(Church of Uganda) The House of Bishops of the Church of Uganda, in its regularly scheduled meeting on 23rd June 2009, made several resolutions concerning the state of the Anglican Communion and the future of global Anglicanism.

The Bishops reaffirmed their commitment to the Anglican Communion and to the GAFCON movement as a force of renewal within the Communion, and pledged to continue to be a voice of orthodox faith, which is the biblical and historic faith of Anglicanism.

The Bishops were deeply concerned that the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) refused to seat the Church of Uganda’s duly appointed clergy delegate, Rev. Phil Ashey, and deprived the Church of Uganda from the representation to which it is entitled. The Bishops said, “The Church of Uganda’s prerogative to choose who should represent us was abused by the ACC by refusing to seat our delegate. We consider this to be a profound violation of our rights by the Joint Standing Committee and the ACC.”

The House of Bishops also reaffirmed its commitment to not receive funds from the Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Anglican Church of Canada, revisionist TEC and Canadian dioceses and parishes, and funding organs associated with them. The Bishops also chastised and called to account those Bishops among them who have violated this collective and long-standing decision.

Finally, concerning the formation of the Anglican Church in North America, the House of Bishops resolved that it warmly supports the creation of the new Province in North America, the Anglican Church in North America, recognizes Bishop Bob Duncan as its new Archbishop, and declares that it is in full communion with the Anglican Church in North America.

Likewise, the Bishops resolved to release, effective immediately, the Bishops, clergy and churches in America under its ecclesiastical oversight and to transfer them to the Anglican Church in North America. The House of Bishops further resolved to continue its partnership and friendship with them in mission and ministry, extends its hand of fellowship, and wishes them well.

Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi said, “This really is the moment we have been waiting for. We have been longing to be able to repatriate our clergy and congregations to a Biblical and viable ecclesiastical structure in North America, and that day has now come. To God be the glory.”

God, history, and provinces representing the overwhelming majority of the members of the Anglican Communion were on the side of the ACNA, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told the 234 delegates drawn from the ACNA’s 28 founding jurisdictions including four former dioceses of the Episcopal Church, representing some 700 congregations and 100,000 Anglicans in the US and Canada.

The break with the Episcopal Church was now complete, Bishop Duncan said. “There is no one here who will go back.”

Delegates attending the June 22-25 convocation formally adopted the ACNA’s Constitution and Canons and were also addressed by Bishop Duncan — who was elected archbishop on June 21 by a meeting of the ACNA’s House of Bishops — and California megachurch pastor Rick Warren, and Metropolitan Jonah, the head of the Orthodox Church in America.

Archbishop Duncan lauded the comprehensiveness and unity of the new province, which bridged the traditional theological divide between High and Low churchmen, Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, in addition to the modern question of the ordination of women.

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When it comes to blow-out church services, the Anglicans can sure put on the dog. I’ve been filing stories for the past three days on the constitutional convention for the Anglican Church of North America, the emerging 39th province of the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion. The big party to end it all was Wednesday night (it’s 1:14 a.m. as I type this on Thursday) and it was a splasher.

The site was a Texas megachurch called Christ Church in Plano, a north Dallas suburb. Although I got lost getting there from Fort Worth (first ended up in Garland somehow), I knew when I finally drove up that this was the place. Talk about huge. Buildings everywhere and the sanctuary was cathedral-like in its vastness. All that was missing were side chapels and votive candles. The decor is a bit stark – no Christ on the main cross above the altar which goes along with low-church evangelicalism Texas-style.

Read the whole article.

The spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church in America offered to begin talks aimed at full communion with the new Anglican Church in North America, then named a series of obstacles whose removal could tear apart the hard-won unity among the 100,000 theological conservatives who broke from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

“What will it take for a true ecumenical reconciliation? Because that is what I am seeking by being here today,” Metropolitan Jonah said to a standing ovation from 900 people assembled in a tent on the grounds of St. Vincent Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

He spoke of St. Tikhon, a 19th-century Russian Orthodox missionary to the United States who initiated a close relationship with the Episcopal Church that later cooled.

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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.”

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Watch it all.

As I stated in my Bishop’s Address at our Diocesan Convention in March, I see little reward or benefit in expending our resources and energies in unfruitful expeditions trying to stem the tide of revisionism in The Episcopal Church. Certainly I ask those who are intercessors to pray that God would “stay the hand of the revisionists” at General Convention. And we who attend will, under God, carry out our roles in faithful witness to the truth as we have received it in Holy Scripture and in the traditions of the Church. But the creative thrust of the diocese””beyond the gospel imperative to preach the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches as missionary outposts of the Kingdom of God””needs to be elsewhere than in political machinations of the General Convention. As I’ve stated before, God has called us to help shape the future of Anglicanism through mutually enriching missional relationships and through inter-diocesan, inter-provincial accountability. Certainly, Kendall as our Canon Theologian will monitor the developments at General Convention 2009, but I believe it is in keeping with our declared vision as a diocese to focus on what we believe God is calling us to do, not on the strategies and battles he called us to engage in yesterday.

Before I conclude, let me address an issue that I find is sometimes confusing to many within the diocese, as well as those who are watching us in the reappraiser wing of North American Anglicanism, specifically in what is called “The Inside Strategy.” Among the writers and bloggers of North American Anglicanism there has emerged what some call the inside and the outside strategy in battling with heterodox teaching and practice in the Church. Some who were once Episcopalians have left because they were convinced that anything resembling orthodox belief and practice was lost. Many of these are now gathering at the ACNA convention. They are sometimes referred to as engaging in the outside strategy. That is, in the cause of orthodoxy in North American Anglicanism they have left previously official churches, such as the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church in the United States. According to this understanding it is believed the best way to revive or reform Anglicanism in North America is to work outside the established churches of the Anglican Communion. In distinction from those outside there are those who remain within TEC and the Anglican Church in Canada. Since they are staying, but still hold to the same understanding of the faith as those who have left, it is assumed by some that they must be carrying out an inside strategy of reformation. We in South Carolina are then said to be carrying out such an agenda””battling for orthodoxy, seeking to win back the day in The Episcopal Church in some maneuvering of ecclesiastical politics. While some within the Church may indeed be doing this, it is certainly not my intent. The stakes at present are much higher than what is happening in Episcopalianism or the continuing Anglican bodies in North America.

If we could be said to be carrying out an “Inside Strategy” it is not towards TEC: it is toward the Anglican Communion. Put simply, we remain inside the structures of the Communion to help shape the emerging Anglicanism of the 21st Century so long as we are able. It is ironic that as one of the few dioceses of The Episcopal Church with documented growth in every significant metric of measurement””membership, average Sunday attendance (ASA), spiritual vitality, finances, missional relationships through the last decade””we can influence the developments within global Anglicanism more effectively than we can influence our own Church! When conferences are held for bishops and leaders in TEC about growth and reaching new generations, why are experts brought in from non-Anglican sources and the prior architect of growth in the one diocese in TEC that has documented growth, Bishop Salmon, is not invited to speak? Why are the rectors in this diocese who have so clearly effectively reached their communities with the gospel never once referenced or consulted? Even the Presiding Bishop had to revise her statement that no diocese in TEC had seen growth, when documentation was cited that South Carolina had seen significant decadal growth. But, irony aside, getting back to my main point, our “Inside Strategy” is not to tilt at windmills in Quixotic fashion thinking we can turn back the clock to some prior age; it is to help shape the future that is emerging in global Anglicanism from within the Communion.

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His Beatitude, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) announced recently that his church has ended its ecumenical relations with The Episcopal Church, and will establish instead formal ecumenical relations with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA made the announcement June 24 at a plenary session of the ACNA’s founding convocation at St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas.

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The Rev. Rick Warren brought hundreds of former Episcopalians to their feet in applause Tuesday when he called their exodus from the denomination “a historic event” and said God was “calling you out” of the Episcopal Church.

“I jumped at the chance to come here,” Mr. Warren, evangelical pastor of the 24,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., told delegates to the constitutional convention of the newly created Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). “We will stand with you in solidarity as God does something new in your midst.”

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Love God and love people, the Rev. Rick Warren told founders of the new Anglican Church in North America on Tuesday as he advised them not to focus on property disputes caused by the exodus from their mother churches.

“You may lose the steeple, but you won’t lose the people,” Warren said to long applause from about 1,000 packed into a tent outside St. Vincent’s Cathedral. “Christ did not die for property.”

Anglicans from across the world are at the conference, where church members upset over the ordination of gays and other issues formed the new Anglican church. They had split from the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and the Anglican Church of Canada.

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Seated on the dais at the inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America, alongside Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan, evangelical mega-pastor Rick Warren and Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America was a woman in a clergy collar.

The Rev. Mary Hays, canon to the ordinary — chief of staff — of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) had one of the most visible roles of an ordained woman in this assembly representing 100,000 people who broke with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. She moderated a discussion among 900 people and led them in prayer for the Rev. Warren, a Southern Baptist who addressed the gathering.

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, 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.

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The Rev. Rick Warren used his Southern Baptist preaching skills to fire up a gathering of conservative Anglicans in Bedford on Tuesday.

“We stand with you in solidarity as God does something new in your midst,” said Warren, author of the mega-bestseller The Purpose Driven Life, pastor of massive Saddleback Church in California, and invocation-giver at the Obama inaugural.

The Anglican Church in North America invited Warren to be one of the headline speakers for its first provincial assembly, which continues through Thursday at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford.

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A survey of leaders in the Anglican Church in North America reveals a need for a greater emphasis on Christian training ”“ traditionally known as “catechisis” ”“ in the church. Among the survey’s findings are:

* Only 17% of respondents are very satisfied with the overall effectiveness of catechesis in the Church;< * Where catechesis is offered, respondents believed it was often highly effective among adults, but generally saw it as less effective among children and, especially, adolescents; * When asked, “What is missing from current catechetical content?” the most frequent answer was the inability to move from belief to action. Read it all.

Watch it all thanks to BabyBlue.

Read it all and check out the pictures also.

Read it all.

Several hundred former Episcopalians, meeting in a school gym near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, ratified a constitution Monday for the fledgling Anglican Church in North America as a direct challenge to the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada.

About 800 people jumped to their feet and sang the Doxology, a hymn of praise, after the ACNA’s new leader, Archbishop-designate Robert Duncan, told the group that it had “done the work.”

“The Anglican Province of North America has been constituted,” he said.

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In a Texas cathedral where the liturgical nuances of Anglo-Catholicism mingled with the joyous shouts of Pentecostalism, Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh called together a body representing 100,000 people who had left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Yesterday they adopted the constitution of the new Anglican Church in North America, which they hope will eventually be recognized as a province of the 80 million-member global Anglican Communion. The 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church is the U.S. province of the communion.

“There is a great reformation of the Christian Church under way. We North American Anglicans are in the midst of it,” their new archbishop told a standing-room only crowd gathered in St. Vincent Cathedral in Bedford, Texas. It was the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth which, like the Diocese of Pittsburgh, had broken with the Episcopal Church, taking the majority of its parishes with it.

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Fueled by disputes over many issues ”” including ordaining a gay bishop ”” conservatives who have left the national Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada approved a constitution Monday creating a new Anglican Church in North America.

After nearly unanimous adoption of the constitution, some 800 Anglicans ”” representing 700 dioceses and other groups with some 100,000 parishioners in the U.S. and Canada ”” stood and sang PraiseGod From Whom All Blessings Flow, in celebrating the new organization.

New canons and bylaws will be voted on Wednesday at the convention, being held at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford.

Read it all.

Especially for those of our readers who are attending the ACNA assembly, we’d love to have you share your impressions and perspective on the gathering.

For those who are watching from home via the live feed, feel free to share as well, but we’d like to ask you to focus on what you “saw and heard” (to borrow a theme from well-known blogger Amy Welborn).

So far here are some of the blogs we’re following for the news and views from Bedford:

Peter from Anglican Essentials Canada
BabyBlue
TexAnglican
Wannabe Anglican

And of course the ACNA Assembly website with live streaming from AnglicanTV and much more is here.

One interesting tidbit of info offered is that one-quarter of the voting delegates are 25 or younger.

There are lots of purple shirts (bishops), all of whom have been booted out by the Episcopal Church – or they have volunteered to leave – due to the massive theological differences between the two camps. Some of us are looking around to see if Peter Beckwith, bishop of Springfield, Ill., and an Episcopal bishop in good standing, is there. I asked Bishop Beckwith last week if he was going to come after a spokeswoman for the denomination criticized him for being a liaison to the ACNA.

“If I came,” he said, “it’d be as an observer. I will not become a member of the ACNA. The only reason I’d be there is to support and encourage people.”

He added, “Apparently there are folks calling for my head. There is an effort to purse the Episcopal Church of orthodox people.”

Read it all.

Bishop Duncan is about to become archbishop of these groups who believe that the Episcopal Church and its Canadian counterpart have failed to uphold biblical authority and traditional doctrine on matters from the divinity of Christ to sexual ethics. Many of those present at the gathering are at risk of losing their church buildings, or have already lost them, in property disputes with their former denominations.

“I think there is no one who would go back,” Bishop Duncan said, to cries of “No! No!” from the congregation in St. Vincent Cathedral, the seat of the Diocese of Fort Worth, which, like the Diocese of Pittsburgh, voted to break with the Episcopal Church.

“I hear this everywhere I go. There is no one who would go back. There has been suffering and loss. Some of it was very wounding. But we are so much better off than we were before.”

Read it all.

So we begin in worship and end in worship, and there is much doxology in every part of these days together. And we are here to learn and to be stretched and to be re-committed. That’s what our plenaries are all about.

We are here to grow in fellowship and trust, to deepen in love and respect for one another, and to receive healing and forgiveness, all the while acknowledging our differences in Christ.

We are also here to prove that a Christian Assembly ”“ at least one that wants to reach the cultures and the peoples of its increasingly lapsed and unconverted continent ”“ does not have to focus on resolutions and legislation, nor does it have to be overwhelmingly gray-headed. [More than 20% of the voting delegates of the Provincial Assembly are 25 years of age or younger!] Even in organizing this emerging Anglican Province ”“ a Province in the mainstream of both global Anglicanism and biblical Christianity ”“ we are here to illustrate that a system of ratifying or sending-back is an alternative to spending disproportionate amounts of time on things that are, in fact, not the “main thing.”

We are also here to show what God’s people have always known: just how much Godly business can be done in a tent (especially a tent) or a gym or a school or in simple accommodations.

We are here, above all, to proclaim to the world what our God has done among us, among us sinners”¦

Read it all.

The Anglican Church in North America Provincial Council has endorsed the Anglican Covenant and expressed solidarity with the Communion Partners.

The Covenant is a four-part document that outlines the basics of the Christian faith as Anglicans have historically understood and practiced it. It also provides for accountability among Communion members. The Covenant was initiated by the 2005 Windsor Report which in turn was prompted by the crisis in the Anglican Communion created by the deviation from Biblical teaching and morality in North America.

Read it all.

You can listen here, it began on my computer at 17:03 and continues until just before 21:00 (so just under 4 minutes total). There are a number of questions about the Archbishop of Canterbury which will be of interest to blog readers. Note that Archbishop Rowan Williams has sent Bishop Santosh Marray (retired bishop of the Seychelles) as his pastoral visitor to the ACNA assembly according to the interview.

This elf has been slacking lately and it is only today that it dawned on me that we need a new ACNA category on the blog. So from today onwards, you will now find all stories related to the ACNA here: Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)

News stories, primary source documents and commentary specifically about this week’s ACNA Assembly will be found here: ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009. [i](we have re-categorized relevant blog entries from the past week or so)[/i]

All past blog entries about the ACNA from the past 6-7 months are under this category: –Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Check it out.

The Rev. Craige Borrett, my coworker in the parish where I serve, is going to watch and take notes and report to the diocese. I am posting this because I have already gotten many questions about it.

The link and the schedule is here.