Latest Anglican News                   Volume 1, Number 4, 15 August 2007

While being totally accurate in these days is difficult, the writer of this report will do everything he can to sort out the wheat from the chaff.  We will try to stick to the facts and clearly specify any information that cannot be verified.  

Now, the wait begins, waiting for the two key meetings at the end of September.  As you may have guessed, it is thought the timing of the Common Cause Bishop’s meeting (September 25-28 in Pittsburgh) was no accident.  It was chosen to overlap by one day with The Episcopal Church (TEC) House of Bishops meeting (September 20-25 in New Orleans.  Which TEC Bishops will attend which meeting?  Which TEC Bishops will attend both? (For those reading this report for the first time TEC was formerly named the Episcopal Church of the USA, or ECUSA)

Prior to those meetings, some big news may or may not break, but there are many other things happening in our Anglican World:

Books of Common Prayer 1662 versus 1928 versus the 1979 Prayer Book

References to the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 in the Common Cause Partners Theological Statement should not give rise to concern by Church of the Holy Communion (CHC) members.  How do these books compare?

What better authority on this subject than the occasional CHC guest lecturer and president of the U.S. Prayer Book Society, the Reverend Dr. Peter Toon, who has recently written these words – “If we are to take the words of the Founding Fathers of The Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. at their face value, then we can assert with confidence with them that there are no substantial differences of doctrine, discipline and worship between the Church of England BCP of 1662  and the Amercican BCP’s of 1789/1892/1928.  Further, we know that the English Archbishops also held this opinion. However, and importantly, this positive assertion cannot be made of the American 1979 Book which is an altogether different kind of collection of services and prayers.”

There are differences between the 1662 and 1928 books concerning prayers to the sovereign versus “The President of the United States and to all in authority” resulting from the different types of civil government between this country and England.  The other major differences include the removal of the Athanasian Creed and some changes in the order of appearance of certain parts of the Holy Communion service in the 1928 BCP.  “Some of the minor differences between the two editions are to attributed to the fact that one edition preceded the other by three centuries,” according to Dr. Toon.

For your information, CHC in its membership agreement with the REC specifically retains the unquestioned right to continue the use of the 1928 BCP as long as it, CHC, may determine.

What is the Lambeth Conference and Who will Attend?

The Anglican Communion (AC) Lambeth Conference is held each ten years, in England, at the specific invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  It normally includes all the bishops of all the churches directly affiliated with the Communion. At the last conference in 1998 almost 800 archbishops and bishops, from across the globe were there.  At these meetings the bishops pray, study the word of God and address issues of interest or concern that may affect the well being of the Communion itself and its future. 
 
The 2008 Lambeth Conference is scheduled to be held at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, England, from mid-July through early August next year.  The invitations to some 880 bishops have been sent out.  There is considerable controversy over who has and who has not been invited, and subsequently who will and who will not attend.  Many of the Global South jurisdictions* have said they will not be there and they represent well over one-third the bishops in the AC.  It has been reported in the Church of England Newspaper that as many as “six in ten” bishops of the Church of England might withdraw from participation if the African provinces follow through on their threat to boycott the gathering.  A number of Australian bishops have made similar remarks.  Should this happen, will the conference be held at all?

The immediate cause for these threats of boycott arises as a result of invitations being sent to those TEC bishops who participated in the ordination of Vicki Gene Robinson, a bishop ordained by TEC in 2003 who is living in an open homosexual relationship to which much of the Communion is violently opposed.  The decision not to include the American based bishops of the Nigerian and Rwandan churches and Robinson, himself, has also added to the discontent from both sides. 

There are many other issues which exacerbate the conflicts within the AC, but the more general cause involves the belief by the more traditional provinces of the Communion that the many changes in doctrine and practice generated by TEC and its actions in recent years to reinterpret scripture makes them apostate and ineligible to continue as a member of the Communion.  As Archbishop Peter Akinola, Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria has recently said, “We have had several conferences and several meetings and attended several commissions to see how we could reconcile the western people (TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada) with the so-called conservatives, all to no avail… So today, we are in a state of a broken communion in the Anglican Church worldwide. This is critical and fundamental because when we say we are in a state of a broken communion, it means that the other group has been ex-communicated as it were or ostracized and you are not in fellowship with them anymore until that communion is restored.”   The plot thickens…

Rudy Schenken, REC Lay Representative to Common Cause Partners 

* Global South jurisdictions – this informal name applies to 12 branches of the Anglican Communion located mostly in Africa, but also includes branches in the Far East and South and Central America, such as the Churches of Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Bahamas, Southern cone of South America, and South East Asia.  These churches represent well over half of the 77 million members of the AC.