Yesterday saw the launch of a new organisation, the ‘Anglican Mission in England’ (AMiE). Like the ‘Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans’ (FCA) before it (the organisation launched at GAFCON in 2008 to head up the new breakaway movement for those churches disaffected with the more inclusive goals of other members of the Anglican Communion), they launched to a great fanfare and an impressive-sounding mission: The ‘re-conversion of England’ through church planting.
But to what exactly do they wish to re-convert England?
In a communique from Anglican Mainstream about the new organisation, signed by the increasingly familiar partnership of the Rev. Paul Perkin (Vicar of St Marks church, Battersea, London; New Wine Network; Reform council member; Trustee and on the Steering Committee of Anglican Mainstream; now ‘Chairman of the AMIE steering committee’) and Canon Dr Chis Sugden of Anglican Mainstream (Executive Secretary of Anglican Mainstream and now ‘Secretary’ of AMIE), they say:
AMIE has been established as a society within the Church of England dedicated to the conversion of England and biblical church planting. There is a steering committee and a panel of bishops. The bishops aim to provide effective oversight in collaboration with senior clergy.
But why now? Is it because they have been neglecting dear old Blighty for too long, or is this the next logical step in an attempted power grab within the Church of England?
In 2008, ‘theologically conservative African Anglican leaders who opposed the ordination of homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex unions‘ initiated GAFCON – the ‘Global Anglican Future Conference’ in Jerusalem. At this widely publicised event it was brought to the world’s attention that the very substantial part of the Anglican Communion is not in Britain and the USA – e.g. in ‘the West’ – but in Africa and other parts of the world, and this sector is growing worldwide while church-going in ‘the West’ is, by and large, shrinking. Thus, the conference was seen by some as a direct threat to an antiquated power model of the Anglican Communion, headed up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, by which Anglican leaders from Africa and elsewhere often felt marginalised. At this conference, the FCA was launched. Note this, because the timing is important: The FCA came out of GAFCON.
The communiqué about yesterday’s event from Anglican Mainstream about the AMIE, however, says the following (emphasis mine):
The AMIE has been encouraged in this development by the Primates’ Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON) who said in a communiqué from Nairobi in May 2011: “We remain convinced that from within the Provinces which we represent there are creative ways by which we can support those who have been alienated so that they can remain within the Anglican family.”
Is this wording significant? Here, the “Primates’ Council of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans” is labelled ‘GAFCON’. Thus, in this statement, GAFCON is equated with “the Primates’ Council” within the FCA, rather than a global movement in its own right. This is a curious downgrading of GAFCON’s importance is it not?
There seems to be some slight of hand going on: After GAFCON – perhaps with perfect justification – opened our eyes to a form of colonialism within the Anglican Communion, are Canon Dr Chris Sugden and the Rev. Paul Perkin and their chums at the FCA simply replacing it with something almost indistinguishable, but with a different vision – a more ‘Angican Mainstream’ vision? Are we watching the tail of Anglican Mainstream and their allies trying to wag the dog of the Global Anglican Communion?
Church planting is not new. Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), the home of the Alpha Course, has been planting churches for decades. St Marks itself – Paul Perkin’s church – was an HTB plant, and itself planted St Peter’s in Battersea. HTB continues to plant churches (for instance, St Augustine’s in Queensgate, now ‘HTB Queensgate’), with no apparent need for a new organisation, a new mission, and a new vision, nor the support of overseas bishops. So what exactly is the purpose of the church planting that the new ‘Anglican Mission in England’ proposes? Is it to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or is it to cement and strengthen their own position within the breakaway Anglican Communion and the Church of England? Forgive my cynicism, but it seems to me the organisation is more dedicated to agendas, alliances and allegiances than spreading the vision of Christ, friend and comforter of the outsider and the alienated. AMIE looks like an organisation dedicated to converting the church to its own narrow vision of Anglicanism – for which vision they usurp the word ‘Biblical’ so that no other may claim it, rather than to bringing England’s lost sheep back to Christianity.
But we will wait and see how things develop. Like the FCA before it, AMIE might turn out to be a bit of a damp squib.
flockedout
flocked out 
It makes sense to record the initiatives of these folk, if only from a historical perspective. But in truth what they demonstrate – again and again – is the banal truth that such affronted Anglicans have a tendency to splinter into more and more groups. I think it may be caused by the fact that all of them seem to know exactly what is in God’s mind. They seem to regard themselves as infallibile mouthpieces of Divine Will. So each believes that he or she (usually he) must dominate and lead. Too many leaders? No worries. Start a new group.
Looking outside our denomination for a moment, it seems that a characteristic of Anglican-style churches not in communion with Canterbury is the proliferation of Bishops. In my mind there is more than a little suspicion that these churches offer a refuge for ambitious clergymen (almost always men) whose careers were going nowhere in the mother church.
May I – as an African Anglican – also make the unfashionable point that probably very few of the activists in GAFCON, FCA, AMiE, etc., etc., have ever paused to consider that the word Anglican is an adjective. And the culture of the Church of England, no matter how loopy, is Anglican – whereas the culture of the idiotically-named Southern Cone, or Nigeria, or Rwanda, or Singapore, or Trinidad, or Zimbabwe, is not. I am less than impressed when I am told that a “very substantial part of the Anglican Communion is not in Britain and the USA – e.g. in ‘the West’ – but in Africa and other parts of the world, and this sector is growing worldwide while church-going in ‘the West’ is, by and large, shrinking.” All that means is that non-Anglican influence is growing in what was, and should still be, an Anglican communion.
Unfashionable views in these sensitive days, no doubt!