The Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church, and ACNA

AC	TEC	ACNA

So, what’s up with The Episcopal Church?  There is a huge turmoil going on in the parent Anglican Communion (AC) right now, mostly about the first province to be formed outside of the British Isles, the Episcopal Church (TEC).  I am a party to one of the factions and I would like to provide a forum for all sides in this brouhaha to state their beliefs, suggestions, concerns, etc..  If you want to enter a comment, go to the post that has the same name as this feature “The Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church and ACNA” and enter it there.

A nutshell version of the crisis is that TEC has been taken over by ultra-liberals who are forcing changes in the church that were never contemplated by its founders. People are bailing out of TEC in droves as individuals, families, parishes, and even convents and dioceses.  A lot of these folks have abandoned the AC altogether and “swum the Tiber”, or gone to the Roman Catholic Church (the Tiber is a large river that runs through the city of Rome).  Others have tried to form an alternate province, called the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), to replace the offending TEC.  This exodus has left the faithful remnant inside TEC in an extreme minority position, so the hope of ever getting things back to normal within the Episcopal Church is vanishing rapidly.  Some clergy have resigned themselves to stay on as the vocal opposition until they are removed by force. So the “frozen chosen”, as Episcopalians used to be called because they were very conservative and “proper”, have left TEC to the “loosey goosies” who remain in charge.  The top officer of TEC, the Presiding Bishop (PB), is now a woman who has stated publicly that Jesus Christ is not the only way to salvation and that practicing homosexuals are appropriate candidates for all offices, including hers.  Each new revision of the Holy Bible, the Hymnal, or the Book of Common Prayer contains changes that remove gender and authority (i.e., “king”) references or any other politically incorrect material, so the Faith of our Fathers is now hard to recognize in these materials.  Many of these activities are the result of targeted funding efforts by gay billionaire Jon Stryker through his Arcus Foundation.

You can get a taste of the factions by checking out Anglican Curmudgeon, Titus One Nine, Baby Blue Cafe, Stand Firm, or To All the World for the conservative or “reasserters” point of view and Via Media, Integrity, An Inch at a Time, Towle Road, or The Episcopal Cafe for the more progressive, or as some call them the “revisionists” or perhaps more kindly the “reappraisers”, point of view.

Those who have left TEC to join ACNA hope that it is a new province in the making.  This group is comprised not only of recent Episcopal drop-outs, but includes some Canadian churches and many churches in the USA who left TEC when she began to ordain female priests back in the 1970’s and then to consecrate some of them as bishops.  Some ACNA members dispute the mandatory institution of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, prefering the 1928 version.  The approval of ACNA as a new province by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) is a bit dodgy, however, as it would seem to require either the expulsion of TEC from the Anglican Communion or the reversal of a long held practice of territoriality, where the territory of one province cannot overlap that of another.

The Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC), ++Rowan Williams, who in the AC is the not-very-close-counterpart to the Pope (in the Roman Catholic Church), has released a statement in reaction to the 2009 General Convention of TEC.  A pair of resolutions passed there reaffirm the resolve to bless lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) unions and to welcome noncelebate LGBT folk into leadership roles in the church.  His statement seems to scold TEC for overstepping its bounds and suggests that there may be a “second-track” of membership for provinces who don’t behave properly.  The statement has been criticized by both sides as being too much or too little, but it has been seen with a glimmer of hope by ACNA proponents.

The following is a timeline of events that have fueled the turmoil in the AC and, more specifically, TEC.

In 1917, The Church of England appointed female Bishop’s Messengers to preach, teach and take missions in the absence of men. This did not include formal ordination to Holy Orders.

The first woman ordained to the priesthood in the AC was Florence Li Tim-Oi, who was ordained on January 25, 1944 by the Bishop of Hong Kong in response to the crisis among Anglican Christians in China caused by the Japanese invasion. The 8th Lambeth Conference, in 1948, advised that the ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi “would be against the tradition and order…of the AC” and dismissed the need for further examination of women’s ordination. (The first Lambeth Conference was held in 1867 and it meets about every 10 years at the invitation of the ABC. The conference is the principal instrument of international Anglican life, although it has no legislative authority over the national churches.) When Hong Kong ordained two further women priests in 1971 (Joyce Bennett and Jane Hwang), Florence Li Tim-Oi was officially recognised as a priest by the diocese. She was appointed an honorary (nonstipendiary) assistant priest in Toronto in 1983. In 2003, TEC fixed January 24 as her feast day in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, based on the eve of the anniversary of her ordination. In 2007, the AC celebrated the Centennial of her birth.

The ordination of women began controversially in the USA on July 29, 1974, when eleven women, often referred to as the “Philadelphia 11”, were ordained to the priesthood at the Church of the Advocate in inner city Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by three retired TEC bishops (+Daniel Corrigan, +Robert DeWitt, and +Edward Welles). On August 15, 1974, the House of Bishops, called to an emergency meeting, denounced the ordinations and declared them invalid. Charges were filed against the bishops who ordained the women and attempts were made to prevent the women from serving priestly ministries. Four female deacons were ordained priests on September 7, 1975 at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Washington D.C by retired Bishop George Barrett. These ordinations were ruled “irregular” because they had been done without the authorization of TEC’s General Convention.

On September 16, 1976, the General Convention of TEC in Minneapolis authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate.  In the House of Bishops, on a roll call vote, the tally was 95 yes, 61 no and 2 abstentions. In a vote by orders in the House of Deputies the tally was 60 yes, 39 no and 15 divided (which count as no) (i.e., 60-54) in the clergy order, and 64 yes, 36 no, 13 divided (read no) (i.e., 64-49) in the lay order.  Also in 1976, the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) ordained six female priests.  In 1977, the Anglican Church of New Zealand ordained five female priests. In 1983, an Anglican woman was ordained in Kenya and three were ordained in Uganda.  In 1985, the first female deacons were ordained by the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC).  In 1990, Anglican women were ordained in Ireland.  In 1992, the Anglican Church of South Africa started ordaining women.  The Church of England authorized the ordination of woman priests in 1992 and began ordaining them in 1994 along with the SEC.  The nearly simultaneous publication by the Vatican of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, which argued that truth was immutable, however unpalatable, was a coincidence which was not lost on many traditionalist Anglicans who became Roman Catholics. In 1998, the Anglican Church in Japan began ordaining women.  Despite these widespread ordinations, the parts of the AC representing a large majority of its members (mostly in the southern hemisphere) still refused to consider the ordination of women to the priesthood or the episcopate.

The 12th Lambeth Conference resolved in 1988 that consecration of women as bishops was the prerogative of each autonomous province of the AC.

The first woman bishop in the AC was Barbara Clementine Harris, who, with no formal theological education and indeed no earned degree from any college or seminary, was elected September 24, 1988 and consecrated Bishop Suffragan of Massachusetts in Boston on February 11, 1989 by ++Browning (PB), +Johnson (Massachusetts), +Walker (DC), +Bartlett (Pennsylvania), and +Ogilby (Penn.-ret.). Later in the same year, Penelope Jamieson of the Anglican Church in New Zealand became the first female diocesan bishop when she was elected Bishop of Dunedin. The first female primate (or senior bishop of a national church) is Katharine Jefferts Schori, who was elected PB of TEC at its 2006 General Convention at Trinity Church in Columbus, Ohio on June 18th on the fifth ballot with the exactly requisite 95 votes, and began her nine-year term as PB and primate on November 3, 2006. By April 2008 TEC had elected 15 women as bishops.

In August 2003 the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire elected an openly gay priest, Gene Robinson, as Bishop Coadjutor.  As a result of the controversy over the consecration of gay bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions, on October 15, 2003, Anglican leaders from around the world met in Lambeth Palace in an attempt to avoid a schism on the issue. The day after, they released a lengthy statement which contained the following excerpts:

We must make clear that recent actions in TEC do not express the mind of our Communion as a whole, and these decisions jeopardise our sacramental fellowship with each other…. If Gene Robinson’s consecration proceeds, we recognise that we have reached a crucial and critical point in the life of the AC and we have had to conclude that the future of the Communion itself will be put in jeopardy…. In this case, the ministry of this one bishop will not be recognised by most of the Anglican world, and many provinces are likely to consider themselves to be out of Communion with TEC. This will tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level, and may lead to further division on this and further issues as provinces have to decide in consequence whether they can remain in communion with provinces that choose not to break communion with TEC….

Despite this warning, Robinson was consecrated November 2, 2003 by bishops +Knudsen (Maine), +Donovan ( Arkansas-ret.), ++Browning (24th PB), ++Griswold (PB), +Stendahl (Lutheran), +Eastman (Maryland-ret.), and +Barbara Harris (Massachusetts-ret.).

Bishops from two Anglican provinces, Rwanda and South East Asia, consecrated missionary bishops for the United States in January 2000 and formally established the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), now the Anglican Mission in the Americas, later that year. Bishops in Uganda cut relations with the Diocese of New Hampshire on the day of +Robinson’s consecration. The Church of Nigeria declared itself in “impaired communion” with TEC on the same day, and nine days later announced it was planning to establish a United States branch of its province to support Nigerian Anglicans living in the U.S. The Province of South East Asia broke communion with TEC on November 20, 2003, citing +Robinson’s consecration as the reason for its action.

In 2004, the Lambeth Commission on Communion issued a report on the issue of homosexuality in the AC, which became known as the Windsor Report. This report took a strong stand against homosexual practice, recommended a moratorium on further consecrations of actively homosexual bishops and blessings of same-sex unions, and called for all involved in +Robinson’s consecration “to consider in all conscience whether they should withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion”. However, it stopped short of recommending discipline against TEC.

The years leading up to the Lambeth Conference in 2008 were filled with controversy. In February 2005, the Primates of the AC held a regular meeting at Dromantine in Northern Ireland at which the issue of homosexuality was heavily discussed. Of the 38 Primates, 35 attended. The Primates issued a communiqué that reiterated most of the Windsor Report’s statements, but added a new twist. TEC and the ACoC were asked to voluntarily withdraw from the ACC, the main formal international entity within the AC until Lambeth 2008. But TEC attended the ACC meeting in Nottingham in 2006 although the elected delegates from TEC and the ACoC did not insist on being seated with voice and vote at the Nottingham Conference, and participated only as observers in order to satisfy the demands of the Windsor Report. A Primates Meeting in Dar-es-Salaam in February 2007 specifically asked for TEC to confirm by September 30, 2007 that no more homosexual bishops would be approved, no more blessings for same-sex unions would occur, and that all litigation against orthodox churches in North America would be dropped. Without waiting for the response, the ABC invited the bishops of TEC to Lambeth 2008 three months before the responses were due.

+Robinson was not invited to the 2008 Lambeth Conference by the ABC, however, but he dominated its media coverage for days at a time. +Robinson preached to a crowd of more than 500 at St. Mary’s, Putney in London on the Sunday before the conference. That weekend he did more than 20 media interviews and appeared on every national television outlet, in every major British daily and on most of the radio outlets of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). His sermon, which was interrupted by a heckler, was broadcast live in its entirety by the BBC’s 24-hour news channel. The New York Times and Washington Post also profiled +Robinson. During the conference, the bishops of New Hampshire hosted two receptions at which bishops from around the Communion could meet +Robinson. The receptions were attended by some 200 people, organizers said.

The 14th Lambeth Conference conference took place between July 16 and August 4, 2008 at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus.  Very little was actually accomplished at the conference itself. ++Williams indicated, in his March 2006 pastoral letter to the 38 primates of the AC, that the emphasis would be on training, “for really effective, truthful and prayerful mission”. He ruled out reopening of the controversial resolution 1.10 on human sexuality from the previous Lambeth Conference, but emphasised the so-called “Indaba listening process” whereby diverse views and experiences of human sexuality would be collected and collated in accordance with that resolution. Invitations were sent to more than 880 bishops around the world for the 14th Conference. Notably missing from the list were +Gene Robinson and +Martyn Minns. +Minns, the former rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, VA, heads the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). The Church of Nigeria considers him a missionary bishop to the US, despite protests from Canterbury and TEC.

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), a meeting of conservative bishops held in Jerusalem June 22 - 29, 2008, was thought by some to be an “alternative Lambeth” for those who were opposed to the consecration of +Robinson. GAFCON involved many dissenters who considered themselves to be in a state of impaired communion with Lambeth, TEC, and Canterbury.

Growing out of GAFCON, ACNA is a Christian denomination in the Anglican tradition with dioceses in the United States and Canada formed by member bodies of the Common Cause Partnership, an association of former TEC members. As of August 2009, it comprised about 700 parishes in North America and 100,000 members. The current leader is ++Robert Duncan, Archbishop and Primate of ACNA. The church’s founding constitutional convention took place on December 4, 2008, in Wheaton, Illinois, with the aim of forming a “separate ecclesiastical structure” for Anglican faithful in North America distinct from TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. On June 22, 2009, at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas, the church’s first provincial assembly met to ratify its provisional constitution and erect governing structures. While ACNA, as an organization, is not currently a member of AC, the Anglican churches of Nigeria and Uganda, representing approximately 1/3 of the worldwide AC membership, are in full communion with it. Many of the members of ACNA, however, are in AC by virtue of arrangements with bishops of the Southern Cone, CANA, and AMiA.

In July 2009, +Barbara Harris (ret.) publicly denied the Sacrament of Marriage at a gay Eucharist sponsored by TEC’s homosexual advocacy group, Integrity, where the chief celebrant was +Gene Robinson.

On August 22, 2009, ACNA consecrated its first bishop,  +William H. Ilgenfritz, of Forward in Faith (FIF). The consecrators were bishops ++Duncan, +Iker, +Ackerman, +MacBurney, and +Wantland. The consecration created a new, nongeographical diocese in ACNA, the Missionary Diocese of All Saints, which does not ordain women. See this post for more details. Formed in 1992,  FIF is one of the first organizations formed to resist the changes in TEC. It operates in a number of provinces of the AC, with ‘no compromise of truth and no limitation of love’, to represent a traditionalist strand of Anglo-catholicism and it is particularly noted for its opposition to the ordination of women and, more recently, to more liberal Anglican views of homosexuality.