today in the Episcopal Church

Episcopal Split as Conservatives Form New Group
A group of conservative bishops met on Wednesday at the Resurrection Anglican Church in West Chicago, Ill.
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: December 3, 2008
The New York Times

WHEATON, Ill. — Conservatives alienated from the Episcopal Church announced on Wednesday that they were founding their own rival denomination, the biggest challenge yet to the authority of the Episcopal Church since it ordained an openly gay bishop five years ago.
The move threatens the fragile unity of the Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest Christian body, made up of 38 provinces around the world that trace their roots to the Church of England and its spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The conservatives intend to seek the approval of leaders in the global Anglican Communion for the province they plan to form. If they should receive broad approval, their effort could lead to new defections from the Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism.
In the last few years, Episcopalians who wanted to leave the church but remain in the Anglican Communion put themselves under the authority of bishops in Africa and Latin America. A new American province would give them a homegrown alternative.
It would also result in two competing provinces on the same soil, each claiming the mantle of historical Anglican Christianity. The conservatives have named theirs the Anglican Church in North America. And for the first time, a province would be defined not by geography, but by theological orientation.
“We’re going through Reformation times, and in Reformation times things aren’t neat and clean,” Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, a conservative who led his diocese out of the Episcopal Church in October, said in an interview. “In Reformation times, new structures are emerging.”
Bishop Duncan will be named the archbishop and primate of the North American church, which says it would have 100,000 members, compared with 2.3 million in the Episcopal Church.
The conservatives contend that the American and Canadian churches have broken with traditional Christianity in many ways, but their resolve to form a unified breakaway church was precipitated by the decision to ordain an openly gay bishop and to bless gay unions.
The Rev. Charles Robertson, canon for the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, said Wednesday, “There is room within the Episcopal Church for people of different views, and we regret that some have felt the need to depart from the diversity of our common life in Christ.”
He added that the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico will continue to be “the official, recognized presence of the Anglican Communion in North America.”
In a news conference on Wednesday evening, the conservative group unveiled its new constitution and canons at a large evangelical church here in Wheaton, near Chicago.
The proposed new province would unite nine groups that have left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada over the years. This includes four Episcopal dioceses and umbrella groups for dozens of individual parishes in the United States and Canada.
Besides Pittsburgh, those dioceses are Fort Worth; Quincy, Ill.; and San Joaquin, in the Central Valley of California — representing 4 of 110 dioceses in the Episcopal Church. But not all the parishes and Episcopalians in those four dioceses agreed to leave the Episcopal Church.
The new province would also absorb a handful of other groups that had left the Episcopal Church decades earlier over issues like the ordination of women or revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. One of the groups, the Reformed Episcopal Church, broke away from the forerunner of the Episcopal Church in 1873.
Conservative leaders in North America say they expect to win approval for their new province from at least seven like-minded primates, who lead provinces primarily in Africa, Australia, Latin America and Asia.
These are the same primates who met in Jerusalem over the summer at the Global Anglican Future Conference and signed a declaration heralding a new era for the Anglican Communion. Most of these primates a few weeks later boycotted the Lambeth Conference, the international gathering of Anglican bishops in England held once every 10 years.
Bishop Duncan and other conservative leaders in North America say they may not seek approval for their new province from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, or from the Anglican Consultative Council, the leadership group of bishops, clergy and laity that until now was largely responsible for blessing new jurisdictions.
Bishop Martyn Minns, a leading figure in the formation of the new province, said of the Archbishop of Canterbury: “It’s desirable that he get behind this. It’s something that would bring a little more coherence to the life of the Communion. But if he doesn’t, so be it.”
Bishop Minns, a priest who led his large, historic church in Fairfax, Va., out of the Episcopal Church two years ago and was subsequently ordained a bishop by the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, said in an interview: “One of the questions a number of the primates are asking is why do we still need to be operating under the rules of an English charity, which is what the Anglican Consultative Council does. Why is England still considered the center of the universe?”
Jim Naughton, canon for communications and advancement in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and a liberal who frequently blogs on Anglican affairs, said he doubted that a rival Anglican province could grow much larger.
“I think this organization does not have much of a future because there are already a lot of churches in the United States for people who don’t want to worship with gays and lesbians,” he said. “That’s not a market niche that is underserved.”
Since the Episcopal Church ordained Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man who lives with his partner, in the Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003, the parallel rifts in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion have widened.
In the first years after Bishop Robinson was ordained, bishops representing about 14 dioceses in the Episcopal Church joined meetings to explore the formation of a new Anglican entity in North America.
Asked why only four dioceses broke away, Bishop Minns said: “It’s one thing to feel distressed. It’s another thing to do something about it.”
He added: “There’s some people standing back to wait and see if we pull this off, which I think we’ll do. Then others will join us — parishes, and maybe dioceses.”
If the conservatives try to take their church properties with them, they are likely to face lawsuits from the Episcopal Church. The church is already suing breakaway parishes and dioceses in several states to retain church property.
Bishop Duncan said members of the proposed province would spend the next six months discussing the constitution, and would meet to ratify the document next summer at a “provincial assembly.” He said it would probably be held at the Episcopal Cathedral in Fort Worth.
The Episcopal Church is also holding its General Convention next summer.
The founding members of this new province have major theological differences among themselves on liturgical practices, and whether to ordain women.
Bishop Duncan, whose theological orientation is more evangelical, has ordained women in the diocese of Pittsburgh. Bishops of other breakaway dioceses, like Jack Iker in Fort Worth and John-David Schofield in San Joaquin, are more “Anglo-Catholic” in orientation, modeling some elements of the Roman Catholic Church, and are opposed to ordaining women as priests or bishops.
Under their new constitution, each of the nine constituent dioceses or groups that would make up the new province could follow its own teachings on women’s ordination. Each congregation would also keep its own property.
Told of this new Anglican entity, David C. Steinmetz, Amos Ragan Kearns professor of the history of Christianity at the Divinity School at Duke University, said in a phone interview, “It’s really an unprecedented and momentous event,” that all of these dissident groups had agreed to bury their differences.
“It’s certainly going to be deplored by one part of the Communion and hailed by another,” Professor Steinmetz said. “Are we going to end up with two families of Anglicans, and if so, are they in communion with each other in any way? There are so many possibilities and geopolitical differences, it’s really hard to predict where this will go.”


Communion process presents challenges for proposed province
Dissident Anglicans must conform to established guidelines for official recognition, Lambeth says
By Matthew Davies and Mary Frances Schjonberg,
December 04, 2008

Despite claiming to have God and history on their side, proponents of a new Anglican province in North America could face a years-long process for gaining official recognition by the rest of the Anglican Communion.
A statement from Lambeth Palace, the London office of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, responded to the Common Cause Partnership's (CCP) December 3 proposal to form a new Anglican province in North America. The statement said that there are legislative procedures to follow in such instances.
"There are clear guidelines set out in the Anglican Consultative Council Reports, notably ACC 10 in 1996 (resolution 12), detailing the steps necessary for the amendments of existing provincial constitutions and the creation of new provinces," the statement said. "Once begun, any of these processes will take years to complete. In relation to the recent announcement from the meeting of the Common Cause Partnership in Chicago, the process has not yet begun."
However, at least one leader of the movement has questioned the London-based ACC's process, asking "Why is England still considered the center of the universe?"
Members of the 11 self-identified Anglican organizations that form the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) announced December 3 the creation of what they called an Anglican "province in formation" for those who say that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada promote erroneous biblical interpretation and theology, particularly in terms of the doctrine of salvation and acceptance of homosexuality.
Former Episcopal Church Diocese of Pittsburgh bishop and CCP moderator Robert Duncan, who will become the proposed province's first archbishop and primate, told a December 3 news briefing that the movement he leads is a descendant of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Both periods in history required Christians to reassert the power of revelation that some of their leaders had lost, he said.
"That, brothers and sisters, is what I would submit is happening right now in the 21st century across the whole Christian church, particularly in the West," he told reporters. When asked, Duncan refused to claim that the announcement amounted to a schism of the Anglican Communion. Cynthia Brust, communications director for the Anglican Mission in the Americas (a member of the partnership), told reporters that the communion "has been fractured, it has been damaged, it has been in disarray, it's been coming for a long time."
"Rather than today being about division and breaking apart in disunity, it's the day that the Anglican Communion began to be healed," she said.
The leaders of the movement released a "provisional" constitution and canons during the meeting in the suburban Chicago community of Wheaton, Illinois. The two documents are due to be ratified by participants in a planned summer 2009 "provincial assembly" at St. Vincent's Cathedral in Bedford, Texas. (St. Vincent's is in the Diocese of Fort Worth, one of four Episcopal Church dioceses in which many members have realigned with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.)
The leaders also signed onto the Jerusalem Declaration of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) and affirmed GAFCON's Statement on the Global Anglican Future (both available here). The GAFCON documents said "the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America for the federation currently known as Common Cause Partnership to be recognized by the [GAFCON] Primates' Council."
Duncan claimed that statement and a higher authority as the authorization the group needed. "It's the Lord who's called us to do this work" after the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada caused a "crisis," he said.
"The Lord is displacing the Episcopal Church," Duncan said, adding that "it's our anticipation" that the archbishops and the provinces representing what he called the majority of the Anglican Communion "will begin to recognize this province."
Duncan appeared to lay down a challenge to the Archbishop of Canterbury. "We stand where the mainstream of Anglicanism stands," he said. "The question will of course be will the archbishop recognize those who stand where the mainstream of Anglicans -- or the mainstream of Christians -- stand, or not."
On December 3, prior to the release of details of the proposed province, the Rev. Charles Robertson, canon to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, noted in a statement that "the Episcopal Church, along with the Anglican Church of Canada and La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico, comprise the official, recognized presence of the Anglican Communion in North America."
"And we reiterate what has been true of Anglicanism for centuries: that there is room within The Episcopal Church for people with different views, and we regret that some have felt the need to depart from the diversity of our common life in Christ," he added.
Recognition of any new province by the official structures of the Anglican Communion is complicated. The ACC, the communion's main policy-making body, meets every three to four years and has the authority "to advise on inter-Anglican, provincial, and diocesan relationships, including the division of provinces, the formation of new provinces and of regional councils," according to its constitution.
The ACC legislation about new provinces cited by Williams' spokesperson refers to provinces being created on a geographical basis as opposed to on theological grounds such as the Common Cause Partnership's proposed province.
"Once initial consultation had taken place, and it was agreed in principle that it would be expedient to form a new province in the region, the promoters would appoint a drafting committee, to consider the outline draft constitution set out by the ACC," the resolution says, noting that "the drafting process in itself is likely to take some considerable time."
ACC resolutions have repeatedly stated that before the creation of a new province there should be consultation "from the earliest stages in their discussions" with the secretary general of the Anglican Communion or the Anglican Consultative Council "for guidance and advice, especially in regard to the form of constitution most appropriate."
Asked whether the secretary general had been consulted by any member of the Common Cause Partnership, a spokesman for the Anglican Communion Office said December 4 that there has been no approach.
Martyn Minns, a former Episcopal priest and a bishop of the breakaway Convocation of Anglicans in North America, told the New York Times December 3: "One of the questions a number of the primates are asking is why do we still need to be operating under the rules of an English charity, which is what the Anglican Consultative Council does. Why is England still considered the center of the universe?"
If the Common Cause Partnership were to abide by the ACC's procedures, the process could take several years, according to the schedule outlined in the resolution. "Having agreed on the form of the new constitution, the proposers are asked to submit their application ... to the ACC not less than 15 months ahead of the next meeting of the full council," the resolution says. The ACC's next meeting will be held May 1-12, 2009 in Jamaica. According to the resolution's schedule, any formal attempt by the Common Cause Partnership to have the ACC accept its proposed constitution would need to wait until the following meeting, presumably in 2012.
Two-thirds of the primates would also have to approve such a constitution before it is presented to the ACC for consideration.
ACC resolutions on the creation and division of provinces date back to its first meeting in 1971 and have been reaffirmed by subsequent meetings of the council. At the first meeting, the ACC resolved (resolution 21) that when creating and dividing provinces "there must be the good will of the existing province in order not to create difficulties of disunity after division." (A first set of guidelines for drafting and revising provincial constitutions was developed at the fourth meeting of the ACC in 1979).
While the new province would be based on theological commonality rather than the geographical proximity that generally shapes the rest of the provinces in the Anglican Communion, the members are not united in all of their theological positions. This is especially true on the issue of women's ordination.
"Scripture is unclear" on the subject, Duncan said in response to a reporter's question. He noted that both the Old and New Testaments give women leadership roles and that "clearly it is the case that women had an apostolic function in the New Testament" even though all the apostles were male and the church has "traditionally" defined the priesthood as all male.
"Whereas some issues are quite clear in Scripture, others have a complexity," Duncan said.
Noting that some members ordain women only to the diaconate and not the priesthood, Duncan said they agreed that women could not become bishops in the province. To allow female bishops "wouldn't bring unity and it wouldn't be universally accepted," said Duncan, who has ordained women as priests. "We've submitted to one another on matters that make for unity."
Questions about that issue evolved into a larger discussion about the authority of Scripture. Duncan accused the Episcopal Church of being unwilling to adhere to what he called the clear biblical "standard" that defines marriage and the family as a lifelong union that mirrors Christians' relationship with God.
"Scripture makes it plain that homosexual relations are not in God's will," Duncan told reporters. "Jesus' love is for absolutely everybody. Jesus meets people where they are and then he says 'go and sin no more.' What the Episcopal Church has done -- and the Anglican Church in Canada -- has been to leave the whole scriptural notion of transformation in the power of the Holy Spirit out of the equation. The gospels being preached particularly in the West -- and it's not only in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada -- [are] a gospel of acceptance, a gospel of affirmation. The classic gospel is a gospel of transformation where people are delivered out of their own desires into God's desires for how we live our lives."
The group's provisional constitution and canons have several differences from those of the Episcopal Church, including:
an archbishop elected to up to two consecutive five-year terms only by his fellow bishops (Episcopal Church bishops elects not an archbishop but a presiding bishop for one nine-year term and the General Convention's House of Deputies ratifies that election);
all congregational property is owned by the congregation and not subject to "any trust interest or any other claim of ownership arising out of the canon law of the province" (the Episcopal Church asserts such trust interests);
member groups (known as diocese, clusters or networks) can leave the province at any time (the Episcopal Church maintains that while people may leave dioceses and parishes, those entities remain a part of the church unless they are dissolved or otherwise reconfigured by their governing bodies); and
"an ecclesiastical court of final decision," to be known as the provincial tribunal, to settle all disputes arising from the constitution and canons (the Episcopal Church has no such court).
The actions in Wheaton are the latest in a more than two-year-old effort to create an alternative province in North America for those Anglicans who disagree with the theological and biblical interpretation stances of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. The outlines of that effort are available at the end of this story.
The Common Cause Partnership's members include the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Coalition in Canada, the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (also known as the Anglican Communion Network), the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, Forward in Faith North America, the Reformed Episcopal Church, and bishops and congregations linked with Kenya, Uganda, and South America's Southern Cone.
Common Cause says that together the groups represent 700 congregations and more than 100,000 Anglicans. The Episcopal Church includes some 7,600 congregations and 2.4 million Episcopalians. There are an estimated 77 million Anglicans in 164 countries worldwide.

-- Matthew Davies is editor of Episcopal Life Online and Episcopal Life Media correspondent for the Anglican Communion. The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is Episcopal Life Media correspondent for Episcopal Church governance, structure, and trends.