Latest Anglican News                                                                         Volume 3, Number 6, July 1, 2009

From The Foundations of the Creed by Harvey Goodwin, Lord Bishop of Carlisle 
 “…to recite a creed (the Nicene or Apostles’) is no barren or dry test of orthodoxy; it is a loving outburst of a loyal heart, and a claim to receive the blessing to members of Christ’s flock, children of God, and heirs to heaven.”
 
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The Provincial Assembly is history…The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) exists and Bob Duncan is its first Archbishop. 

This report is primarily a compilation of comments from well known Christians and reporters and a few bloggers that are not so well known.  The hope is to convey to the reader several points of view about the significance presented by this new Anglican province.  Some are quick to point out the differences apparent within ACNA, the principal one being the ordination of women, but I believe the more important focus should be on the similarities of its membership.

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"This is clearly not a schismatic quest for purity by a small group of discontents. Rather, it is a theologically diverse group that sees how much is held in common.

‘It's a new day,’ Bishop Robert Duncan of the Diocese of Pittsburgh told a standing-room only crowd packed into St. Vincent's Cathedral, gathering for the organizing assembly of the 100,000-member church. The new denomination is working to be recognized as part of the 80-million member global Anglican Communion. Many of the overseas Anglican churches have sent observers to the assembly, including, but not limited to, African churches that have supported the denominational enterprise. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has sent an observer, known as a pastoral visitor, Retired Seychelles Bishop Santosh Marray of the Province of the Indian Ocean.

The ACNA is remarkable not because it is splitting off from an existing church, but because it is uniting multiple churches. After over 30 years of splintering, traditionalist Anglicans are setting aside many of their differences in order to pursue common mission.
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-- Jeff Walton, Director of Institute on Religion and Democracy’s Anglican Action Program
 
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Under the title, “Anglican meltdown: there are now two Anglican Churches in the US”, reporter Damian Thompson for the London Daily Telegraph gives us these tongue-in-cheek words: Please welcome the 39th province of the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church in North America. “Formal recognition awaits,” writes Ruth Gledhill of the Times, but the head of the ACNA, Archbishop Robert Duncan, is in talks with Rowan Williams and the new province is already in full communion with 30 million Anglicans around the world.

Great news, eh? Funny that it took Anglicanism 400 years to establish a presence in North America, but better late than never.

Oh. Sorry. I’ve just done a quick Google search and it turns out that there is already an official Episcopal Church in the US (TEC) and an Anglican Church in Canada. Perhaps the ACNA uses a different rite of worship: there’s precedent in the Catholic Church for overlapping jurisdictions based on liturgical heritage.

Hang on. (Another Quick Google search.) Nope, turns out that the soon-to-be 39th province of the Anglican Communion actually has different doctrines from TEC, which by my reckoning is the third province by order of foundation.

So… if you attend a service in an American Anglican parish belonging to the third province, homosexual acts aren’t necessarily sinful, but if you nip down the road to a parish from the 39th province then hellfire awaits.

Maybe it’s my Roman Catholic ignorance, but this strikes me as stretching the definition of “Communion” just a tad. How lucky that the Anglican Communion is headed by an intellectual of the stature of Dr Williams. He’ll sort it out! Indeed, watching him closely in the heat of debate, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s the most decisive Anglican statesman since the Rev Timothy Farthing, a bumbling Anglican priest in a BBC sitcom).

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From Ruth Gledhill of the London Times: Please welcome guest blogger Chris Sugden, of Anglican Mainstream, …a member of the Church of England General Synod which meets soon, where traditionalists in England will continue their battle over women bishops...  Chris writes: 'Many will be quick to find fault with the launch of the Anglican Church in North America, a church representing a Sunday attendance of 69,000 Anglicans in 23 dioceses across the USA and Canada.  It will to all intents and purposes be the 39th province of the Anglican Communion.  Already the Anglican Churches of Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, South East Asia, and Rwanda, representing over 30 million Anglicans have stated that they are in full communion with ACNA…

'So what has happened? The Episcopal Church has pursued a determined path to oppose and overturn Christian teaching and practice. An English clergyman now in the USA told me that many TEC clergy and bishops only regard the creeds as purely historical statements of what used to be believed, not statements of Christian truth today that they believe.

'Many orthodox clergy and congregations who have resisted TEC’s practice and direction have been driven out of their churches and buildings. Some individual church members have been sued for upwards of half a million dollars.

'What were the faithful bishops and clergy who cared deeply for their people and the teaching of the faith to do?

'They have formed a new Anglican church and a new Anglicanism in North America… Leaders of the world church here in Bedford, Texas this week have publicly recognized them as upholding the Christian faith as understood by the Church for the last 2000 years…  Archbishop John Chew of South East Asia sent a personal representative to present a letter in which he said: “Today you are making a historic and apostolic stand. You have paid a price. Be assured of our deep communion to the Lord. We are right behind you.

Changing Attitude, the pro-GLBT organization, sees a massive conspiracy in all this. Colin Coward writes: 'The dissident plot involves the abandonment of the Archbishop of Canterbury as head of the Communion and the replacement of the Communion as at present constituted… Instead we will have a Communion of the so-called faithful orthodox constituted around the 39 Articles and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.  This Communion will deny an equal place in the church to women, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people among others.'

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From Jim Jones for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: The new Anglican Church in North America will give former Episcopalians new confidence and pride in being Anglicans, Jack Iker, bishop of a Fort Worth group that has left the Episcopal Church, declared Wednesday.

"Over the last 30 years, our members have winced or shuddered when they saw a story about the Episcopal Church in the public press," he said, "because it has usually been about some scandal or outrageous thing one of our leaders has said or done."
Iker said the new Anglican body "gives mainstream clergy and laity a chance to recover confidence and enthusiasm in being an Anglican Christian."
The new Anglican body, he said, will concentrate on planting churches and winning converts.  "So it’s good to be a part of something that accentuates that part of Anglicanism and of God," he said.

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From David Virtue for VirtueOnLine, some comments on the speech to the assembly by Pastor Rich Warren: “He wowed them with one liners like...’You may lose the steeple, but you won't lose the people. Christ did not die for property.’
‘A great commitment to the great commandments and the great commission will grow a great communion.’
‘We have an unchanging message in a constantly changing world.’

Rick Warren has been named among the 25 most influential Americans.  His church, Saddleback draws 22,000 weekly… Today he is in Bedford, making these newly minted North American Anglicans feel special. He has accepted only three speaking engagements this year - one to the largest assembly of Muslims in America and the other to a general gathering of the Assemblies of God… and to ACNA delegates in Bedford, Texas.

‘I am genuinely humbled to be with you on this historic event. I jumped at the chance to be here,’ he tells more than 800 assembled in a large tent on the grounds of St. Vincent's cathedral.  He reads the first ten verses of Isaiah 43 and every word rings home to his listeners. ‘Fear not for I have redeemed you... I have called you out by my name...They will not consume you.’

Did he have The Episcopal Church in mind with the last Biblical reference? He reads on, ‘I will give up others in exchange for you...you are my witnesses...forget the former things...do not dwell on the past...see I am doing a new thing.... Do not be afraid. I will be with you. I will bring together your children; bring all my sons and daughters, everyone who is called by my name, those who I created for my glory.’

…As he ends, one feels a palpable hope in the air. America's supreme pastor has left these new born Anglicans with spiritual food they will take back to their parishes and into their future. It is a new day.”

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From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Seated on the dais at the inaugural assembly of the ACNA, alongside Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan, was a woman in a clergy collar.
The Rev. Mary Hays, canon to the ordinary (chief of staff) the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) had one of the most visible roles of an ordained woman in this assembly…

Once a prominent leader within the conservative movement in the Episcopal Church, she is the sort of woman who might have been called to be a bishop. But her new church (ACNA), which hopes to join the 80-million member global Anglican Communion, forbids female bishops pending some future consensus by the Anglican Communion to permit them. Each of the 28 dioceses in the Anglican Church in North America can choose whether or not to ordain women as priests and deacons. Most don't do so.

‘Leadership is not about ordination. Leadership is about service to Christ and service to others in his name," said the Rev. Hays… ‘Of course there is disappointment that there is less openness to the ordination of women among some. But we are agreed on the essentials of the faith,’ she said.

…Of four dioceses that broke from the Episcopal Church and joined the new church, only Pittsburgh ordains women. The Canadians ordain women, as does the Diocese of the Holy Spirit, made up of U.S. parishes that had been under the oversight of the Anglican Church of Uganda. But they are a minority.

‘It's a sadness and a sacrifice but it's not the end of the story,’ the Rev. Hays said. She noted that it is also a sacrifice for some opponents of women's ordination to sit on a provincial committee of which she is chairman.  ‘All of us are called to make sacrifices as we seek to fit into the body of Christ,’ she said.

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From the Christian Post:  “More Anglican leaders from across the global communion have joined in support of the newly formed Anglican Church in North America. 
The Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, the Province of Southeast Asia, Bishops from England, Sydney and parts of Africa also celebrated the ACNA and recognized it as authentically Anglican.  So far, nine of the 38 provinces in the Anglican Communion indicated support for the ACNA, which was constituted this week as a biblically-centered province.”

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An interesting and humorous perspective from Julia Duin for the Washington Times: When it comes to blow-out church services, the Anglicans can sure put on the dog. I've been filing stories… on the constitutional convention for the Anglican Church in North America, the emerging 39th province of the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion. The big party to end it all was Wednesday night… and it was a splasher.

   The site was a Texas mega-church called Christ Church in Plano, a north Dallas suburb.  …I knew when I finally drove up that this was the place. Talk about huge.  …the sanctuary was cathedral-like in its vastness.  …The decor is a bit stark… which goes along with low-church evangelicalism Texas-style.

  Fortunately they got fancy with the music. Some 60 bishops and 323 clergy had to process in, so they needed something sprightly to move these folks in - long robes, mitres and academic hoods and all - rather quickly. What they came up with… was a variation on the hymn "Praise My Soul the King of Heaven" combined with African march-style music in a 4/4 beat. Sounds awful but it was stunning - and beautiful.

  I've been doing this religion writer thing for more than 30 years and in the course of my travels, I've done Rome and Canterbury and Jerusalem; ordinations, installations and consecrations of everyone from Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl to New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson. I've done papal Masses all over the country with two popes. But I've rarely been in a service where every single piece of music was beautifully done at top level during a 2 hour+ service involving 1,500 people.  I am running out of adjectives here… There were other parts to the service that were memorable: the new archbishop joking about his bushy eyebrows; the colliding lines of all the visitors wandering to and from the Communion rail not to mention the party afterward outside in a hot and soupy Texas evening.

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From Patrik Jonsson for The Christian Science Monitor: “The formation of a new Anglican body – the largest-ever breakaway from the Episcopal Church – has torn at congregations across the US and split the Anglican world. The Anglican Church in North America claims 100,000 members, while the Episcopal Church, the US province of the global Anglican Communion, has at least 2.1 million members. The challenge before them is obviously two-fold,’ says the Rev. Bill Sachs, an Episcopal priest and author of the forthcoming book, Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism. ‘How do you meld all of these groups that have prized their particular identity? And the larger challenge is how do you transform a spirit of protest into a positive message that might even attract newcomers?’

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The Rev. Todd H. Wetzel, a Dallas friend of CHC: “On the afternoon of June 22nd, 2009, the gavel…came down signaling passage of the Constitution of the Anglican Church in North America.  With the words, “We are now ‘constituted,'” the new province was born and life among Anglicans on the American shore became more diffuse and confusing.

      I rejoiced and wept almost in the same instant.  Rejoiced because so many had worked so hard, sacrificed much and prayed without ceasing for this moment.  I am among them.  Yet it was bitter sweet for me.  I realized that many of the people now part of this new entity are people with whom I’ve loved and laughed, prayed and commiserated over the years.   These people were friends and colleagues. Together we were Episcopalians and now they were rejoicing in being “former Episcopalians.”   That bond is now irreparably broken. The distance between us will grow even though we will try not to let it impair our relationships. 

The newly invested Archbishop, Robert Duncan, ordains women though most of the bishops with whom he’ll be working do not.  Can this work?   Perhaps; only time will tell.  The Service of Investiture displayed an interesting fact.  The Most Rev. Leonard Riches served as principal consecrator.  He is the Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church and is the spiritual descendent of Bishop Cummins who broke from the Episcopal Church in 1873 over very real evangelical concerns. The Presiding Bishop of the first group to break away served as the principle consecrator for the newest amalgam.  Bishop Riches does not, nor does the REC, ordain women.  Yes, they ordain women to a special service position of Deaconess (read Mary Jane Mathieu), but not as priests. The new Archbishop has and will.  Together they embraced and both have worked hard to build this now newly formed entity.  …I wish them Godspeed.

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From Odessa Elliott, a churlish curmudgeon; widow of a long-serving Anglican priest, and classmate of our David Edman at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City some years ago: “No mention of the ‘solas,’ which are as ‘biblical’ as Apostles' Creed.  The Nicene Creed, of course, was the attempt of Bishops called together by Constantine to pinpoint the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, over against the Greek heresies that threatened confusion as these false teachers had done in the days of St. Paul.  Gnosticism has a way of popping up frequently, the most recent example being among the leadership of The Episcopal Church.”
  
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Heard at the assembly from a prominent Anglo-Catholic Bishop: "There was this meeting of charismatic evangelicals and they reached a critical point in the debate, so the Chair called the question, 'Could all those in favor of the motion please signify by lowering your arms".

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Bishop John-David Schofield, who led 90 percent of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, Calif., out of TEC last year, said he was "thrilled" with the gathering. "This represents more than 20 years of work and sacrifice," he said. "It's good to be part of a House of Bishops where there's love, cooperation and a desire to support each other."

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And from the Ecumenical News International: The new North American group claiming to embrace "traditional Anglican values" will not last long, the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop has predicted.
 
V. Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man living openly with a partner… who as bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire created a backlash among traditional believers within the U.S. church, told Ecumenical News International he does not believe the new Anglican grouping has long-term viability.
 
‘A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that,’ Robinson told ENI after delivering a sermon on 28 June at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City during the city's annual gay pride festivities.

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Apologies for the length of this report…there was just too much to be said… 

A last word; don’t concern yourself about the differences in people head-count…no two writers ever agree on how to count people.  I’ve left in the numbers each writer created him/herself.

Rudy Schenken
Church of the Holy Communion, Dallas
www.holycommuniondallas.org
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