At the core of the dilemma for liberals is a total loss of nerve when it comes to talking about Jesus, sin and salvation, the need for New Birth and pressing such ancient doctrines as justification and sanctification. Liberals would sooner talk about the need for anti-racism training, eco-evangelism, poverty issues, women’s issues and almost any issue that takes someone’s fancy about inclusion and diversity.

It is important to understand what is going in Nairobi at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) and why Western Pan-Anglican provinces that are liberal in ethos and theology despise and hate them.

There is a profound simplicity to all that is being said here. It is gospel affirmation at its finest. There is nothing really new. The sermons and hymns, both ancient and modern, are as old as Luther and Wesley, Havergal and Crosby, Newton and Sanky to name but a few. Billy Graham would be completely at home here as would Rick Warren, Tim Keller and Al Mohler. GAFCON is a continuation of the East African Revival that these African leaders want to see continue into the future for themselves and for their children. They are afraid that a large number of western Anglican provinces have departed from “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” and have imbibed “another gospel” – (See Gal 1: 6-7).

Furthermore, they see the intrusion of Western pansexual Anglicanism as a serious threat to their faith and morals that they don’t want their children to imbibe.

It is an understandable fear, one that makes perfect sense when one sees one’s own children — now called “Nones” — depart the faith for a vapid secularism with an easy belief of just about anything (or nothing) that takes their fancy. A lot of it is laziness, a lot more is “the spirit of age”, moral relativism and much more.

This frightens these ardent evangelical African Anglicans. They both fear what the West is doing and what they will ultimately do to them, if they let it go unchallenged. It is more than just about homosexuality. That is a besetting issue but not the only one. It is the genuine fear that if the gospel is not upheld in the face of its cultured despisers, they will leave nothing for their children. A virulent evangelistic Islam also poses a major threat to the historic Christian Faith, though not to its liberal version. This was forcefully explained by Pakistani-born Bishop Michael Nazir Ali who pounced on secularism, Islam and syncretism as the three forces facing the church that unless confronted could seriously compromise the church’s primary message.

Western Anglicans view the church and the world through different lenses. They want to be sure that faith is not relegated to the dustbin of history by modern advancements in science and medicine. Why pray to God for healing when we really depend on drugs and surgeons to cure us. Our understanding of sexuality cannot be left in the hands of a 2,000 year old apostle (St. Paul) who spoke for another time and age in the church and therefore cannot speak with any authority in today’s fast-paced world where sex is first and foremost for recreation not procreation. What could he possibly know about permanent, loving same sex marriages? Is it any wonder that homosexual behavior and marriage is now a fait accompli at a political, social and spiritual level? It is only a handful of homophobes living in an ancient time warp holding out against it.

It is why a Jack Spong and a Gene Robinson are so au courant and acceptable to the modern Episcopal mind. They have had the “courage” to leap out of the “narrow” confines of the Bible and into the modern world, taking only those vestiges of faith with them that they can tolerate in what they see in a fast changing world made so by new technologies, Apples, drones, iPads and trips to the moon. Does one really think one will see God from 50 miles up in the stratosphere?

Is it any wonder that Katharine Jefferts Schori, a former scientist, cannot accept the bodily resurrection of Jesus? Instead she opts for a more spiritualized version, a mental specter, because she believes that dead bodies cannot rise and walk through walls, even though there are dozens of Christian scientists who have no problem believing that Jesus rose bodily from the grave.

Liberals fear being left behind in the mad rush towards modernity in an ever-changing world. They want to modernize the church to keep it from being irrelevant. It’s an understandable fear at one level but fatal at another.

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To read more on this conference, go here, here, and here.