GAFCON update

From GAFCON's website:

Akinola also emphasised that GAFCON is not going to break away from the Anglican Communion. “We have no other place to go, nor is it our intention to start another church.”

Who really knows what will actually unfold; a break could still come to pass. "The spirit is willing" but Akinola's comment, and the GAFCON site's giving that comment such high profile, seem to confirm suspicion that our Separatist brothers and sisters have lost momentum. If so, why? I do not suppose rhetoric of separation was insincere. Rather, if indeed the momentum for separation has waned, it seems the prospective leaders of the anticipated separation must have realized they held "losing hands": the costs of separation at this time outweighed the benefits. Perhaps not enough English--and American--evangelicals were on board.

Anyhow, failure to separate is dangerous to GAFCON partisans, inasmuch as a large measure of their strength comes from those who expected a separation now: true blue believers. Delay might disappoint them and further weaken the GAFCON faction--if the disappointed separatists are permitted to disengage from the drama of the Anglican Communion.

Thus, it seems to me that the leaders of the GAFCON faction will have an incentive to keep tension and conflict going. That will mean more negative hyperbole, more efforts to seduce rectors and bishops, more attempts to prise away parishes and dioceses amidst high-profile, international purple events: more of the same, at least as shrill if not even more urgent. And it will mean, perhaps, the GAFCON faction will have an incentive to participate at the Communion level in the formation of a covenant. I would not be surprised to see those who can still attend Lambeth with street credibility intact do so. To be brief, the survival of the AC does not mean peace in our time.

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