In my article for the September issue of The Rock I wrote the following [about popular moral perceptions]:

"... what happens in practice? It is the moral relativist who is often most eloquent in his panegyric for a colleague who has died heroically and tragically for what he or she has believed; it is the young who shed most tears for one of their number who dies a premature or unjust death in the course of duty. When the chips are down neither the young undergraduate, nor their tutor who has so busily been inculcating moral relativism into him or her, is prepared to say the things which they have actually been professing in their essays and tutorials.

"Which brings us to the crux of the whole matter. The one fact with which neither self-fulfilment nor moral relativism can cope is death. Yet from the very beginning the Christian faith has put death and resurrection at the very centre of its creed; the biggest mistake which the churches have been making, and are seemingly intent upon continuing to do so, is to try and put something else there."

Little did I realise that within a day or two of sending it off the world would be shaken by the sudden and tragic death of Princess Diana, the extraordinary and deeply worrying reaction of people worldwide, not least in the United Kingdom, and the total inability of the bigwigs in the Church of England to discern the writing on the wall for the misconception about the purpose and meaning of life which they have both encouraged and generated, or the simple message "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting".

We are now sufficiently distanced from the event to be able to write with some candour about it. During the time of intense grief and bewilderment it was understandable that nobody would want to be too hard on the parties involved. Nevertheless I saw fit, the moment the funeral was over to write a piece entitled Great is Diana of the Ephesians which I published on the Internet and which I believe the Editor of The Rock is minded to publish as a separate article.

The spiritual and moral near-bankruptcy of our Church and nation at the present time combined with the urgent request from several readers of The Rock to know exactly what is going on In England Now prompts me to say rather more than usual about the other events of the past 3 months which have produced, largely, nothing but good news for Forward in Faith, Reform, and those other organisations which are committed to being Defenders of the Faith, something of which neither General Synod, the Establishment, the Queen in Parliament or any other human agency appears to be capable.

But first a caveat. Priests, no less than others, like to believe in the infallibility of their own judgement. They will therefore say that such-and-such is "bound to happen" or on the other hand is an eventuality "impossible to imagine". What they are in fact doing is making an enlightened guess which stands a good chance (judging by past of experience) of being correct. However there are just enough examples to the contrary (the rise of confidence in Forward in Faith and its consequent substantial upsurge in ordinands against all earlier predictions being a particularly striking one, see below) for us to be very cautious about such "certainties". The scope for miscalculation and the tendency of God to dispose where Man proposes have proved remarkably consistent over the course of history"!

In 1992, for instance, when the vote was taken about women priests and passed in General Synod, it was generally supposed by the protagonists of women's ordination that opposition would "melt away"; that those who disagreed with the novelty would soon be discredited; and anyway that such opponents who remained would be incapable of organising themselves in any coherent way; and that there would be an unending supply of women offering themselves for the sacred ministry.

In practice none of these predictions proved correct. The supply of acceptable women candidates has tailed off significantly, and many of those who were ordained in the first flush of enthusiasm have discovered that what they have let themselves in for is not what they were led to suppose.

Forward in Faith has, in contrast, successfully set up and maintained an alternative structure with what are, in practice, mini-dioceses with four "flying bishops" (Provincial Episcopal Visitors or PEVs for short) who are ministering to their needs in the way that no Church of England bishop has been able for the last 40 years. The number of ordinands of our persuasion (always a good yardstick by which to measure how spiritually alive a Christian organism is) has grown so that we now have over 150 on our books.

Nor is our situation one of day-to-day "survival" as it is for many who are less fortunate situation. On the contrary FiF is in the process of formulating plans for the next ten years: plans which take account of all the likely developments within the Church of England, including women bishops. We do so in the confidence that by the year 2007 we shall still be very much here, despite the efforts and predictions of those who would rather we were not.

The next cause for rejoicing was the two Annual conferences, Forward in Faith and Reform, both of which endorsed the Kuala Lumpur Statement, the latter unanimously, the former by a substantial majority.

Predictions had been made that somehow the whole business of homosexual acts and marriages and "gay relationships" and their conflict with the Church's teaching on sex and marriage would be firmly kept off the agenda for the Lambeth Conference 1998 by the various spin-doctors whom the Establishment employs to work night and day for such a purpose.

It now looks increasingly unlikely that they will succeed. Thanks to the motion by Archbishop Moses Tay, and the seeming determination of the Bishop of Newark, John Selby Spong, that the issue should be at the very centre of the Conference agenda, the chances of its being swept conveniently under the carpet are almost nil. Bearing in mind what I said earlier in this article about "certainties and impossibilities" I hesitate to say that this couldn't be done. Nevertheless the chance of any attempt to do so succeeding have been greatly diminished as a result of the determination, persistence and single-mindedness of Bishops like Tay of Singapore and Sinclair of the Southern Cone of South America.

To add to Lambeth's woes there is the threatened secession of the Australian Diocese of Sydney. This diocese in practice foots most of the bills for the Anglican Church in Australia (besides providing a large tranche of their communicant membership).

Their pretext for acting unilaterally on the matter lay presidency at the Eucharist (which they wholeheartedly espouse, and presently practise illegally) is not an issue which commends itself to most of our constituency whether Catholic or Reformed. Nevertheless their justification for doing so - so-called "provincial autonomy" - is precisely that which has been invoked by provinces which have chosen to go ahead with the ordination of women priests and bishops, in total disregard to the hitherto invariable practice of the Universal Church.

Now the really important point about it is this. Because this principle (of Provincial Autonomy) has been so widely embraced throughout the Anglican communion as an excuse for any province to do what its Synod decides, irrespective of everyone else, it must apply equally to those of us who are working towards an Independent Province within the British Isles. Our only agenda is that we should be allowed to practise, preach and propagate a faith which is that of the Universal Church and which, until very recently, was the accepted norm of all Anglican provinces around the globe.

There really doesn't seem to be any answer to this one; and it is the policy of Forward in Faith to plan and act as though there never will be. What we have to do (and this is of course a major task) is to convince those who are of our persuasion that this is the only way of safeguarding the faith with which we have been entrusted and to map out how such a Free Province might come into existence.

There is a bit of time at our disposal.

Supposing the Lambeth Bishops manage to ride out the storm next year and the so-called "Anglican Communion" doesn't disappear finally down the tubes, the House of Bishops of the Church of England has agreed amongst themselves that "women bishops" (which would bring matters to a head very quickly) are something which they will collegially oppose whatever their private views on the "justice" of the matter. By thus putting off making this decision, many of those who are presently bishops hope that they will have retired before it has come to be a reality. So we are thinking in terms of a five-to-ten year span of time to get ourselves organised. In ecclesial terms that is a short, but not unmanageably short period to achieve what we are setting out to do.

[By the way, "justice", which featured so large in their arguments in favour of women priests in 1992 now appears to take a very different place in the scale of importance over the matter of women bishops. Forward in Faith is not in the least reticent about pointing this out to them. How they must love us!]

One of two things might bring matters to a head over a shorter time-span. There are rumours that an attempt will be made to rescind the Act of Synod under which Forward in Faith and the Flying Bishops operate. That wouldn't necessarily affect us directly but it would be the strongest possible indication that the position afforded us by the House of Bishops in Bonds of Peace was no more than an expedient for getting the legislation through Parliament.

The other "blowing apart" of our present relationship with the Church of England would be if Women Bishops, either from England or abroad were to become a present reality over here, despite the determination of the House of Bishops that they should not do so. At present there exists nothing like the powerful "women's caucuses" which are such a feature of the Anglican churches in the USA and Canada, for example. But given the generally low morale and frustration of those women priests who find that their ministry is far from universally welcome, and is rejected in its sacramental dimension by a many devout communicants for reasons good or bad, it is certainly possible that such an attempt might be made.

Our first aim, then, must be to convince those of our integrity about the viability of our plan for a Free Independent Province. The second must be to plan for its legal, administrative and financial independence of the Church of England. In doing this we should be doing nothing that was not undertaken at the time of the creation of the Church in Wales or the disestablished Church of Ireland.

Our cause has been greatly helped by two or three stories which have hit the headlines in the press. One was an article in the Sunday Times by Christopher Morgan, a journalist with more than a passing interest in Forward in Faith.

Although what Morgan said contained an number of inaccuracies, and the headline (not attributable to him) spoke in terms of a thousand anglican priests breaking away from the Church of England as if this were about to happen next week, the publicity by and large has had the beneficial effect of waking ordinary people up to the reality that a fundamental change has come over the Church of England during the last 10 years. As Morgan himself said, a fundamental change is beginning to dawn over public perceptions.

This bonus was preceded by another one in the Times, where their Religious Affairs Correspondent, Ruth Gledhill, reported that David Holloway, the Vicar of Jesmond Parish Church in Northumberland, an evangelical and well-known member of Reform had applied to the Archbishop of York under one of the Canons (C18) to invite him to intervene in order to drive out "erroneous and strange doctrines" in the form of those being put forward by his bishop-elect, Martin Wharton because of his open espousal of the Christian legitimacy of homosexual acts.

Holloway was, in his own words, applying for "Alternative Episcopal Oversight" - precisely what those of us who had opposed the priesting or women had demanded, to be given instead the lesser, but workable alternative of the Provincial Episcopal Visitors and "alternative episcopal care" with which we were in fact provided

Furthermore the Jesmond request (which was endorsed by the whole church council and by the Council of Reform itself) does not depend on the particular view of priesthood underlying the Act of Synod with which some evangelicals have difficulties. In making his request, Holloway are only asking that the same facilities be made available to them which Canon 18 has always made provision for and which are in no way tied into the rightness or wrongness of women priests.

Holloway's example has been followed by at least one other parish in the diocese of Oxford, and next week the Council of Reform is meeting to make its views known on the subject. It would be very surprising if a cluster of other parishes were not to take the same line where their bishop (like the Bishop of Oxford) has been similarly outspoken on the subject of homosexual behaviour, especially amongst the clergy.

All of which adds up to grounds for great hope. The TAC bishops met for their Annual Convention in London on this occasion (we had no less than six to stay with us at St Stephen's, including Bishops Crawley and Mercer from ACC Canada) and they were able to share first-hand both in the counsels and worship of Forward in Faith.

As a result of what they saw and heard they were left in very little doubt that Forward in Faith is pursuing a common agenda with them, albeit in ways which are appropriate to the particular circumstances which obtain in the Church of England.

So satisfied, indeed, were the TAC Bishops that, so far from supposing that we have compromising ourselves by "trying to have the best of both worlds", they were prepared privately to admit that had our strategy only been available and apparent to them during the 1970s, they too with the benefit of hindsight would have much preferred to proceed along the lines which Forward in Faith is presently following.

Return to Rock Home Page

Return to Trushare Home Page

Return to In England Now Pages