Posted on 05/13/2007 7:17:01 AM PDT by Huber
The Rev. Felix Anyasor was a happy man this week. So was his friend and colleague the Rev. Simon Omoke.
The Nigerian-born Houston ministers had just returned from Virginia, where they celebrated the installation by Peter Akinola of a “missionary bishop” to lead U.S. churches that have broken from the Episcopal Church because of disagreements over homosexuality.
“It was like the first Christian gathering at Antioch,” Anyasor said of the installation of the former Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns as bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America.
“When (Antioch) happened, people from all over the world came. The spirit of God fell on them, and they were able to speak in different languages,” he said.”That’s what I saw (in Virginia), too.”
The convocation, known as CANA, was established in 2005 by Akinola and the Church of Nigeria.
Its 34 members include churches that have broken away from the U.S. Episcopal Church, including Minns’ Truro Church in Fairfax City, Va., and those that began as independent Anglican churches under the umbrella of the Anglican Church of Nigeria.
The latter includes Anyasor’s Christ Anglican Church on Harwin and Omoke’s Chapel of Reconciliation in southwest Houston.
Anyasor’s predominantly Nigerian 90-member church opened in 2004; Omoke’s 30-member chapel was founded the next year. They were never a part of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas.
“It was inevitable, because there was an ordination of the gay bishop, and that started the schism,” Anyasor said. “So many of our people didn’t want to go to the Episcopal Church anymore, and there were phone calls from many people to start a church.”
Read it all.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. I don’t see how they can protest CANA. Surely the Episcopal church over the centuries helped fund Anglican missions and churches in Africa (there are several hymns in the 1940 Hymnal that make reference to this). And I bet our church ancestors didn’t ask permission to do this either.
TEC would argue that in such cases there was not already an Anglican presence in those regions. Orthodox Anglicans (if they were to ignore continuing Anglican Churches such as the ACC or the APCK) might argue that the same is now the case in the US.
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