“There is very little chance that the Anglican Consultative Council would approve two provinces in the same geographic area, especially when the ACNA is, in fact, quite small,” said Lawrence R. Hitt III, professor of Anglican Studies at the Ilif School of Theology in Denver.
Kevin Ross, rector of the ACNA International Anglican Church in Colorado Springs, is skeptical that the organization will ever be officially recognized.
“To recognize (the ACNA) they would have to de-recognize the Episcopal Church,” Ross said. “You have a greater possibility of the worldwide Anglican Communion splitting than having the Episcopal Church de-recognized.”
The ACNA is scrambling to organize itself into a hierarchical system similar to that in Anglican Communion provinces, and it is also establishing various ecclesiastical councils.
It matters more to me whether or not the Church of England’s House of Bishops votes to recommend the recognition of the ACNA…..which they’ve been talking of doing, and not whether or not the ACC recognizes us. Personally, since TEC exercises such overbearing influence on them, I couldn’t care less what the ACC does.
This article seems to have been written by an agent for TEC…they create division in the local ACNA because Ross is so protestant that he could care less about communion issues, while Armstrong/Grant are more catholic and long for right order (remember Armstrong was with ACI and most likely still shares their more catholic perspectives). This sounds like mainline Anglicanism to have such ‘tensions’ in place.
It does look like they have 1,000 people worshipping each Sunday in their ACNA churches in this one town alone…sounds like they are pretty darn successful. I wonder how many TEC worshippers there are on a given Sunday in Colorado Springs?
Just a little note on the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. When I was a young man, Iliff was known as the far left Methodist Seminary in the area. If you wanted to learn about Bultmann or Tillich or Process Theology, it was the place to go. Unless Iliff has radically changed, there is something extremely ironic about an Iliff faculty member opining about historic Anglicanism. Of course, the Anglican Consultative Council may well be the Anglican Instrument of Unity that has the most affinity with a place like Iliff.
#3…it is also widely known that the Bishop of Colorado and Kenneth Kearon are just a little chummy, so not surprising that the diocesan chancellor is confident about the ACC, although they themselves are a side show in considerations about ACNA’s relationship to the larger Communion.
Remember that Rowan himself suggested that there be created something like the ACNA and a network of other orthodox within TEC, so there was one entity for him to deal with concerning such proclamations about who is first tier and who is second tier, who is in and who is out.
More importantly has been Rowan William’s several assurances that all of these people who claim to be Anglicans in these difficult days, are in communion with him and that he considers them to be Anglicans.