CIVIL WAR BREWING IN GAFCON

ON ISSUE OF WOMEN BISHOPS?

GAFCON (Global Anglican Futures Conference) started in 2008 as a coalition of anti-homosexual rights bishops in the Anglican world. This was primarily in reaction to the embrace of equality for and inclusion of non-celibate homosexuals by the Canadian and American branches of the Anglican Communion. While primarily focused on gays, GAFCON also held a very low esteem for women in the clergy but they did not go for the same sweeping ban on this issue. 

When GAFCON and its American allies formed the Anglican Church in North America in 2009, they explicitly banned women from the episcopate. Local dioceses may choose to ordain women to the diaconate and priesthood, but none would be allowed to have women bishops. This hybrid compromise was written into the ACNA Constitution and Canons. Whether local dioceses would be allowed to ordain women at all remained a divisive issue within the ACNA. In 2017, the ACNA bishops issued a statement on this denouncing the ordination of women to the priesthood by "insufficient scriptural warrant." However, they concluded that although women's ordination was non-biblical, the local dioceses would continue to have the option of ordaining women as deacons and priests. The bishop of Ft. Worth loudly  proclaimed impaired communion with dioceses in ACNA ordaining women, e.g. South Carolina.

While there was no question about blanket ban on gays in the GAFCON sphere, there was considerable disagreement on women in the clergy. In fact, there are now four women bishops in Africa: two in Kenya, one in South Sudan,, and one in Southern Africa. Only a few days ago, Rose Okeno was ordained and consecrated the IV bishop of Butere, by the primate of Kenya, Jackson Ole Sapit.

The misogynists in GAFCON (and ACNA is part of GAFCON) appear ready to take up arms to stop allowing women to be bishops. In 2018, the primates' council of GAFCON issued a statement calling for a moratorium on consecrating women as bishops. Obviously, some in GAFCON have ignored this, certainly to the displeasure of the primates' council.

Now, a collection of reactionary clergy and laity in America has issued a letter calling for a ban on women bishops in GAFCON. Find it here . 

The leadership of GAFCON is going to have to come to terms on the ordination of women bishops. It appears that the issue is being settled de facto anyway. There are women bishops in GAFCON an they are not going to be dethroned. So much for the moratorium.

In the ACNA there will not be a woman bishop. It is a nearly all-white patriarchy. This means that the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina will never have a woman bishop. This is one reason why there is so little interest among the public now for the three candidates to succeed Mark Lawrence. In the recent election in the Episcopal Diocese of SC, there were two outstanding women candidates. This generated an enormous amount of interest and participation in those Walkabouts and election. We see little of that interest now in the next bishop of ADSC.

The ADSC has a lukewarm attitude toward women in the clergy. There is a handful of woman deacons and priests but none has ever been given authority over a medium or large parish. Women have never been the majority on any significant committee of the ADSC. No woman has ever chaired a major committee of the ADSC. It is clear that women are relegated to second-class status in the ADSC and will stay there. I only wonder why self-respecting women accept this out-dated misogyny.

GAFCON is a house of cards in the Anglican world. It was created to keep homosexuals out of the church. The rest of it was not so clear. If it begins to unravel on the issue of women bishops, the cards could begin to tumble and GAFCON itself could collapse in the face of the rising tide of human rights in the world.