Monday, November 24, 2008

The splintering begins or continues depending on your point of view.

NEAC5 closes in acrimony after claims of ‘set-up’


The renegades in the Church of England can't get there act together any better then those in the TEC.  They held a meeting and immediately started excluding those who were not pure enough for their movement.  

Rodney Curtis, a management con sultant who worships at St Ebbe’s, Oxford, likened attending the meeting to “watching a car crash in slow mo tion”, as Dr Turnbull ignored advice from Dr Philip Giddings, the con vener of Anglican Mainstream, and Canon Michael Saward to withdraw the resolution. “The management of the day was so amateur that I felt embarrassed,” he said. “We were being bounced into supporting GAFCON at the say-so of Richard Turnbull.”

He described Dr Turnbull as having been “publicly humiliated”, and GAFCON as having been made to look like “a bullying, manipulative movement”. A procedural motion brought by Philip Love grove, a veteran of the General Synod, called for a move to next business. That motion was carried by 123 votes to 104.

The fact that even conservatives view GAFCON as "a bullying, manipulative movement" this quickly is a bit surprising but that this would happen was an easy bet.  The doctrine of purity has no end.  It continues until most of the members end up in home churches where they can completely control the doctrine.  The inability to live in tension with others whose believes are different has been a hallmark of this process in England and here.  While initially watching the renegades fall on their face is humorous in the end it is really sad.  Thousands of people have followed these men (they are almost all men) off a cliff and there is little turning back.

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