George Pitcher’s pitch:

Dr Nazir-Ali’s departure signals the end of Anglicanism’s damaging schism, says George Pitcher.
Again, it’s important not to read too much in to Dr Nazir-Ali’s resignation itself. He has had the See of Rochester for 15 years; at not yet 60, he has another career in him yet. But can anyone seriously suggest that, had those biblical traditionalists of the southern hemisphere, known collectively as the Global South, prevailed last year in overthrowing the authority of Canterbury in favour of an African-led Communion, he would have abandoned his important foothold in the English Church?

No. Dr Nazir-Ali, scourge of homosexual liberalism and what he sees as the Muslim threat to Christendom, pitched his tent with the African rebels, under the flag of the unfortunately named Gafcon, but now finds that army dispersed and demoralised.

In the upside-down world of liberalism, a rebel and schismatic is someone who holds to 2000 years of established Christian doctrine, while a crumbling colonial edifice entrenched in an old boy network of back-slapping bishops that boast about making up their own rules is the standard-bearer of all that is proper and decent.

In fact, it is the largely decadent western expression of Anglicanism that is rebellious and schismatic; it is the one that has departed from received doctrine.

Once Pitcher has established that it is “important not to read too much in to Dr Nazir-Ali’s resignation”, he does just that. I have no idea why Dr Nazir-Ali’s has decided to change careers and neither does Pitcher, I imagine. One thing that Pitcher’s article does reveal, though is that a liberal finds the idea of eschewing ecclesiastical power – which is not much different to secular power – impossible to understand unless it is because the power has failed to achieve its ends. What seems to beyond Pitcher’s grasp is that God may have called Nazir-Ali to do something else and Nazir-Ali is more interested in what God wants than a pointed hat.

As for Gafcon’s army being dispersed and demoralised, there are millions of Gafcon/Foca Anglicans who are completely unaware of that – because it isn’t true.