JUSTIN WELBY – Advent Cable Network Nigeria

Archbishop Welby Says it is Un-biblical For Nigerian, Rwandan and Ugandan Churches to Skip The Lambeth Conference

ACNN ADMIN — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 11:34:05 +0000

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has written to the Primates of Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda to tell them that his invitation to bishops from their provinces to attend the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops remains open.

In a joint letter with the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Archbishop Justin said: “God calls us to unity and not to conflict so that the world may know he came from the Father. That is the very purpose of the church globally.”

“Boycotts do not proclaim Christ”, the two Anglican leaders said. “Those who stay away cannot be heard, they will lose influence and the chance of shaping the future. All of us will be the poorer spiritually as a result of your absence.”

His letter was in response to a joint statement issued by the three Primates – Archbishop Henry Ndukuba of Nigeria, Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, and Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba of Uganda – in response to the Communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting at Lambeth Palace, London, in March, which they did not attend.

In his letter, Archbishop Justin asks the three primates to cease making inaccurate statements about the position of the Church of England, telling them that “the Church of England, has not in any way changed its teaching on marriage or the place of sexual relations.”

They also criticise the three Primates’ rejection of some of the topics to be discussed at the Lambeth Conference, saying: “we are distressed to read that you consider matters of the environment, poverty and economic disadvantage to be ‘peripheral’. These are matters of life and death for large parts of the Communion. They are the result of human sin of despoiling and ruining God’s creation and it is anticipated that the world will see devastating wars and the displacement of up to one billion people as a direct result of climate change.

“Not to care for God’s creation and for the poor and destitute is in direct contravention of the teaching of scripture and the words of Jesus Christ.”

The Communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting made reference to the Primates of Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda, saying: “We continue to lament the absence from our meetings of three primates who choose to stay away. Our reflections, deliberations and fellowship are diminished by their absence. We miss them and their prayerful wisdom, and we long for the time when we will all meet together.”

In their letter, Archbishops Justin and Josiah said: “We stand by the statements in that communiqué, not least that which laments the absence of Your Graces from that meeting and of your churches from other instruments of the Communion’s life.”

On the question of disagreements within the Anglican Communion, Archbishops Justin and Josiah said: “The Bible is at the heart of Christian life. Anglicans hold to Scripture as the ultimate authority in matters of faith, as the Church has down the centuries.

“There have always been disagreements on matters that affect the faith and life of the church and, from the Council of Jerusalem (see Acts 15) onwards the way that the Church has dealt with disagreement has been by prayerful discussion and listening to the views of those who differ.

“Questions of human identity and sexuality will undoubtedly be discussed at the Lambeth Conference but bishops from Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda have indicated that they will not be there. Therefore they will have neither voice nor the opportunity to listen.”

They Were Playing “Power Games”, Welby Issues Accusations to Lambeth Conference Holdouts

ACNN NEWS — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 23:03:47 +0000

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby issued accusations at those refusing to attend the Lambeth Conference next year. He said they were playing “power games” and were a “tool of power” for “small groups that claim extraterritorial jurisdiction”.

While not naming names, he clearly had GAFCON archbishops and bishops in mind who have made it abundantly clear that they will not attend because of unresolved issues over homosexuality and Welby’s failure to uphold the strictures placed by the ’98 Lambeth Conference Resolution 1:10 on provinces that no longer uphold marriage between a man and a woman, refusing to forbid homosexual practice as “incompatible with Scripture”.

In an article published on the Lambeth Conference website, Welby said, “[we] will seek to find a way forward on the issues that have divided us for so long over marriage, sexuality and relationships”. Such hopes are wishful thinking.

Welby then undermined his own position, saying; “It is unlikely that we will have a single common understanding. We are a global communion with more than 2000 languages, and such deeply embedded and possibly different views of what is right and wrong, both culturally and in our understanding of the Bible. But this is what marks the Church out as different. We are called to find ways of continuing together, knowing that we belong to one another and obeying the commands of Jesus to love one another, and where we disagree, disagreeing well.”

But that will not be possible if dozens of bishops from the Global South do not attend, and many have made it clear they will not. These provinces include Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania to name but a few.

At a recent Global South Anglican conference attended by some 90 bishops from 16 provinces, Welby issued a call for all to attend Lambeth next year. In response, delegates made it clear in a communique that each member province will make its own decision about attending the 2022 Lambeth Conference.

The leaders also made it abundantly clear that the definition of Anglican “belonging” (Communion) is based on orthodoxy not geography (Canterbury). They sent a clear reminder to Welby that he does not hold all the cards and the center of Anglican authority has moved from Canterbury to an as yet unnamed, but more biblically orthodox Anglican location. The bishops also acknowledged the unresolved “ecclesial deficit” outlined in the Windsor Report.

Furthermore, it is Welby himself who publicly excluded ACNA Anglican Archbishop Foley Beach from the next Lambeth Conference, telling Beach that he had left the Anglican Communion thus furthering a partisan, divisive, and false narrative. Beach fired back that he had not left the Anglican Communion and had no intention of doing so. Welby said he could come as an “observer”, as though Beach were a bishop with leprosy. Also invited was the bishop of the Anglican Church in Brazil., the Rt. Rev. Miguel Uchoa who also declined Welby’s offer.

Welby also argues that participants “need to be clear about what it should mean to be part of the Anglican Communion as part of God’s Church”. Too often, he says, the Communion “has slipped into being a tool of power, the absolute opposite of discipleship in the service of Jesus Christ.

“Some groups are intent on changing the way in which the Anglican Communion works, so that those outsides of a province may interfere with its actions and tell people what to do. There is a danger of becoming a communion that finds itself with a load of small groups that claim extraterritorial jurisdiction.”

Would Welby recognize that some of those “small groups” are activist homosexual groups like Changing Attitude led by Colin Coward or Jayne Ozanne’s lesbian foundation! Pointing the finger at orthodox groups as though they were the guilty ones promoting schism is both wrong and fundamentally flawed thinking. It is the revisionists (now called progressives) who have moved away from the ‘faith once for all delivered’ causing a breach and tearing the fabric of the communion, not the orthodox.

It is ironic that Welby’s predecessor Archbishop Rowan Williams opined to a group of clergy and laity in Los Angeles (2019) that the Anglican Communion is no more, it is now a (dysfunctional) family, but a family, nonetheless. “I am saying ‘Anglican family’ rather than ‘Anglican Communion’ because we’re a very fractured communion but we’re still family — like so many families, quarreling till the cows come home,” he said.

Welby still believes in the communion and said, “This goes against the understanding of the Church from the New Testament onwards, set out clearly in the great councils of the Church. It reverses the understanding of what it is to be Anglican which was established from the first Lambeth Conference. It tries to narrow us from being a global church with open doors and a welcoming heart of love for the needy to one that — rather than depending on Christ and the Holy Spirit to draw in those who are not yet members — sets its own tests based on its own way of doing things.”

One of those “tests” was whether the communion would accept homosexuality on a par with heterosexuality. In 1998, it did not by an overwhelming 570 to 69. For biblically orthodox Anglicans, homosexuality is a salvation issue, and they will not give it a pass or sweep it under the table, however much Welby might want to ignore that resolution which hangs over him like a Damoclean sword.

Welby hopes the Lambeth Conference will discuss more than “internal church matters,” and focus on evangelism; persecuted Christians; reconciliation and peacebuilding; the climate crisis; and response to the pandemic. This will not draw in disaffected Anglican bishops who don’t believe the Bible can be rewritten to suit the sexual appetites of a small, shrill, strident group of whining pansexualists.

An even deeper irony is that Welby wants the Lambeth Conference of bishops to focus on, unite and be a sounding board for global climate change when he can’t even unite Anglicans in his own communion over sexuality!

The upcoming 2022 Lambeth Conference will be the first to have taken place since 2008, (when it was a setback because of a worldwide pandemic) and the first presided over by Archbishop Welby.

Given changes in travel and quarantine requirements, and the unequal distribution of vaccines around the world, however, there are plans for parts of the Conference to be available online for bishops who are unable to travel to Canterbury. An estimated 500 bishops from around the communion are expected to attend.

END

By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
October 25, 2021

The Fall of Kabul Was a “Political” Failure, Justin Welby Tells The House of Lords

ACNN ADMIN — Sat, 21 Aug 2021 21:20:23 +0000

The Archbishop gave this speech during today’s House of Lords debate on Afghanistan.

My Lords,

I look forward today especially to hearing noble and gallant Lords, diplomats, and others with local knowledge in Afghanistan. We rightly remember the courage, suffering and sacrifice over the last 20 years, and the courage being shown by our ambassador and the service people in Afghanistan at the moment, together with their colleagues and reporters. When we look back, I remember a cathedral, full for the funeral of a soldier: family and many colleagues silent in dignity, some wounded, mourning their loss.

The failure we face today is not military or diplomatic: they did all they could. It is political. Recovery and hope will come to Afghanistan with us supporting commitment to the neediest and most desperate. We have proven capacities in soft as well as hard power.

We owe an absolute, lavishly generous moral covenant to all those who are at risk because they served with us in Afghanistan or took seriously our frequently professed commitment to its future, women and girls included. An Afghan refugee, now a UK citizen said to me this week, “families in such times of trouble belong together”. His words are not politics but humanity. This is about morals not numbers. Will the Government confirm that their policy will reflect moral obligation and not be controlled by numbers?

In Pakistan, a country facing huge pressure including from refugees, we must undertake dialogue and support, learning afresh the religious and cultural literacy which is essential to effective work. We must not put any groups there, or in Afghanistan, into a corner where they may be driven to greater extremes. The aid we offer must support dialogue, inspire hope and prepare reconciliation. And that aid must be genuinely additional, not a transfer from other places of need. Is that going to be the case, I ask the Government?

We must renew commitment to freedom of religion and belief everywhere, a point not much mentioned so far. That will count in Pakistan and Afghanistan for Christians and religious communities such as Shia, Hindus, Jains, Ahmadis and Sikhs. A WhatsApp, from a Christian in Afghanistan yesterday, asked for support there and in Pakistan. Memorably, it said, “I am willing to die for Jesus, but I do not want to die forgotten”.

My Lords, this is a very bad time, especially for so many in Afghanistan, and for those who served there. It is a time for prayerful humility – and for us to display generosity, virtue, and courage. Rebuilding our reputation in such ways will give many others hope as well.

JUSTIN WELBY UNABLE TO GIVE ‘STRAIGHT ANSWER’ ON WHETHER GAY SEX IS SINFUL

ACNN NEWS — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 09:46:33 +0000

Archbishop admits he is struggling with issue, in interview where he also expresses hope of not having to oversee Queen’s funeral.

Justin Welby has said he struggles with the question of whether gay sex is a sin and acknowledged that the gulf between conservative and liberal Anglicans on the issue is “irreconcilable”.

In an interview, the archbishop of Canterbury also said the Queen was “one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met” and that he hoped he would not have to preside over her funeral.

Welby, who came under fire at the weekend by survivors of sexual abuse for his suggestion that the Church of England had acted with integrity, is likely to disappoint LGBTI campaigners within the church over his “cop-out” on gay sex.

Asked by Campbell if gay sex was sinful, Welby said: “You know very well that is a question I can’t give a straight answer to. Sorry, badly phrased there. I should have thought that one through.”

Pressed on why he could not answer, the archbishop said: “Because I don’t do blanket condemnation and I haven’t got a good answer to the question. I’ll be really honest about that. I know I haven’t got a good answer to the question. Inherently, within myself, the things that seem to me to be absolutely central are around faithfulness, stability of relationships and loving relationships.”

In response to Campbell’s assertion that those could be characteristics of same-sex relationships, Welby said: “I know it could be. I am also aware – a view deeply held by tradition since long before Christianity, within the Jewish tradition – that marriage is understood invariably as being between a man and a woman. Or, in various times, a man and several women, if you go back to the Old Testament.

“I know that the church around the world is deeply divided on this in some places, including the Anglicans and other churches, not just us, and we are – the vast majority of the church is – deeply against gay sex.”

He added: “I am having to struggle to be faithful to the tradition, faithful to the scripture, to understand what the call and will of God is in the 21st century and to respond appropriately with an answer for all people – not condemning them, whether I agree with them or not – that covers both sides of the argument. And I haven’t got a good answer, and I am not doing that bit of work as well as I would like.”

Asked if he was trying to reconcile Anglican church leaders in places such as Uganda and more liberal churches principally in the UK and north America, Welby said: “It is irreconcilable.”

But, he added, homophobia was sinful “because you are hating individuals. I don’t think it is sinful to say that you disagree with gay sex. But to express that by way of hatred for people is absolutely wrong in the same way as misogyny or racism is wrong.”

In response to Campbell’s suggestion that his answer was “morally a cop-out”, Welby responded: “Yes. I am copping out because I am struggling with the issue.”

The divisions within the global Anglican communion over same-sex relationships will be central to a five-day meeting of primates in Canterbury, which starts on Monday.

The meeting is expected to impose de facto sanctions on the Scottish episcopal church, which accepted same-sex marriage this summer and conducted its first same-sex wedding last week.

In January 2016, Anglican primates said the US episcopal church must face consequences for a similar move. It was barred from membership of representational bodies and excluded from decisions on policy for three years. The Canadian church is expected to follow suit on same-sex marriage.

Campaigners for LGBTI equality believe there has been a sea change in the past year within the Church of England in attitudes to same-sex relationships, and most Anglicans now support a more inclusive church.

In his GQ interview, Welby also said he hoped he would not have to preside over the Queen’s funeral. “It’s enormous whoever does it – God willing someone else – because it is an enormous public event. But as a parish priest, at every funeral you think about the enormity of it.

“I don’t want to get into details because it is not something I want to talk about, but the Queen is the most extraordinary person, one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met, in every possible way. When it [her funeral] happens it will be the most extraordinary historic moment.”