Matt Kennedy wrote this article on Stand Firm: Responding to Bishop NT Wright part 1: Mystifying Vitriol. In the article, Kennedy quotes Wright:

‘AS FAR AS ENGLAND IS CONCERNED, it is damaging, arrogant and irrelevant for GAFCON leaders to say, as they are now doing, ‘choose you this day whom you will serve’, with the implication that there are now only two parties in the church, the orthodox and the liberals, and that to refuse to sign up to GAFCON is to decide for the liberals. Things are just not like that. Certainly not here in England.”

After citing this, he writes, “Bishop Wright comes very close to bearing false witness here” because GAFCON leaders have not said this. While I disagree with Wright about things not being as bad in England as GAFCON says, Wright’s “vitriol” has to do with the issue of polity. The GAFCON “recruitment” was done at an Orthodox parish in a conservative diocese. Why does GAFCON choose a parish under a conservative who has yet to sign on to GAFCON? Kennedy writes,

I do not know why he takes offense. The Jerusalem Declaration was clear in expressing support for interventions only in those places where bishops with jurisdiction presume to depart from orthodox Christianity. Once a bishop, or any ordained leader, presumes to contradict or overturn apostolic teaching, he is anathema, his authority is null and void.

So long as bishops in the Church of England remain faithful to apostolic doctrine and so long as those bishops who do not come under discipline and those parishes under the authority of heretic bishops are given refuge and succor by the wider church, then there need be no fear of intervention.

Really? You can’t understand why he’s upset? If GAFCON is “recruiting” signatures in an Orthodox diocese, I can very much understand Wright’s perspective. If this was in my diocese, I would think that GAFCON was trying to turn my parishioners against me. Bishop Wright may be off in his analysis of England’s orthodoxy (as he may be in his analysis of his own orthodoxy), but I think Wright’s reaction is understandable. If I was in Durham or London, I think I would fear that GAFCON was trying to turn my diocese into Australia.