Calm urged as Anglican split over sexuality threatens to deepen

Bishops from across the world are due to come together for the once a decade Lambeth Conference but there’s concern many will boycott.

Conservative group GAFCON says its bishops won’t attend due to the fact gay bishops will be permitted to attend.

Conservatives within the Church are also unhappy at how they’ve been portrayed by the Anglican Communion.

Speaking at the Anglican Consultative Council last week, Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon (pictured below right) said the divide in the Church was due to “largely autocratic Primates and bishops in the Global South who do not behave as Anglicans”.

The Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion (EFAC) has written to him to ask him to reconsider his words.

Speaking to Premier, EFAC trustee Carl Hughes said: “You have to be realistic that there is a clear disagreement about human sexuality from a doctrinal point of view, across the Anglican Communion.

“What I think we were concerned about, as trustees, when we read what Archbishop Josiah said, was a suggestion that it was actually the groups like EFAC and GAFCON, who have held to the traditional teaching of the Church, that it is these groups that have moved away from the Anglican Communion whereas, actually, the differences that have arisen all started with the Episcopal Church in the United States acting independently…