Posted on 02/14/2004 8:26:30 PM PST by ahadams2
The Realignment: A Summary Update
By The Editor
REPORTS OF FALLOUT at home and abroad from the U.S. Episcopal Church's embrace of an openly gay bishop and optional same-sex blessings just keep coming.
"The implications are staggering. Hardly a day goes by without international mention of more consequences," said Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone of America—one of the latest Anglican provinces to declare broken or some form of impaired communion with the Episcopal Church's liberal leadership.
Provinces in that category now number 11 (out of 38), and represent nearly half of all Anglicans worldwide. In addition to the Southern Cone (South America), they are Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, South East Asia, Central Africa, Congo, West Indies, and Papua New Guinea. Some ten other provinces also are said to be in impaired communion with the Episcopal Church (ECUSA), but have not individually spoken. However, further declarations of broken fellowship are likely, particularly after a study commission set up by Anglican primates (provincial leaders) reports in October.
Another gauge of international opposition to ECUSA was seen at deadline, in a statement from 14 primates in support of a new network of conservative Episcopalians (on which more later).
VENABLES' JANUARY 8 LETTER to Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, which included a statement from the Southern Cone's House of Bishops, is representative of the growing freeze-out of ECUSA in the wider Anglican Communion.
Venables wrote Griswold that the American Church's decision to consecrate Vicky Gene Robinson, "a person sexually active outside marriage," as the next Bishop of New Hampshire, "and to declare by resolution that same-sex blessings are 'in bounds,' has left us no choice but to recognize the situation which you have created."
In their statement, Southern Cone bishops said that ECUSA's actions ignored "the clear witness of God's Word...the moral teaching, practice and common understanding of the Anglican Communion" as reaffirmed by the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, and the "heartfelt pleas of the entire Communion. When the economically powerful church in America acts, it attracts worldwide attention; and despite repeated warnings, ECUSA's leaders have shown selfish indifference to the difficulties and confusion their actions have now brought this and other provinces."
Though Venables said these actions had created a "profound impairment of communion" with ECUSA inhis province, it is clearly far more than that. The Southern Cone bishops said that, "in faithfulness to the Word of God," they cannot recognize Robinson's consecration or "share fe|lowship, ministry, Eucharist, or gifts with those who have affirmed or participated in the consecration of Gene Robinson, nor with those who perform or permit blessings of same-sex unions... nor with any clergy who are sexually active outside marriage." ECUSA's repentance is the only way to change this, the bishops said.
As with other provinces that have shunned ECUSA, they went on to declare continuing fellowship with and support for Episcopalians who have stood for the historic faith against ECUSA's unbiblical actions. They also voiced concern about reports that such tributive applications of canonical and secular legal procedures."
(See a separate report on liberal backlash in this section)
NOTEWORTHY, TOO, WAS THE PEN-LASHING that Central African Archbishop Bemard Malango recently gabe to Bishop Griswold. Malango ripped the PB for agreeing to last October's stern statement by Anglican primates - warning of serious harm to the Communion if Robinson's consecration went ahead - and then acting as Robinson's chief consecrator.
This was "dishonest, false, and a great betrayal," said Malango. "How can there be any hope for a shared future when communications and commitments mean nothing?" he asked.
"They would have been to the Anglican Church otherwise," confirmed Archbishop Venables, who reminded that Anglican primates had all agreed on the provision of 'adequate...episcopal oversight" for theologically-alienated parishes. "We cannot just stand idly by while congregation are being lost to the Anglican Communion."
Bishop Lyons bluntly said: "We are sorry to lose the Episcopal Church [from] the...Communion, but they freely decided to go their own way, regardless of the consequences..." In an early February visit to Holy Cross, Bishop Lyons told a congregation of over 230 meeting at a middle school just outside Atlanta that ECUSA no longer represents Anglicanism in the US.
It appears that the Nigerian Church may be the next in line. The News Agency of Nigeria reported that Anglican province plans to establish a branch in the US to provide what may be as many as 250,000 Nigerians there a "place to worship without interference or interaction with the gay bishop."
The Bishop of Lagos West, Peter Adebiyi, said: "We have told our people to leave the U.S. church and give us time to set up our own"— to be called "Church of Nigeria in the US."
A LARGER NUMBER of faithful Episcopalians appear to be responding to ECUSA's pro-gay actions with some type of "inside' strategy, the centerpiece of which is the new Network of Anglican Communion Diioceses and Parishes (NACDP), covered in two stories in this section.) It aims to be "in, but not of" ECUSA, but appears headed toward an early battle with the latter over the subject of adequate episcopal oversight for constituents stranded in liberal Episcopal dioceses.
Indeed, the NACDP has already drawn fire from some liberals for allegedly plotting ECUSA's overthrow, though interestingly, it struck other liberals as tamer than expected. Significantly, however, the Network had by deadline received resounding public support from 14 primates, from the 11 provinces which had earlier made individual declarations distancing themselves from ECUSA and four others - Sudan, South India, Pakistan, and Philippines.
Another indicator was the bid by the international group, Anglican Mainstream, to garner "One Million Signatures by Christmas" in support of biblical orthodoxy and the new NACDP. By year's end, the effort had drawn the endorsement of persons representing over 13.6 million Anglicans across the Communion, The statement was presented at Lambeth Palace at the end of December.
The NACDP "is but one more piece of the national and international chess set of the Anglican Communion that is positioning itself to realize a future for Anglicanism—or watch it dissolve into a federation or perhaps two communions," wrote church journalist David Virtue.
Wallets Snap Shut
Meanwhile, as alienated Episcopalians continue to cut back support and/or redirect it to orthodox ministries, the financial losses to ECUSA, liberal dioceses and parishes in the wake of Robinson's consecration are rapidly piling up all across the country.
Some of the diocesan budget "shortfalls" are astonishin— e.g. $950,000 in Washington, D.C., and $900,000 in Virginia. (It was in the latter diocese, incidentally, wherein Bishop Peter Lee recently compounded the unrest over his support for Bishop Robinson by urging his flock to "choose heresy" if they must make a choice between that and schism. Lee's diocesan convention took steps to avoid an open split, but may have just postponed one.) One couple who pledged $5 million to the Virginia diocese for new churches, payable over five years, said they probably will not follow through with earlier tentative plans to pledge another $5 million after the first is paid—a staggering loss.
Concern is growing that—especially if the Network does not prove to be an adequate alternative for conservative parishes—the decline in membership and support will put some ECUSA parishes in danger of being demoted to missions or dissolving altogether.
Even some liberal parishes—where one might think there would be no real impact from ECUSA's revisionist stand on homosexuality—are feeling the pinch. Not least is the ultra - liberal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, reportedly down $3 million in pledges for 2004. One liberal Maryland parish also was said to be $3 million under its pledge.
A member of one Midwest Episcopal parish said that, since September, attendance and giving had declined by at least 20 percent, the parish was some $8,500 in arrears to the diocese because of inability to pay, and pledges for 2004 were half what they were for 2003. The some $75,000 pledge is "not enough to keep a fulltime priest, a part-time secretary, organist-choirmaster, and sexton." He said some parishioners heeded the rector's call to wait until the end of 2003, but "nothing ....happened," so they left.
The layperson said: "I wish Gene Robinson could come and look this congregation in the face on Sunday morning to see what he hath wrought. Even for those members who supported his consecration, it still affects them because of what is happening to their parish."
TOPPING IT ALL OFF is the fact that ECUSA's endorsement of homosexual practice has not only caused a major disruption within Anglicanism, but outside it, with Rome and several major Orthodox bodies moving to suspend dialogue with the Episcopal and/or Anglican Church.
The story behind that is simple: The charges are most likely true, and very possibly not unique. However, Frank Griswold sent his strong-arm lawyers to have a little chat with the young fellow, and not surprisingly, he collapsed like a house of cards when they literally threatened him with immense lawsuits and other assorted nastiness.
At least one other person involved in that imbroglio was likewise threatened, but this fellow was lucky enough to have top cover, and to be known as a tenacious fighter in his own right. Griswold's goons backed off from their threats, and actually apologized after they realized he'd called their bluff.
That's what "inclusiveness" means in Frank Griswold's church.
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