Within the Bible, the desert, or wilderness, is the place the place God teaches and varieties His folks. Moses led the Israelites by the desert for forty years earlier than they entered the promised land, Jesus spent forty days within the desert earlier than starting his formal ministry.
Yesterday, the World South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) gathered in a monastery within the Egyptian desert for its first meeting underneath its new covenantal constructions. Their objective? Restore the Anglican Communion.
In his keynote speech, the present chairman of the GSFA, Primate of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, Archbishop Justin Badi, offered their plan.
Underneath the Cairo Covenant, provinces, dioceses and different networks of church buildings will “covenant amongst themselves to stay trustworthy to the plain and canonical educating of God's phrase and to be mutually accountable in issues of religion and order”. In impact, it’ll create a “holy remnant” in a divided and theologically various Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Badi made it clear that this remnant wouldn’t “stroll collectively” or have “good disagreements” with Canterbury and different revisionist provinces. He repeated the message he first delivered on the Lambeth convention in 2022: “The GSFA Primates and I say: 'We can’t stroll collectively in sin except there may be repentance of those that have gone astray, we can’t have unity on the expense of God's life-giving fact.'
And it’s this life-giving fact that’s on the middle of all the things that has occurred in Egypt to date. GSFA prepares for a mission – even in locations the place evil reigns. Archbishop Badi provided hope to these dealing with “struggling, injustice and chaos” when he stated: “However our God is rarely late. As we pray and work for his restored kingdom, he’ll even use the work of the forces of evil to result in his salvation. Within the midst of darkness, God's glory will shine upon his folks, and thru his folks this mild will deliver life and hope to all who name upon the Lord, who will see and expertise the salvation that solely God can deliver.”
It was a message illustrated by Archbishop Stephen Than of the Church of Myanmar Province, who held a picket cross engraved with two whips representing pure and man-made disasters and edged in silver. He held it up and stated, “These disasters press us and drive us to share our tears and blood. In the midst of the cross, brothers and sisters, each cloud has a silver lining… Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ is our silver.”
The World South Fellowship of Anglicans has waited twenty-five years for the Devices of the Anglican Communion to deliver order to the divided Church neighborhood, however they may wait not. They could respect the workplace of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the seat of Augustine, however Archbishop Badi had a message for the present incumbent: “We deeply remorse the present scenario within the Church of England and within the revisionist provinces. We pray that you simply 'come out of Babylon' (Isaiah 48:20) and return to obedience to the phrase of God.”
As Church of England bishops meet immediately to debate plans to introduce separate same-sex blessing providers, they might wish to think about the GSFA's voice. In the event that they don't, they might be evicted, as a result of Archbishop Justin was very clear about what ought to occur to liberal educating within the Church: “I all the time say, in Africa we stay in tukuls. When a snake enters your tukul, you don't need to run away , it's a snake – you're chasing it away. So we’ll struggle. Liberals, we'll kick them out of our beloved communion.”
The World South Fellowship of Anglicans congregation is broadcast stay. Try their Fb web page for particulars.
Susie Leafe is director of Anglican Futures, which helps Orthodox Anglicans within the UK.
