unfortunately, there is another issue that has been made public; it is now part of the historical record: Chuck Murphy and eight AMIA bishops have removed themselves from Rwandan oversight, having done so for no particular theological or biblical reason. The issues are both personal and ecstatic. By personal, I mean personality conflicts. By ecstatic, I mean that the only spiritual reason given for the departure was Chuck Murphy’s sense that the Lord had told him personally that he was like Moses leading people out of Egypt: “I must now say ”¦ that I believe that the Lord’s present word to me (and to us) now directs me to look beyond Genesis chapters 39-45, and on into the Book of Exodus”¦. that Africa (Egypt) could no longer be viewed as [AMIA’s] lasting home”¦. Things have now been made very clear to me” [letter of Dec. 5, 2011 to Archbishop Rwaje].
I think it critical in such times that we say what a thing is”“only the truth will set us free. And this thing that happened has a name: schism. All the AMIA bishops who have resigned are schismatics.
This is a hard sentence to write and to read, because these are otherwise godly men, whose leadership we have admired. Some we call friends and colleagues. But there is no other word to describe what they’ve done other than the word schism.
Duncan of ACNA points out that AMiA threatens to lose its connective tissue to the Communion through Rwanda. Fair point. Barnum and Glenn don’t want to leave, apparently, for this and other reasons of collegiality and polity. I mean this as no criticism as we are all in a time of judgment in TEC and the Communion. But how can this be a stated objection? ACNA does not have any provincial connection on analogy with the erstwhile/continuing AMiA. One understands that ACNA wants to be accepted as a province in its own right, but couldn’t Murphy and his now-exited fellow Bishops say that Duncan’s objection at this point is toothless and that their effort to find a provincial sponsor is aimed precisely at this point?
I do not mean this as a criticism but as a question of the logic of what is going on. One wonders who would want to sponsor AM under Murphy given the Rwanda troubles. Then there is CANA also apparently wanting to hold on to Nigeria.
“All the AMIA bishops who have resigned are schismatics.”
Unless the author is Catholic, this is just the pot calling the kettle black. Why is this lost on so many Protestants? You can be part of a splinter group that has already fractured numerous times, but as soon as yet another splinter splits off, it’s [i] they [/i] that are the schismatics?
Hi PaulC — the reformed church does not define “schism” as Roman Catholics do — rather obviously! I mean — if we defined schism as “we left the RC church” then obviously we’d all have to return!
What is today called the Roman Catholic Church was the greatest body of schismatics in history, having departed from the Universal Church in 1052. How short memory is! In this case, it’s still self-evidently schismatic, deriving from the well-known pneumatic heresy, which is the same one that Mrs Schori, Gene Robinson, etc, suffer from. “The Holy Spirit made me do it!”