Posted on 12/30/2005 9:05:27 AM PST by sionnsar
For three astounding days, seven archbishops from the Global South ministered encouragement and grace to distressed Anglicans from across North America.
Twenty-four hundred Anglicans from 73 dioceses across the continent gathered in Pittsburgh Nov. 10-12 to wait on God and hear how to be faithful as a re-formation of their church unfolds.
Almost one-third of the attendees at “Hope and a Future” were clergy. The seven primates from Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Central Africa, the West Indies and South East Asia represented 32 million Anglicans.
These are challenging times for Canadian and American Anglicans who seek to be faithful to historic Christianity. Currently the Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA) and the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) are suspended from the worldwide Anglican Communion. Those who wish to remain faithful to the teachings of the Communion are in a place of waiting and mistreatment as some of their own leaders ignore or persecute them.
The waiting will be over for Episcopalians after their General Convention in 2006 and for the Anglican Church of Canada after their General Synod in 2007 when the two national bodies decide officially whether to submit fully to the recommendations of the Communion’s Windsor Report. It is looking unlikely.
The Anglican Communion Network, orthodox Anglicans within ECUSA, hosted the conference and invited a vast array of Anglican families, some within ECUSA and ACC and some without, but all seeking to be faithful to God in these between times. Bob Duncan, the Bishop of Pittsburgh and moderator of the Network, presided at the opening Eucharist.
Duncan is waiting for due process. “We’re Windsor bishops. We’ll do everything we can to clearly have General Convention submit to the Windsor Report but when they don’t, they’ll come after us. It will create a constitutional problem for ECUSA themselves. It will confirm in an irrevocable way that they have walked apart [from the Communion].”
A standing ovation was given to Robinson Cavalcanti, the Bishop of Recife, Brazil, who, along with 90 percent of his clergy was excommunicated by the liberal primate of Brazil. It was the first time a diocese was almost totally expelled by a Province.
“During this hard time the Holy Spirit was working. We who were united in pain all grew in maturity. This is not the end of Anglicanism, but the beginning of a new and faithful Anglican Communion. The so-called powerful of this world are like dead men. Don’t look for solutions in the empty tomb! The Lord of History continues to perform miracles. The Lord of History is asking us to write new pages in history. Many times the laws of men need to be broken so that God’s law can be obeyed. The new reality of Anglicanism is the reality of networks of similarities not the old model.”
Henry Luke Orombi, Archbishop of Uganda, who oversees 8 million Anglicans and a church renown for its martyrdom said, “You in North America will have to suffer since the Gospel is not a pleasant message. Move away from self-pity. The time for debates is over. The turbulence may be terrible but fix your eyes on Jesus Christ. See what he’s doing. Join in his company. We come to encourage you. We come to stand with you.”
Drexel Gomez, archbishop of the West Indies said that as of Nov. 10, the Panel of Reference which had been requested by the Primates “as a matter of urgency” in February, to give some protection to distressed parishes and dioceses, “has yet to respond to the first case. It is very disappointing. Our request has not been taken nearly as seriously as it was intended to be.”
Present at the conference where members from several distressed parishes such as the so-called “Ohio Four” and the “Connecticut Six” as well as from the Anglican Communion in New Westminster, all of whom are awaiting help from the Panel.
Gomez told a news conference that the revisionists preach an alien gospel, along with new ethics and practises. They may use the same words but have “emptied” those words of their original meanings. They are “unclear” about God and change his titles to make him “a more inclusive” deity. “The good news is an affirmation of the culture rather than a revelation from God.” And there is no gospel of salvation from sin and judgement but merely one of “affirmation.”
“Primates will have the last word. They will say whether they consider ECUSA’s response adequate to the Windsor Report at General Convention next year, even if Frank [Griswold, the ECUSA moderator] tries to fudge it.” Gomez does not consider that ECUSA has repented for ordaining an openly gay bishop and that instituting a one-year moratorium on blessing any bishops was “almost an insult.” He also wants the blessing of same-sex unions stopped altogether (it is still practised in some Vancouver-area churches) until a consensus is reached in the Anglican Communion.
“We do not know what the new alignment will look like but we know Jesus,” said, Keith Akerman, president of Forward in Faith. “If suffering leads to glory in the end, it leads to maturity in the meantime. We will be judged for what we have done but also for what we have become in our afflictions. If we are full of bitterness and resentment and anger, we forfeit the blessing. If we meet hostility and affliction with grace, God will bring us through to glory.”
Duncan, in his welcoming address, warned against impatience. “Murmuring only lengthens the purgatory of the wilderness.” Idolatry, or the attitude that God can’t be trusted any more, leads to accommodation and “sullen-in-action.” And conservatives must guard against self-righteousness. “It is not just someone else’s sin that got us here.” He gave three choices. Choose truth over accommodation to the culture. “Jesus is greater than culture, comfort, property, family and friends.” Choose accountability over autonomy. And choose “mission over sullen-in-action.” Reach out evangelistically and in social action to both local community needs and also partner with a Global South diocese or congregation.
Many provinces in the Global South while poor, no longer feel in good conscience that they can accept money from ECUSA and ACC. So orthodox Anglicans in North America have set up the Anglican Relief and Development Fund which has already provided shelter and a three-month food supply for 1,600 home less victims of the recent earthquake in Pakistan. A portion of the offering at the closing Eucharist was earmarked for Pakistan.
Baroness Caroline Cox, who has travelled in the no-go areas of the world where even many relief agencies are forbidden to enter, encouraged North American Anglicans, in all their own trials, not to forget the extreme suffering of faithful Christians around the world and to reach out generously to them, “that we may be worthy of their faith. By their dying, they show us how to live.” On earth, “the crown of thorns signifies Christ’s reign.”
****
During the closing Eucharist four young Americans were ordained, three as deacons and one as a priest, by Frank Lyons, the Bishop of Bolivia, on behalf of the Bishop of Chile who could not be present.
Eliot Winks, a graduate of Trinity Episcopal School of Ministry an orthodox seminary in Pittsburgh, had been turned down four times for work in the liberal diocese of Maryland. When he was refused a license for community ministry he worked instead as a construction worker. Then a laity-led house congregation in Baltimore approached him to be their priest. Winks will serve under the province of Chile and his congregation will be under the diocese of Chile, even though it is located in Baltimore.
So one model for orthodox laity in liberal dioceses may be to have an Anglican bishop outside of ECUSA but within the Anglican Communion, ordain clergy for them. Although Duncan and other ECUSA clergy witnessed the ordinations, they did not take part in the ordination liturgy that occurred in a convention centre not on ECUSA property.
“I did nothing canonically wrong and I never do,” Duncan told the Anglican Planet. The other side have made the canons [church laws] their Bible. I use canons faithfully and creatively. I gave Frank Lyons permission to ordain clergy for congregations that have never been part of ECUSA. I support brother Frank of Bolivia because he is rescuing people that the canons won’t allow me to rescue. I’m certainly not going to stand in the way of him rescuing people across this country.”
“No canonical charge can be brought in against Duncan,” claimed the bishop of Bolivia. The men he ordained are to “minister to those who, like us, are in broken communion with ECUSA.”
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. BTTT
So is this money going to Muslims in Pakistan? And if so, how does that help the Anglican Communion from disintegrating?
But if you have some ideas on how that money could be spent to keep the Anglican Communion from disintegrating, please tell! Nobody yet, insofar as I know, has figured out how to solve that problem by throwing money at it.
Well, it's this literalism of the social gospel that is the major source of the problem in the Anglican Communion. Social-activist priests simply turned the Church into all of the world's problems. If Anglicans are troubled by the chaos in the Church, then they would be better off using that money to buy some property and build a parish church that isn't under the control of a local Episcopal bishop.
But if you have some ideas on how that money could be spent to keep the Anglican Communion from disintegrating, please tell! Nobody yet, insofar as I know, has figured out how to solve that problem by throwing money at it.
A split is coming in the Anglican Communion. But if traditional Anglicans would rather send their money to Muslims than build local parishes, then I don't want to hear any more complaints when a bishop in the Episcopal church imposes his or her will on a local parish, and the congregation has nowhere to go.
The congregation *always* has somewhere to go, unless they're more attached to the property than anything else.
I've been a member of two congregations that have gone from "church-in-a-box" to established, mortgage-free, Churches With Buildings. Property is nice, but it's not the end-all be-all. A parish whose existence is centered on its property is a parish with a problem...
But beyond the property, a question: You talk about "send their money to Muslims" (implied: waste). Are you opposed to outreach and evangelism programs? Do you think Muslims are unable to hear the Gospel?
Right, let's just hold communion in a cardboard box under a bridge. Property...we don't need no stinkin' property.
But beyond the property, a question: You talk about "send their money to Muslims" (implied: waste). Are you opposed to outreach and evangelism programs? Do you think Muslims are unable to hear the Gospel?
Rather than implying it, let me say it directly: Sending money to Muslims is a waste. As for Muslims hearing the Gospel, you might want to ask some Orthodox Christians or Coptic Christians who have been suffering under those sensitve Muslims for 14 centuries about how Muslims hear and respond so wonderfully to the Gospel.
And are you reporting from Egypt, Morroco, Saudi Arabia, or Iran? Or do you let others do your evangelizing for you? How many Muslims have you brought to Christ?
You appear to have a fascination for the almighty dollar and the things it can buy, including fancy church buildings and those who worship same. Do you declare yourself to be a Christian?
Reaping is everything. Forget those who sow and those who weed and nurture. How self-centered, how self-important, a world-view is being expressed here.
No judging there. No, not a bit. Just one of those humble, nonjudgmental monks living in a hovel.
Looking in a mirror are you?
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