Are we witnessing the beginning of the Great Anglican Schism?
by Julian Hargreaves, Anglican Ink:
When the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches announced their momentous decision to split from Canterbury on 21st February, the sting was in the tail. The bishops, including those from Nigeria, Uganda South Sudan, said they would not quit the Anglican Communion but that they could no longer be in communion with the Church of England as a “revisionist province … whose decision goes against the overwhelming mind of the Anglican Communion”, thus relegating the Church of England to the margins, as they see it, of the Communion. They also pledged to provide Bishops to support any Church of England dioceses or groups who opposed blessings for same sex couples.
The decision seems massive but there were warning signs aplenty. Global South Fellowship had already broken off relations with the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales over the earlier decisions in these provinces to offer church weddings and blessings to same sex couples, and relations with Canterbury were already hanging by a thread.
How did we get here? The case of Tim Farron is instructive. Although he is still MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, he keeps himself to himself these days after being pressured into standing down as leader of the Liberal Democrats due to a backlash over his views regarding gay sex, thus sacrificing his political career on the altar of his belief, as some would see it.
We can now see that the “Tim Farron effect” might have scuppered Kate Forbes, the evangelical Christian who narrowly lost out to Humza Yousaf in the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP, though whether this was specifically due to her stance on gay marriage is unclear.
But to understand how illiberal liberals and Liberals must seem to those who take a conservative position on these matters, we need to see things from a wider perspective. It’s as if the Anglican Communion in Western Europe and some parts of the global north is collectively looking at things through the wrong end of a telescope. Let us be clear, they are the outliers in this matter. There is a large and growing number of Anglicans in Africa and the global south, the great majority of whom do not understand the relentless discussions among Western Anglicans about same sex marriage. Why is this?
Read also: CoE Bishops fearful about the consequences of gay blessings vote, leak shows by George Conger
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