Why I left the Brisbane Anglicans to join the Diocese of the Southern Cross
By John Sandeman, from Anglican Ink.
My big story started in 2013. I was in Nairobi at Gafcon, and Mike Ovey [the late principal of London’s Oak Hull College] Mike spoke on Ephesians chapter five.
[The passage says] that there were those who would deceive us into thinking that the wrath of God is not coming because of, as Paul puts these things, the extent of their immorality. And the encouragement of the Apostle Paul, “Do not become partners with them”.
And that started me thinking, well, here I am in the Brisbane diocese; what does it mean to be partners? What does that mean in terms of my relationship with the diocese?
It’s not a simple question. That’s why I took so long to work it through. It actually isn’t a simple question, as so many people who are committed to the cause of the gospel and the authority of the Scriptures show because they remain in structures like that.
It came to a head for me when last year, the Archbishop [Phillip Aspinall], in his address, said that the ethical commands of scripture are no longer prescriptive*. That statement rang out as a break with Anglican theology, with Christian theology that I did not feel I could remain.
My point of contention with the Archbishop actually wasn’t around the same-sex marriage issue. Because actually, as we often discussed, that is a presenting issue of the much deeper issue of discarding the authority of Scripture.
And when he openly rejected that authority, that was something that was quite unusual. The Archbishop tended not to play his cards; he would let other people do his talking for him. He didn’t tend to say anything that could come back to bite him. It was quite unusual for him to make such a stark statement.
But, I then challenged the Archbishop.
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