Problems with the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans UK

by Stephen Kuhrt

pre-published, with permission, from The Church of England Newspaper, 16th October 2009

First of all I’d like to express my thanks to the Church of England Evangelical Council for this invitation to address it on the issue of The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans United Kingdom (FCAUK). Obviously my membership of the leadership team of Fulcrum is part of the reason for this invitation and, in particular, the article that I wrote for The Church of England Newspaper back in July on the potential impact of FCAUK in relation to the diocese of Southwark. I do have concerns about FCA in regard to the Anglican Communion as whole but understand my brief in this address to concentrate on FCAUK in relation to the Church of England.

My concerns in regard to FCAUK are as follows:

(1) FCAUK is likely to encourage precipitate action on a variety of different issues that need to be responded to separately if they are to be handled with integrity

(2) FCAUK will encourage cynicism amongst evangelicals about the existing structures within the Church of England at just a time when these structures need encouragement and support

(3) The formation of FCAUK will encourage an unhelpful standoff with more liberal groupings and work to increase rather than resolve polarisation on the issue of homosexuality

(4) Because of all of these things, FCAUK will work to hinder the mission of both the Church of England and the evangelical churches and groupings within it.

In a moment I will attempt to unpack and explain each of those points a bit more. But before that, I thought I ought to explain a little bit about myself and my context. I have been in evangelical churches all my life and for the six and a half years that I have been ordained I have served in one parish in New Malden in South West London firstly as curate and for the last two a half years as its vicar. I’m responsible for two churches in this parish – Christ Church and St John’s and Christ Church, in particular, has a large congregation regularly attending our four Sunday services. I’m passionate about mission and evangelism and far and away the largest of our services is completely built around mission seeking to make church as accessible as possible for newcomers. We particularly specialise in trying to make church completely children and family friendly, are blessed to have some 250 children coming regularly on a Sunday and earlier this month I had this Grove book published on how we do this: Church Growth through the Full Welcome of Children: The Sssh Free Church. I am a convinced evangelical preferring the tag of “open” to “conservative” because to me it sums up better the Anglican spirit of being open to listening and learning from other traditions and thereby showing a robust confidence about our evangelical convictions rather than a defensive fear. I am completely orthodox on the issue of homosexuality and regard the persecution of those who take this stance in The Episcopal Church in America as really terrible. I’ve also got to say (and I am aware that I’m in mixed company on this one) that I am totally convinced of the biblical basis for the full ministry of women at every level and this is a particular feature of the ministry at Christ Church, New Malden.

That is all by way of introduction to me returning to those four points I set out earlier.

FCAUK is likely to encourage precipitate action on a whole variety of different issues that need to be responded to separately if they are to be handled with integrity

Obviously there are a number of difficulties for evangelicals within the Church of England at the moment. These include objection to what is seen as a growing revisionism in regard to homosexual practice and for a number there are also major difficulties surrounding the development of women’s ministry, especially the prospect of women bishops. But another whole set of frustrations exist on quite different issues such as the levels and use of parish share, the non-recommendation of ordination candidates, the non-authorisation of cross boundary church plants and the non-ordination of staff to them. These problems are all very real and it is therefore completely right that strong representation is made on them to bishops and elected synods. Sometimes this will be by pressure groups campaigning on each issue and, at other times, because the problems are essentially local, by individual churches and their leaders.

But my problem with the formation of FCAUK lies in its encouragement of the belief that all of these frustrations come under the umbrella of ‘liberalism’ and ‘unorthodoxy’. The Jerusalem Declaration contains many good statements of orthodoxy and many, therefore, that virtually all evangelicals including myself would like to be able to affirm. But therein lies the problem, because what the launch of FCAUK revealed, and what article 13 of the Jerusalem Declaration specifically promotes, is that the truth of these statements both can and should lead to rejection of any authority that its opponents deem to be ‘unorthodox’.

And what this opens up are the grounds for pretty much any parish or grouping with a grudge against authority appealing to FCAUK and receiving its support. This has been seen already with groups as diverse as frustrated church planters, disappointed ordination candidates and opponents of women bishops all being urged to see FCAUK as the means to achieving their agenda. That is why many were particularly concerned with the afternoon session at Westminster Central Hall back in July which suggested that FCAUK was happy to support anyone having a problem with their bishop or diocese. I’m particularly thinking of frustrated evangelical church planters and disappointed evangelical ordination candidates when I say this. But the involvement of Forward in Faith also forms a concern here. In this case FCAUK has turned a blind eye to the significant gay subculture within Forward in Faith and sponsored its angry opposition, on Catholic grounds, to the ordination of women because an alliance with that opposition can weaken the Church of England. Few of us who were present at the launch of FCAUK will forget the Bishop of Fulham, John Broadhurst declaring “Satan is alive and well and resides in Church House!”. This links to my second concern which is that this lessening of confidence in Anglican structures is not just an outcome of FCAUK but close to its aim.

FCAUK will encourage cynicism amongst evangelicals about the formal structures within the Church of England at just a time when these structures need encouragement and endorsement

1966 was three years before I was born. But I am aware that in that year a call was made to evangelicals to, in effect, ‘come out from’ denominations in which they co-existed with liberals. I’m immensely grateful that that didn’t happen and, in particular, to those who gathered at the first NEAC at Keele a year later in 1967 and, under the wise leadership of John Stott (the founding father, of course, of CEEC as well), committed themselves to a confident and constructive engagement with the structures of the Church of England. Now obviously that was before the issue of homosexuality reached the crisis point that it is at now. But it was the era of ‘South Bank religion’ and ‘Honest to God’. Yet those who gathered at Keele still chose a path that not only rejected separatism and abandonment of the structures of the Church of England but also any relativisation of a commitment to being positive about those structures and making them work. That, I suggest, was the right approach to evangelical frustrations back then and it remains, I believe, the right approach now.

FCAUK, however, seems to stand for just such a relativisation. The charge of separatism is hotly denied by FCA leaders but in his address at NEAC 2008 Chris Sugden declared ‘We will keep formal administrative links with the formal Church of England, but our real identity is with Global Anglicanism as defined by the Jerusalem statement and declaration.’ And the sad thing is that this negativity about the formal structures within the Church of England at just a time when these structures need and deserve encouragement. Because the truth is that for evangelicals in the Church of England we have truly ‘never had it so good’. Yes there are still major frustrations, many of which I share. But the Church of England has never had more evangelical bishops than it has now and proportionately it has never had more evangelical ordinands. In the latter case, we can say that if there is anyone attempting to stop evangelicals (and particularly conservative evangelicals) getting recommended by their selection conferences they are doing a remarkably bad job! The same can be said of the appointment of evangelical bishops. In the 1980’s under Robert Runcie the bias toward liberal Episcopal appointments was very clear. However under Rowan Williams, the sheer number of evangelical bishops being appointed is a clear indication of a current policy to appoint the best people for the job, regardless of their churchmanship. Another fantastic development is the enthusiasm and energy coming from the central structures of the Church of England for mission and evangelism through the growth of Fresh Expressions which is a truly remarkable development. We have committed evangelicals like Steve Croft and Graham Cray given the scope to build a mission shaped agenda right into the heart of the Church of England and both that and its growing impact are things that we, as evangelicals, we should be rejoicing over.

Rejoicing over, supporting and encouraging for all we’re worth. Yet to listen to the leaders of FCAUK you would think that with the odd exception, the situation within the Church of England is only a few years away from being like that of the Episcopal Church in America. But it is not, it is vastly different and it’s because, I suggest, of those Keele evangelicals, people like Colin Buchanan, George Carey, Gavin Reid, Michael Saward, Gordon Kuhrt and Philip King who took that decision back in 1967 to really commit to working within the structures of the Church of England and seeing their renewal. Apart from the numbers of evangelical bishops and ordinands, another indication of the difference between TEC and the Church of England can be seen when you look at their liturgies. This, as much as anything, shows the fruit of evangelicals positive engagement over the last forty years with the structures of the Church of England. We’re clearly not there yet and there is no room for complacency. Frustrations and challenges remain. But that’s where the work starts and we are called to make the same commitment to putting in ‘the hard yards’ that our forefathers did at Keele.

But an indication of FCA’s rather different attitude here is its apparent determination ‘to bury good news’ about both the formal structures of the Anglican Communion and those orthodox clergy and churches who are determined to stay within them. Communion, Covenant and our Anglican Future: the recent statement of Rowan Williams in response to the 2009 General Convention of TEC, the continuing commitment to the Windsor Process and the existence of the important ‘Communion Partners’ movement in the Episcopal Church are all things that FCA seems determined to play down and present as holding little, if any, significance. All of these are ‘off message’ with its concern to present the formal structures of both the Anglican Communion and the Church of England as irredeemably in the hands of liberals and therefore in need of replacement.

My third point coming from a rather different direction:

The formation of FCAUK will encourage an unhelpful standoff with more liberal groupings and work to increase rather than resolve polarisation on the issue of homosexuality

Now I want to be clearly understood here. I take a conservative or orthodox stance on practicing homosexuality – a compassionate and pastoral one, I hope, but nonetheless a conservative stance. But the truth that we also need to recognise that many Christians, including many evangelicals, are increasingly perplexed about this stance and won’t be persuaded by anything other than a careful, nuanced and loving engagement with the issue, its complexities and the human beings that it involves. This, I believe, is one of the clearest things that Greenbelt indicates. The Rev George Day, whom some of you may remember speaking from the floor at NEAC 2008, is another example of an evangelical thoughtfully and prayerfully questioning that traditional stance and we simply must listen to these voices. And by establishing opposition to homosexuality (despite its strange alliance with Forward in Faith) as the defining issue of orthodoxy, FCA is provoking a polarisation that is in danger of doing more to strengthen the revisionist view within the Church of England. As a result of the formation of FCA, groupings on the liberal side of this debate that previously held more varied views from one another are now moving to greater coalition and that careful and nuanced dialogue and engagement that is so crucial to this issue ever being resolved is in danger of disappearing altogether.

Now that perspective that I’ve just given could be seen as too focused upon the Church of England. Some would argue that we owe it our brothers and sisters in Africa and those being persecuted in America and Canada to show that we stand with them in their stance on homosexual relationships. But, as many suggested at NEAC 2008, that can still be done by bodies like the CEEC expressing our firm support for them. Forming FCAUK is of course another way of expressing that support. But in terms of this country, I don’t believe that the formation of this coalition will do anything other than work to make those who are unsure about the traditional stance on homosexuality less likely to engage with it.

And that really leads into my final problem with FCAUK.

Because of all of these things, FCAUK will work to hinder the mission of both the Church of England and the evangelical churches and groupings within it.

I want to see this country evangelised and I want to see an energetic, renewed Church of England with all its unique advantages leading the way in this. For this to happen effectively I believe that we need not only evangelicals more effectively united, though bodies such as the CEEC but evangelicals committing to the Church of England listening and working for change constructively when we believe its structures are unhelpful. If I genuinely believed that the formation of FCAUK would help at all in the promotion of effective mission and evangelism within this country I might be tempted to give it some measure of support. But because of the points I have made this afternoon, I do not believe that that will be the case.

Stephen Kuhrt is Vicar of Christ Church, New Malden and Administrative Secretary of Fulcrum.

This is expanded version of an address delivered to the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) on 14th October 2009.

A edited version also appeared that week in the Church of England Newspaper.