Posted on 05/21/2006 5:43:01 PM PDT by sionnsar
Father Galloway says the parish, with a decided evangelical bent, has been a member of the Anglican Communion Network for at least a couple of years. The network is made up of conservative Anglicans upset with the direction that the U.S. Episcopal Church has taken on a number of social issues, and has enjoyed an increasingly warm relationship with the Anglican Church’s hierarchy in Africa.
AS PART OF THAT WARM relationship, a number of Anglican bishops have offered to provide pastoral support to American parishes looking to quit their ties to their national church. The Coventry parish would, under the arragement, come under the jurisdiction of Anglican Bishop James Ochiel of Nyanza, Kenya.
In her speech to members of St. Andrew and St. Philip, Bishop Wolf remarked that if the congregation decides, as she fully expects, to carry out the break, she hopes she would be invited back for an occasional visit. Participants applauded.
But Bishop Wolf said she wanted to remind her listeners that, despite all the talk of the Episcopal Church being thrown out of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church has never been told that. “So if you want to remain a part of the Anglican Communion you already are, and don’t have to do anything.”
Nonetheless, the consensus in the parish is there is little reason now for turning back.
Father Galloway said that given the way the Episcopal Church’s General Convention is constituted he doubts very much that the national church will agree to “repent” for its ordaining of gay bishops and clergy when it meets next month, making a split inevitable.
Father Galloway said he could not overemphasize how unusual it is to have a situation, such as the one here, where the parish and the bishop appear to have resolved all the questions amicably — without even a lawyer looking after the congregation’s interests.
[I believe the following comment is from Kendall Harmon: --sionnsar] I salute Bishop Wolf for this, and keep thinking that if a number of other bishops had done similar things in the last two and one half years we would be in a very different situation today. Read it all.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Most of them, unfortunately, are not. Some are actively provocative in persecuting orthodox congregations.
Actually, there would be but things would be much less ugly and more... ummm... Anglican?
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