Lambeth Conference: Fewer Than 20 Bishops Undecided

Thinking Anglicans points us to an article about Lambeth invitation responses in the Church Times:

On Wednesday, numbers stood at 620 of the possible 880 bishops in the Anglican Communion. Officials calculate that about ten per cent of sees are vacant. Nigeria has said that none of its 141 bishops will attend; nor will Uganda’s 31 bishops. This leaves fewer than 20 bishops unaccounted for...

...This week, the organisers of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) said that 280 bishops had registered to attend. GAFCON, a conservative gathering, takes place in Jordan and Jerusalem next month. It is now clear that many bishops plan to attend both conferences...

Regarding GAFCON, let us recall Mark Harris' description of this gathering:

...GAFCON will go down in the history of the Anglican Communion as the foundational meeting of a new communion. Since the current one, the Anglican Communion is already peopled with a wide variety of church folk GAFCON will either have to take over, kicking the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and a wide variety of other churches out, or start a world-wide Church of its own.

We should have no doubts, however. The present brought to us this Christmas by this leadership group is rotten. GAFCON may succeed in its purposes, but the gaffe in GAFCON is that it is indeed the work of con artists.

So, there are 280 Bishops going to this conference in Jordan. If we add together the Bishops of those Provinces that have invaded North America and attempted to claim congregations to which they have no right (Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and the Southern Cone), we can account for 219 Bishops. If we include the 3 Bishop in TEC who are collaborating with these foreign plum pickers (two from Pittsburgh and one from Fort Worth), we have identified 222 Bishops who are most likely to attend GAFCON. That leaves 58 Bishops attending from outside the Global South. Among those 58 will be some from the Common Cause Partnership, such as Bishops from the Reformed Episcopal Church, who are not in communion with Canterbury.

Not exactly a balanced representation with which to launch a new global Communion, is it?

Pray for our Bishops and the Lambeth Conference.

Pray for the Church.

J.