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.
“… in the case of the Reformed Episcopal Church, for more than 100 years …”
I find this so encouraging – a sort of public stamp of affirmation by the Holy Spirit that He is truly behind ACNA.
Despite what our detractors say.
I am more than a little concerned that he described the CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITION of Female Bishops as “temporary.” If that is temporary, then what else is “coming soon?”
I saw nothing temporary about it, and after what we experienced in TEC, I doubt very much that any of us is eager to let it happen. I am quite certain that resistance to women bishops is, and will be for a very long time to come, overwhelming.
Brother Cennydd,
I agree with you that resistance to Woman Bishops will be overwhelming. Thus I was concerned to read what Bishop Harvey said:
“ANiC’s policy is that any office that can be held by a man can be held by a woman. However, he explained, that “for the sake of launching this province,†ANiC agreed to abide by the ACNA decision that no diocese would appoint woman to the episcopacy in the immediate future. Women can hold positions as priests and deacons. “I’ve spoken to all of the women priests in ANiC about the reasons for us going along with something that is not really part of our own constitution,†he said, to reassure them that this [b]temporary agreement[/b] does not represent a change in ANiC’s position. “It was to facilitate something rather than to change a doctrine. And they have all been very supportive. They know why we’re doing it.â€