There is now an important piece online by Giles Goddard, the chair of Inclusive Church, describing the background to the statement which prompted Ruth Gledhill’s piece on ‘Open Warfare in the Church of England.
This answers one of my questions, about how ‘organized’ this programme is, and the answer seems to be, by Anglican standards ‘very’. As anyone who works with clergy will know, it is not easy to get people together at less than a week’s notice. According to this article, however, an already-planned meeting was rapidly expanded to include “anyone or any group concerned about the reflections and wishing to respond”.
Precisely who was in on the first meeting, or who was new at the second is not stated, but the ‘progressive’ element listed earlier on includes “Changing Attitude, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, Inclusive Church, Women and the Church, the Modern Churchpeople’s Union, Affirming Catholicism”. Notably it does not include the ‘evangelical’ groups who signed the statement.
Meanwhile, evangelical disarray continues (at least, outside the FCA ‘wing’).
Revd John Richardson
10 August 2009
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Hi John
ReplyDeleteBut can these organised liberals carry the centre of the Church of England with them towards their goals?
(It's hard to work out the answer to that question from 12000 miles away!)
I guess the same question exists re the FCA ... and the tantalizing question is whether the FCA plus Open Evangelicals (i.e. in the pews, not just the few who comment on Fulcrum), if organized, would outnumber organized liberals ...?
I don't have any stats or anything but my feeling is that there are significant numbers out there who would probably be classified as open evangelicals by whoever decides these things and who aren't in FCA (if my church is anything to go by) so I'd be surprised if them plus FCA wouldn't outnumber liberals by a country mile but that's a feeling - can't back it up with any numbers!! 'If organised' is possibly another story....
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Bridcut
Wirral
Hi John, Talking of getting organized, I hope that the evangelical groups are getting organized for the forthcoming synod elections etc... You can bet that the "liberals" are going to be strategizing and campaigning to try to maximise their elected representation.. If GS swung liberal this time we could well see he whole TEC thing played out in the CofE... and certain Bishops talking about having to listen to God saying something new!
ReplyDelete