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UK: A Response from a Layman to the Rev. Julian Mann and the AMiE

UK: A Response from a Layman to the Rev. Julian Mann and the AMiE

By Dan Leafe
Special to VIRTUEONLINE
www.virtueonline.org
June 15, 2016

I am a layman and I am an Englishman. Both are wonderful callings which open to me many privileges, including a marvellous range of avenues for service of the everlasting gospel.

Nonetheless, I remain a layman and one of the reasons for that is my English nationality. My twin status means that in the two decades since I graduated from university, I have found myself in something of a bind. On the one hand, despite not being a, "cradle Anglican", I have become increasingly convinced, as an adult, that Anglican theology is indeed the best (although, inevitably, not the perfect) expression of the principles of the Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, since at least 1994, I have been wholly unconvinced that I wished to seek ordination in my national Anglican church: the Church of England.

In March 1994 I was serving on the staff of a large Anglican church in the delightful English city of Bristol. The Diocese of Bristol was the first English diocese to ordain women to the presbyterate. As a result and as a very young man I had a front row seat at that most revisionist of projects. I did not like what I saw. Even as an Anglican ingenue it was not difficult to identify the corrupted theology and scrambled ecclesiology that drove the process. In particular it was evident that this "innovation" was driven by a general lack of confidence in the revelation of Holy Scripture. I was left in little doubt as to where this trajectory would take us; I recall too well lunches around the vicarage table where we discussed where the Church of England was now headed, including on issues of identity and sexuality. Twenty years on those prognostications have proved depressingly accurate.

It has truly been something of a bind but one which I believe our sovereign Lord in fulfilment of his sure promises has used for my good, as I seek to use it for the good of the Church.

That the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), under the umbrella of GAFCON UK, largely resolves such hitherto irresolvable dilemmas is why I rejoice in its work and am thrilled to have served on its Executive Committee since the GAFCON Primates graciously initiated the work at GAFCON 2013.

The leaders of AMiE and Bishops of GAFCON UK are collectively the most outstanding group of men I have worked with either in my secular career or in my wide church involvement.

Some have described the AMiE as a lifeboat but that is an image I consistently resist as unhelpful. The only sense in which the AMiE is a lifeboat is in that it is like a fine liner coming to the rescue of rusty, sinking fishing smack. To my mind the AMiE is an infinitely superior means of conveyance to what most of the Church of England has sadly become.

The AMiE is not a rescue mission borne of desperation; rather it is a calculated attempt to offer something better. The AMiE offers something that is more authentically Anglican than the Church of England (because it holds fast to the truths of our faith in Christ's saving activity and to the teaching of the Prophets and Apostles as expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal) while also offering the Gospel-opportunities so often denied to orthodox Anglicans by the Church of England.

Those are but two of the great merits of what AMiE is seeking to do, I could mention many others, including the increasing extent of the work.

It is in this context that I was rather surprised by Revd Julian Mann's piece, "Making it Easier for Local Churches to Join the Anglican Mission in England" posted here on the 8th June (see: http://virtueonline.org/making-it-easier-local-churches-join-anglican-mission-england). The article suggests that the AMiE is too closely linked to London, to that city's church of St Helen's, Bishopsgate and would thereby benefit from greater regional representation. I beg to differ.

I know the Rev. Mann as a true partner in the work of the Gospel and a sacrificial servant of the wider church but on this occasion, as I have explained to him privately, he has inadvertently managed to construe an area of strength for the AMiE as a weakness.

It is undeniably true that English Anglicanism has been far too London-centric. That has been the case for perhaps 200 years or more but it is due to a clear awareness of that very fact that the AMiE has deliberately sought to be different. Again, that is led by a desire to do things better than they have been done in the past.

The AMiE is currently served by an Executive Committee of eight of whom one is a retired bishop. Between them they live in and represent the dioceses of Blackburn, York, London, Sheffield, Southwark (two members), Truro and Winchester. The members of the GAFCON UK Panel of Bishops overseeing the work are from the dioceses of Peterborough, Winchester, Chichester and Rochester. Accordingly, those directly involved in leading the AMiE are drawn from no fewer than ten different dioceses. Several also have national ministries. This approach has been specifically designed to ensure that the AMiE has just the regional reach that Rev. Mann seeks.

As many readers will know the church of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, along within All Souls, Langham Place, has been a particular blessing to generations of Conservative Evangelical Anglicans both from this country and abroad. Those two churches (together with others countrywide) are rich in resources and generous in how they deploy them to the benefit of the wider church. It would be unusual to find a conservative evangelical Anglican leader in England that did not have at least a tangential connection with one or both of them.

The only member of either AMiE Executive or GAFCON UK Panel of Bishops who attends St Helen's is the other layman on the committee, who in fact works as the Church Manager there and whose administrative skills make him an excellent Secretary to the AMiE. It is right to say that one of the ordained members also worked at St Helen's but he left that post in 1995 since when he has lived in the North of England.

In contrast to the picture the Rev. Mann paints the AMiE/GAFCON UK leaderships are from churches both large and small, both rural and urban, both financially rich and financially poor, both ancient and very new and from all points of the compass.

AMiE also delights in its partnerships through the ReNew Conference with the Church Society and Reform. The three organisations aim to co-operate together to ensure that the great variety of needs of orthodox Anglicans across all areas of the country are identified and then met in the most appropriate way.

The Revd Mann may be heartened to know that AMiE is presently engaged in a process of stream-lining its selection system in order to cope with the growing demands being placed upon the organisation. Canon Andy Lines, General Secretary of the AMiE, is leading and prioritising that project which is a part of a more extensive reorganisation aimed at ensuring that the AMiE is able to focus as much energy as possible on its key twin tasks of- providing for existing churches and increasing the number of new ones pioneered. The aim is that the "rescuing liner" should be as well appointed as possible for that work.

English Anglicans find themselves in a unique situation: ours is the "mother church" of the Communion and Archbishop Justin is both our Primate and an "Instrument of Communion", while all the time revisionism is advancing. It was with gratitude that the AMiE received the news that the GAFCON Primates meeting recently in Nairobi had particularly noted our plight.

The AMiE has proved, contrary to previous perceptions, that the Church of England has no monopoly on Anglicanism in this country. I trust that seeing that will help others to resolve the type of conundrum with which I struggled for so long.

END

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