As a result of developments in the Diocese of Springfield, Bishop The Rt. Rev. Peter Beckwith, Bishop of Springfield, will not be attending the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) Assembly which is scheduled to begin tomorrow at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

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This clip includes brief comments from Bishop Iker and Bishop Duncan among others.

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Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who led the network of hundreds of congregations that broke from The Episcopal Church for the past five years under the banner of the Anglican Communion Network, will be installed as the new church body’s first archbishop on June 24 at Christ Church in Plano, Texas. Visiting bishops from as far away as South America, Africa and Asia, representing millions of Anglicans, are expected to attend the June 22-25 assembly.

“We look forward to celebrating the miracle that is the formation of a biblical, missionary and united Anglican Church in North America,” Duncan said in the days leading up to the assembly. “This meeting is historic because it heals decades of division and represents the answer to many years of prayer. It will be a momentous time for orthodox Anglicans everywhere.”

Leaders in the Anglican Communion Network ”“ which will cease operation when the new province launches ”“ had been calling on The Episcopal Church to repent and to get back in line with traditional Anglicanism and Scripture since it consecrated an openly gay bishop in 2003. But over the past couple of years, Duncan and other conservative bishops saw little hope that the U.S. church body would change direction from what breakaway Anglicans claim to be a departure from Christian orthodoxy.

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[Ian] Douglas is not convinced that this week’s assembly is all that important.

“I’ve seen it before,” he said, referring to earlier gatherings of those disenchanted with the Episcopal Church.

But another Episcopal priest, the Rev. William Sachs ”“ a historian and author of the forthcoming book Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism ”“ called the Bedford meeting “a very big deal.”

He said the new group will be taken much more seriously if it emerges seeming united and willing to work through established procedures for recognition by the Anglican Communion.

Sachs added: “The challenge before them is to come out of there with a message that is positive and distinctive and not simply a shared spirit of protest.”

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A congregation in York expects to be part of a proposed Anglican province in the U.S. whose leaders meet this week in Bedford, Texas.

In its 10th year, St. Alban Anglican Church meets in the basement chapel of Trinity United Church of Christ downtown and averages six to nine worshippers at Mass.

Parishioners said Sunday they’re excited about being part of a larger church body.

“If you want to have something going for the future generations, you need to be part of something bigger,” said the Rt. Rev. Barry E. Yingling, parish rector. “So you’re taken seriously.”

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St. John’s Anglican Church in Vancouver will join a new group of conservative parishes, the latest move in an ideological battle over same-sex marriage with the local Anglican authority.

St. John’s Rev. Canon David Short will be in Texas this week for meetings to create the Anglican Church of North America. It will include roughly 700 parishes, which are united in their belief in orthodox principles. All 30 parishes that make up the conservative Anglican Network in Canada will join.

The new group will be a permanent home for St. John’s, the largest Canadian Anglican parish, with four services and roughly 1,000 worshippers most Sundays.

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The head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, is sending a “pastoral visitor” from his staff, says Duncan, which he says shows that “we are part of the family.”

Williams himself will attend the Episcopal Church’s governing meeting this summer to give a seminar on combating global poverty.

Jurisdictions that have joined together to form the 28 dioceses and dioceses-in-formation of the Anglican Church in North America are: the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Quincy and San Joaquin; the Anglican Mission in the Americas (including the Anglican Coalition in Canada); the Convocation of Anglicans in North America; the Anglican Network in Canada; the Reformed Episcopal Church; and the missionary initiatives of Kenya, Uganda, and South America’s Southern Cone. The American Anglican Council and Forward in Faith North America also are founding organizations.

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Representatives from breakaway Episcopal congregations and dioceses ”” bound together in opposition to gay priests and same-sex marriage as well as in their desire to preach the Gospel ”” will gather here this week to create a new Anglican province.

Some say the provincial assembly gathered at St. Vincent’s Episcopal Cathedral Church in Bedford may create something geographically unprecedented in the United States: a second Anglican province.

One province would be the new and theologically conservative Anglican Church in North America; the other, the established and theologically liberal U.S. Episcopal Church.

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The status of the new Anglican Church in North America, of which Archbishop-elect Duncan will lead, remains uncertain within the global Anglican Communion.

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Martyn Minns recalls the moment he knew he had to leave the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It was 2005. He was rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., and he was talking with a young family who told him they could no longer attend a church that accepted gay bishops or diverged from what they called Orthodox Christianity.

“As I looked at them, I realized that I had a decision to make,” he says. “Either I moved with them into a rather uncertain future, or I lost the heart of the congregation. So for me it was a matter of, ‘Do I want the church of the future, or the church of the past?’ ”

Soon after that, Minns’ church bolted from the American Episcopal Church and aligned itself with the conservative archbishop of the Anglican province of Nigeria. Now he and other church leaders representing more than 700 congregations, four dioceses and up to 100,000 churchgoers are meeting in Bedford, Texas. They hope to form a new Anglican province in the U.S. ”” one that would rival the Episcopal Church.

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Springfield, Illinois ”“ June 19, 2009

Notwithstanding suggestions to the contrary, Bishop Beckwith remains a faithful Christian within The Episcopal Church (TEC) as the Bishop Diocesan of Springfield, and intends to keep that status intact. Bishop Beckwith has also served as the Vice President of the American Anglican Council (AAC) for a number of years. A majority of AAC’s membership consists of communicants of The Episcopal Church. It is in this capacity that he has been involved in the Anglican Communion Network (ACN) and the Common Cause Partnership (CCP). Any involvement in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) Assembly scheduled for next week in Bedford, Texas, would be limited to being an observer. Furthermore, as an Episcopalian, Bishop Beckwith was asked to be a TEC Liaison to the Ecumenical Relations Task Force. In no sense is he a structural part of either the Task Force, or the ACNA.

The Anglican Church in North America will be formally founded next week, challenging the legitimacy of the U.S. Episcopal Church and posing a dilemma for the worldwide Anglican Communion over who represents Anglicanism in the United States and Canada.

When 232 delegates to the ACNA convention at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas, approve the organization’s constitution and canons on Monday, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan will become archbishop for this “emerging” 39th province of the communion, consisting of several groupings that have left the Episcopal Church over issues related to sexuality and biblical authority.

A ceremony celebrating Bishop Duncan’s installation is set for June 24 at Christ Church in the Dallas suburb of Plano, the ACNA’s largest parish, with more than 2,000 members. Also among the ACNA’s members are 11 Northern Virginia parishes, including the historic The Falls Church and Truro parishes, which left the Episcopal Church to found the Convocation of Anglicans in North America.

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Three Christian leaders, Pastor Rick Warren, Metropolitan Jonah, and the Rev. Todd Hunter have agreed to be among those addressing the organizing Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America scheduled for June 22”“25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life and pastor of Saddleback Church, will speak on June 23. Warren, a longtime friend of orthodox Anglicans, has been repeatedly recognized as a key spiritual leader in America. Named “America’s Most Influential Pastor” by Christianity Today in 2003, Warren has also been called one of “America’s 25 Best Leaders” (US News and World Report 2006), and one of the “15 People Who Make America Great” (Newsweek 2006). Saddleback Church, founded by Warren in 1980, is an innovative evangelical congregation of 22,000 in Lake Forest California.

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Leaders of a conservative group of Anglicans in the United States will hold an organizational meeting later this month.

The inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) will take place at the end of June in Bedford, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The meeting will bring together more than 700 congregations into a growing North American province in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

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