Australia: General Synod Wrap-Up – The Anglicans Who Don’t Want to be Anglican?
by David Ould:
Friday saw day 5 of General Synod as we wrapped things up and then made our way to the airport and began the long trip home to our various dioceses.
I’m sure each of us will have had our own thoughts as the plane lifted into the early evening sky. Is it too melodramatic to suggest that as a beautiful sunset washed across the horizon we had also witnessed the sunset of the Anglican Church of Australia?
I wouldn’t go so far myself. But one burning question would not leave me be:
Why did some Anglicans not want to be Anglican?
One debate on the last morning crystallised much of what we had experienced over the week. Bishop Matt Brain of Bendigo moved, with Professor Dorothy Lee seconding, a motion titled “Being the Body of Christ”…
…The intent of the motion was pretty clear, as Bp Brain explained in his speech telling us it invited Synod to say, “I count you in before I count you out”. Rising in support, Professor Lee told us “we have a huge amount of things in common” going onto set the figure at “at least 95%”.
So, in essence, we were being asked to affirm a proposition that, as The Anglican Church of Australia, despite our acknowledged differences, there was much (at least 95%) that we agreed upon and so we ought to work hard at unity despite those (5%) differences.
And then someone did something crazy. They suggested we dare to include our core unifying agreements in the motion. Of the 95% that we agreed on, what might be a central 1-2%? So the following amendment was put up:
What a same-sex marriage vote reveals about the Anglican Church of Australia, by David Robertson, Christian Today
Australia: The big shift at the Anglican General Synod as conservatives advance, by John Sandeman, Eternity News: The numbers are shifting. It will soon be the Bishops in progressive dioceses who will seek to defend their boundaries against the national church’s conservative majority.
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