Churches of Global South represented at National Laitmer Conference

Last year, the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen was the guest speaker at the Conference of the Latimer Fellowship, a national association of Anglican Evangelicals.

This year two international speakers will attend the National Latimer Conference for 2007 to be held from Monday 2 to Tuesday 3 July at St Christopher's Anglican Church, Avonhead. The Revd David Short from Vancouver, Canada and the Revd Terry Wong from Singapore.

The Revd David Short is from the diocese of New Westminster, Canada, where his parish, along with others, has opposed the authorising of same-sex blessings by the bishop, which has led to a conflict that has reverberated around the Anglican Communion. In February of this year he was part of a delegation from ANiC (Anglican Network in Canada) who met with Anglican leaders prior to the Anglican Primates meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Primates meeting of Archbishops from around the world met to find a way of preventing the fragmentation of the Anglican communion due to the actions of the Canadian church and the subsequent consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop by the American Church, a man living in a same-sex relationship.

David Short says, “The issue really has nothing to do with sex. The issue underneath it has to do with Scripture and whether our faith comes from the revelation of God in Scripture.”

The Revd Terry Wong is based in Singapore and is chaplain to Archbishop John Chew, Primate of South East Asia. Archbishop John Chew is a leading Primate of the ‘Global South’, a coalition of non-western churches that make up more than 75% of the Anglican Church worldwide. The Global South leaders have consistently challenged the Western church over its departure from the teaching of the Bible in respect to sexuality. Terry Wong will present a paper at the conference giving a Global South perspective on the deepening divide within the Anglican Communion.

The Warden of the Latimer Fellowship and Vicar of the parish of Bryndwr, the Revd Malcolm Falloon, welcomed the participation of the wider Anglican Church at the Latimer Conference, “We can no longer pretend that what is happening on a global scale has no impact on the local church, and vice versa.”

Malcolm Falloon said, “The liberal wing of the Anglican Church is advocating an approach to the Bible that makes everything (and hence, nothing) provable from the Bible, robbing the Church of the very Gospel that sustains its life and mission. It is this Gospel mandate that we seek to reaffirm at this year’s conference”

Revd Malcolm Falloon