Has the Anglican Experiment Really Failed?

http://www.anglicanspread.org/?p=262

[SPREAD] 30 Oct 2009--Last Sunday I was privileged to be present at the consecration of the Revd Canon Dr Festus Yeboah-Asuamah as the new bishop of Sunyani Diocese in Ghana by the Archbishop of the Church of the Province of West Africa, Dr Justice O. Akrofi. The diocese has only existed since 1997 and the diocese from which it was formed had itself only been inaugurated in 1981, yet here were hundreds of joyful worshippers gathered in a new cathedral to welcome their next bishop. For over five hours there was a glorious weaving together of liturgy and music, moving seamlessly between solemnity and spontaneity, with a clear and challenging gospel focus in the Archbishop’s sermon.

Yet the day before in London, as Forward in Faith were debating Pope Benedict’s extraordinary offer to Anglicans of a Personal Ordinariate, the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Revd John Broadhurst told the conference plainly that ‘the Anglican experiment is over’. Well, maybe in England it is, but clearly not in Ghana!

Of course, the Pope’s initiative is a very sobering sign of Anglican failure. The Vatican has been at pains to point out that its action in offering Anglicans a continuing ‘space’ within the Roman Church is not an attempt to poach, but a response to persistent requests from those in distress and it seems clear from the lack of preliminary consultation with Dr Rowan Williams that confidence in his ability to lead the Anglican Communion has dwindled.

However, what my experience in Ghana illustrates is the truth which GAFCON has so powerfully articulated – that the failure of the Anglican Communion is not an intrinsic flaw in its fundamental theological vision, but a failure to be faithful to that vision. The Anglican experiment is in fact proving to be remarkably successful in many areas of the Global South, undergirded by that recovery of confidence in Evangelical Anglicanism so closely associated with John Stott and J I Packer – even if it may sometimes take liturgical forms which would not be entirely to their taste.

The Anglican Communion crisis is not about Anglicanism in itself, but a crisis of faithfulness. Failure to maintain Anglicanism’s doctrinal and moral integrity precipitated GAFCON and is the root cause of the Pope’s offer of the Ordinariate. As Bishop Broadhurst bluntly stated ‘Anglicanism has become a joke because it has singularly failed to deal with any of its contentious issues’.