women should keep quiet and give way to the male in home and church. I wouldn't have much hope for toleration under Orombi's guide book interpretations.