Evangelion to the Poor

A very interesting piece this evening from Chris Sugden at Anglican Mainstream entitled “Good News to the Poor and the Crisis in the Anglican Communion”. Chris is the head honcho of Anglican Mainstream and before that he was a bigwig at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, one of the leading Evangelical and Ang-Cath colleges of Missiology, where hoards of students come from all round the world to develop their understanding of global mission.

When you look up Chris’ details on the OCMS website it comes up with – Regions: Asia: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia; Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, South Africa; Caribbean. Now that’s a lot of places and it reflects the many and varied contacts that Chris has made within the Anglican Communion. I mean, he was writing books on Global Mission before I was even a glint in my parents’ eyes. He has worked and served with many of the people that currently oversee the Communion around the world and are now it’s leading lights.  So when in his last paragraph he writes:

As the Global South makes clear its position, based on the Kigali Statement, at the Primates Meeting in Tanzania in February and in subsequent developments, watch to see whether those who urge the Christian commitment to justice actually listen and give respect to the way the poor of the earth receive Jesus’ good news to the poor.

don’t be mistaken in thinking he’s just another blogger having a stab at guessing what the next turn will be in the current nail-biting drama that is the Anglican Communion. No, Chris talks to the Primates of Africa and Asia in a manner that many of us never will – he counts them as his friends. So I wouldn’t read this piece of his as just idle speculation, another person giving his two-penneth into the fray. Rather I’d read it as the words of a man who has just come in from an evening with a friend and who is now telling you what that friend says. And if that’s so, then if I were Katherine Jefferts Schori and the rest of the 815 cabal, I’d take what Chris Sugden writes here very, very seriously. And if I were Rowan, I’d also be listening because it certainly won’t be the last time that the thrust of this piece will be raised in the Communion.