The Church of England's Global Anglican Future

[...] While a growing number are now recognisng that the Archbishop of Canterbury is incapable of providing sound leadership Reform and Church Society have managed to sustain a consistency and clarity. Both groups opposed the appointment of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury.

More recently, the Alpha Course movement based at Holy Trinity Brompton has partnered with a new theological college, St Mellitus which is described as a personal initiative of the Bishops of London and Chelmsford.

While the Alpha material teaches a biblical view of homosexuality, the current Bishop of Chelmsford is a Patron of Changing Attitude, a campaigning gay/lesbian group and there are a growing number of clergy in Chelmsford Diocese who are therefore not prepared to receive his ministry.

Participants on the Alpha Course could therefore feel some understandable confusion. Coming right up to date, Elaine Storkey, a leading member of the liberal leaning evangelical group 'Fulcrum' having already having won a £20,000 award for unfair dismissal against Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, is now seeking to extend the scope of religious discrimination law by arguing that it can be applied within a religion, in her case alleging discrimination by the 'conservative evangelical' management at Wycliffe Hall against her own 'open evangelical' position - a grievous example of how evangelical compromise leads to the hardening of division, not to mention the irony that someone who has sought to champion Christian values in the public sphere is opening the way for the secular 'rights' culture to trump Christian conviction by suing a bishop (James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool and chairman of the college council).

Despite this disarray in England, the wider picture of the Anglican Communion is becoming clearer as the Lambeth Conference approaches and will force on the Church of England the very choices its leadership has been trying so hard to avoid. Read more
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