Now that his diocese is no longer torn by internal strife, Bishop Robert Duncan of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) called on parishes to engage in bold, new missions.
“Sometimes we have to stop and heal wounds, but that is not our corporate task now,” he told several hundred people yesterday at the Anglican convention in Trinity Cathedral, Downtown. “Every one of our people is called to ministry.”
On Oct. 4 the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted to secede from the Episcopal Church, which it believed no longer upheld classic Christianity. The majority of 74 parishes joined an Anglican province based in Argentina, amid hope that the global Anglican Communion — of which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. province — will create a second North American province for theological conservatives.
Yes! It is great to be able to focus on mission and ministry rather than political correctness and social justice. That is for the secular world! Our Father in Heaven commissioned His disciples to go out and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ not the gospel of KJS and the secular humanists agendas.
“He mentioned two specific missions for the diocese: Teaching the Bible and providing opportunities for female priests.”
I love Bishop Duncan, and count it a real privilege to have served under him in Charleroi from 1996 to 2001.
But on that second point he is wrong. It is the same disobedience to Church Order as the distortion in teaching on human sexuality. Both start with “the church used to believe X was forbidden in Scripture, but it knows better now”
In my opinion, there are wounds still to be healed, even, dare I say it, among the leadership. You can’t go through the trauma that we’ve been through over the past five years and claim that we’ve been unaffected by it.
One of things that bothered me about last Friday’s convention – and about today’s report – is that the only people to make reference to the broken relationships with fellow conservatives (by their choice, I know) were those from Somerset Anglican Fellowship, who spoke of how they were praying for the residual parish (to whom they left the property) and how hoped they would flourish. I’m sure others are experiencing similar feelings of loss and yet publicly it is as if the non-realigning conservatives no longer exist.
I happen to think there is a place for mourning and grief, but then I’ve always felt more meaning in a Requiem Mass than in a Mass of the Resurrection.
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Onward and Upward, +Pittsburgh!!