(Astute blog readers may note that Stan is my classmate from seminary. I am overjoyed to be able to say he is my friend. I still have a wonderful memory of his smiling face at our wedding in 1987, which seems like a long time ago in a land far away–KSH)

At the age of 19, through the example and sharing of a Christian friend, I asked Jesus to take over my life. While I knew the Lord forgave me, I continued to strive for personal perfection and holiness apart from God’s grace. I pursued the “call” off and on through my graduation from college in 1972, then living as a Capuchin (Franciscan) brother for two years.

What I discovered was my inability to live the Christian life. I was overwhelmed by my own rebellion against God. I was self-will run riot. While I “appeared” to be an active and “together” follower of Jesus, I knew better. My “insides” didn’t match up with what I appeared to be. I became quite accomplished at comparing what was going on inside of me with the public persona of other believers. I left the Franciscan community after my second year, and gave up on any thought of serving as a pastor.

Then in 1982, several folks from my home congregation, including the pastor, urged me to consider studying for the pastorate. I wanted no part of it. I knew what a hypocrite I was. I recall telling my pastor that I “wasn’t equipped to serve as a pastor.” Father George replied: “God doesn’t call the equipped. He equips the called.”

I didn’t want to pursue the “call,” knowing my own inadequacies. After wrestling in prayer with the Lord for the better part of a year, I agreed to pursue the “call.” With the agreement and support of my wife, children and local church, I applied to our bishop to begin seminary. There are heel marks to this very spot! I didn’t decide to be a spiritual leader, the Lord chose this for me.

Read it all.

Q: What is the ACNA’s plan to reach out to America?

A: We want to be clear that the congregation is God’s fundamental way of doing things, just like the family is God’s fundamental building block for society. And if the chief agency is the congregation, the chief agents are the individual Christians. We have to disciple. We have to teach people to love God ”¦ and share their faith. We have to teach them how to engage the world in service, in Christ’s love.

Q What is your message for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams?

A: He should understand there really is realignment in Anglicanism. There is a new Reformation in the Christian West. I hope he sees the unity despite our diversity. It’s a unity in Christ. He should see the passion for mission. I trust he sees a people that look recognizably Anglican.

Read it all.

I honestly cannot remember a time in my life in the Episcopal Church where I have read more mistakes in less time than in the last two to three weeks. Please do not believe everything you read and make sure to fact check and research material, a point we have stressed time and again on this blog.

A case in point is this recent piece by Diana Butler Bass. I enjoyed Dr. Bass’ Standing Against the Whirlwind : Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America which was well written and researched (and is quite relevant to our present time by the way), and so was baffled to see such a poorly written piece by her on Beliefnet.

The relevant section of her article for our purposes reads this way:

The Anglican Church of North America, the umbrella group for conservative Episcopalians who have left their denomination over women’s ordination and full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons, has long claimed over 100,000 members. Recently, they admitted that only 69,000 persons in 650 churches in the USA and Canada have joined their association. There are 2.2 million Episcopalians in the United States and approximately 1 million in Canada. Thus, the conservative group–the one that has garnered so much media attention in recent years is a very small percentage of the entire North American Anglican membership–some 2% of the total. And with their rigid opposition to women’s ordination, it is hard to imagine that this group will find much appeal with young North Americans.

Now for the record, I am not in ACNA. Certainly her description of the reason for the departure of ACNA is not one ACNA would agree with just for starters. It is over issues of Christology, marriage, the authority and interpretation of Scripture, the nature of the church, and the standards of Christian leadership that this controversy is fundamentally about.

According to ACNA’s own website, ACNA still claims 100, 000 members. That claim has not changed. The reference to the 69,000 number is for Average Sunday attendance: according to the ACNA site ACNA claims “average Sunday attendance of 69,197 (as of spring 2009)” [and there is a even more about ACNA numbers here]. So follow along. Dr. Bass suggests the claim of membership in ACNA has changed. It hasn’t. Then she suggests ACNA is claiming a number for membership which ACNA is claiming for average Sunday attendance. This is elementary category confusion. As anyone in parish ministry knows membership and Sunday morning attendance are very different.

Having made all these errors, Dr. Bass then compares the wrong category of numbers for ACNA and TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada:

There are 2.2 million Episcopalians in the United States and approximately 1 million in Canada. Thus, the conservative group–the one that has garnered so much media attention in recent years is a very small percentage of the entire North American Anglican membership–some 2% of the total.

Do you see how she got the 2% figure? She took the roughly 69,000 figure, which is for Average Sunday attendance, and compared it to the membership figures for TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. But this is comparing apples to oranges. The Episcopal Church has not been using average Sunday attendance figures for all that long, but you may know that whereas in the 2004 tables TEC claimed ASA of 833,672, by the 2009 tables that number is down to 768,476.

The 1 million number Dr. Bass gives for the Anglican Church of Canada membership is way off. One of the recent numbers I found was 641,845, but of course, this is again membership not Sunday morning attendance. I would honestly be surprised if average Sunday attendance in the Anglican Church of Canada is more than 200,000 actually (many of you know I lived and worshipped in Canada for two years), but let’s use 300,000 for our purposes.

Now, if you use these figures, and compare apples to apples, the ASA of ACNA is approximately 6.5% of the ASA of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada combined, more than three times the percentage total Dr. Bass gives.

You would think given the large number of errors that I would be finished. But no. She continues:

And with their rigid opposition to women’s ordination, it is hard to imagine that this group will find much appeal with young North Americans.

Well, this would come as news to my friend Mary Hays, an ordained woman quite involved in ACNA, to pick just one example. ACNA is trying to protect two perspectives on women’s ordination, as anyone in the movement itself could have told Dr. Bass if she had asked.

What an embarrassing effort Dr. Bass has given us in this article. I sincerely hope she will improve in the future–and please, do not believe everything you read–KSH.

Dr Rowan Williams made clear his concern after clergy and laity in The Episcopal Church voted at the General Convention in California to overturn a moratorium on gay ordinations.

Clergy and laity in the US backed a motion that “acknowledges that God has called and may call any individual in the church to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church, in accordance with the discernment process set forth in the Constitution and Canons of the church.”

This means that anyone can be ordained regardless of sexuality.

If the US bishops back the move when they vote on it later today or tomorrow, a formal split in the Anglican Communion seems inevitable.

Read it all.

It is on the Fifth Notice Paper, and reads as follows:

Anglican Church in North America
Mrs Lorna Ashworth (Chichester) to move:

‘That this Synod express the desire that the Church of England be in communion with the Anglican Church in North America.’

(Hat tip: Simon Sarmiento)

The Six Bishops Are:

Blackburn
Winchester
Europe
Rochester
Beverley
Burnley

A private member’s motion asking the Church of England to recognize the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has been submitted to the General Synod of the Church of England. While the motion will not come up for debate at the current meeting of Synod, it serves to sharpen the focus of the 76th General Convention on the consequences of backing away from the 2006 pledge made with Resolution B033.

Synod is meeting in York from the July 10-13. On July 10, a private member’s motion was submitted asking for a debate on the Church of England’s formal relationship with the ACNA. To be considered for debate, a private members motion must receive the support of 100 members of synod. Approximately 75 members have so far endorsed the motion.

Traditionally only one or two such motions are considered at each session of Synod, and in creating the agenda for forthcoming session, the Synod’s Business Committee generally looks to the number of signatures received in order to set the priority for debate.

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The presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church warned the Church of England not to foment schism in America, responding to a threat made over the possibility that the U.S. church will start ordaining actively gay bishops.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said Sunday, in response to questions from The Washington Times, that calls by conservatives in the Church of England for recognition of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) over gay-related issues would wound her church, already split by the secession of conservative dioceses and congregations to form the ACNA.

She urged Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to remember the “pain of many Episcopalians in several places of being shut out of their traditional worship spaces, and the broken relationships, the damaged relationships between people who have gone and people who have stayed.”

“Recognition of something like ACNA is unfortunately likely only to encourage” further secessions, she said, reminding the Church of England that “schism is not a Christian act.”

Read it all.

Dr Rowan Williams flew to America last week ahead of moves by church leaders in the US to introduce rites for same-sex unions and to promote more gay bishops.

Conservatives in the Church of England are threatening to divide worldwide Anglicanism if the liberal Americans force through radical reforms at a crucial meeting in California this week.

Dozens of members of the General Synod have backed a motion that calls on the Church to recognise a breakaway movement in the US opposed to the pro-gay agenda.

Read it all.

Greetings to the Anglican Church in North America
from
the Church of Ireland Evangelical Fellowship

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

The Church of Ireland Evangelical Fellowship includes in its membership lay people, clergy and bishops in the Church of Ireland. Our committee, meeting on 28th May 2009, unanimously resolved that we should write to encourage you in the formation of the Anglican Church in North America.

We have followed with sadness the unfolding developments in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. We know that many of you have suffered great loss (personal, parochial and diocesan) for upholding the orthodox faith in the face of radical innovation, and we want you to know that you have our full support.

We are glad to affirm you fully as fellow-Anglicans and we hope and pray that your new Province will be officially recognised by the Anglican Communion before long. We would like to share with you some words of the hymn known as St Patrick’s Breastplate*:

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One, and One in Three.
Of whom all nature hath creation;
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

We assure you of our love and prayers in these times of testing.

Yours sincerely in Christ

Dermot O’Callaghan
(Chair of the Church of Ireland Evangelical Fellowship)

La Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur has grown by “leaps and bounds” over the past decade the Bishop of Bolivia, the Rt Rev Frank Lyons told delegates to the founding convocation of the ACNA in Fort Worth last week, with many dioceses doubling in size.

Bishop Lyons reported that at the March 28 meeting of the South American House of Bishops in Asuncion, the province authorized the creation of four auxiliary bishops for the Diocese of Chile, three auxiliary bishops for the Diocese of Peru, one suffragan bishop for the Diocese of Uruguay, and one suffragan bishop for the Diocese of Northern Argentina.

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Last week more than 800 men and women gathered in Bedford, Texas, to elect an archbishop and ratify a constitution for the ACNA, a new alliance for churches that have left the Episcopal Church. Led by Robert Duncan, bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the ACNA comprises more than 700 theologically conservative churches with about 70,000 parishioners.

There were many central theological beliefs that last week’s attendees could agree on in their constitution and canon laws, including the full inspiration of the Bible, the centrality of baptism and Communion to church life, and the authority of the historic church creeds. But for the time being, ACNA leaders have not reached full agreement on female priests. At this time, each jurisdiction is free to decide whether or not to ordain women, but jurisdictions cannot force others to either accept women’s ordination or to stop practicing it. Women bishops are forbidden.

“For those who believe the ordination of women to be a grave error, and for those who believe it scripturally justifiable . . . we should be in mission together until God sorts us out,” said Duncan in last week’s opening address. “It is not perfect, but it is enough.”

Read the whole thing.

The 750 churches in the newly formed Anglican Church in North America were once among the most charismatic churches in the Episcopal fold, said the Rev. Briane Turley, rector of Tulsa’s Church of the Holy Spirit Anglican.

Turley’s church is one of two Tulsa-area congregations in the new denomination.

Most of the congregations left the Episcopal Church over concerns that it was drifting from its biblical foundation.

“Most of the largest Episcopal churches have joined us,” he said.

Turley said that the largest Episcopal churches have tended to be evangelical and charismatic at their core.

“We’ve tended to attract the most evangelical, and the most Anglo-Catholic congregations,” he said, churches that adhere to the biblical record and also to traditional, liturgical forms of worship.

“It has to do with a thirst for the transcendent Christ, for knowing him, having entered into a deeper relationship with him,” he said.

Read it all.

The reality is that the Common Cause Theological Statement has outlived its usefulness. What is needed is a new doctrinal statement, one which is not only more comprehensive in its recognition of divergent opinions among orthodox Anglicans but also displays greater solidarity with the Anglican entities that have supported the establishment of a new orthodox province in North America and extend their recognition to the ACNA as that province in formation. Such a statement need not be complicated””just a few well-chosen words””around which all orthodox Anglicans can in good conscience come together in the cause of the gospel.

Read it all.

The Rev. Tom Foster of Modesto was a delegate to the historic inaugural provincial assembly of the Anglican Church in North America held June 22-25 in Bedford, Texas. He called the meeting “a gangbuster operation” and said the spirit of the gathering “was absolute joy.”

The 29th province in the worldwide Anglican Communion was established to oversee U.S. churches and dioceses that have left the Episcopal Church, as well as those in Canada that similarly have split over doctrinal issues, primarily the interpretation of Scripture. ACNA will oversee 700 parishes four U.S. dioceses and about 100,000 people, organizers said.

The new province, which still must garner approval from two-thirds of Anglican leaders around the world, is not recognized by the Episcopal Church. The Rev. Robert Duncan, bishop of another U.S. breakaway diocese, was installed as ACNA’s archbishop during the assembly, which included the adoption of a constitution and canons, or laws. That would put him on equal footing with Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and the other 27 primates, or leaders, around the world.

Read it all.

Early in the 20th century, some Orthodox leaders were willing to accept the “validity of Anglican orders,” meaning they believed that Anglican clergy were truly priests and bishops in the ancient, traditional meanings of those words.

“It fell apart. It fell apart on the Anglican side, with the affirmation more of a Protestant identity than a Catholic identity,” said Jonah, at the inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America, held in Bedford, Texas.

“We need to pick up where they left off. The question has been: Does that Anglican church, which came so close to being declared by the other Orthodox churches a fellow Orthodox church, does that still exist?”

A voice in the crowd shouted, “It does!”

“Here, it does,” agreed Jonah, stressing the word “here.”

Read it all.

“We’re trying to be servants,” Katherine Martin, a cleric from Auburn, Ala., told me. “I’m not being welcomed to consecrate [Communion] in Quincy [Illinois] or Fort Worth [Texas],” which are two dioceses that don’t ordain women, “but both the bishops of those dioceses couldn’t be more kind.”

I wondered if the men would take a similar position, agreeing to be “servants” while limitations were placed on them.

“I’d be lying if I’d say I wasn’t disappointed,” said Canon Mary Hayes of the Pittsburgh Diocese. “I’ve been a priest 25 years. I’m delighted to be in a body of people who have different views. It’s not about getting my way.”

Read the whole thing.

Among the [ACNA] founders was the Rev. Neil Lebhar, a Jacksonville priest and a leader of the regional movement of theological conservatives out of the denomination after an openly gay bishop was elected in New Hampshire in 2003.

With its archbishop and church laws now established, the new group represents a clean break with the past for former Episcopalians, Lebhar said.

“For the average person in the pew, I’d say the major thing it means is that our denominational battles are over and we can get on with the ministry and mission of the church,” said Lebhar, rector at the (Anglican) Church of the Redeemer on the Southside.

Read it all.

Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man living openly with a partner, whose 2003 consecration 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.

Read it all.

The creation of a second Anglican church in America for conservative Episcopalians angered by the liberal drift of their denomination has drawn high praise from the members of a Vero Beach church who attended the new denomination’s founding convocation in Texas this week.

“I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment,” said Judy Stull of Christ Church in Vero Beach, one of ten members of the church’s delegation to the Anglican Church in North America founding convocation held June 22-25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

Formed in 2007 after the clergy and a majority of the members of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach withdrew from the Diocese of Central Florida, the new church meets in the former Indian River County Tax Assessor’s Office in Majestic Plaza off U.S. 1 in Vero Beach. The 500-member church is one of 700 congregations comprising 100,000 former Episcopalians in the U.S. and Canada that make up the ACNA.

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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.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Please welcome the 39th province of the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church in North America. “Formal recognition awaits,” writes Ruth Gledhill, 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….

Read it all.

Three main problems face the newly formed ACNA, and they are all formidable. All of them in a sense limit the ability of ACNA to break free of its emotional and psychological attachment to that which has brought them to this point. The first revolves around property disputes. I wrote to bishops and deputies to General Convention today suggesting that a trust or trusts be formed to administer disputed property and to enter into temporary agreements in cases in which a vast majority of parishioners in such properties wish no longer to be in TEC, negotiating leases, shared arrangements and creative solutions to take these disputes out of the secular courts. I was not encouraged by the responses I received, most of which accused those leaving us off stealing property or of being so bigoted against gay and lesbians that in justice they should be shunned. Justice, I am told, trumps charity.

The second problem revolves around the language used to depose bishops and other clergy who have joined ACNA which, if language means anything at all, purports to laicise such clergy rather than merely to desprive them of the right to exercise ministry in Provinces in which they have no desire to exercise ministry.

The third is the problematic relationship between ACNA and the Instruments of Unity of the Anglican Communion which has exported American problems worldwide and threatens to destroy the unity of the entire Communion. If indeed the Communion comes apart because of what has happened here, ACNA will, whether it deserves to be blamed or not, bear a good deal of responsibility for a tragic schism, a responsibility in which it will ironically, be accused of sharing responsibility with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, to what extent perhaps is a judgment differently assessed by people on differing sides of this tragedy.

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If Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy, then Bedford is no Congress of St. Louis.

The 1977 gathering and its Affirmation were about sharply defining doctrine, with continuity both back to the origins of the Church of England, and setting a precedent for decades if not centuries to come. This week’s gathering was about fuzzing theological differences between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, while reassuring both parties that the ACNA is no TEC.

It’s possible that more truth, clarity and courage will be forthcoming, but right now I don’t have reason to be optimistic. If he wants to connect to those American Christians who believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church, Metropolitan Jonah still has a few dozen Schism I bishops yet to meet. Perhaps it’s time for the Congress of St. Louis/Schism I crowd to convene their own media event. If the Metropolitan isn’t available, they could invite Cardinal Kasper.

Read it all.

Describing the assembly, Bishop Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), said “There was a marvelous mood of co-operation and hope there. We had allowed three sessions for the adoption of the constitution and the canons and it was done in less than two. Everything passed unanimously all the time.”

He was quick to add, however, that he was “not naïve enough to think that in future synods there won’t be discontents of some sort arising,” noting that ACNA is a coming together of a number of different groups. Along with ANiC, which says it represents about 4,000 Anglicans in 30 congregations across Canada, ACNA includes dioceses and parishes that have left The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Mission in the Americas; the Convocation of Anglicans in North America; the Anglican Coalition in Canada; the Reformed Episcopal Church; and the missionary initiatives of Kenya, Uganda, and South America’s Southern Cone. Additionally, the American Anglican Council and Forward in Faith North America are founding organizations. ACNA says it represents approximately 100,000 Anglicans in 700 parishes.

Bishop Harvey noted that some of the groups that have united have been out of the mainline of Anglicanism for a long time, in the case of the Reformed Episcopal Church, for more than 100 years.

Read it all.

[Robert Duncan’s] take on Islam echoed the more strident tone of conservative U.S. evangelicals and not those who have called for “inter-faith dialogue” with Muslims.

“We’ve got to be about the business of engaging Islam ”¦ secularism, and materialism, but especially Islam. Because there is only one way to the Father, it’s the only way. It’s a matter of life and death,” he said to warm applause.

On another note, he evoked the Church of England’s founding father Henry VIII ”” crowned King of England 500 years ago ”“ and held him up as an example of ”a ruler in the end gone astray, confiscating the property of a church in an almost contemporary way.”

This comparison of the legal battles between dissident dioceses and the Episcopal Church over property to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries was probably meant in a light-hearted way. But it could also be taken as a jab from a new alliance that wants to come out swinging.

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Of the 800 people present, 234 are delegates from the 28 groups that have broken away from the Episcopal Church of the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Bishop Duncan, deposed from the Episcopal Church in 2008 and now a bishop in the Province of the Southern Cone, was due to be installed as Archbishop of the would-be province on Wed­nes­day at St Vincent’s Cathedral.

The assembly has ratified its canons and constitutions, and pro­claimed its support for the Anglican Covenant, which it would like individual dioceses to be able to adopt, rather than provinces. It has retained a declaration that says: “We are grieved by the current state of brokenness within the Anglican Communion, promoted by those who have embraced erroneous teaching and who have rejected a repeated call to repentance.”

ACNA says it has 693 congrega­tions, 81,311 worshippers, and an average Sunday attendance of 69,197….

Read it all.

The Episcopal Church is part of the global Anglican Communion. Anglican Church members say they remain part of the same Communion, even though they’ve left the Episcopal Church.

Bane said that after his retirement, he tried to remain active in Episcopal ministry but was shunned by the denomination.

Bane said he was more conservative than many members of the Southern Virginia diocese. In 2003, he voted against Robinson’s ordination; other clergy and parishioners representing the diocese voted unanimously for ordination.

Asked why he didn’t join the Anglican conservatives earlier, Bane said he’d hoped to remain a traditional voice within the Episcopal Church.

He said the Anglican Church “is probably where I should have been earlier.”

Read it all.