Conservative Anglican fellowship launched in South Africa

Just months after being launched in London, a conservative Anglican movement has made its way to South Africa where 70 clergy and laity have gathered to affirm the orthodox Christian faith.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (South Africa) was launched Thursday at St. John's Church in Port Elizabeth and participants want to send out a clear message that "the Scriptures exhort us to remain faithful to the faith 'once for all delivered to the saints,' to the Lordship of Christ and hence to Apostolic teaching and practice."

At a time when some conservative Anglicans are choosing to split from their national churches over differences on scriptural authority and homosexuality and form separate groups, organizers of the FCA insist their movement is not an act of secession but a way of keeping orthodox, biblical Anglicanism "inside the fold," as Peter Jensen, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, explained earlier.

The movement comes out of an invitation by conservative Anglican bishops from mainly the Global South. Last summer, leaders at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) who believe some in the Anglican Communion are preaching a "false gospel" affirmed Christian orthodoxy and invited like-minded Anglicans to establish a fellowship.

They have pointed to The Episcopal Church in the United States and its departure from Anglican tradition and Scripture. The Episcopal Church widened rifts within the global Anglican Communion in 2003 when it consecrated its first openly gay bishop.

This year, U.S. Episcopal leaders passed resolutions that some believe will further impair the unity of the global body. One resolution declares the denomination's ordination process open to all individuals, including practicing homosexuals.

In a greeting to those at the launch of FCA (South Africa), Archbishop Peter Akinola, Primate of Nigeria, said his concerns and fears over the direction of The Episcopal Church remain.

"Revisionists will not come to repentance," he said. "The action of TEC at its recent General Convention have confirmed our fears that for them, there is no going back. They are intensifying their search for new disciples in Africa, using mammon to buy silence and cheap compromise of the Gospel. They claim to be theologically with us, but are in full alliance with all that we stand against.