Plano, Texas — Conservative Anglicans disenchanted with the liberal drift in their U.S. and Canadian churches say they are confident that a new church body launched this week will one day gain a seat in the worldwide Anglican Communion.
The new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has been organized, its leaders say, as an alternative for Anglicans who disagree with the theology of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.
“This is the beginning of a recovery of confidence in Anglicanism as a biblical, missionary church,” said former Fort Worth Episcopal Bishop Jack Iker.
Iker and other former Episcopalians frequently criticized their former church’s embrace of female clergy and the 2003 election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire. Iker seceded, with his diocese, late last year.
The ACNA, he added, will give “the mainstream of our clergy and laity a chance to recover confidence and enthusiasm about being an Anglican Christian.”
Delegates representing an estimated 69,000 active Anglicans from some 650 North American parishes met June 22-25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas, to ratify their church constitution and nine canons, or laws.
They also installed former Pittsburgh Episcopal Bishop Robert Duncan as archbishop in a ceremony Wednesday (June 24) at Christ Church, a Plano megachurch that cut its ties with the Episcopal Church three years ago.
Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya anointed Duncan, 60, as ACNA’s first archbishop; he will serve a five-year term. Duncan was removed from the Episcopal Church last year for leading his diocese to secede from the denomination.
In his sermon, Duncan urged those who align themselves with ACNA to focus on evangelism and mission by planting 1,000 new churches in the next five years, engaging Islam — “because there is only one way to the Father; it’s a matter of life and death” — studying Scripture and practicing works of mercy.
“It’s not about the past. It’s not about what we’ve come out of,”
Duncan said in his sermon. “We have been brought together for a noble work, and God has blessed this journey.”
Nine of the 37 provinces in the Anglican Communion sent official representatives to the inaugural Provincial Assembly, most of them from the rapidly growing “Global South” of Africa and Asia.
ACNA leaders say they have the momentum to eventually be recognized as an official province within the Anglican Communion, but they will need the approval of two-thirds of the world’s 38 Anglican primates, and a key international Anglican council, before they can be granted full membership.
Episcopal Church headquarters in New York kept a low profile during the ACNA launch, sticking to its long-held position that it is the only official branch of Anglicanism in the United States.
Duncan said he is in regular contact with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the Anglican Communion, but had not received a formal acknowledgement of his election.
Church leaders will be working “relationally” to gain recognition from the larger Anglican Communion, said Bishop Martyn Minns, who leads the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, one of ACNA’s member bodies.
“The majority are already siding with us,” he said. “I think it will take time. Relationships take time to build. … But we don’t need a Plan B because Plan A is already working.”
Michael W. Howell, executive director of Forward in Faith North America, agreed, calling the ACNA “an answer to prayer” for many disenfranchised Anglicans. His own group split with the Episcopal Church long ago, partly over women’s ordination.
“Some of us have felt like we have been in exile for a while,” he said.
The Texas gathering also drew solid ecumenical support from groups such as Southern Baptists and the National Association of Evangelicals.
Speakers included California megachurch pastor Rick Warren and Metropolitan Jonah, an Episcopal convert who now leads the Orthodox Church in America.
Duncan said he plans to open official ecumenical relations with Jonah’s church. “All of a sudden, they see Anglicans who look like the Anglicans they always knew,” Duncan said.
“We are focused on keeping the main thing the main thing. And the main thing is the mission of Jesus Christ, reaching out to North America and now to the whole world with the transforming love of Jesus Christ.”
A governance task force devised a “minimalist structure” that leaves much of the church’s oversight to local dioceses, said Cheryl Chang, chancellor of the Anglican Network in Canada and a lawyer who helped draft the new church constitution and canons.
The preamble to the newly adopted constitution states the ACNA is “grieved by the current state of brokenness within the Anglican Communion prompted by those who have embraced erroneous teaching and who have rejected a repeated call to repentance.”
The church’s canons define marriage as “a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman,” prohibit the blessing of same-sex unions and female bishops, as well as non-celibate gay clergy.
Four of the 28 dioceses participating in ACNA are still involved in legal disputes with the Episcopal Church over church property, said the Rev. Peter Frank, Duncan’s spokesman.
Jurisdictions that have formed the ACNA’s 28 dioceses and dioceses-in-formation are: the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Quincy, Ill., and San Joaquin, Calif.; the Anglican Mission in the Americas; the Convocation of Anglicans in North America; the Anglican Network in Canada; the Reformed Episcopal Church; and the missionary branches of Anglican churches in Kenya, Uganda and South America.
By Robin Galiano Russell
Religion News Service
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted June 25, 2009 at 9:30 pm
The more players in the game the more fun the game is! If they feel better starting their own church, why not? All is fair in love, war and religion! Now to see if Williams will acknowledge their party.
posted June 25, 2009 at 9:44 pm
The Orthodox jurisdiction that I’ve been most involved with, the Orthodox Church in America, has already essentially transferred the focus of its ecumenical conversation with Anglicanism away from the Episcopal Church and to this new group. It will be interesting to see what form the relationship takes from here on out. Orthodoxy and Anglicanism have a history of cordial relations, but the situation in America has not been that great for the past several years.
posted June 26, 2009 at 12:04 am
That’s exactly what’s needed – a separate Anglican church. Now I know I can safely go to an Episcopal service without running into one of those bigotted hate-mongers.
May they have great success, and may their numbers multiply by sucking away the undesirables from the ECUSA. The sooner they do, the sooner the ECUSA will be free of their repressive taint.
posted June 26, 2009 at 9:33 am
“bigotted hate-mongers”, “sucking away the undesirables”, “their repressive taint”
And it’s the conservatives who are intolerant? Ok..
posted June 26, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Amen my Name! Now if all the antiwomen and antigay bigots would leave all the other mainline denominations and let the mainline Christians be the true Christians following Jesus and his teachings they are, which alot of these fundamentalists seem to have forgotten no matter how many times they say his name.
posted June 26, 2009 at 2:34 pm
What a lovely look at toxic name calling. I guest it is hard for some to imagine Jesus with a intolerance for sin to many folk who see Him as a anything goes kind of guy. The truth is He was very clear on His description of marriage and sexuality. So in order to be a true Christian remember He said He did not come to change the law any more than to change genders, or call those His Father created as man a woman or woman a man, husband a wife. But He did remind us if we speak up we will be persecuted so name call on I do understand.
posted June 26, 2009 at 2:50 pm
“He said He did not come to change the law any more than to change genders”
So cknuck you go along with death by stoning (Leviticus) for people like the family values protector Republican Senator John Ensign?
posted June 26, 2009 at 3:28 pm
To clarify, Leviticus does not, to my knowledge, advocate death by stoning for family values protectors, or even for Republicans, but it does advocate it for committing adultery with another man’s wife, which Ensign admitted.
And since you want to follow the Bible closely, cknuck, and you say Jesus didn’t change any of the laws, I presume you want to follow the old law in that regard.
John Ensign has said much the same and I keep expecting to see him report to be stoned to death. Of course I also expect a lot of his followers to want him stoned to death but as time goes by I’ve come to think Bible followers are far more ardent to inflict it on others than on themselves.
posted June 26, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Interesting that the RCC was not acceptable so the Anglicans (thanks to Henry VIII) started. Since all is not well in that part of the woods, yet another section starts. Isn’t that how all those “Christians” were started? JC taught different things than his Jewish upbringing, and some of those folks, years later got tired of the RCC running things so they branched out etc. to make Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians….all thinking “they were right”? No one is right…all are supposedly believers in a single “god” but can’t agree on that darn Bible! Who really cares that here is yet another branch of Christianity? What is sad? There are those “Christians” that still think that God doesn’t accept all his/her creations..thus this yet new branch. Religion certainly isn’t boring!
posted June 26, 2009 at 5:21 pm
nnmns there are a few people who I could see that could use a good stoning but of course Jesus was quite merciful without changing the law. Obviously there is a place for capital punishment but there is a place for grace also. So much like the pharisees of Jesus’ day I hope your question/trap is resolved but I know it is one of your main stays in your arsenal and it will resurface.
posted June 26, 2009 at 6:54 pm
This isn’t really a new “branch” of Christianity, pagansister. It’s still Anglicanism, it’s just not under the jurisdiction of the Episcopal Church anymore
posted June 26, 2009 at 7:14 pm
cknuck you seem to want to have it both ways. You forgive the conservative heterosexual Republican Senator John Ensign and presume Jesus would, though his adultery with married woman was explicitly mentioned in the Bible as earning being put to death (no mention of being forgiven) yet you say nothing about forgiving homosexuals who want to get married even though the Bible says nothing about homosexual marriage and little, at most, about homosexuality.
So unless you clarify (change) one or the other of those positions you are indeed guilty of hypocrisy. Not that I expect that to bother you.
posted June 26, 2009 at 7:49 pm
NateW: What is the difference (briefly please:o) ) in the Anglicans and the Episcopal’s? Are the Episcopals the American version of the English Anglican church?
posted June 26, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Oh, so if the Bible doesn’t say something is at least a consideration you want nothing to do with it eh? Hands off your computer, cknuck!
And you keep ignoring the conservative Republican adulterer the Bible clearly says should be put to death. You are really going against the Bible you claim to love and trust. Sleep on that, if you can.
posted June 27, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Anglicanism is a global communion of churches that trace their heritage back to the theology and practice of the Church of England; the Episcopal Church is the main American church in the Anglican tradition, which became a separate body from the Church of England around the time of the American Revolution (although there have always been a few non-Episcopalian American Anglican churched scattered around here and there). As I understand it, this new group has its dispute mainly with the leadership of the Episcopal Church, not with Anglican theology or with the Anglican Communion as a whole. It still considers itself an Anglican church and wants to be in communion with the Church of England and the other Anglican churches, it just doesn’t want to be under the authority of Episcopal Church leaders who it thinks have been jettisoning some of the elements of traditional Anglicanism.
And to nnmns: There’s a difference (which I think would be quite clear) between forgiving someone and blessing their actions. Liberals in the mainline churches want homosexual marriages not to be forgiven (they don’t think there’s anything there to forgive), they want them to be blessed by the church. There’s a big difference there.
posted June 27, 2009 at 2:55 pm
nnmns; It’s understandable that atheist know scripture the bible covers that, but it also explains that it is the letter that you are familiar with not the spirit many atheists, borderline Christians, and non-Christians do operate in that framework to promote their personal and collective agendas. Even with that said and including the detailed post I submitted that was deleted homosexual marriage is never considered a option in the bible and both old testament and new are clear on what constitutes a marriage, very clear, anything else is just a perversion of the Word of God which is why the split of this church. One wants to follow the Word and the other wants to please the flesh. If you know what death is biblically and have read how God has processed the reality of it though the bible, then surely you knows “all” have fallen short” and you know probably something of the purpose of Christ but from your conversation like many, you just can’t quite put it all together.
posted June 27, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Thanks Nate W, for your concise answer to my question. I think I understand better now.
posted June 30, 2009 at 11:01 pm
The ACNA is different from the Episcopalians in that it will require its clergy to subscribe the the 39 Articles of Faith (google them). The liberal drift has caused many clergy to abandon key traditional ideas like the divinity of Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus (his dead body was transformed into a higher physical state), and the general resurrection of the dead (that all his followers will one day return to a transformed earth in a higher bodily state ie suprahuman but physical). There are some other doctrinal issues, but the main rub is that many believe that Episcopalians generally are no longer teaching Christianity but some sort of crypto-hinduism (all paths lead to God).