New Dean of Canterbury comes under fire from GAFCON Primates

Oct 25, 2022 by

by Pat Ashworth, Church Times:

PRIMATES allied to the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) have condemned the Archbishop of Canterbury for “refusing to prevent” the appointment of the Very Revd David Monteith as Dean of Canterbury Cathedral (News, 14 October). They have urged Archbishop Welby to repent. Lambeth Palace has responded by saying that the statement is inaccurate.

The subject of Dean Monteith’s appointment takes up a large section of the communiqué issued by the Primates of North America (ACNA), Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, All Nigeria, and the Indian Ocean after a meeting of the GAFCON Primates Council meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, which ended on Wednesday. GAFCON is a conservative grouping of Anglicans, founded in 2008 after the consecration of a gay bishop in the United States. Kigali will host its next full meeting in April next year.

The Primates question the “moral character” of the Dean, who has been Dean of Leicester since 2013, and who has been in a civil partnership since 2008. They also question the appointment of Stephen Knott, who is in a same-sex marriage, as the Archbishop’s Secretary for Appointments, declaring such relationships to be “perceived as a cloak for homosexual activity”.

“It is disingenuous if not duplicitous for the Archbishop to claim that the Church of England has not changed its doctrine of marriage when he has engaged an Appointments Secretary whose own union is a living contradiction of marriage as God has ordained it, and which the Church of England claims to uphold,” they say in their communiqué.

With regard to Dean Monteith, they describe themselves as “deeply grieved”, and write of the “heart-breaking provocation that such a departure from biblical standards would be thrust upon the Communion in the historic See of Canterbury and in opposition to the established teaching and practice of the majority of Anglicans”.

They suggest that while Dean Monteith’s civil partnership “may have gone under the radar at Leicester Cathedral, the moral character of the Dean of Canterbury has ramifications for the whole Communion. Canterbury has a place in our history which needs to be preserved, rather than undermined.”

And they point the finger firmly at Archbishop Welby: “The announcement from the Archbishop of Canterbury distanced himself from this appointment, as it was the recommendation of a Selection Panel, requiring the Queen’s approval. Yet it is difficult to see how a Diocesan Bishop, let alone the Archbishop of Canterbury, could not influence the appointment of the Dean of his own Cathedral, especially given the published process for the Appointment of Deans. .

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