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PITTSBURGH: Why Did We Act As We Did?
By Bishop C. FitzSimmons Allison and AMiA Bishop John Rodgers
Sept. 29, 2007
We have been asked, "Why did we, as Bishops of the College of the Common Cause Partnership, took the action that we did?". Here is our reply:
"Do not be conformed to this culture, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern the will of God..." (Romans 12:2)
The college of Common Cause Bishops, gathered in Pittsburgh, PA, having minds and hearts renewed by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, acted on September 29th, 2007 in faithful obedience to Jesus Christ to form an Anglican Union. In so doing we acted to further the effective propagation of the Gospel (John 17:21), to provide a place where faithful Anglicans could remain Anglican and at the same time be obedient to Christ, and to resist and overcome a culture and churches growing increasingly hostile to biblical Christianity.
The Common Cause Partnership, together with other Anglicans world-wide, is seeking to retain and proclaim the Anglican Faith. This historic Faith, reformed and catholic, is being diluted and denied by a leadership intent on conforming to the increasingly non-Christian, secular culture of the West.
By so acting, the College of Bishops of the Common Cause Partnership, though small in number, is like the small group of confessing Christians of the Barmen Confession, who in 1934 resisted National Socialism's domination of the German Lutheran State Church in order to obey and openly confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, no matter the cost.
Just as the impact of the Barmen Confession had telling influence world-wide, it is our firm conviction that this beginning by all of the bishops of the College of the Common Cause Partnership, though small in number, will echo widely, impacting the whole Anglican Communion as well as challenging the compromising main-line churches in North America.
We cannot but note that the movements of God always start small, "First the seed, then the blade, and then the ear.", and bear their amazing fruit or results in the not too distant future." May the impact of this act amaze us all by its extent and effects from and for Christ.
+Fitz and +John
Bishop C. FitzSimmons Allison is the Bishop of South Carolina (ret.)
Bishop John Rodgers is a bishop with the Anglican Mission in America and presently Interim Dean of Trinity School for Mission based in Ambridge, PA
