An interesting interview with the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone.
Read it all here:
On crossing borders – the local ACoC bishop is Michael Bird, incidentally:
Did you ask permission of the local Anglican Church of Canada bishop to visit here?
No, because I am coming to another, different Anglican church.
On why “reconciling” ANiC and the ACoC à la Justin Welby’s recipe won’t work – the ACoC has “another gospel…. not the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ”:
Do you or GAFCON have any plans to reconcile ACNA with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada?
We don’t see our role in that way. The new Archbishop of Canterbury wants to work for the reconciliation of the church around the world. I don’t know how he will do it. I don’t know if TEC or the ACC will change. We will not renounce what we believe. Our understanding in GAFCON is that TEC and the ACC have another gospel; it is not the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ. If they move back to the Bible we can be in communion.
On what really sets Canterbury’s policy:
You have spoken of “the heavy machinery” or bureaucracy behind the Archbishop of Canterbury. How much does it run things?
I met the last Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams is a very nice man. But all the machinery behind him, the bureaucracy, is led by liberals; the Anglican Consultative Council is controlled by liberals; the Anglican Communion Office is controlled by liberals as well.
On the worldwide Anglican Communion of which TEC and the ACoC are not a part according to Zavala:
Don’t we really have two separate international entities now, the FCA and the more liberal rest of the Communion? And the Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to straddle them both. Do we really have a global Communion anymore?
Anglicans are one universal body. We have internal tensions. That is happening now. Maybe we will have to live forever with those tensions. We had that issue in the Southern Cone in 2003. Why not leave the Communion? We decided no, because we are true Anglicans. Instead we broke communion with the ACC and TEC.
On how Canadian church services are short:
Tell me more about the Anglican Church in Chile.
Most Chilean pastors are full-time priests but we often meet in schools. Our church services can be three or four hours long. If the sermon is less than an hour, the pastor is not considered a good preacher. People sometimes walk 1½ hours to get to church. Some services begin at 11, stop at 1 for lunch and resume from 2 until 4.
