Leaders of 1,300 Anglican/Episcopal churches seek status as new North American Province.
Less than 1 week after the official opening of the Lambeth conference in the UK, the conservative Common Cause Partnership has issued a press release, declaring their joint intention to request that leading Anglican primates recognize their 1,300 congregations as the new North American Province.
Granted, this was a widely anticipated move. But this effort puts the fat in the fire on a day when Lambeth attendees are having tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace following their very public march through official London for adoption of the Millennium Development Goals to fight global poverty and improve the standard of living for the world's 3 billion poor people.
Here's the full press release below.
July 24, 2008
COMMON CAUSE PARTNERSHIP WELCOMES JERUSALEM DECLARATIONThe Common Cause Partnership leaders issued a statement today welcoming the Jerusalem Declaration and the statement on the Global Anglican Future and pledging to move forward with the work of Anglican unity in North America.
"We, as the Bishops and elected leaders of the Common Cause Partnership are deeply grateful for the Jerusalem Declaration. It describes a hopeful, global Anglican future, rooted in scripture and the authentic Anglican way of faith and practice. We joyfully welcome the words of the GAFCON statement that it is now time 'for the federation currently known as the Common Cause Partnership to be recognized by the Primates Council.'
"The intention of the Executive Committee is to petition the Primates Council for recognition as the North American Province of GAFCON on the basis of the Common Cause Partnership Articles, Theological Statement, and Covenant Declaration, and to ask that their Moderator be seated in the Primate's Council.
"We accept the call to build the Common Cause Partnership into a truly unified body of Anglicans. We are committed to that call. Over the past months, we have worked together, increasing the number of partners and authorizing committees and task groups for Mission,
Education, Governance, Prayer Book & Liturgy, the Episcopate, and Ecumenical Relations. The Executive Committee is meeting regularly to carry forward the particulars of this call. The CCP Council will meet December 1-3, 2008."The Common Cause Partnership links together nine Anglican jurisdictions and organizations in North America.
Together, the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Coalition in Canada, the
Anglican Communion Network, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, the Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas, Forward in Faith North America and the Reformed Episcopal Church represent
more the 1,300 Anglican parishes in the United States and Canada.The Common Cause Partnership Executive Committee is: The Rt. Rev'd Robert Duncan, Moderator; The Venerable Charlie Masters, General Secretary; Mrs. Patience Oruh, Treasurer; The Rt. Rev'd Keith Ackerman, Forward in Faith North America; The Rt. Rev'd David Anderson, American
Anglican Council; The Rt. Rev'd Donald Harvey, Anglican Network in Canada; The Rt. Rev'd Paul Hewett, Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas; The Rt. Rev'd Martyn Minns, Convocation of Anglicans in North America; The Rt. Rev'd Chuck Murphy, Anglican Mission in the Americas; The Rt. Rev'd Leonard Riches, Reformed Episcopal Church; The Rt. Rev'd Bill Atwood, Anglican Church of Kenya and The Rt. Rev'd John Guernsey, Church of the Province of Uganda.
Here's my admittedly instant analysis:
1. It suggests that conservative Anglicans are pressing their agenda forward, while the rest of the Anglican Communion is spinning its wheels in fruitless 'indaba' meetings.
2. It illuminates a strategy that GAFCON primates plan to address this issue of the legitimacy of a new North American Province by placing the new Primates Council as the emerging new center of Anglicanism.
Thus, the new global Anglicanism transcends recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury. There will no longer be a single answer to this question: Who is Anglican?
3. My follow up point is that if this new Province gains recognition and credibility, Canterbury-based Anglicanism becomes severely weakened in almost every way. It becomes a photo-op site of pilgrimage, not the hub of a worldwide communion.
4. What's the metaphor? Well, this seems too convenient perhaps, but the Indymac Bank take-over crosses my mind.
Just as federal regulators have taken over the failed Indymac Bank, one of the largest bank failures in American history, conservatives perhaps aspire to running the Anglican Communion by cutting it into two pieces the "good bank" with good assets and the "bad bank" with bad/non-performing assets.
And, you can just guess what happens to the bad bank.
PS The British press is following the money or lack thereof at Lambeth. Some are reporting that the conference is 1 million GBP or more in the red.
Posted by Tim Morgan on July 24, 2008 4:44PM
Comments
Thank you for covering this important change for my denomination. It is such a move of the Holy Spirit that all these groups can come together to form a decisive body that will impact this country for the Gospel of Christ. The orthodox have been so marginalized during the last 30 years in the Anglican Communion. Your attention validates our struggle. I appreciate your fair reporting.
Posted by: Jennifer at July 25, 2008
Considering that the "common cause" is greed for gay and "accepting" people's jobs and influences...they all should be quite ashamed of themselves.
Sure, there are other issues, but like the Civil War, there is that core issue, and both are about feelings of God given entitlements and privileges, ill will, segregation and exploitation of neighbors.
There is the saying that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce...well, people are laughing at them, and they deserve that.
Moral people simply don't care if someone is Gay or not. Gay is merely interesting, and so is not-Gay. Anti-gay, however...interesting as well, but silly and immoral.
Posted by: Gregory Peterson at July 25, 2008
You can have anything you want at Alice's Anglican Restaurant.
Posted by: Ken at July 25, 2008
There are, of course, some practical issues to deal with in the request of the Common Cause Partnership. For instance, how can GAFCON, which claims to be a fellowship and not a Church unto itself, recognize Common Cause as a "province." A province of what exactly, if not the Church of GAFCON? That, coupled with the issue of the GAFCON leaders being self-appointed smacks of the same sickness that has brought down the American Episcopal Church, i.e. a willful desire to go one's own way. The only difference are their opinions.
The second practical issue to clear up is the fact that not all of the various ecclesial bodies within the Common Cause partnership enjoy the same degree of fellowship with one another. Some members include Dioceses that are still within the structure of The Episcopal Church, various bodies that have left at different times over issues as varied as the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, Women's Ordination and now the sexuality controversy. Because of their differences on these matters (save sexuality issues) there is no inter-changeability of ministries within the members of the Common Cause Partnership, which is, of course, one of the first issues to be dealt with on the road to unity. How can anything calling itself a province of a Church include within it groups that don't recognize one another's ordination? This issue is heightened in the case of the Reformed Episcopal Church, which joined Common Cause while the Anglican Province of America, with whom they are merging, declined to do so for these very reasons (why would you join in fellowship those whom you believe to be wrong in regards to women and the Prayerbook just because you agree on issues of human sexuality, when it was those other issues that drove you to separate from TEC to begin with?)
I'm afraid all this talk of "realignment" within Anglicanism sans Canterbury is little more than the self-deception of conservatives who are doing as much to turn a Church that has been growing and evolving into an international Communion, into little more than a partisan fellowship of the like-minded, as the liberals are on the other end. What they fail to realize is that unless their is a solution that emerges from an evolution of the Communion, such as many are working toward through the Covenant, the hopeful future establishment of an Anglican Faith and Order Commission etc... then they are doing nothing but establishing sects that may or may not achieve and maintain any recognizable form of unity--and it certainly won't be recognizable as a global communion. And if indeed that does happen, and fragmentation continues, it begs the question of what it has all been for. After all, aren't there any number of ways to be protestant and use the prayer book liturgy without all the fuss and bother of the current politics in the Anglican Communion? It boggles my mind. If one isn't willing to work for a solution that leaves a stronger international communion, then why wouldn't you simply form an independent Bible Church that happens to use the BCP (whichever version you prefer)
Posted by: Jody+ at July 26, 2008
I'm a retired [Episcopal] priest and subscriber to Christiantity Today. My ordination certticates claim I was ordained deacon and priest in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Although retired, this vocation goes on until death. And therefore I feel bound to remain faithful to the Holy Catholic Church--which today aligns me closer to Protestant evangelicals of almost any orthodox tradition, including Southern Baptists, than to today's Episcopal Church. I think there are many of us--born-again, baptized in the Holy Spirit, Bible-believing Anglicans. We are not going to compromise with our salvation or, as leaders, with the salvation of anyone else.
Posted by: Fr. Phil Swickard at July 27, 2008
In the end it comes down to do you believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God or not?. If the answer is yes then homosexuality is wrong, and no, means you are no longer following God but being seduced by the world as Paul preached about in the latter days that man will be lovers of flesh rather then of spirit and teach false doctrine instead of the word of God. As for me & my house I choose to follow the Lord.
Posted by: Clifford at July 28, 2008
Really, my brothers and sisters - is this how you want us to spend our energies in ministry? On something that Christ never addressed at all? For the writer who felt the Bible spoke clearly as to homosexuality - do you not think that the total absence in Christ's message of any reference to it speaks clearly, too? It's most unlikely he would simply forget to mention something of central importance to salvation, is it not?
Here's what I heard clearly in scripture, from our Savior: Love one another. Care for the poor and the suffering in mind, body and spirit. Love God with everything you have and are.
I don't think it's loving God with everything we have and are, to spend our passions fighting each other over this issue. If we feel strongly about the authority of scripture, let us together proclaim it to the world in ways we can agree about - let us declare love and mercy and salvation with the voice of scriptural authority. That alone is plenty to work on.
If we feel strongly about justice, let us fight for it with the world rather than with one another. There is no small supply of injustice rampant every day throughout all our pre-modern, modern, and emerging worlds. Surely it would not hurt to seek justice together, in all the places we all can agree Christ has called us. The list is long.
In the meantime, until we grow up and grow closer to each other, let us agree to disagree, like Anglicans. Breadth of thought and generosity of spirit is our gift, and a signal of our very identity as a gathering of Christians. Let's remember it - let's live and let live. If we, of all people, cannot manage that here amongst our Christian family, what hope for there for the world?
We need not live in uniformity in order to be unified - one look at God's infinite variety of creation, bound together in life and miracle, makes that plain. Let's hold together to that which matters most, if we cannot manage to hold together every single thing. Let's find and be passionate about all the things we love and share, and leave the rest to God. It's the gentler path, and the wiser one.
For myself - since I have no illusion of possessing any Christ-like insight into people's souls or experience of God - I will spend my days and ministry erring on the side of kindness, and standing with the outcast. Scripture seems to me pretty clear on this - I noticed my Savior spending a lot of his message on it; thus I discern the scriptural authority in the call to do so, and trust it as a faithful response.
If I'm mistaken, well, I noticed Jesus spending a lot of his message on forgiveness and redemption, so I'll trust that, too.
It's a lot better than the risk of looking my God in the face at the end of my days here, and explaining why I felt it so transcendently important to spend the life I was given, fighting with my fellow Christians about homosexuality.
Posted by: The Rev. Laina Casillas at July 30, 2008
God allowed the division of his people under the OT; His message was clear: sin must not prevail; repent: unity is not for unity's sake. The issue of homosexuality according to Laina Casillas is not addressed by Christ but how come? Has not this woman whom Christ loves read Christ's response to the question posed to Him on divorce? Did He not refer to the Creation Order instituted by God Himself: He referred to the cleaving of a man to his wife! God clears out bestiality, homosexuality, and self gratification in one short paragraph! Accusing Evangelicals of being biblical literalists is frankly not good enough and seriously it does not stick. Why? Because most Evangelicals will emphasize the importance of metaphor, parable, poetic description, symbolism, typology etc. Evangelicals always emphasize the centrality of the Lord Jesus; Evangelicals believe and know the God-man Who died for the sinners' sin; the Gospel is what is central to Scriptural and more specifically NT interpretation (He. 1:1). Similarly, the charge of inconsistency is refutable: has Laina read the answers to often rhetorically asked questions on OT strictures, sacrifices, and ceremonial law? Laina, I'd strongly urge you to do that. The understanding of things like forgiveness, confession, restoration, walking with God under the OT are often misconceived and misunderstood! There can be no inconsistency! I've never so far encountered a single inconsistency! Of course there will be people who sneer: "pity the man!". Let me assure you that God makes no mistakes! I hope we can agree on that! Fallible man does make mistakes in understanding God and himself etc. but make no mistake that God makes no mistake in speaking about Himself and in revealing Himself and His will even through the apostles and prophets and supremely of course through the God-man Jesus Christ. The truth is always tested and it always survives the test. Have you considered the potential inconsistency of the inconsistency charge against the Scriptures? Logically, it creates more problems than it "cures". The charge of "nobody knows what this or that phrase means" is even more preposterous because how can one insist on homosexuality being good on the basis of ignorance! Believe me Laina a thick tome of scholarship would just be a beginning and it would put to rest all the objections that I happen to know.
Posted by: Costas E. Ioannou at July 31, 2008
"Accusing Evangelicals of being biblical literalists is frankly not good enough and seriously it does not stick."
Costas, I don't believe I accused anyone of anything, but if I unknowingly did so I certainly beg your pardon.
"Has not this woman whom Christ loves read Christ's response to the question posed to Him on divorce?"
Yes, I have, and through God's mercy have been spared the experience of divorce these past 35 years of our marriage. I take the passage very seriously.
Here's what I'm wondering about in your reading of it: In the context of Christ's teachings to us, do you think that he would have said precisely the same thing to every single woman in every single situation? Do you think that he would have said that to a woman whose husband beat her daily, tortured their children, drunkenly gambled away the family sustenance, whored with any number of HIV infected women - or men? Might his answer to one individual vary with another individual? Just wondering what you think, and I will levy no criticism, whatever your answer may be.
"Similarly, the charge of inconsistency is refutable: has Laina read the answers to often rhetorically asked questions on OT strictures, sacrifices, and ceremonial law?"
Again, yes I have, and am well aware of the distinction between OT writings and the Gospel. And again, I don't think I made any charges whatsoever, but if I did so unknowingly I ask your forgiveness.
"I've never so far encountered a single inconsistency!"
I've never actually heard anyone who has read the Bible make such a sweeping statement, Costas. I don't think God makes mistakes - but I do think that he has made people possessed of sometimes very different perspectives. (Not very surprising, when one takes a good look around at his creation!) I think we ought to listen to one another better. What do you think?
"Fallible man does make mistakes in understanding God and himself.."
I agree. I could certainly be one of them. What I find puzzling is that you're so sure you can't be one of them, too.
"The truth is always tested and it always survives the test."
We agree on this. It's why I said, "until we grow up and grow closer to each other..." which gives truth time to demonstrate its survivability. I sometimes wonder what people of the church will be focused on 100 years from now.
Did I insist on homosexuality being good? Did I insist on anything at all? I hope not. "Love does not insist on it's own way"...a piece of scripture every bit as important as some of the things folks are squabbling about so vociferously these days.
Perhaps regard for that teaching is something we can share, Costas.
Posted by: The Rev. Laina Casillas at July 31, 2008
Laina thanks for your response!
1. The love commandment.
This reminds me of the Source of the Love Commandment Who is God Himself Whose overarching love reaches out to everybody and I mean everybody, adulterers, the sexually immoral, liars, homosexuals, et al, Who hates sin and is calling all men to repent: an adulterer should flee his "girlfriend" and go back to his wife and family and try and reconcile (if his wife will have him back); the homosexual should repent by leaving his or her "partner" and seek God's forgiveness and cleansing. An ex-homosexual may reengage with a member of the opposite sex and marry! There are many ex-homosexuals who have done that and are happily married!
I trust that you believe in hell (the Lord Jesus spoke about it as well a number of times) and that you acknowledge that if liars, adulterers, bestials, homosexuals, pedophiles et al refuse to repent and die in their sin the God of Love will send them to hell.
By the way, do I now qualify for the label of "fundamentalist"? Or if I were in Brazil, need I be arraigned under a proposed new law that criminalizes anti-homosexuality speech? Homosexuality is a sin that must be repented of just like other sins.
2. "On something [homosexuality] that Christ never addressed at all?"
God Himself at creation and the Lord Jesus Christ addressed this foundational subject. God at creation spoke by creating male and female and then He expressly sanctioned marriage: "for this reason shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall be one flesh". This is what the Lord Jesus referred to when He was asked on divorce! Firstly--and poignantly--He said ""Have you not read that the Creator from the beginning made them male and female?" This is God speaking about what He did and His plan for male and female! The Lord Jesus as I mentioned earlier at one stroke asserted the Creation Order both before the fall of man (I hope that we can agree on that) as well as after the fall under the NT. The Lord Jesus not only fulfilled Scripture through His death and resurrection, He--evidently--reintroduced the Creation Order: bestiality, homosexuality, self-gratification, polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, etc. are not His will. The Lord Jesus' teaching on homosexuality, polygamy, and bestiality et al is recorded in the Gospels!
God means what He says and does what He means without mistake.
3. "For the writer who felt the Bible spoke clearly as to homosexuality " and "It's most unlikely he would simply forget to mention something of central importance to salvation, is it not?"
Is that true Laina? Did He not? Regressing, God spoke about homosexuality at Creation through the Creation Order, and the Lord Jesus spoke on homosexuality et al by reasserting the Creation Order on the basis of which you, Laina, were married some short 35 years ago!
But the Bible does speak clearly on homosexuality: God through the apostle Paul--the one He sent out to the Gentiles, I hope we can agree on that too--says: "do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral (porni) nor idolaters nor adulterers nor the effeminate (malaki) nor those who sleep with men (arsenokite) ... shall inherit the kingdom of God".
Well, doesn't the Bible speak clearly on homosexuality?! Evidently it speaks very clearly on adultery because you are saying, "whored with any number of ...". In fact sexual immorality and fornication are addressed before the mention of "effeminate men" and those "who sleep with men".
There are no problems of Textual Criticism concerning this Scriptural passage but there are people who plead the cause of ignorance by saying that "we don't know what they mean" to plead the cause of homosexuality! This, logically as well as biblically is worse than pleading the silence of Scripture!
"Effeminate" (malaki) and "those who sleep with men" are side by side and for good reason. Both words refer to homosexuals.
I will not go now into the NT Greek etymology and meaning of these two words nor into their Classical Greek usage nor into their occurrence in patristic writings in the first couple of centuries, nor indeed into their usage in Modern Greek lore today!! The meaning of these two words is well established. Believe me Laina it is a lot easier than deciphering the Rosetta Stone.
But it is the responsibility of every minister of the Gospel to warn men of the deadliness of sexual immorality, adultery, and homosexuality (among other things).
4.Laina you quoted me as saying "I've never so far encountered a single inconsistency!" and I did and of course I stand by it! "I've never actually heard anyone who has read the Bible make such a sweeping statement."
Then, evidently, I have not read the Bible but those who have read it e.g. "Higher" and other critics assert that the Bible is inconsistent!! This is arrogance Laina! You are saying that those who have read the Bible have discovered inconsistencies! Inconsistency means that there is something untruthful, wrong, and unreliable about the Bible!
Since before the days of Thomas Paine people have grappled with seeming inconsistencies! In fact Islam claims that the OT and the NT are unreliable documents because of inconsistencies!
Since even before the days of Mohammed, Christians and non-Christians have grappled with the subject of seeming inconsistencies.
In my experience, I've not encountered one claimed inconsistency that holds water!
On the other hand I can find a lot of inconsistencies in today’s de rigueur liberal sexual advice: sleep with one partner et al the risk of infection.
Do you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture Laina?
That's part of the seriousness of the problem Laina! People who propose tolerance towards the sin of homosexuality plead biblical inconsistency.
5. "Do you think that he would have said precisely the same thing to every single woman in every single situation? Do you think that he would have said that to a woman whose husband beat her daily, tortured their children, drunkenly gambled away the family sustenance, whored with any number of HIV infected women - or men? Might his answer to one individual vary with another individual?"
When it comes to addressing the matter of divorce, yes, the principle which God is asserting in the passage applies to everybody and in every circumstance but there are other passages of Scripture which taken together constitute the full counsel of God in dealing with such onerous subjects!
I'm sure that through your Bible's parallel passages you'll read about the adultery exception, and that through your concordance you'll find passages relating to abandonment, grievous abuse, etc.
Evidently, Moses--the greatest of OT prophets--faced Zipporah's explosion and abandonment when she circumcised her sons against her will but Moses dealt with the situation in a manner that was pleasing to God, because God stopped wanting to kill him! Look it up! In like manner I'm sure that God would provide His full counsel to any man who will seek Him and His will with all his heart.
The major mainline Christian traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant) affirm the lifelong component of marriage and the utility of repentance and forgiveness in maintaining it. Since the early days of the Reformation adultery became a widely accepted reason for divorce among Protestant Christians, and in our days abandonment, and grievous harm or the threat of it have come to be accepted among post-modern Christians.
What is alarming is that today's cavalier--through their disdain of established norms-- solutions to marital friction, divorce and remarriage have created more problems than they have resolved. In the face of the malaise of divorce and broken relationships that characterize much of today's landscape a Christian should be convulsed with the agony experienced by many as they willingly or unwillingly deal with brokenness.
The bottom-line Laina is that liberal ECUSA Anglicans in the US and their Canadian counterparts have violated foundational Biblical mores on the Family Order and on sexual conduct through “consecrating” an active homosexual who believes in the surfacing of new revelation on the subject! As a point of indisputable FACT ECUSA’s current leadership have digressed from traditional Anglican Christian faith as passed on their former Provinces and GAFCON is merely the acknowledgment of liberal digression and that the faith once handed to the saints is sufficient.
God bless you Laina! I hope that what I've shared has been useful to you.
Posted by: Costas E. Ioannou at August 2, 2008
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