EGN NEWS DESK
In the Bible, the desert, or wilderness, is a spot the place God teaches and types his individuals. Moses led the Israelites via the desert for forty years earlier than they entered the Promised Land, Jesus spent forty days within the desert earlier than he started his formal ministry.
Yesterday, in a monastery within the Egyptian desert, the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) met for his or her first Assembly, below their new covenantal constructions. Their function? To reset the Anglican Communion.
In his keynote deal with, the present Chair of the GSFA, the Primate of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, Archbishop Justin Badi, set out their plan.
Under the Cairo Covenant, provinces, dioceses and different networks of church buildings will “covenant with one another to remain trustworthy to the plain and canonical instructing of God’s phrase and to be mutually accountable to one another in issues of Faith and Order.” In impact they are going to kind a “holy remnant” inside the divided and theologically various Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Badi made clear that this remnant won’t “stroll collectively” or have “good disagreement” with Canterbury and different revisionist provinces. He repeated the message he first gave on the Lambeth Conference in 2022, “The GSFA Primates and I say, ‘We can not stroll collectively in sin, until there may be repentance by those that have gone astray, we can not have unity on the expense of God’s life-giving fact.'”
And it’s this life-giving fact which is the main target of all that has taken place thus far in Egypt. The GSFA is getting ready for mission – even in locations the place evil dominates. Archbishop Badi supplied hope to these going through “struggling, injustice and chaos”, saying, “But our God is rarely late. As we pray and work for his renewing kingdom, He will even harness the work of the forces of evil to attain his salvation functions. In the midst of darkness, the glory of God will shine on his individuals; and thru his those that gentle will carry life and hope to all who name on the Lord. The nations will see and expertise the salvation that solely God can carry.”
It was a message exemplified by Archbishop Stephen Than of the Church of the Province of Myanmar, who held out a wood cross engraved with two whips representing pure and man-made disasters, and edged with silver. Holding it up, he mentioned, “These disasters strain and drive us to share our tears and blood. In the center of the cross, brothers and sisters, each cloud has a silver lining … Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ is our silver lining.”
The Global South Fellowship of Anglicans has waited twenty-five years for the Instruments of the Anglican Communion to carry order to the divided church group, however they are going to wait not. They might respect the workplace of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Seat of Augustine, however Archbishop Badi had a message for the present incumbent: “We deeply lament the present scenario within the Church of England and in revisionist provinces. We pray that they are going to ‘come out of Babylon’ (Isaiah 48:20) and return to obeying God’s phrase.”
As the bishops of the Church of England meet at this time to debate plans for introducing standalone providers of same-sex blessing, they could need to take into account the voice of the GSFA. If they do not, they could discover themselves being evicted, as a result of Archbishop Justin was very clear what ought to occur to the liberal instructing within the Church: “I at all times say, in Africa we stay in tukuls. When a snake enters your tukul you do not run away, it’s the snake – you chase it away. So, we’ll battle. The liberals, we’ll chase them out of our beloved Communion.”
The Assembly of the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans is being livestreamed. Details could be discovered on their Facebook web page.
Susie Leafe is director of Anglican Futures, which helps orthodox Anglicans within the UK.
