(Via email):
San Jose is now home to the new St. James Anglican Church. All are invited to celebrate the establishment of this community of faith. Sunday services will include a traditional mass at 9 am, and a contemporary service at 10:45 am.
St. James will be meeting at the Camden Community Center at 3369 Union Ave, San Jose, CA 95124. St. James has joined the newly-formed Anglican Church of North America, which unites 700 orthodox Anglican congregations, representing roughly 100,000 people in the United States and Canada.
The initial launch team for St. James has been drawn from the former leadership of St. Edward’s Episcopal Church. Fr. Ed McNeill, who led St. Edward’s for 10 years, is St. James Anglican Church’s first pastor. Six of the twelve members of St. Edward’s Vestry have left to help found St. James.
The decision of Fr. McNeill and other church leaders to found St. James Anglican Church marks the end of years of debate within St. Edward’s about supporting the efforts of The Episcopal Church USA. While members of the Episcopal Church have always welcomed a diversity of opinion, recent theological innovations by the national leadership have made it impossible for many orthodox Christians to remain.
The Episcopal Church has increasingly adopted policies that are unacceptable to orthodox Christians, departing from the primacy of Scripture. Church leaders have taken positions that undermine traditional teaching on the Divinity of Christ, Jesus’ resurrection and His role in salvation, Biblical standards on sexuality, and many of the tenets expressed in the Nicene Creed. These changes aligned the church with today’s social trends, and led the church away from its historic mission. The result has been declining attendance, declining ordinations and the departure of many clergy members, strained relationship with the global Anglican Communion, and nationwide lawsuits.
Fr. McNeill said, “We are very happy that the time of divisiveness has passed, and that healing can begin. We will miss our friends who have chosen to remain in the Episcopal Church and are committed to praying for them. We look forward to serving in the Bay Area as Anglican Christians.”
A website has been established at www.newanglicanchurch.com, to provide a means for community-building among Anglicans in the Bay Area. Those who have left the Episcopal Church, or who have been searching for Orthodox churches in the Bay Area, will have access to news and information, as well as an opportunity to communicate with others.
New church.
Newly-formed “Anglican Church of North America”
Thank God we’re part of a free country where people who don’t like what the Episcopal Church is, believes, does or lives out can leave and start their own new church so they can live out their lives of faith the way they feel so called and leave us to get on with the mission and ministry of TEC.
And thank God we’re part of a country where the rule of law keeps those who want to go do a new thing from taking the old buildings, silver, linens and prayerbooks with them.
Things are lookin’ up!
I did my doctoral studies at a Roman Catholic institution. One of the questions I was sometimes mischievously asked by my fellow students of Roman persuasion was how I liked belonging to a church that had been founded on the lust of Henry VIII. I realized that the jibe was meant half jokingly, but my usual response was to ask whether when my friend washed his or her face he or she now had a new face.
And by the way, Henry kept the silver.
In the end, we all have to stand before the judgment seat, do we not? I think I’ll follow the Word delivered to Apostles and forefathers…
Hello Susan,
It is nice to not have to worry about law suits and such. I can assure you that we took nothing from St. Edward’s. More than that, we still support St. Edward’s when they have qestions and will continue to do so. Just this week I was helping the parish Administrator with their website.
More important to us that the “real property” is our character. As we left we were mindful that our behavior at this time will shape our character into the future. Accumulating real property is much easier than changing an institution’s character.
We are also mindful that some 4,000 Episcopalian’s have left TEC churches in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2003. We have a heart for these people. We want to help them network and begin forming new churches and eventually a new diocese. This is why we created http://www.NewAnglicanChurch.com
Once registered on this site, users can login and search for other registered users by zipcode, city, county, and even state.
Administrators of the site can see where concentrations of people are beginning to form and gather them together to begin exploring the possibility of a new parish. I’ve already had one such meeting with two households in Orinda, just east of Oakland. It is a very cool and safe way to network. I’d like to invite all the readers here in The San Francisco Bay Area including wine country and also the Monterey Penninsula to register.
In Christ,
Ed McNeill
St. James Anglican Church
At the risk of seeming trivial, terrific website. I was so impressed I clicked on the template supplier hyperlink.
Glad you like it Terry. The site uses Joomla, phpBB3, Community Builder, Frontpage Slide Show, and a few hidden bells and whistles. Rockettheme is a great template supplier, and has a very active bulletin board where people can get support.
Ed
[i] Please keep the discussion on topic to the thread rather than to one comment by one individual. [/i]
-Elf Lady
Fr. McNeill, it is a very neat website. Makes me wish I lived out in your area. God bless you, your parish, and this new endeavor!
Fr McNeill, thanks for the news! My wife and I left San Jose for Los Banos and St Alban’s Episcopal (now Anglican) Church seven years ago, and have never regretted the move. My wife and I wish you and the faithful people of St James’ Church all of the best, and we will keep you in our prayers.
!. Susan Russell, does this mean that you’d deprive the children of their Sunday School crayons and other materials…..thus punishing them, too? How about the toys in the nursery?
Oops, sorry, elves! But I just had to say it!
May the Lord richly bless Fr. McNeill, his ministry, and the new congregation.
[i] Comment edited by elf. [/i]
Ed,
What about the folks that are not leaving? Will they be identifying themselves as a traditional parish in The Episcopal Church – you know, folks who plan to stay to provide a strong witness to biblical faith in Christ? I’d be glad to try to be of help to them in that regard.
It sorrows me to see this divide, and especially to lose you as an “internal” ally. Certainly allies in the big picture of testifying to the Only Name, and in the power of His Holy Spirit, though, and I rejoice in that. I do hope as well you and the new congregation can be a place of refuge for all those Episcopalians in exile in the Bay Area. May the Lord bless you as you build your witness to what the depths and richness of Anglican (and true Episcopal) worship, proclamation and compassion looks like in lifting up high the Name of Jesus. Rejoice in knowing that the only freedom worth eternal merit is in serving the Lord Jesus Christ, and in responding to his every leading.
Rob
Susan (in #1),
I think you have TECUSA confused with the Church of England.
Susan and others with similar sensibilities:
After wandering in the wilderness of the New Age movement for nearly a decade and upon returning to the Lord through the human agency of one C.S. Lewis, I had been seeking a meaningful, orthodox Anglican church for some thirty years in the greater bay area and simply could not find one. Personally, I find that a monumental tragedy. Frankly, the way I saw it, after my years in the New Age Movement, the Episcopal Church in the U.S. was very close to the tenets of everything which I abjured after reading Lewis’ little gem,
“Mere Christianity”. I simply could not find myself in a church which no longer discerned truth from error and which increasingly seems to persecute those who believe the faith once delivered as embodied in the historic creeds of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.
Therefore, it is with great joy that I seem to have found my kith and kin at St. James Anglican (ACNA). I look forward to joining her with and serving my Lord with all my might within her doors (wherever those physically may be). The building is nothing more than brick and mortar, and having watched other orthodox parishes like St. John’s of Huntingdon Valley, PA lose their historic buildings in their departure and the formation of St. John the Evangelist (AMIA), I know that there is life on the other side of losing a facility. Again, with all due candor, I must say that all this fuss over buildings is nothing in comparison with the life and work of the church and extension of the kingdom, albeit with nothing more than a simple yurt and the blessings of our heavenly Father.