FCA IN UK

THE Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) will be launched on Monday at Westminster Central Hall. The organisers of the event, “Be Faithful”, are the FCA’s chairman, the Revd Paul Perkin of Reform, and secretary, Canon Chris Sugden of Anglican Mainstream.

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who resigns on 1 September, is to issue a call to “re­pent of capitulating to cultures around them and focus on the faith of the Church down through the ages and on authentic mission to our nation”, a press statement said this week.

The FCA said that organisers had seen registrations “flooding in since the launch was announced just two months ago” — a claim repeated on conservative websites in the US. It is at odds with reports that, until two weeks ago, only half the places had been taken up, and the event had subsequently been opened up to a wider constituency. The Bishop of Sherborne, Dr Graham Kings, has accused the FCA in a pre-published newspaper article due to appear this week, of “ratcheted rhetoric” over claims of widespread support.

Church of England Evangelical Council members were urged to plug the event at its meeting last week. A concerned supporter of the Church Pastoral Aid Society contacted the Church Times when he received an email from the society’s director, John Dunnett, encouraging him to attend. He was given assurance in the email that the FCA was “avowedly not separatist”.

The Bishops of Chichester, Ful ham, and Lewes are speaking at the event, and the Bishop of Chester has sent greetings, which have also come from Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya. The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen; the Rt Revd Keith Ackerman, retired Bishop of Quincy; the Revd Vaughan Roberts; and Canon Vinay Samuel are among the 12 speakers, who include one woman, Baroness Cox, the campaigner for persecuted Christians.

The FCA has its roots in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) last year in Jerusalem, from which the recently launched Anglican Church in North America emerged. GAFCON issued the Jeru salem Declaration, and announced the establishment of “a fellowship of confessing Anglicans for the benefit of the Church and the furtherance of its mission”. It describes itself as a cross-party forum for those con cerned to preserve orthodox faith and doctrine.

Critics cite the collapse of the “Covenant for the Church of Eng land”, drawn up by Canon Sugden and Mr Perkin in December 2006, as evidence of a lack of broad support among Evangelicals. The Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, described the document as “a sabre-rattling call to arms” and found in some of its declarations “a statement of seces sionist intent”