ACNA BISHOPS HAVE NOT BEEN INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE
The Anglican Communion Office has clarified that the Anglican Church in North America is not part of the Anglican Communion and its bishops have not been invited to join the Lambeth Conference that meets 26 July-8 August this year. Find the statement of Gavin Drake, Director of Communications, Anglican Communion Office, London, HERE .
In fact, the ACNA has been invited to send observers to the Conference just as other ecumenical non-Anglican Communion bodies have been invited to send representatives. It is up to the ACNA to accept or decline this invitation.
What brought this subject up was a misleading report in The English Churchman last month that stated the ACNA had been invited to attend the upcoming Lambeth Conference. Then, on 19 May, the magazine posted an article giving ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach's response to this. Find it HERE . Beach said:
As long as the Archbishop of Canterbury is inviting bishops to Lambeth who are living in immorality and continuing to tear the fabric of the Communion, the Anglican Church in North America and other GAFCON provinces will not participate in the Lambeth Conference. We have not agreed to 'walk together'. That narrative is not true; we didn't agree to this. There are some things that we simply cannot agree to disagree on, and the biblical truth about human sexuality is one of those things.
So, what does this tell us?
---Yet again, the Anglican Communion has said the Anglican Church in North America is not in the Anglican Communion.
---The ACNA bishops have not been invited to join the Anglican Communion bishops at the Lambeth Conference. This means Bishop "Chip" Edgar has not been invited.
---The ACNA has been invited to send representatives to observe the Conference.
---Homosexuality is now, as it has always been, the issue dividing the Anglican world. Any claim that the dispute is about theology is nonsense.
---GAFCON, and its proxy the ACNA, are the ones who have rent the fabric of the Anglican world, not the other way around. GAFCON provinces broke off communion with the Episcopal Church and set up a replacement "province" to take the place of TEC. ACNA was created explicitly to prevent both non-celibate homosexuals and women from equality and inclusion the the life of the church.
---The charge that many Anglicans will boycott the Lambeth Conference is an exaggeration. Of the 41 provinces of the Anglican Communion, exactly 3 have announced boycotts. Not surprisingly, Nigeria, Uganda, and Rwanda have some of the harshest laws regarding homosexuality.
---I think we can safely assume the modern day Pharisees of the ACNA will not be sending representatives to the Lambeth Conference this year.
