I once had Canon Andy Lines to speak at a men's breakfast I was organising for a church.
The event was taking place in a rather disappointing pub where a recent refurbishment had pulled off the remarkable feat of making the building look even worse than it had before. And it hadn't been great to start with.
But Andy was terrific. A former tank commander, he spoke with passion, clarity and thoughtfulness about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. And today Andy is becoming a bishop. He will be consecrated by GAFCON (the Global Anglican Futures Conference), which is led by a council of Primates who claim to represent the numerical majority of the world's practising Anglicans.
GAFCON's raison d'etre? According to its website, the aim is to 'to guard the unchanging, transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ and to proclaim Him to the world'. You can read more about it here. The group's UK website describes the reasoning behind Andy's consecration as 'an immediate and courageous response to the most recent developments in the Scottish Episcopal Church's decision to change its Canons on marriage. However, the necessity for alternative Episcopal oversight in Scotland also applies to all corners of Britain, because the issues which underlie the SEC's move are common to Anglicanism throughout the country.'
Here are three thoughts.
1. We should pray for Andy Lines. Whether you are a GAFCON supporter or not, there is no doubt he is a thoughtful, wise and holy man of God, and exactly the sort of person anyone should rightly want as a bishop. The New Testament says an overseer should be 'above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money' (1 Timothy 3). He's certainly all of those things. And in many ways it is something of a tragedy for the Church of England that they hadn't made him a bishop already.
2. We should read GAFCON's Jerusalem Statement. Much media reporting about what is happening in global Anglicanism tends to reduce things to caricatures and sound-bites. But the statement on which Andy Lines stands – GAFCON's Jerusalem Statement – is surely one to which the vast majority of Anglicans past and present could readily subscribe. I had no problem signing it myself. Whatever your own view, it is good to be informed from the original sources, rather than second-hand reporting.
3. We should exercise prayerful discernment. I would be dishonest, however, if I did not confess that I do have some reservations about GAFCON. It sometimes seems an uneasy alliance of all sorts of unlikely partners – from highly conservative evangelicals at one end, to Anglo-Catholics at the other extreme who recommend praying to Mary and going off on pilgrimages to her various shrines.
Whatever one's precise outlook on these and other matters, it is quite hard to see how these disparate strands cohere into one unified, coherent and consistent theological whole – because in and of themselves these two wings represent quite different, clashing visions of the Christian faith. It's easy when both sides are reacting against what they see as a common enemy (theological liberalism) to be on the same side and sing from the same hymn sheet. But I do wonder how things can hold together long-term.
Moreover, many evangelical Anglicans remain committed to working in the Church of England, as Christian Today reported recently. Other Anglican alternatives are also appearing on the scene, including one recent link-up with the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa. All this comes against a backdrop of a Church of England and global Anglicanism which is, frankly, a theological car crash – even to a sympathetic supporter and third-generation Anglican clergyman such as myself who would love it to do well.
So pray for Andy Lines. He will be a fantastic bishop. Pray – whether your 'tribal' allegiance is to the Church of England, GAFCON, both of them at the same time, or indeed something else altogether – that above all else the name of Jesus Christ is honoured and that the gospel goes forward. Most of all, I'm just grateful that it is precisely because of the mess we humans make of things that Christ came. If we keep him at the centre, trust his word, and die to self then – however denominational groupings may unfold in the future – we shall not go far wrong.
David Baker is a former daily newspaper journalist now working as an Anglican minister in Sussex, England. Follow him on Twitter @Baker_David_A
