When Bishop Martyn Minns (who was born in England) flies into Heathrow Airport near London, he flashes his UK passport and the guard greets him with “Welcome home, Mr. Minns!” On his return flight into Newark Airport outside of New York City, he pulls out his US passport and the security officer says, “Welcome home, Mr. Minns!”
CANA congregations and clergy have the privilege of holding dual citizenship in both CANA and the ACNA. While the provinces in the Anglican Communion and GAFCON live in the current period of evolving ecclesiastical structures, these guidelines will help us understand and manage some practical issues related to holding two virtual passports.
Q1. What does “dual citizenship” mean?
The largest province of the Anglican Communion and GAFCON, the Church of Nigeria, sponsors the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) as an indigenous, ecclesiastical structure of districts, congregations, and clergy in North America. As such, CANA also is a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) which is an indigenous province-structure. Thus, congregations and clergy in CANA have a dual citizenship and two virtual passports that allow them to be bona fide members of the Church of Nigeria (and thus the Anglican Communion) and the ACNA.
It seems as though they are hedging their bets.
Well, don’t a lot of the ACNA congregations/dioceses have “dual citizenships”? The REC for one… They are still REC, with their own bishops, yet ACNA, show me the difference, except for CANA Bishops mostly being overseas.
Grannie
One more piece of evidence that the ACNA is not a “Province” but rather a coalition of allied groups. It would be so much wiser if the ACNA dropped its pretense of being a “Province” and instead requested that each of its contingent groups merge into one group that was under the direct authority of the the Global South primates as a group. Being a member of CANA or the Southern Cone or Uganda or whatever doesn’t make one officially a member of the “Anglican Communion” any more then would what I describe above, or any more then membership in ACNA (witness the refusal of recognition to the North American Ugandan rep back at ACC-Jamaica).
Oh come now jamesw, if the collapsing Church in Wales and Scottish Episcopal Church which are each smaller than an English diocese [having purged the varied groups of which they used to be composed] can be an Anglican province at half the size of ACNA, then ACNA certainly can be [with its varied churchmanships and views which reflect the variety of those of provinces such as my own].
Moreover more than half the world’s Anglicans recognise the ACNA as a province in formation as does much of the Church of England including myself.
As it happens, I thought the dual membership with the GS provinces ‘grandfathering’ the ACNA was a good idea, and could help it out, but of course Williams and Kearon have been pushing ACNA to separate from the GS Provinces and for the GS Provinces to release their congregations into ACNA.
One would like to think that this is Lambeth Palace/ACO encouraging ACNA, but of course it is more likely about their desire to isolate, control and marginalise much like Williams’ disgraceful involvement in appointing a TEC priest to USPG as its Chief Executive, the mission arm of the CofE and UK churches, with now a real risk of TEC pressure being applied to the many GS Provinces that USPG supports, and notwithstanding that it flies in the face of all that Williams said about representation in relation to Faith and Order in his Pentecost letter. This follows two other contradictory appointments of: Ian Douglas to convene a Standing Committee Faith and Order review of the work of IASCUFO [from whom TEC representatives had been removed; and the equally bizarre appointments the Archbishop has made to ARCIC III.
But there we are – and why we have a vacuum of leadership in the Communion, as Williams and Kearon persist in undermining their organisations and themselves. Keep digging Archbishop.
But good for ACNA and CANA – onwards and upwards!
One thing which should be pointed out. There are probably many people and parishes in CANA who feel very strong connections to CANA and Nigeria but only “yeah, we’re part of that ACNA thing too” feelings about their membership in ACNA.
I can very much attest that many of us in the REC accept that the REC is “affiliated with ACNA” but we DO NOT consider ourselves to be under Duncan. (Who may be a wonderful man but he pretends to “ordain” females to the priesthood.) So, the “dual citizenship” thing is necessary.
A recent media report asserted that the Province of Nigeria had “cut its ties” with CANA. ++Okoh expressed his surprise last week when told about this.
I would say that this article is meant as a corrective to that erroneous media report. Thus it is not saying anything new, but re-stating what has always been the case.
Jamesw wrote:
[blockquote] “One more piece of evidence that the ACNA is not a “Province†but rather a coalition of allied groups.” [/blockquote]
Who has claimed that ACNA is a province?
It is certainly intended to be one, eventually. It may at times colloquially be referred to as a province, even by its members. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Jerusalem Conference in June 2008 resolved “We believe this is a critical moment when the Primates’ Council will need to put in place structures to lead and support the church. In particular, we believe the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America for the federation currently known as Common Cause Partnership to be recognised by the Primates’ Council”. Would anyone really expect a new province to be formed in less than 3 years?
In one sense, ACNA is a province, but in other senses it has a long way to go. I note +Minns in this article calls it “an indigenous province-structure” and that seems as accurate a characterisation as any.
Jamesw wrote,
[blockquote] Being a member of CANA or the Southern Cone or Uganda or whatever doesn’t make one officially a member of the “Anglican Communion†any more then would what I describe above, or any more then membership in ACNA (witness the refusal of recognition to the North American Ugandan rep back at ACC-Jamaica). [/blockquote]
Which begs the question – why would anyone want to be “officially a member of the Anglican Communion” in the sense defined by ACC? Ten years ago, sure. But things have changed.
Pageantmaster makes some very good points above.
And Recchip (whom I recall from Virtue Online many years ago – its good to see you again) points out one of the real issues about forming a new province. This one about ordination of women will have to be resolved sooner or later if ACNA is to move forward. But ACNA is not unique in this regard – some Global South provinces ordain women to the priesthood, whereas many others hold out resolutely against it.
RE: “Being a member of CANA or the Southern Cone or Uganda or whatever doesn’t make one officially a member of the “Anglican Communion†any more then would what I describe above, or any more then membership in ACNA (witness the refusal of recognition to the North American Ugandan rep back at ACC-Jamaica).”
I think, JamesW, that one of the undercurrents of dissatisfaction with transferring entirely to ACNA without the dual citizenship, is that *many clergy* and *some bishops* desire to continue their orders acknowledgement through a Province of the Anglican Communion. There’s been a lot of waffling and discussion back and forth about that particular matter.
[blockquote]This one about ordination of women will have to be resolved sooner or later if ACNA is to move forward. [/blockquote]One could say the same for Australia, where, at least as I understand, Sydney archdiocese does not ordain women, but other archdioceses do. Certainly one hopes Australia comes up with a better solution that the pogroms that have taken place in TEC, CoE and ACoC.
The Anglican invention of “impaired communion” is the root of any number of our current difficulties. It is through this means that churches are divided at the sacramental level at diocesan or parish level, but can stay in the same ecclesiastic structure. +RW, +Bob Duncan or any bishop who ordains women, or any woman bishop or priest, can never be in full communion with Anglo Catholics, or the REC, or any Anglican province that holds the traditional view of WO). The question is, how impaired is the communion between them. This impairment can range from mutual excommunication to lesser forms, such as refusal to exchange priests between dioceses.
Overall, ACNA is no more “confused” over WO than most Anglican provinces where the practice has been adopted. Only those provinces where WO is forceably mandated or those where it is prohibited actually have (almost) full communion internally, and those two groups are essentially excommunicated from one another at the Communion level. Another reason why the Anglican Communion is not a communion.
Pageantmaster makes several good points above, about ++RW and the ACO putting TEC personnel into key positions in the Communion, which renders ACNA acceptance extremely unlikely (although I think PM’s greater concern is over the behavior of the ABoC and the further damage he does to the Communion with these appointments). Given the ABoC’s propensity for violating his own rules laid out in the Pentacost letter, we can be almost assured that the SC subcommittee that will make the determination will be headed by Ian Douglas or Janet Trisk.
It is very much in ++RW’s self interest to have GS churches cut the formal ties that bind GS to ACNA and AMiA. Since he will refuse to invite any ACNA bishops to Lambeth- and some of those bishops also sit in the HoB of GS provinces, there is great likelihood that GS churches will not send bishops if their entire HoB is not invited. Regardless of whether TEC is there or not. Given the ++RW has gone so completely off course since accepting the Glasspool consecration, it is almost unimaginable that GS bishops will attend the next Lambeth in any case, but he goes on as if “all is well.” Perhaps he will just hold a meeting of facilitators instead, which would have the same result as a Lambeth Conference, and be less expensive.
Hopefully, the ABoC will prove me wrong, and in his report on ACNA communion with the CoE, due at the next Synod, will support full communion. But my best guess is that he will instead form a committee of his affirming catholic cronies to be headed up by the bishop of Liverpool, who are to report back to Synod sometime after the establishment of the first diocese in outer space.
Given the present state of the Communion and given the machinations of those at or near the top, I’m not so sure that it’s a good idea to aspire to membership [i]at the present time.[/i] I think that we in the ACNA can afford to wait, because that leadership isn’t going to be around forever.
I should clarify my #4 above. Janette O’Neill is a long-term employee of The Episcopal Church, but not ordained as far as I know. The objection to her completely inappropriate appointment to USPG is not related to her personally, but to her as a senior employee of TEC, being appointed to succeed a British Bishop to run one of the two major mission agencies we have in these Isles.
If I was one of USPG’s clients in Africa, I would be outraged given the privileged access USPG has and its trusted status. I have personally met +Mokiwa of Tanzania being hosted by USPG here. It is a massive betrayal of both the British churches and a cynical ploy by Rowan Williams to put a TEC employee into this position of trust.
I hope the clients of USPG speak up against this and let USPG know that this appoinment is unacceptable.
As for Rowan Williams, yet further evidence of his duplicity as he continues to undermine the Church of England and its mission in the world, and how the wretched Williams is now using us to undermine the faithfulness of the Communion.