London conservatives look for support from breakaway Anglicans

Mar 2, 2023 by Jill

by Ed Thornton, Church Times:

Churches seek help from GAFCON after same-sex-blessing proposals.

THE chair of the Global Anglican Futures Conference (Gafcon), Dr Foley Beach, is to visit London this month to meet Evangelical clerics who are at odds with their bishops over proposals to bless same-sex civil marriages. He has told them that the Gafcon Primates’ Council “will support you in any way we can”.

The Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, has said that she would be happy to meet Dr Beach, Archbishop of the breakaway Anglican Church in North America, when he comes to London.

News of Dr Beach’s visit was revealed in a video message posted on the website of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in the City of London, on Sunday.

St Helen’s, which has an electoral roll of more than 1200, paused payments to the diocesan Common Fund last month in protest at the Bishops’ proposals to offer services of prayer and thanksgiving for same-sex couples and to bless civil marriages in church (News, 10 February), which were carried by the General Synod this month (News, 9 February).

In the video, the Rector, the Revd William Taylor, says that, as well as agreeing to meet Evangelical clergy in the diocese, Dr Beach “has offered to make provision for the annual clergy review process at St Helen’s”.

Furthermore, Mr Taylor says, “curates in training” at St Helen’s have withdrawn from a Holy Week meeting with Bishop Mullally; an ordinand in the church has withdrawn from the ordination process; and “those clergy who have completed their training have written to me stating that they can no longer walk together with bishops who have walked away from them”.

Mr Taylor asserts that the House of Bishops has “walked away from the true Church of God”, and has created a “major crisis” which requires “concrete structural solutions”. He also accuses the Bishops of being prepared “to trample imperialistically in white Western boots over the biblical convictions of the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide”.

Read here

Watch Revd William Taylor on Vimeo