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GAFCON, in its February 20th<\/sup> statement<\/a> responding to the Church of England\u2019s decision to bless same-sex marriages, has declared that the CofE can no longer be considered the \u201cmother church\u201d. It has broken communion with provinces that hold to Biblical views on human sexuality and Justin Welby is no longer the first among equals<\/em> in the global communion.<\/p>\n In other words, the Anglican Communion is divided, split, rent asunder, fractured, broken.<\/p>\n Linda Nicholls thinks everything is just fine. The problem has been \u201coverblown\u201d. Like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear<\/em>, Nicholls cannot hear the waves of chaos crashing against the foundations of what is left of her church.<\/p>\n The truth is, the Anglican Communion has already<\/em> split. What we are witnessing now is the external outworking of an inward fracture, an outward, visible sign of an inward, invisible rupture, an unholy sacrament.<\/p>\n Nicholls goes on to complain that according to the GAFCON statement, \u201cthe final test of orthodoxy is human sexuality\u201d.<\/p>\n Not so. Orthodoxy requires not only a correct understand of the nature of God \u2013 or at least as correct as flawed humans can be \u2013 but a correct understanding of the nature of mankind. At the root of the church\u2019s LGBT* mania is the lie that the purpose and nature of man is self-fulfilment, self-gratification and, especially in the \u201cT\u201d case, atheistic existential self-determination, a misreading of the human condition so mixed up, most self-respecting pagans wouldn\u2019t hold to it.<\/p>\n From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n The significance of a press statement from a grouping of theologically conservative Anglican primates which recommends the withdrawal of \u201corthodox provinces\u201d from the rest of the Anglican Communion, and which has drawn international headlines, has been overblown, Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, tells the Anglican Journal.<\/p>\n [\u2026.]<\/p>\n The motion passed in the Church of England\u2019s General Synod allows clergy to use their conscience in deciding whether to use the prayers of blessing, meaning that they can opt in or out of blessing same-sex unions on an individual basis. So no church or individual will be required to give blessings that they disagree with, Nicholls says. In fact, she adds, since the Church of England motion extends only to blessings, it does not actually make any changes to its policy on marriage itself. For comparison, some dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada, after extensive discernment, have provided same-sex marriage as a pastoral response, Nicholls says.<\/p>\n In that context, she says, it makes little sense to break up the Communion over such a small change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GAFCON, in its February 20th statement responding to the Church of England\u2019s decision to bless same-sex marriages, has declared that the CofE can no longer be considered the \u201cmother church\u201d. It has broken communion with provinces that hold to Biblical … Continue reading