Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh is convening a meeting next week called “Common Cause Partners” to unite Episcopal conservatives. But even conservatives doubt its viability.<\/p>\n
On Monday, conservative Bishop Jeffrey N. Steenson of the Diocese of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, N.M., plans to announce that he’s resigning and joining the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
“The movement is in danger of fragmenting into so many pieces,” said Canon Kendall Harmon, a leading conservative thinker from the Diocese of South Carolina. “We look like American Protestantism already and we’ve only been essentially at this, depending on whose measuring stick you want to use, three to five years.”<\/p>\n
If Anglicanism continues on the path of slow but steady splintering, it will effectively do as much harm as a formal schism. Anglicans in Africa, who derive much of their stature from their global ties, will become just another church. The 2.2 million-member Episcopal Church, which has played such a central role in U.S. history, will also be marginalized.<\/p>\n
“If that happens, people will say, `This wasn’t much of a church anyway,'” said Ephraim Radner, an evangelical Anglican and a theology professor at Wycliffe College in Toronto. “The results will be the disappearance and dissolution of Anglicans as a whole in North America.”<\/p>\n