Posted on 12/20/2006 8:06:20 AM PST by sionnsar
(Via email)
After three years of prayer, study, consultation, and tears by the rector, vestry and congregation over the divisions that have torn our denomination asunder, St. John’s Episcopal Church, in Petaluma, California met in a properly noticed parish meeting on Sunday, December 17, 2006, and by a vote of the vestry and parish, agreed to sever their 150-year relationship with The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Diocese of Northern California. By the same vote, our name was amended to St. John’s Anglican Church as we will seek to be in communion with an orthodox diocese within the Anglican Communion.
Beginning with the decisions of the August 2003 General Convention of The Episcopal Church, it had become painfully clear that there exists a great theological difference between us and the national church leadership regarding the authority of the Bible and its teachings on human sexuality. With the consent to the election of V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, a divorced man now living in an openly homosexual relationship, the overwhelming majority of our members decided in good conscience that they could no longer continue their financial support of Church structures which they believed to have acted contrary to Holy Scripture and the Church’s traditional teachings regarding sexual morality.
Especially troubling to this parish family has been The Episcopal Church’s continued refusal to heed the appeals of the majority of Anglican leaders worldwide to turn from their current course of action and return to the agreed upon teachings of the Scriptures and the Anglican Communion. The 2006 General Convention of The Episcopal Church not only voted down the resolutions calling for compliance with the teachings of the wider communion, but elected a new Presiding Bishop of the U. S. Province who is a vocal advocate of the revisionist teachings that are dividing our church. Our national leaders have spoken clearly that they intend to walk apart from worldwide Anglicanism.
St. John’s chooses not to join our national church. Instead, we have, from the beginning of the crisis, disassociated ourselves from these revisionist teachings and actions. Now, seeing their unwillingness to repent and change course, St. John’s has left The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Northern California and will be associating with an orthodox province of the Anglican Communion. Under their jurisdiction, we will await the final resolution of the divisions before us, a resolution that our international Anglican leaders will settle, and that we hope will be soon.
St. John’s has stood for orthodoxy and biblical teaching for the last 150 years in our community. We pray that our actions to disassociate from The Episcopal Church will be a witness to the world at large that we, one congregation among hopefully many in Northern California, are still standing for God’s Word and the historic Christian faith.
St. John’s will continue to hold services at the corner of 5th and ‘C’ streets in Petaluma, as we have done at this site since 1858.
Contact Information:
The Rev. Dr. Lu T. Nguyen
For St. John’s Anglican Church
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Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. "The Ents are beginning to move" ping
St John’s purchases a building several months ago and is now at home there.
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