Bishops Bill Atwood, John Guernsey, and Bill Murdoch are personal friends of many years and we are looking forward to working with them in the coming months as part of the Common Cause Partnership. These new initiatives are a dramatic demonstration that we are not alone as we seek to bear witness to the transforming love of Jesus Christ that is rooted in the ‘faith once and for all delivered to the saints.’
These missionary and pastoral initiatives by our friends in the Global South also make clear that they will not abandon us to those who seek to silence our voices by pernicious lawsuits and canonical threats. It is my hope that one result of these creative partnerships will be a renewed emphasis on mission and reaching the unchurched with the Gospel.
If a new US Province is formed will these Bishops be Bishops in it? Or will the people in the Province vote on their Bishops? It seems like there are too many new Bishops from Africa for the new Province especially if those Bishops from other churches in Common Cause also remain as active Bishops.
Given that AMIA has announced its intention to consecrate three more Bishops early next year one has to ask:
Why are so many bishops necessary?
Answers to the question raised in comment 2 depend on answers to previous questions about the nature and purpose of the ministry of bishops in particular and the ordained ministry in general. I’m working on a biographical directory of the 1100 or so Church of England clergy who served in British America before 1785.
All these clergy were ordained in England though from about 1750 on the larger number were American born and educated. It cost a year’s income to go for ordination and con temporaries wrote that about 20 per cent of those who went for ordination died on the way or within a year of their return.
Several times the clergy in America made serious efforts to have a bishop appointed for the colonies. The last such effort in the 1760’s sought an ecclesiastical bishop with responsibility for ordinations and a general supervision of the clergy. The effort failed for a number of reasons, one of which was the inability of both American nonconformists and English political leaders to conceive of a bishop who was not also an officer of state. Frederick Mills’ _Bishops by Ballot_ is the best book on the subject.
Those who have for conscience’ sake rejected the authority of the General Convention seem to have a view of the episcopal office more like that held in the mid-18th century. The bishops in these expressions of the Anglican heritage in our time are parish clergy as the bishops of the Episcopal Church were in the first two generations of the American succession. Their authority is limited, and so are their salaries and other expenses.
Tom Rightmyer in Asheville, NC
Outside Lynchburg Va. there is an Episcopal Seminary and on the property there is a fenced in graveyard. One of the headstones speaks of a bishop who was laid to rest in the early 1700’s. I believe you will find a Church of England presence in the USA many decades before the war of Independence.