Leaders of the Third Province movement sidestepped the contentious issue of women clergy last night, and have endorsed a provisional constitution and canons governing the emerging Third Province in the Americas.

“God did a great work today,” Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told supporters at a church service in Wheaton, Illinois at the end of the Dec 1-3 gathering, as the disparate members of the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) of Anglican traditionalists in the US and Canada “came together with the proposed draft of the constitution and canons” and after discussing each proviso, “adopted unanimously” each article of the code.

This was “staggering considering who was around the table” said Bishop Duncan ”” the moderator of CCP and now the interim primate and archbishop of the provisional province.

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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.

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Members of Congress wanted Detroit’s Big Three automakers to redo their homework before they resumed begging for a government bailout today. So how’d they do?

It doesn’t matter. If a Senate Banking Committee on the matter Thursday was any indication, America’s automakers failed badly enough and pose such a danger to the economy that lawmakers seem less focused at this point on whether they’ll give the automakers a bailout, and more so on how they’ll do it.

“We’re not going to leave town without trying,” committee chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said of their efforts to provide funding for General Motors , Ford Motor and Chrysler.

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On Nov 11, Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi told The Church of England Newspaper that a meeting had been tentatively set with Dr. Rowan Williams in London for Dec 5. He said the timeline under which the Gafcon primates were working was that on Dec 3 the leaders of the Common Cause Partnership would gather in Wheaton, Illinois to endorse a draft constitution for the emerging province.

The Gafcon archbishops: Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Peter Akinola of Nigeria, [Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda] Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, Valentino Mokiwa of Tanzania, Henry Orombi of Uganda, Justice Akrofi of West Africa would then meet on Dec 4 in London to receive and endorse the agreement and bring it to Dr. Williams the following day.

Speaking to the congregation of Truro Parish in Fairfax, Virginia on Nov 30, Bishop Martyn Minns publicly confirmed the proposed timeline adding that the Gafcon primates were also planning on briefing the primates standing committee the day before the start of the Jan 31-Feb 6 Alexandria Primates meeting-however, US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will likely miss the pre-conference session as she is scheduled to attend the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council meeting from Jan 29-31.

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Anglican archbishops will hold an emergency meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury today to discuss the unfolding schism in the Church in America.

The meeting between Dr Rowan Williams and the primates of Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and the Southern Cone comes two days after conservatives in the US unveiled the constitution and canons of the new Anglican Church in North America.

With a membership of 100,000, drawn from disaffected members of the Episcopal Church of the US and from churches that broke away over the women’s ordination dispute, leaders of the new “province” claim they are not splitting from the 75 million-strong Anglican Communion.

A formal proposal arguing for recognition as the 39th province of the Anglican Communion will be put before the primates at their meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, at the end of January.

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The Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota’s decision to close nine Pine Ridge Reservation churches and reduce services at two others had ended up in Oglala Sioux tribal court.

Members of 11 churches also want the diocese to be prevented from deconsecrating buildings and cemeteries in the process.

The papers were served Nov. 24 in Sioux Falls but had not been signed by a tribal judge as of Nov. 25. The plaintiffs want a hearing to stop the closures, which were planned for Nov. 30.

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[Bob] Duncan said 22 of the 38 Anglican provinces have broken or impaired communion with the Episcopal Church.

“We think many of them will begin to recognize this province,” Duncan said. “We stand in the mainstream of Anglicanism and Christianity.”

Alan Crippen, spokesman for the breakaway Grace Church and St. Stephen Parish in Colorado Springs, said the groups behind the new province have provided a safe haven, a sanctuary, for former Episcopalians alienated by the church’s increasingly liberal views.

“It’s become increasingly clear that these differences weren’t going to be worked out,” Crippen said.

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Bishop Michael Curry, who heads the Raleigh-based Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, which includes Charlotte, said the conservatives had a right to do what they wanted. But he predicted that their declaration in Wheaton would matter little in the Tar Heel state.

“The Episcopal Church in North Carolina continues to grow,” he said in a statement. “I do not anticipate that these reported actions will have any significant impact on the church in North Carolina.”

The Charleston-based Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina ”“ the only one of five dioceses in the Carolinas that might be tempted to join the conservative province ”“ sent the Rev. John Scott of Eutawville, S.C., to Wheaton to be an observer and report back to Bishop Mark Lawrence, a conservative whose election was initially rejected by the Episcopal Church.

“We’re watching it and wishing them success,” said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, a spokesman for the S.C. diocese. “We’re in theological sympathy, but not in strategic agreement. ”¦ Right now, we’re seeking to be a faithful witness and tell the truth to an (Episcopal) church that’s lost its mind, that’s turned its back on God and his truth.”

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Organizers hope to become a full province of the Anglican Communion, a status that would make it a peer of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. It is the first attempt to create a province defined by theological orientation, not by geography.

“It’s something that has never happened before in the Anglican community,” said the Rev. Roger Ames of St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Fairlawn, who attended the event. “You will have a more orthodox group that will, in time, be recognized as an alternative to the United States Episcopal Church.”

The other local breakaway parishes are St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Bay Village, the Anglican Church of the Transfiguration in Cleveland, Church of the Holy Spirit in Akron and St. Anne in the Fields in Madison.

Martha Wright, communications officer for the Diocese of Ohio, said five of its 93 parishes in northern Ohio have broken away. She said the diocese, based at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, will “absolutely not” break with the Episcopal church.

“We’re sorry that they chose to go that route,” Wright said. “We stay because this is who we are.”

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The new church, called the Anglican Church in North America, represents conservative 700 parishes and 100,000 parishioners. They share an orthodox Christian outlook that includes opposition to same-sex blessings and to the ordination of gay bishops.

The plan for the formation of a new jurisdiction, based on ideology rather than geography, was first reported in the National Post last month. At that time, leaders of the conservative movement in Canada and the United States said they would not need the blessing of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual head of global Anglicanism, because he had lost his moral authority.

Instead, the new church will look to the Global South for support, where the majority of Anglicans live and orthodoxy is the norm.

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Bishop Robert Duncan of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) has been named primate- and archbishop-designate of a proposed new body of 100,000 theologically conservative Anglicans in North America, which hopes to win recognition from the global Anglican Communion.

Archbishop-designate Duncan, whose diocese left the Episcopal Church in October, said he was “elated” that 30 representatives of eight groups with ties to the Anglican tradition in the U.S. and Canada had unanimously proposed a constitution for a body called the Anglican Church in North America. They met yesterday in Wheaton, Ill.

“I believe we’re at the beginning of something that is very significant for the Christian church in North America and for the Anglican Communion worldwide,” he said.

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A group of about 70 Anglican conservatives on Wednesday released a proposed constitution for a new Anglican province in the United States that will directly compete with the 2.1-million-member Episcopal Church.

The new Anglican Church in North America consists of various groups of conservatives who have split from the denomination over issues of biblical authority since the 2003 consecration of an openly gay bishop, including four whole dioceses of the Episcopal Church.

On Wednesday night, the new church released its provisional constitution and provisional canons. They declare the group part of “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church,” confess to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and declare “eight elements as characteristic of the Anglican Way, and essential for membership.”

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The City Council in Bellevue Washington voted Monday night to raise property taxes 3 percent next year and 3 percent the following year.

I am interested in local reaction to the new Province story. If you have such in your area, please pass it long; do not assume I have seen it. Examples would be the Tenessee priests, the Chicago Bishop, and the South Carolina clergyman quoted in the stories so far posted. Please email them (KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com) to me, thanks–KSH.

The new Anglican Church in North America will include four Episcopal dioceses which recently split from the US church, as well as breakaway parishes from Canada.

Conservative Episcopalians have long been upset by the stance of the church’s leadership on various issues, particularly homosexuality.

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A collection of breakaway Episcopalians have formed a single denomination to rival the mainstream U.S. church, cementing a schism that was largely prompted by the election in 2003 of a gay bishop.

Their new “Anglican Church in North America” said it includes four dioceses that recently split from the Episcopal church, as well as several splinter groups, 1,000 clergy and an estimated 700 parishes, said the Rev. Peter Frank, spokesman for the Right Rev. Robert Duncan, bishop of Pittsburgh, who months ago lead his diocese away from the Episcopal church. A spokesman in the Episcopal church said he was dubious the numbers were that high.

The new church will seek recognition from the world-wide Anglican communion, including its leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams. It is unclear how the larger church will deal with a rival on American soil to an existing church body. The tension will no doubt spark fresh lawsuits over the ownership of church property, dozens of which have already been filed from California to Virginia in recent years.

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“We’ve seen it coming for years. It’s not a rival denomination. At best, it would be a church within a church,” said the Very Rev. John Burwell of the Church of the Holy Cross, which has congregations on Sullivan’s Island and Daniel Island. “They’re still part of the Anglican Church. They just don’t want to be part of the Episcopal Church,” he said.

“We intend to stay and fight. We intend to stay in the Episcopal Church and act as the conscience of the Episcopal Church,” Burwell said.

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Other Memphis-area parishes intend to remain with the Episcopal Church.

“I don’t think there’s anybody left in the Diocese of West Tennessee that is going to be interested in that,” said Rev. Dr. Andrew MacBeth, rector of Calvary Episcopal Church. “It has been a long time coming, and I wish them well, but we really are of different views on how to interpret Scripture and a different view of authority.”

Rev. Jeffery Marx, rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church of Collierville, expects the Episcopal Church to react to the conservative rebellion.

“There’s more and more anger toward those people,” he said of those leaving the church. “Especially the left-wingers are furious about what these people are doing. They have spent millions of dollars on lawsuits. It’s really unfortunate.

“It’s what people do when they’re mad.”

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The province’s constitution leaves property in the hands of individual parishes, limiting the potential for lawsuits down the line if parishes or dioceses decide to leave. Details such as how marriage and divorce will be handled are expected to be hammered out before the constitution is ratified in June.

Chicago Bishop Jeffrey Lee said he is disappointed by the group’s decision to leave.

“I’m saddened that some members of the Episcopal Church are choosing to affiliate with other parts of the Anglican Communion,” Lee said. “I think we’re impoverished whenever sisters and brothers are not with us at the same table for the same conversation. There’s real regret attached to that for me.”

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The Rev. Frederick Schmidt, an Episcopal priest and theology professor at Southern Methodist University, said that only the Archbishop of Canterbury can decide who is a part of the Anglican Communion.

“This would be a little bit like a group of people outside the 50 states of the United States claiming suddenly to be a part of the United States of America,” he said.

Schmidt also questioned the long-term viability of the denomination.

“The question becomes .”‚.”‚. Can you actually build a church around a negative?” he said.

David Holmes, a religion professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said he believes that the 100,000-strong denomination can survive.

He noted that one group joining the new denomination first split from the Episcopal Church in the 1870s.

“The point is that if a group that broke off .”‚.”‚. lasted over 140 years, this is a much larger group that has more substance in terms of membership and prestige,” he said.

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Here is one section:

1. The ACL welcomes this new development while remaining deeply saddened by the circumstances which made it necessary. Faithful Anglicans have been marginalised within The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada because of their determination to remain faithful to the Scriptures as expressed in the Creeds and the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. We rejoice with these our brothers and sisters in this way forward out of the difficulties that have plagued them over the past five years and more.

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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.”

Read it all. Please note that this is a longer article that incorporates some of the material in the article previously posted from the Times, but there is much that is new here.

Conservatives from the Episcopal Church voted yesterday to form their own branch of Anglicanism in the United States and said they would seek new recognition in the worldwide church because of their growing disenchantment over the ordination of an openly gay bishop and other liberal developments.

In the past five years, a small but growing number of Episcopal parishes and dioceses have voted to leave the church, but yesterday’s vote, at a meeting in Wheaton, Ill., represents the biggest split for Anglicans and presents a new challenge to U.S. church leaders and the denomination’s world spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

The conservatives remain upset about the 2003 ordination of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the role of female clergy, the church’s definition of salvation and changes to the main book of prayer.

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Here is one section:

4. Of Bishops and Their Election

Bishops shall be chosen by a diocese, cluster or network in conformance with their respective procedures and consistent with the Constitution and Canons of the Province. Eligibility for bishop must include being a duly ordained male presbyter of at least 35 years of age, who possesses those qualities for a bishop which are in accordance with Scriptural principles, and who has fully embraced the Fundamental Declarations of this Province.

An electing body shall certify the election of a bishop for consent by the College of Bishops, or may certify two or three nominees from which the College of Bishops may select one for the diocese, cluster or network.

Where the originating body is “in formation,” that body shall normally nominate two or three candidates, from whom the College of Bishops may select one.

Consent or, choice and consent, shall require the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the membership of the College of Bishops, which consent shall be given within 60 days and in writing.

Upon the consent or choice of a bishop-elect by the College of Bishops, the Archbishop shall take order for the consecration and/or installation of such bishop.

In the event the bishop-elect or the nominees are rejected by the College of Bishops, the College shall so inform the originating body inwriting.

Read them carefully and read them all.

In the Name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

We are Anglicans in North America united by our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the trustworthiness of the Holy Scriptures and presently members of the Common Cause Partnership.

We know ourselves to be members of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

We are grieved by the current state of brokenness within the Anglican Communion prompted by those who have embraced erroneous teaching and who have rejected a repeated call to repentance.

We are grateful for the encouragement of Primates of the worldwide Anglican Communion who gathered at Jerusalem in June 2008 and called on us to establish a new Province in North America.

We believe that this Constitution is faithful to that call and consistent with the Historic Faith and Order of the Church and we invite the prayers of all faithful Anglicans as we seek to be obedient disciples of Jesus Christ our One Lord and Savior.

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Sharpening the emerging debate over how to reshape the country’s healthcare system, the major group representing insurers unveiled a proposal Wednesday for covering all Americans in a more centralized insurance market.

The plan offered by America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group representing companies that together insure more than 200 million people, comes a decade and half after the industry helped kill the last major healthcare reform campaign — pushed early in the Clinton administration.

And Wednesday’s proposal for a form of universal insurance coverage reflects the intensifying interest among groups like insurers, businesses and healthcare providers in having an active role in shaping the reform effort.

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Food stamps, the main U.S. antihunger program which helps the needy buy food, set a record in September as more than 31.5 million Americans used the program — up 17 percent from a year ago, according to government data.

The number of people using food stamps in September surpassed the previous peak of 29.85 million seen in November 2005 when victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma received emergency benefits, said Jean Daniel of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.

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Why are the Pharisees of Accounting in the U.S. trying so hard to destroy American business? Having crippled high tech entrepreneurship and made it nearly impossible for any U.S. company to ”˜go public’, the people who set the rules of financial disclosure are now making corporate financials so obscure that investors literally have no way of knowing the financial condition of their companies.

In 2002, in reaction to Enron and other perceived corporate excesses of the Dot.com Boom Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) followed suit be revising its Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to make corporate accounting more transparent.

But in my experience, all that these new laws and regulation have done is make corporate finances more opaque – and is killing off the creation of new public companies in the United States.

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