THE YEAR IN REVIEW - Part 6

By David W. Virtue

AND AN OFFICIAL PROPOSAL obtained by Virtuosity from the Primates of the Global South & The Anglican Communion Institute, which had met in Nairobi, Kenya, offered a two stage proposed plan of action.  Stage One - Emergency Action - called on the Standing Committee of the Diocese of New Hampshire to rescind its approval of Canon Gene Robinson’s nomination for election, prior to November 2, 2003. Failing that Stage Two - Formal Structures - would kick in and from November 2, 2003 and Easter, 2004 if repentance was not forthcoming after Easter, 2004 only those orthodox ECUSA bishops who uphold a commitment to the Holy Scriptures and to the historic faith and order of the church would continue to have full participation in the affairs of the Communion, including voice and vote in the councils of the Communion.  The rest would be out of communion. This discipline would take the following form: Bishop Ingham would be reduced to observer status in the Communion (no voice, no vote). His further participation in Communion affairs would be suspended.

Mechanisms would be implemented to protect parishes and clergy in New Westminster who maintain a commitment to the historic faith and order

of the Communion.

Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen threatened to split the Church and transfer his allegiance from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Primate of Nigeria over the issue of gay clergy. We must recognize the possibility that the Anglican Communion will actually divide, Dr Jensen said in an interview. It is conceivable, I have to say, that two world Anglicanisms may develop, perhaps with two mutually exclusive centres. Instead of looking to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, for moral authority, Sydney could look more to Nigeria or some other place for the chairmanship of the board. And that was just for starters.

It is not just the Episcopal Church that will come unraveled, the implications of Robinson’s consecration is having a rippling effect across the globe and among many Christian denominations.

In UGANDA Archbishop Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo announced that he had broken communion with the ECUSA bringing to three the number of African provinces who had broken communion with the American branch of

Anglicanism.

IN CANADA things went from bad to worse. Michael Ingham the New Westminster Bishop called the actions of the biblically orthodox

Vancouver 11 ACiNW parishes schismatic saying, It is clear that the

intransigence of the leadership of the dissenting group may force our

negotiations to focus on structural separation (schism) rather than

reconciliation. In view of this, diocesan officers must exercise both a

fiduciary and a stewardship responsibility to preserve the territorial

integrity of the diocese, and the assets of its parishes, for the future of the Anglican Church in British Columbia.

AND IN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH the call went out for Griswold to resign. Two rectors in the Diocese of Colorado who run CommunionParishes.com with some 6,000 supporting Episcopalians wrote a letter which invited anyone who felt so inclined to sign and send directly to the church’s national headquarters in New York.

IN DAYTON, OHIO a number of Episcopal churches formed an independent

Anglican Fellowship in the wake of actions by the Episcopal Church’s

General Convention last August. Andy Figueroa, Webmaster and former

Director of Communications with the Episcopal DIOCESE OF SOUTHERN OHIO resigned his position after the August decisions. These are painful times for Episcopalians who feel they have been betrayed by their leadership, he said.

Figueroa announced the formation of Christ the King Anglican Fellowship. The fellowship, inspired by the Anglican Congress (a movement working to unite separate Anglican churches in the US and Canada), is a collaborative effort with Christ the King Reformed Episcopal Church (REC).

In the DIOCESE OF THE RIO GRANDE the evangelical Bishop Terence Kelshaw

said this: We are not traditionalists as some would rudely and scornfully dismiss us, but we are men and women of God who (as The Message would put it) will not be turned into traitor to Him who called us by the grace of Christ by embracing a variant message, another gospel, and one which turns the unchanging Gospel of Christ on its head!

The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, issued a

statement responding to the reported severing of ties with the Episcopal Church in the USA by the Anglican Church in Nigeria. If these reports are accurate, my prayer is that the Nigerian bishops will come to reconsider their action and await the outcome of the commission established by the worldwide Communion.

ANGLICAN MAINSTREAM LOOKED FOR ONE MILLION SIGNATURES From

www.anglican-mainstream.net They were looking for a million signatures

affirming orthodoxy by Christmas Day, and got them.

We will wind up fighting pew to pew and steeple to steeple. Canon David Anderson, President, American Anglican Council. The AAC emerged as the central orthodox player in the forefront of the spiritual battle being waged against the liberal/revisionist hegemony of The Episcopal Church and its innovators. The fast-growing Episcopal organization had 14 chapters across the US with more signing on.

A regional AAC meeting in Atlanta elicited a screaming Associated Press headline: Episcopalian schism coming. ECUSA’s emerging leading orthodox bishop Robert Duncan told AAC delegates who are angry about the recent consecration of an openly gay bishop to remain patient, assuring them that early skirmishes will be within the next 60 days.

The Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan (Pittsburgh) vice president of the American Anglican Council did not specify what those skirmishes would be, but he hinted at a move toward a possible split in the American church. Duncan and AAC president the Rev. Canon David C. Anderson - two leading critics of V. Gene Robinson’s consecration - reported at the organization’s Georgia chapter meeting that they are drafting a charter for the Network of Confessing Dioceses and Parishes. Both said it would be a church within a church.

The Bishop of Atlanta, Neil Alexander disinvited the AAC. He forbade the organization from meeting in any church in the diocese. The only orthodox-evangelical parish in the area was denied an advertisement in the local diocesan newspaper, and the AAC was also forbidden to buy an ad in the paper. Another excellent example of Episcopal inclusion.

Duncan and Anderson reaffirmed that a split between orthodox Episcopalians and liberal factions seemed inevitable - although that may be years down the line. In the meantime, the Network of Confessing Dioceses and Parishes would address the immediate concerns of conservative Episcopalians, they said.

ACROSS THE COUNTRY in one diocese after another, orthodox and revisionist forces were arrayed like armies facing each other across a great unbridgeable divide. In nearly every diocese the forces are uneven. In some dioceses like South Carolina the orthodox side is strong, but the vocal minority had the national church leadership and attorney David Booth Beers beating the drums for them.

In the Diocese of Albany it is lopsided in favor of the orthodox but the minority at a recent diocesan convention were vocal, loud and pushy. In swing dioceses like Tennessee, Southwest Florida and Florida the armies are more evenly arrayed, while in Colorado the scales are tipped marginally toward liberals, but the orthodox are financially well- armed, theologically astute and they know how to fight. Bishop Robert O’Neill, barely into his first year as bishop was asked to resign for his voting record at GC2003, as was Presiding Bishop Griswold by a serious theologian and a number of theologically orthodox priests.

In the DIOCESE OF OKLAHOMA Bishop Robert Moody pulled the license of a

godly deacon this week for opposing General Convention’s resolutions on same-sex blessings and Gene Robinson’s election, in a sermon he preached, while in the DIOCESE OF NORTH CAROLINA a group of rectors covering the Research Triangle, the Piedmont Triad, and Charlotte, challenged the approval Bishop Michael Curry gave to the Gene Robinson’s consecration and sex-same union blessings.

And as the year closed the orthodox in the DIOCESE OF NEW WESTMINSTER

found some safety and power in numbers (11 ACiNW parishes versus one revisionist bishop). Their plight got the full attention of the national church body. Bishop Victoria Matthews (DIOCESE OF EDMONTON) was appointed to lead up a task force to examine alternative oversight for dissenting conservative parishes in Canada.

In the DIOCESE OF WASHINGTON Bishop John B. Chane announced that he

intended to create a committee to help develop optional liturgical rites which clergy in the Dioceses of Washington could use to bless same-sex unions.

Fr. David Moyer and his congregation, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, PA applied for alternative ecclesiastical oversight to get out from under the revisionist Bishop of Pennsylvania, Charles Bennison.

THE FANTASY CONTINUED with The Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge,

Massachusetts trying for the umpteenth time to search for reconciliation on sexuality issues. The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston the president of the seminary wanted to bring together people in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

The news came in that Frank Griswold had resigned ARCIC talks between Roman Catholics and Anglicans while Nigerian Anglican Province announced it would set up a US branch, to protect and afford its members a place of worship without interference or interaction with the new gay bishop-Gene Robinson.

The Bishop of the Lagos West Diocese of the Anglican Province of Nigeria, the Rev Peter Adebiyi disclosed the plan in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, said the church which would be called the Church of Nigeria in the US would be established as soon as it was feasible and a priest posted there. We have told our people to leave the US Episcopal Church and give us time to set up our own, because out members are spread across the states in the US, Adebiyi explained.

There were growing signs of convergence amidst increasing fragmentation in the North American Anglican scene. A three-day conference in Orlando, Florida drew more than 50 bishops, clergy priests and laity from a dozen splinter Anglican groups from the Continuum, the Reformed Episcopal Church, other Anglican groups and two orthodox bishops from The Episcopal Church. Collectively they represent more than 165,000 Anglicans in the U.S. and abroad.

Held under the banner of the U.S. Anglican Congress, the conference was

held at St. Luke’s Cathedral, a flagship ECUSA parish in the Diocese of Central Florida under the spiritual authority of The Rt. Rev. John Howe. The Rt. Rev John Lipscomb, Diocese of Southwest Florida was also present, as was a bishop from the Anglican Mission in America, the Rt. Rev. John Rodgers. Retired ECUSA Bishop the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison (SC) also attended and gave an anecdotal history of ECUSA’s slow decline and fall. The Rev. Todd Wetzel, executive director of Anglicans United (formerly Episcopalians United), brought the conference together. What we are seeing is a movement towards convergence, said Bill Bugg an ECUSA layman from Atlanta in his

opening remarks, and this theme carried through discussions for the next three days. A new realignment is in process, said the Rev. Todd Wetzel, and this conference was a microcosm reflecting a greater realignment, a macrocosm of seismic proportions going on in the wider Anglican Communion.

A recently completed document on Women’s Ordination put together by leaders of the AMIA nixed women to the priesthood but said they could go as high as the diaconate.

The Episcopal Church found itself in broken communion with eight of the communion’s largest provinces and in impaired communion with 24 other provinces. In total ECUSA was now out of favor with some 38 million Anglicans worldwide. Furthermore both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches had shunned him and recently he chose to resign from ARCIC talks under pressure from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s council of advice.

THE PRIMATE OF CENTRAL AFRICA The Most Rev. Bernard A. Malango, wrote

Griswold a letter telling of his betrayal your actions have caused. There may be some clever way of describing it in your mind so that you can live with it. We have ways of describing it as well. It was dishonest, false, and a great betrayal. How can there be any hope for a shared future when communications and commitments mean nothing? In meeting after meeting, you have either stayed silent or have protested that ECUSA and your bishops are overwhelmingly orthodox, that you believe the Bible and the Creeds and the faith of the church.

THE PRIMATE OF SOUTHEAST ASIA Yong Ping Chung unanimously rejected the purported consecration of Dr V. Gene Robinson (‘Robinson’) regretted

that communion with the ECUSA as well as those who voted for the consecration and those who participated in the consecration service was

now broken.

VIRTUOSITY learned of an Episcopal webring where clergy and laity could

write anonymously to each other using fake E-mail addresses with one single objective - to bring pressure to bear and ultimately presentments against orthodox bishops who were not willing to conform to General Convention’s recently passed resolutions affirming same-sex blessings and V. Gene Robinson’s consecration. It was a sinister development hosted by the Episcopal Church’s leading sodomite, Louie Crew at his website.

In the DIOCESE OF NORTH CAROLINA Bishop Michael Curry held a secret

meeting with 30 vicars and told them to conform to his will and that of General Convention or else. He told them he did not want them to talk

about alternative episcopal oversight and strictly charged them not to

discuss what is going on in the wider Anglican Communion.

And then there was the story about a parish in the DIOCESE OF OHIO where Bishop J. Clark Grew II faced a revolt from spiritually hungry parishioners at Christ Church, Hudson, Ohio. This parish was a cash cow to the bishop, but the godly Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals were tired of political sermons and wanted spiritual food not temporal stuff easily obtainable from any local newspaper. Some 60 of them met at another church for Bible studies and worship. Bishop Grew got wind of the alternative worship and wrote a letter threatening to any clergy who showed up to perform sacramentally. Seven did.

The DIOCESE OF FOND DU LAC voted to send a letter of disassociation from the Gene Robinson consecration and the same-sex blessings resolutions of GC2003. Bishop Russell Edward Jacobus and the Executive Council permitted individuals to direct their giving through the congregations away from 815, ECUSA’s national church headquarters.

But in the DIOCESE OF HAWAII their diocesan convention reported figures

for baptized members had plunged 12.5 percent over the last two years along with an additional 11.8 percent drop in communicants of good standing. Bishop S. O. Chang, a revisionist who formerly worked at 815 in New York is a close friend of Frank Griswold.

Perhaps fearing a revolt Bishop Robert O’Neill told his clergy in Colorado Springs that resolution CO51 did not authorize same sex blessings and that he wouldn’t allow any to take place until something definitive comes out of General Convention which would not happen for another three years.

And the AMERICAN ANGLICAN COUNCIL president Canon David Anderson heated up the action in his Advent message, telling readers that orthodox

Episcopalians have many reasons to be hopeful right now.

Three dioceses announced the formation of a network of dioceses and congregations to reform the Episcopal Church which is telling a lie with the things they approved last summer.’’ Next month clergy and lay representatives will join bishops from as many as 13 dioceses in Plano,

a Dallas suburb, for a constitutional convention. Pittsburgh Bishop Robert W. Duncan is the moderator of the new Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. He has begun to emerge as the Primus inter pares of the Episcopal Church. This rival church within a church would continue to adhere to the pre-General Convention 2003 constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church.

Canon Bill Atwood of EKKLESIA, the international outreach arm of this emerging group is working with the vast majority of orthodox Primates

to coalesce around Holy Scripture and against the Robinson consecration. And the recent merger of two ministries, the Scholarly Engagement with Anglican Doctrine, (SEAD) and the Anglican Institute to form THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION INSTITUTE (ACI), as the theological brains behind this new movement, and suddenly there was a whole new ball game.

The ultimate prize is international recognition as the legitimate expression of Anglican Christianity within North America.

THE ANGLICAN PROVINCE OF UGANDA issued a stunning rebuke to ECUSA and to Frank Griswold personally over the November Gene Robinson consecration. In a scathing public letter they let it be known that they will refuse to allow a delegation from ECUSA to attend the upcoming consecration of their new archbishop. The American Anglican Council applauded the Ugandan Church’s actions and further decried ECUSA’s apparent attempt at financial manipulation. The Anglican Province of Uganda reiterated that it had broken off all ties with the Episcopal Church over its support for the consecration of an actively homosexual bishop and said it was praying for the newly formed Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. They then invited a delegation from the Network to attend the consecration.

And in the DIOCESE OF CONNECTICUT, Bishop Andrew D. Smith ordained an

avowed lesbian, Sherrell Osborn, to the priesthood in Christ Church cathedral in Hartford over the objection of two priests, Ronald S. Gauss and Alyn Benedict. The Bishop of Connecticut had promised his diocese that he would appoint a bipartisan task force to advise him on how the diocese should proceed on issues of human sexuality following GC2003.

AND IN PROVINCE NINE, which is composed of overseas dioceses within the

US Episcopal Church, things recently got so hot for one bishop that he invited a number of his supporters to join him in laying siege to his own cathedral. Thankfully it appears that no gunplay occurred on sacred ground, but Ecuador Bishop Jose Neptali Larrea-Moreno is under ecclesiastical indictment for his refusal to cooperate with an investigation into longstanding financial irregularities. Larrea who had reportedly refused to attend General Convention because of fears that he would be arrested upon arrival on US soil, knows the Episcopal Church is on to him over serious unresolved questions of diocesan finances he oversaw.

A DIRTY LITTLE WAR going on in the DIOCESE OF SOUTH CAROLINA between the diocese along with ECUSA versus All Saints Church Waccamaw, erupted to the surface. The bishop Ed Salmon stepped in and on December 17, excommunicated the vestry of All Saints Church and in a letter declared that the Vestry had vacated its offices as Vestry Members and that the Bishop had reduced All Saints to a mission. He then said he would appoint a mission committee to replace the current Vestry as the governing body at All Saints Church.

AND AS IF TO THROW MORE GASOLINE on the already overheated Anglican

Communion facing schism, Bishop V. Gene Robinson announced that he

wanted to marry his partner Mark Andrew. I Want To Marry screamed one

newspaper headline. I am very supportive of the right to marry, Robinson said in a telephone interview with The Eagle Tribune Newspaper.  And just when you thought there was no bottom to the outrage, V. Gene Robinson accepted an award from a soft core porn website. Robinson was named Person of the Year for 2003 from PlanetOut a soft core porn website, for his unprecedented achievement and its impact on the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. PlanetOut interviewed Robinson where he happily accepted the award. The Advocate the nation’s leading gay and lesbian newsmagazine, also named him person of the year, giving him a front cover picture in full bishop’s regalia.

Gay bishop named years’ top newsmaker said RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE. His approval and consecration, and the ensuing threats of schism in the U. S. church and the wider Anglican Communion, were collectively cited as the top religion news story of 2003 -- a ranking shared with criticism of the Anglican bishop of Vancouver, British Columbia, who approved same-sex unions.

Colorado Episcopal Bishop Jerry Winterrowd expressed regret that he supported the election of the nation’s first openly gay bishop, saying the church was not ready. Winterrowd, who retired Dec. 31, said he went into August’s General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA intending to vote against the election of Gene Robinson as New Hampshire bishop, but then didn’t. Subsequently, I would say that I am on very thin ice there, Winterrowd.

A NEW THEOLOGICAL CHARTER WILL FORM THE BASIS FOR DISSENTING

EPISCOPALIANS. The Anglican Communion Institute announced the appearance of a new document drawn up for the orthodox Anglican

presence within the United States and Canada. Titled The Theological

Charter for Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes of ECUSA and the

Anglican Church of Canada it follows in the same line as other ACI Documents, including Claiming Our Anglican Identity and Steps of

Discipline but is meant to serve as the theological mission statement

for Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes in North America. It has

been adopted by the Bishops who form the leadership for this network,

whose Moderator is the Rt. Revd. Robert Duncan.

A tornado ripped through St. James Church in Houston, but the school

was left standing. A number of bishops died in 2003, the most notable

being Paul Moore of New York. Known as a limousine liberal, the

patrician bishop felt the pain of the poor and disenfranchised women

without affecting his own lavish lifestyle.

THE YEAR ENDED QUIETLY, but beneath the surface the plates are ready to

move again as new ecclesiastical earthquakes develop in the Year 2004.

We wait with baited breath.

END