By Julia Duin THE WASHINGTON TIMES January 5, 2004   The direction of the Episcopal Church is increasingly being determined not by its clergy or church institutions, but by a group of determined Internet jockeys whose reach encircles the globe.   They are men who spend 12 to 14 hours a day sending out posts to message boards, fielding replies or overseeing blogs, or journals on the Internet, about the conflict tearing the 2.3-million-member denomination apart the Nov. 2 consecration of the first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop.   On Aug. 5, the Episcopal General Convention meeting in Minneapolis confirmed Canon V. Gene Robinson’s election to the episcopate. The vote was delayed a day because of an Internet message calling attention to the bishop-elect connection to a youth ministry Web site that had links to hard-core pornography.   David Virtue, founder of www.virtuosityonline.org and the originator of that message, said a conservative bishop had called him at midnight the night before he posted it.   He said, you’ll take the lid off the church if you do this, Mr. Virtue says. I did do it, and the lid came off. The article about the bishop’s ties to the youth site, posted at 4 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 4, triggered an emergency meeting of Episcopal leaders a few hours later. By early afternoon, TV camera crews were pouring into the convention conference center.   Although Mr. Robinson was cleared a day later of having any connection to the pornographic links, the lesson was clear any self-appointed Web master could influence an entire denomination.   Since then, more activists have taken to their keyboards. Very few have any journalism training and most say they make no money at it. All say its a spiritual calling to get the news out.   When Bishop Michael Ingham of the Diocese of New Westminster near Vancouver, B.C., decided to shut down a conservative mission church four days before Christmas, one of his fellow Canadian priests sprung into action.     Within hours of the Ingham story appearing on the Web site of the National Post, a Toronto-based newspaper, the priest had sent copies around the world. Traditionally, the institution has controlled church news, said the priest, a man in his 30s whose Internet nickname is Binky the Web Elf. Now the Internet supercedes regular media. This news about New Westminster would not have appeared in a church newspaper for a month, [but via the Internet] what a bishop says in North America can be read by a bishop in Central Africa in a few hours.   He gets 1,500 to 2,000 visits a day to his site, Classical Anglican Net News, also known as www.anglican.tk . So much news is pouring out from various Episcopal-related sources from around the world that he posts two daily briefings.     People are hungry for this, so they come where it is, he say. Even [Episcopal News Service director] Jim Solheim wrote us, saying he checks us daily.   The ordinary people may not have the theological tools to stand up to their leaders. They often don’t have that extra bit of information that allows them to say this is their church, too. Now through the Internet, their story is being told.   Not that bishops are taking this lying down.   I have drawers full of hate mail. The Internet has enabled the technological equivalent of drive-by shootings, Bishop Ingham told a Canadian magazine, MacLeans. I’ve had to learn to deal with a level of malevolence and sheer hatred that I frankly didn’t know existed in the church.   Washington Bishop John B. Chane, another church liberal, termed Mr. Virtue mean-spirited in a June 22 sermon.   We’re not as creative or direct as David Virtue at sharing our side of the story, he confided. We have to break that noose.   The church’s leading liberal Internet activist is Louie Crew, founder of the Episcopal homosexual caucus Integrity.     Mr. Crew, 67, who nicknames himself Quean Lutibelle posts items like Queer Eye for the Heterosexual Imagination and other offerings at http// www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/rel.html .   The site, which gets about 800 hits a day, has 3,000 pages of Episcopal minutiae history, lists of diocesan contacts, links to other Episcopal sites, articles, essays, photos, statements, audios of sermons, even an invitation to a renewal of vows for him and his partner.   A retired English professor from Rutgers University, Mr. Crew says he spends 12 hours a day processing material.   Before the Internet, he says, There was spin. Now there counterspin. We have to listen to points of view we don’t like. I have convictions and support them, but don’t want to be an ideologue.   Atop his Web site is the queen of spades, a title bestowed upon him by Mr. Virtue. In return, Mr. Crew awarded Mr. Virtue the title of joker.   Mr. Virtue, 59, a New Zealand native who lives in West Chester, Pa., began writing investigative articles for Episcopalians United, a conservative group, in the mid-1990s. Finding church politics habit-forming, he created his Internet site in 1998. To date, it has received 500,000 hits, 300,000 since the General Convention.   He also sends out a news digest several times a week to 100,000 readers.   He estimates he works 70 hours, seven days a week. Contributors send in about $80,000 a year, he says, which, after expenses, ends up at $35,000 a year. All of his postings are first checked by an attorney.   It’s what I feel called to do, he says, to bring the light of the Gospel on the revisionist nonsense of the Episcopal Church and to show it morally bankrupt. To do this, you have to bring the sludge to light.   Some of Mr. Virtue’s material gets distributed by the Rev. Richard Kim, 76, a retired Episcopal priest who runs an informal news service out of Detroit from an America Online account.   He searches newspapers, secular wire services and church Web sites all over the English-speaking world for documents and articles to circulate. He also has an extensive network of church contacts who send confidential reports to him.   Nothing’s a secret anymore, he says. Bishops in the church can no longer do things quietly. Anything that put out quickly goes around the globe. The Internet has allowed people to challenge assumptions, critique them and given ordinary people a chance to raise questions that would not ordinarily be raised.       Copyright © 2004 News World Communications, Inc

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 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 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 ONeill, 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 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 ECUSAs 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 recently passed resolutions affirming same-sex blessings and V. Gene Robinson’s consecration. It was a sinister development hosted by the Episcopal Church 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 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 ONeill 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 hurch 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 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 leading gay and lesbian newsmagazine, also named him person of the year, giving him a front cover picture in full bishop 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 General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA intending to vote against the election of Gene Robinson as New Hampshire bishop, but then didnt. 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   *****

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 from 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 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 Anglicanism’s 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 orsome 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 theEpiscopal Church in the USA by the Anglican Church in Nigeria. Ifthese reports are accurate, my prayer is that the Nigerian bishops willcome to reconsider their action and await the outcome of the commission established by the worldwide Communion.

By David W. Virtue VIRTUOSITY In the orthodox DIOCESE OF PITTSBURGH, bishop Robert Duncan was called evil at a special diocesan convention by pro-sodomite revision is forces with bleeding heart liberal laity writing letters saying that he had stolen the church from them. Duncan had said he would allow parishes who did not agree with General Convention election ofRobinson to choose their own pathway. In the DIOCESE OF ALBANY, a small faction of liberal priests unhappy with the way Bishops Dan Herzog and David Bena voted at GC2003 tried to pull off a coup d’etat hoping to turn the diocese towards sexual inclusion (read perversity) with an alternative vision for the diocese. They tried and they failed.And in the DIOCESE OF COLORADO the new bishop Robert J. ONeill who came in on a ticket of moderation and inclusion to replace thecompromised Jerry Winterrowd asked two of the most revisionist bishops in the Episcopal Church - Tom Shaw of Massachusetts and the former suffragan Barbara Harris to co-consecrate with James Jelinck at his own consecration.Griswold threw down the gauntlet and told the ANGLICAN COMMUNION DROP DEAD! He told Associated Press that he openly supported Gene Robinson's confirmation because Episcopalians in New Hampshire had overwhelmingly chosen him in their local election and had the right to make thatchoice. Griswold also argued that Scripture does not condemn same-sex relationships, a position conservatives vehemently reject.In the UK The Church Society, an evangelical organization within theChurch of England, called for the expulsion of the Episcopal Churchfrom the Anglican Communion for promoting a non-celibate homosexual to the episcopate. In a letter addressed to the Primates of the AnglicanCommunion dated September 15, the Church Society argued that therecent action by the Episcopal Church of the USA in agreeing toconsecrate Gene Robinson is not an isolated incident but it serves toshow how that body acting corporately has set themselves outsidehistoric Christianity. The denomination has become a (North American)sect.Then news came that CANON JOHN PETERSON of the Anglican Consultative Council was attempting to manipulate the agenda of the primates October meeting in order to nullify conservative outcomes. Some classified documents were inadvertently given to Dr. Paul Zahl, an American orthodox Dean and a member of the International Anglican Doctrinal and Theological Commission [IADTC]. This deep-sixed Peterson control of the Primates meeting.ECUSA were untenable. There must be one Anglican Province in thecountry-regin in fellowship with Canterbury, not two the concept oftwo overlapping jurisdictions is untenable for several reasons. For theArchbishop of Canterbury to remain in communion with those bishops,clergy and congregations that endorse the election and consecration ofBishop-elect Robinson would morally and doctrinally corrupt theAnglican Communion itself.SYDNEY ARCHBISHOP Peter Jensen weighed in suggesting that the American arm of the worldwide church be expelled. He said time was running out for the Archbishop of Canterbury to act on homosexual issues dividing the worldwide Anglican Church.A GATHERING OF NEARLY 3,000 ORTHODOX ESPICOPALIANS IN DALLAS still shell-shocked by GC2003 decision to confirm Robinson, heard the Rev. David Roseberry issue a clarion call, we are finally free and we know what is at stake. God still does change lives and that we declare. We declared our support at General Convention on August 5 and we stood up on the votes and we asked for the intervention of the Primates.At Dallas, A PLACE TO STAND - A CALL TO ACTION was distributed to the attendees. The statement upheld the Great Commission, repudiated the actions of General Convention, repented for its part in the sins of the Episcopal Church, and called upon the Episcopal Church to repent and to reverse the unbiblical actions of the General Convention, stating its objection to the consecration of Canon Robinson as a bishop of theChurch.FORWARD IN FAITH LEADER Fr. David Moyer called for full cooperation with Evangelical and Charismatic wings of the ECUSA, to achieve the goal of cleansing the Church and working towards renewal and reform.THE POPE SENT PRAYERS TO THE AAC meeting through Cardinal Ratzinger, bypassing  815 and a rebuke to Frank Griswold, a pointed at that did not go unnoticed by revisionists. A wrenching split in the fabric of the Communion if the Primates did not act it was predicted. Couragebreeds courage, said the Bishop of Pittsburgh to the 2,700 attendees.THE PRIMATES also said they would intervene in the Episcopal Churchthen they met in Lambeth, and move to throw Frank Griswold and theEpiscopal Church out of the Anglican Communion. THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE Some 37 Primates were ready to act as they gathered in Lambeth. And act they did. What emerged was the most honest, most difficult meetingany could recall reflected Robert Duncan with reports of the power ofprayer and the falling of the Holy Spirit reported. Questions of lawand constitutionality nearly derailed the meeting. The Communionscenter and its power shifted to the Global South. The Primates Meetingreplaced the Anglican Consultative Council as the Communion’s keydecision-making body (between Lambeth Conferences). Rowan Williams achieved presidency on his terms and his turf and the limits ofAnglican diversity were clearly delineated. Scripture and LambethConference teaching were determinative and Provinces could breakcommunion with errant partners and Ecumenical and Inter-Faithconsiderations mattered profoundly. It was also a time to organizeprovincial responses to schism.Midway into their deliberations an unscripted press conference was held on the grounds of Lambeth Palace. Irish Archbishop Robin Eames told reporters that the Primates were telling their stories representing the cultural differences, while saying that there was a tremendous anxiety to maintain the Anglican Communion on a basis of collegiality,cooperation and the common faith.The UK movement REFORM urged the Primates to stand firm.A Statement at the conclusion of the meeting by the Primates said theactions of New Westminster to authorize a Public Rite of Blessing forthose in committed same sex relationships, and by the 74th GeneralConvention of the Episcopal Church (USA) to confirm the election of apriest in a committed same sex relationship to the office and work of aBishop, threatened the unity of the Communion as well as relationshipswith other parts of Christ Church, as well as mission and witness,and relations with other faiths, in a world already confused in areasof sexuality, morality and theology, and polarize Christian opinion.The Primates of the Communion were given enhanced responsibilityentrusted to them by successive Lambeth Conferences, and they re-affirmed their common understanding of the centrality and authority ofScripture in determining the basis of their faith.In a unanimously-agreed statement, they strongly reaffirmed the globalAnglican teaching on homosexuality, with the Primates concluding thatif this consecration proceeds, we recognize that we have reached acrucial and critical point in the life of the Anglican Communion. Theysaid that the future of the Communion itself would, therefore, be putin jeopardy. If Robinson is made a bishop, the statement said, hisministry would not be recognized by most of the Anglican world, withmany provinces likely to consider themselves out of communion with the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA).AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES SAW VICTORY AT LAMBETH with Frank Griswold being told in clear and blunt terms that if appeared at, and/or consecrated Gene Robinson he would be declared anathema by the Archbishop of Canterbury and in time expelled from the Anglican Communion. Lines hardened and there was no way back for the leader of the theologically liberal Episcopal Church if he went through with the consecration of Gene Robinson.In an effort to put the best spin on the Lambeth meeting the Diocese ofNew Hampshire issued a statement saying, we echo their affirmationthat what we hold in common is much greater than that which divides usin proclaiming Good News to the world. We commend their resolve tofollow the 1998 Lambeth resolution calling for the Church to listen tothe experience of homosexual persons, and ... to assure them that theyare loved by God and that all baptized, believing and faithful persons,regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body ofChrist.But the Coptic Orthodox Church at its Annual Clergy convention presided by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark formally condemned Homosexuality, the Ordination of Homosexuals and Same-Sex Marriages.In the meantime, The AMERICAN ANGLICAN COUNCIL prepared for arealignment. We are beginning the process of realignment ofAnglicanism in North America that the Primates laid out for us in theirstatement. Our course is getting clearer each week, said the Rev.Canon David Anderson, AAC President. With the Archbishop ofCanterbury encouragement, the AAC Bishops Committee on AdequateEpiscopal Oversight is coordinating requests for oversight, said CanonAnderson. We are proceeding deliberately and carefully to insure thatthis oversight is available sooner rather than later. The AAC Boardalso moved forward with the establishment of a Network of ConfessingDioceses and Parishes in the Episcopal Church.In a separate note Archbishop Drexel Gomez who attended theExtraordinary emergency meeting of primates said the appointment ofRobinson was  unacceptable by an overwhelming majority of Primates,and said dreadful consequences of sodomy to a state, and on the extent to which this abominable vice may be secretly carried on and spread, we cannot, on the principles of sound policy, consider the punishment as too severe.ROBINSON CONSECRATEDAmidst much hoopla Robinson was consecrated on an ice hockey rink in Durham, NH Nov. 2, 2003.  First came the objectors. The Rev. Dr. Earle Fox launched into a statement about the high percentage of homosexuals who engage in anal and oral sex. After he began to talk about rimming he was interrupted by Griswold who asked him to get to the main point of his speech. Fox then talked about the physical and spiritual consequences of homosexual behavior and that God would never bless such a behavior. Next up was a woman parishioner from the parish of St. Mark Episcopal Church in Ashland, NH. Meredith Harwood read a prepared statement that said to press forward with this consecration was to turn one back on almighty God, and the clear teaching that sexual activity outside of marriage was wrong. Inclusivity without transformation is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, she said. Finally the Suffragan Bishop of Albany, David Bena stood up and read astatement on behalf of 38 ECUSA and Canadian bishops, and said thechosen lifestyle of Robinson was incompatible with Scripture and thatto proceed with this consecration stands at odds with that teaching.Krister Stendahl read a letter from the Archbishop of Uppsala commending the occasion. In his speech Robinson spoke of those who find themselves on the margins and who have not known the year of the Lord’s favor.Following the objections a group of dissenters left the ice rink and attended an alternate Eucharist at Durham Evangelical Free Church.Worldwide outrage reached fervor pitch.The AMERICAN ANGLICAN COUNCIL protested the consecration and twenty Anglican primates who opposed the ordination of homosexuals announced that they would split from their North American counterparts. The primates made public their decision to break away from the Episcopal Church of the USA.THIRTY-EIGHT BISHOPS signed a letter of objection to the consecration. Their statement read in part said, In keeping with our consecrationpledge to guard the faith, we, the undersigned bishops are registeringour objection to the consecration of a person whose chosen lifestyleis incompatible with Scripture and the teaching of this church. Weendorse the assessment of the Primates of the Communion who wrote that as a result of this consecration...The future of the Communion itselfwill be put in jeopardy. In this case, the ministry of this one bishopwill not be recognised by most of the Anglican world, and manyprovinces are likely to consider themselves to be out of Communion with the Episcopal Church (USA).A number of Primates of the Global South responded to the consecration of Gene Robinson saying, It is with profound sadness and pain that we have arrived at this moment in the history of the Anglican Communion. We are appalled that the authorities within the Episcopal Church USA(ECUSA) have ignored the heartfelt plea of the Communion not to proceed with the scheduled consecration of Canon Gene Robinson. They have ignored the clear and strong warning of its detrimental consequences for the unity of the Communion...CENTRAL FLORIDA BISHOP JOHN W. HOWE blasted Griswold saying he should resign.  My heart is breaking over yesterday consecration of the Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire, he wrote. By virtue of this action, we in the Episcopal Church, USA have ignored the counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Meeting of the Anglican Primates (as recently as two and a half weeks ago, which you yourself signed!), the Anglican Communion Council, the most recent Lambeth Conference (in 1998), and the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops.IN THE DIOCESE OF NEW JERSEYa pregnant lesbian priest who runsDiocesan happenings, a sort of Cursillo for youth was exposed byVirtuosity with both bishops approving her position, seeing nothingcontrary to Scripture or even common sense, to allow this awful rolemodel to run a youth program.WHILE IN CANADA the New Westminster Bishop came down hard on seven orthodox parish priests and said he was bringing them up on charges. The bully of Vancouver, Michael Ingham, officially charged all seven clergy with disobedience.AND IN THE DIOCESE OF PUERTO RICO, The Rev. David Alvarez was inhibited, one of three orthodox priests including a universityprofessor for standing up to the bishop there, a bishop who supportedECUSA same-sex blessings and the ordination of an avowed sodomite.MEANWHILE ECUSA LEADERS WRESTLED OVER the meaning of Episcopal oversight. The first view, that of adequate episcopal oversight, was being pushed by the American Anglican Council with the blessing of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates. ECUSA Presiding Bishop had a different take on what that means. He argued for alternative Episcopal care, a different notion altogether. What the orthodox wanted was a flying bishop arrangement not unlike that in the Church of England. The AAC created an application process for congregations seeking adequate episcopal oversight.AN OPEN LETTER TO THE DIOCESE OF EL CAMINO REAL from The Standing Committee revealed a totally dysfunctional bishop in the person of Richard L. Shimpfky which saw financial shortfalls and clear canonical violations by the bishop. This matter will be resolved by his removal me time in 2004.Following his consecration V. Gene Robinson, the new activist homosexual bishop of New Hampshire said he believed a split was possible and if there must be a parting of the ways then so be it. He said it may be time for his denomination to split because of theological differences.ONE OF THE GREAT EFFORTS AT RECONCILING OPPOSING VIEWS to come out of the recent Lambeth Conference was a commission set up by Dr. Williams and headed up by Irish Primate Robin Williams to explore diverse views on homosexuality. A group of scholars was put together and told to come up with a report by September 2004.DIOCESE OF FT. WORTH, Bishop Jack Iker opined at his diocesan convention that he had about had enough and told his people so. I am weary of the battles and debates, but I will not be silenced or intimidated. I will not give up or give in or go away. Like many faithful Episcopalians across the United States, I am alarmed by the relentless efforts in this Church to create a new religion - call it Episcopalianism - which is increasingly at variance with the teaching of Holy Scripture and historic Christianity. I am tired of the General Convention religion that attempts to give us a new and improved version of Christian faith and practice every three years.TWO BISHOPS and a major orthodox Episcopal organization called on the Presiding Bishop to resign following his consecration of a non-celibate homosexual to the episcopacy. Central Florida Bishop John W. Howe, Bishop William Wantland (Eau Claire ret.) and a national Episcopal ministry called Communion Parishes with more than 6,000 signed up members, said Griswold should step down as ECUSA leader. Just under half of Colorado clergy are part of the Communion clergy of that diocese. They said Griswold was leading the Episcopal Church away from the historic Christian Faith and towards increasing isolation both in the Anglican Communion and in worldwide Christianity, because of his pansexual views.While in the DIOCESE OF NEVADA the clergy and laity approved a resolution permitting same-sex blessing ceremonies but then said it would not be enacted in any parish until a parish policy was adopted, the priests consented and there was a Christian community which could also bless the relationship.BUT THE BIG ISSUE IN THE COMING MONTHS WILL BE OVER PROPERTY. David Booth Beers, the Presiding Bishop’s chancellor said if a congregation leaves the ECUSA the remnant will retain title to church property for the diocese. It became apparent that ECUSA’s revisionist bishops real interests were power and property, not the gospel and mission.But revisionist bishops were not getting it all their own way. In the DIOCESE OF COLORADO, theologian Dr. Ephraim Radner and evangelical priest Don Armstrong struck the new revisionist bishop, Rob Oneill with some theological lightning bolts of their own. They wrote him a letter saying his choices were to disassociate himself from the actions of General Convention and honor his consecration vows to uphold the historic faith and order of the church, or have the integrity of your convictions and depart, leaving the Diocese of Colorado to find new leadership.FORWARD IN FAITH, NORTH AMERICA released a letter they sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to certain select Primates of the Anglican Communion urgently requesting a consultation with Dr. Williams to ask his support for their plan to appropriate and implement the Primates resolve to make adequate provision for episcopal oversight by the consecration of the two men previously nominated as episcopal candidates. Dr. Rowan Williams ignored their letters.The RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH announced that it was impossible to maintain further contacts whatsoever with a church that elevated a homosexual to the post of bishop and with the bishop himself. We will not be able to co-operate with those people either in the realm of theological dialogue or in the humanitarian, religious and public spheres. We cannot afford even to a certain degree share their position, which is, in our opinion, profoundly anti-Christian and sacrilegious, read the ROC statement. The ROC burned down a church in Russia where a priest had married two gay men.And the ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NIGERIA sent Griswold another message saying you can take your money and shove it. Primate Peter Akinola said it would be preposterous for dioceses and bishops in his country to continue to receive assistance from the church in America. The Primate of the Anglican Church in Nigeria who is also President of the Nigerian Christian Association (CAN) said the severance of relationship between the Anglican Communion in his country with its counterpart in the U.S. over the ordination of Rev. Gene Robinson, a gay, was TOTAL.And Caribbean Anglicans wouldn’t accept an American gay bishop either, warning of overwhelming opposition to the ECUSA. The CARIBBEAN ANGLICAN COMMUNION will maintain a formal relationship with the Episcopal Church while keeping the matter under critical review pending the findings of a commission expected in a year, said a statement.And a meeting of the ANGLICAN ORIENTAL ORTHODOX INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION, which was to have taken place at Walsingham was postponed at the suggestion of the Heads of the Coptic Orthodox Church (His Holiness Pope Shenouda III), the Syrian Orthodox Church (His Holiness Patriarch Zakka I) and the Armenian Orthodox Church, Catholico state of ilicia (His Holiness Catholicos Aram I), who met in Antelias, Lebanon, on 17 and 18 October 2003. The reason the present time is clearly a moment of uncertainty in the life of the Anglican Communion, with the consecration of a homosexual person in a committed, same-sex relationship as a Bishop within the Episcopal Church (USA), they said.And in the DIOCESE OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA a resolution affirming the Statement of the Primates of the Anglican Communion of October 16, 2003 was defeated by an extremely small margin of 167 - 161 at their annual Convention.While in the DIOCESE OF CENTRAL NEW YORK, delegates of St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Syracuse, declined to participate in a worship service in which representatives of the diocese101 parishes were invited to pour small bottles of water into a bowl. Bishop Gladstone Skip Adams blessed the water, symbolizing the common life of the diverse diocese that stretches from Canada to Philadelphia and Utica to Waterloo. As lines of people emptied small vials of water into clear bowls, orthodox priest Raymond Dague carried a bottle of olive oil to the bishop. This is a sign of how fractured the Anglican community is, you cannot mix water and oil.And in the DIOCESE OF NORTHWEST TEXAS a good ol boy rancher named Ray Snead from Dalhart, TX did a straw poll of his diocese and learned that though the bishop who is orthodox, those surrounding him were not, but who exert a lot of power in the diocese. Of some 3,300 letters he sent out polling Robinson’s consecration 84 percent said they did not approve. END OF PART FIVE

(Part 4)   By David W. Virtue   THEN ANOTHER BOMBSHELL EXPLODED.    On Saturday, June 7th, the Rev. Canon V. Eugene Robinson was elected by the Convention of the Diocese of New Hampshire to succeed the current diocesan bishop. A practicing homosexual canon who left his wife was the favorite to be the next Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire. Canon Gene Robinson, 53, the second most senior figure within the diocese of New Hampshire beat out three other candidates and was elected bishop coadjutor. He replaced the retiring Rt. Rev. Douglas E. Theuner. Canon Robinson was described as the most dangerous man in the American Church. Seminary Dean Dr. Peter Moore (TESM) opined that the election of an openly gay man to be the bishop of New Hampshire would provide comfort and encouragement to a tiny minority within the worldwide Anglican Communion. Revisionist Washington Bishop John Chane said the election of Robinson would be a challenge to the Holy Spirit.     Canon Bill Atwood of EKKLESIA said the Global South majority of Primates and bishops were so offended by the conduct of Canada, UK, and ECUSA in the last ten days, they were no longer going to be willing to have parallel jurisdiction. I’m guessing, he writes, that what will emerge is replacement jurisdiction. By doing so it will not allow for the cancer to continue without being addressed.     The Brazilian Diocese of Recife promptly declared itself out of Communion with both the Diocese of New Westminster and New Hampshire.   Bishop Robinson Cavilcanti in a letter to VIRTUOSITY said the acts by those two dioceses was contrary to Scripture and the Lambeth Conference resolution. And in the ECUSA the first parish in the DIOCESE OF TENNESSEE left the Episcopal Church for the AMIA. It was the 51st Episcopal Church to  leave the theologically fractured denomination. The new congregation took the name Faith Anglican Church. The parish located itself in the rapidly growing suburb of Memphis.   The 15th Annual Assembly of FORWARD IN FAITH, NORTH AMERICA met in Rosemont, at the Church of the Good Shepherd, near Philadelphia and announced that the creation of an orthodox Province of the Anglican Communion in North America was just around the corner. The group also called for the immediate consecration of two orthodox bishops. The Assembly was held at the Evangelical Anglo-Catholic parish in Rosemont, whose rector, Fr. David Moyer has been deposed by ultra-liberal Bishop Charles E. Bennison. Among the dozen bishops from the Church of England, Africa, the Southern Cone, Australia and the Continuum were five bishops from The Episcopal Church including the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman, (Quincy) Rt. Rev. William Wantland, (Eau Claire, ret) Rt. Rev. Donald Parsons, (Quincy ret.) Rt. Jack Leo Iker (Ft. Worth) and the Rt. Rev. Edward W. MacBurney (Quincy, ret.).  Meeting under the    Banner We have This Gospel to Proclaim - Good News for Today’s World, delegates heard leaders tell them that now was the time for the creation of an orthodox Province of the Anglican Communion in North America. The province must exist and must exist now, said Australian Archbishop John Hepworth, the new leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion, (TAC) a continuing Anglican group that broke with the ECUSA at St. Louis in 1978. We want to consecrate bishops because we are going to the same place and we have the same destination. FIFNA and the TAC have resolved one way or another, to have an orthodox province of Anglicans in the world. The Rt. Rev. John Broadhurst, chairman of Forward in Faith International and Bishop of Fullam (UK) said the situation was just another nail in the coffin of unity. We are divided over women bishops and moral teaching, which different people hold passionately. It is gospel unity verses passionately held beliefs.     The CHURCH PENSION GROUP issued a blockbuster report mid-year expressing alarm that not enough young people were being attracted into the ordained ministry, with far-reaching implications for The Episcopal Church itself. A sobering analysis of church attendance revealed that on an average Sunday, 17.5 percent of the people in the pews were attending only 3.3 percent of Episcopal churches. At the same time, only 15.4 percent of Episcopalians attend 47.5 percent of Episcopal churches on an average Sunday. The CPG asked the question, Are we still a denomination of small churches?     Nearly 50 percent of the churches are in the family group with an average Sunday attendance of one to 75 people. FOR SOME 3,465 CHURCHES THE ACTUAL SUNDAY ATTENDANCE WAS 37, a startlingly low number, the report said. By contrast there are only a handful of really big churches. In what the CPG calls there source category, those churches with an average Sunday attendance of over 400, there were only 245 churches.   Further lamentations about the election of a gay bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire came from the Bishop of Albany, Dan Herzog and the Bishop of Tennessee, Bertram Herlong.    VIRTUOSITY wrote at the time that the battle for the soul of the Anglican Communion, which had been simmering for some years in the Anglican Communion, had now broken out into full-scale war.   Revisionists and Evangelicals were now locked in fierce combat over the Church doctrine on what constitutes true morality.    The injunction against the former Accokeek rector, the Rev. Samuel L. Edwards was lifted bringing closure to that nasty little battle between the former Bishop of Washington Jane Dixon who had filed a lawsuit against the ECUSA Anglo-Catholic priest. Edwards left ECUSA and joined with the Anglican Province of Christ the King.     TWENTY-FOUR orthodox bishops of the Episcopal Church signed an open letter to the primates of the Anglican Communion stating that a crisis of faith and order now existed in The Episcopal Church and they called on them to address the situation under your leadership. In their letter they state that the election in New Hampshire of a man who openly confesses an active homosexual relationship to be Bishop Coadjutor, and the inclusion of a measure affirming the blessing of same-sex unions on the agenda of the upcoming General Convention, served as symbols of a desperately confused, errant and disintegrating Anglican province. At stake were the fundamental doctrines of apostolicity and of marriage.  Separation was now a conceptual reality in The Episcopal Church. The 24 bishops also declared themselves out of communion with the Diocese of New Westminster and Bishop Michael Ingham.     GENERAL CONVENTION loomed on the horizon with promises of moral and theological strife. No one was disappointed.   An Ad Hoc Committee sponsored petition calling for the rejection of homosexual marriages and the election of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson garnered 52 Episcopal Church Wardens and 1,000 laity, but it failed to move the powers that be.   A meeting of six Primates, 15 orthodox ECUSA bishops, several theologians and a number of concerned clergy met at Truro Episcopal Church in northern Virginia to discuss a strategy if ECUSA General Convention passed either one or both resolutions concerning rites for same sex blessings and consents for Gene Robinson to be the next Bishop of New Hampshire. An official press release said that a constitutional crisis and dramatic realignment would take place if the ECUSA House of Bishops passed either of these two resolutions.     Virtuosity was told by Charles Nalls, who heads the Canon Law Institute that at least 100 large ECUSA parishes are seeking legal advice and turning over tough decisions regarding their future. These are parishes with no fixed churchmanship. They range from Evangelicals to Anglo-Catholics, said Nalls.     Seeing the crisis facing him PB Frank Griswold plead for understanding in a Letter to the Primates on July 22. The polity of our church places the election of a bishop and the nomination process which precedes it entirely in the hands of the electing diocese.    Rowan Williams expressed his own concern and in a letter to the Primates he said anxiety threatened the Anglican Communion common life. He raised the question whether the communion wanted to be a Communion, or just a federation of local churches.   The archbishop launched into the Episcopal Church mess urging Episcopalians not to pick a gay bishop. In a private letter to his fellow primates, Dr Rowan Williams urged individual provinces in the worldwide Anglican Church to delay unilateral decisions that could destroy its unity. His plea was seen as an 11th-hour attempt to persuade the Episcopal Church, the American version of the Church of England, to prevent Canon Gene Robinson becoming Bishop of New Hampshire. His appeal fell on deaf ears.     GENERAL CONVENTION OPENED with deep foreboding. The bishops quickly approved a procedure for Robinson to get consents and after all the politicking was over the votes were in from both the House of Deputies and House of Bishops, and Robinson was confirmed among the elect.   This despite charges that Robinsons OUTRIGHT website for homosexually oriented youth, exposed by VIRTUOSITY, was only a click away from hard core porn. Robinson also managed to weather sexual harassment charges, paving the way for his election to be the next Bishop of New Hampshire.    Following his confirmation some 20 orthodox ECUSA bishops lead by Bishop Duncan decried the confirmation and with deep emotion in his voice he read a statement that said the Episcopal Church would be subject to discipline, and had divided itself from millions of Anglican Christians around the world. But the outcry and outrage from Primates and orthodox bishops from within ECUSA over his election would rage on for several months.     WEST INDIES archbishop Drexel Gomez wrote to Frank Griswold saying that you seem not yet to have taken the full measure of the destructive potential General Convention affirmation of a new teaching and order with respect to homosexuality will have for the communion God has granted us, nor do you seem to acknowledge sufficiently that the divine gift itself comes as something with a defined nature for whose integrity we are responsible, individually and collectively.  Griswold ignored his pleas.     Some 4500 petitions were received from several conservative ministries opposing same-sex unions and the nomination of Gene Robinson to be the next Bishop of New Hampshire were received at General Convention. This petition is an expression of the grave concern that the overwhelming majority of Episcopalians feel for the items that have become central to this convention over the last 30 years, but do not connect with the real issues of how to keep marriage and family together in the parish.     Another story by-lined Gay Rites Would Not Bless Ecumenism Could also Impair Anglican Work Overseas, said that Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and the formularies of every mainline Protestant denomination except for the United Church of Christ opposed blessings same-sex unions or allowing non-celibate gay clergy.   Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan expressed his grief and a Statement from Anglican Mainstream greatly regretted the vote to confirm the appointment of a gay bishop.   The Bishop of the Diocese of Nelson, New Zealand issued a statement condemning the confirmation and Australian Archbishop Peter Jensen noted with profound regret the confirmation of the election of Canon Gene Robinson. He said it violated the clear traditional teaching of the Christian Church, which is based on the clear teaching of the Scripture.   The Anglican Communion in New Westminster made up of 11 biblically orthodox priests and eight congregations came out in support of Anglican Mainstream over the confirmation of Robinson. The whole Communion roiled in turmoil.   Four ECUSA dioceses - Springfield, Florida, Central Florida and South Carolina held special Diocesan Conventions to discuss the crisis in ECUSA. The withholding of funds to the National Church became the new game in town.   In a Virtuosity interview with AAC PRESIDENT CANON DAVID ANDERSON, the mainstream president said he would convene a meeting in Plano, Texas on Oct 7, 8, 9 for leaders of dioceses and parishes who are biblically orthodox to come together, take counsel and seek God leading. He also applauded the Archbishop of Canterbury for calling an extraordinary meeting of the worldwide Anglican Primates in London in October. Bishop Duncan, Chairman of the AAC Bishops Network wrote, I am confident that the Archbishop will make adequate provision for mainstream Anglicans in North America.     FORWARD IN FAITH wrote a press release with a headline that screamed ECUSA HAS IGNORED CANTERBURY.  Fr. David L. Moyer said the revisionist majority had taken the Episcopal Church out of the Christian religion and severed it from any claim to uphold Biblical, Catholic, Apostolic, and Evangelical Faith and Order. The Episcopal Church had ignored and dismissed the counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and has rejected the mind of Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church as a denomination had willfully created a new religion.   Following Robinson election a raft of international primates, bishops and orthodox diocesan ECUSA bishops came out with statements condemning the actions of General Convention.     The most potent came from the Anglican Church of Uganda.  Homosexuality will not be tolerated, said its leaders. Canon Jackson Turyagyenda, the provincial secretary at Namirembe cathedral  said we protest the inclusion of gays in church activities, let alone as church leaders. Our position has not changed, we are not ready to have communion with those who ordain or bless marriages of gay people.   In Uganda as in numerous African Provinces and diocese their leaders were furious.   Peter Steinfels wrote in The New York Times that the Episcopal Church tottered on the brink of schism even self-destruction, theologically and ideologically fractured, like many American religious groups, over homosexuality and other issues prominent in the nation's culture wars.   In a no brainer vote, George Werner handily defeated Louie Crew two to one to continue his role as president of the House of Deputies.   But a little reported on RESOLUTION B001 revealed the true state of the ECUSA. It came before the House of Bishops, authored by Bishop Keith Ackerman of Quincy, asking the HOB to affirm their continued belief in two things. The first was the statement found in the Articles of Religion, the church constitution, and in the Ordination Services that we believe The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to contain all things necessary for Salvation. The resolution was voted down. Stunned, Bishop Ackerman asked for a roll call vote. One by one the bishops rose and were counted.  Eighty-four of them refused to affirm that scripture contains what is needed for salvation. Eighty-four of them refused to affirm the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral.  Only sixty-six voted for these core truths. The failure to pass what Scripture and the Prayer Book affirmed spoke volumes more than the issue of sexuality it touched the very core of Anglican faith and practice. Its defeat truly signaled the end of ECUSA as a Christian denomination.     The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams republished an essay affirming committed homosexual relationships a move designed to ratchet up the anger in the Anglican Communion, making schism seem inevitable.     PRIOR TO THE EMERGENCY LAMBETH CONFERENCE a group of Southern hemisphere Primates met in Nairobi. The conservative archbishops were increasingly confident that they could force the expulsion of the American Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion over its liberal line on homosexuality. Rowan Williams, contemplated for the first time the possible break-up of the 70 million-strong worldwide Anglican Communion.   When things looked like they couldn’t get much worse for Griswold, two letters suddenly appeared in Virtuosity written by Griswold to Charles Bennison Bishop of Pennsylvania over Fr. David Moyer saying that Bennison heavy hand in dealing with the Anglo-Catholic priest was autocratic and monumentally unpastoral. Griswold cited Gerry Wolf and her willingness to let Keith Ackerman make a visitation to her orthodox parishes as an example. The letter fell on deaf ears.   A second letter by Griswold to Bennison only ratcheted up the pain on the PA revisionist bishop. Griswold wrote [The Archbishop of Canterbury] made it absolutely clear to me that he regards the situation as very serious in the life of the Communion. He also said that your stance serves to justify the actions of Rwanda and Singapore in the eyes of many around the Communion.     THE FALLOUT FROM THE ROBINSON BEGAN TO REVERBERATE with whole dioceses and individual parishes beginning to withhold monies. Griswold himself wrote in a desperate plea to his fellow Primates of the crisis saying, my own sense is that one of our Anglican gifts is to contain different theological perspectives within a context of common prayer. This is not a matter of compromise but of acknowledging that the truth as in Jesus is larger than any one point of view. The Global South Primates did not buy it.   IN THE DIOCESE OF NEW WESTMINSTER, the eight orthodox ACiNW parishes welcomed three Primates from Africa, India, and South American to a special service to celebrate their unity a special service on September 7, in Tsawwassen, British Columbia. Some1600 attended from across the globe came to celebrate, covenant and commission and to move forward in faith and hope, praying for the sweeping fires of spiritual revival in Canada. They also came to support the Rt. Rev. Terry Buckle the Bishop of the Yukon who was providing ecclesiastical cover for the ten besieged parishes.     It was payback time and New Westminster Michael Ingham invoked a rarely used church canon and fired the wardens, trustees and entire parish Synod delegation of St. Martins, a traditionalist parish in North Vancouver, saying the church had an irresolvable pastoral crisis. He attempted on Saturday to change the locks on the doors of St. Martins parish while the conference in Tsawassen was in progress and then sent his archdeacon to read a statement from himself to the congregation in which he alleged the parish was in  turmoil because of its failure to replace a biblically orthodox priest who resigned over the Bishops approval of same sex blessings. Bishop Ingham promptly named his own replacements for the parish positions. The Primates promptly condemned his actions. The Yukon bishop was commissioned by two primates to serve the ten orthodox parishes in the Diocese of New Westminster under siege by their bishop.   BACK IN NEW YORK a group of ECUSA bishops met with Griswold and gave him an earful about disaffected parishes leaving the ECUSA. He was told a massive rally of orthodox Episcopalians would meet next month in Dallas to consider their future in ECUSA. Griswold responded in letter on the meeting saying that the Robinson decision clearly caused pain, confusion and disbelief in many parts of the church, and a sense of rightness in other parts. He further said the meeting was very helpful to me in thinking about how we can assist our church in living through this time in faithfulness, taking care not to lose sight of the mission we share as members of Christrisen body, and the fact that our church is everywhere filled with life and a deep desire to embody the gospel. It was total rubbish that nobody was buying.     WITHHOLDING FUNDS became the new pastime. The DIOCESE OF FLORIDA and the DIOCESE OF DALLAS both said they would withhold funds from the National Church as did a slew of orthodox parishes around the country.     THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN RWANDA issued a statement on the actions of the 74th General Convention of the Episcopal Church saying the life style of a homosexual relationship is not expected of the character and qualification of an ordained man or woman Bishop, Priest or Deacon.     The DIOCESE OF FLORIDA decided to uninvite Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold for the much- anticipated consecration of John Howard as our Bishop Coadjutor. He replaces Bishop Stephen Jecko.     And the DIOCESE OF SOUTH CAROLINA passed three resolutions critical of the Episcopal Church. One declared the Episcopal Church under significant judgment by God because of its drift away from orthodox Christianity, as evidenced by the General Convention approving an openly gay bishop and accepting same-sex blessings. The second called on the top leaders of the Anglican Communion to require Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold to explain why he lobbied for the approval of the Rev. Gene Robinson, who is in a homosexual relationship, as bishop of New Hampshire. The resolution accused Griswold of leading the Episcopal Church into an entirely new teaching of the church in the area of human sexuality and called on the primates of the Anglican Communion -- the top leaders of the Episcopal Church parent body -- to ask him to explain his position.   The third resolution promised to help non-Western church leaders who lost financial support for speaking against the Episcopal Church’s approval of homosexual behavior.   And in what must have been one of the most interesting newspaper turns, the Philadelphia Gay News, featured a front-page story on Charles Bennison the revisionist, pro-gay Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania. In a three-column banner headline, Bishop Warned Not to Remove Priest, the Associated Press article blasted Bennison for attempting to remove Fr. David Moyer from his parish - the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, PA.     THE INTERNATIONAL ANGLICAN FURNACE continued to heat up. The feisty hard-headed Primate of Nigeria, Peter Akinola has taken on Archbishop   Ndungane of Southern Africa, and blasted him saying, Isn’t it a paradox that the Archbishop of Southern Africa sees no arrogance in those whose flagrant disregard of the stand of the entire Anglican Communion has plunged us into this sad and avoidable controversy.   Akinola also made it clear he would not be influenced by Western money, and he was prepared to cut ties with Western liberal dioceses and provinces that disobey Scripture. Archbishop Akinola was elected president of the Council of African Provinces of Africa (CAPA) this week.   IN THE ECUSA itself, in one diocese after another, special diocesan conventions revealed more hidden anger than was ever known. Griswolds notion of graceful conversation was now a bad joke.   In the DIOCESE OF CENTRAL FLORIDA five resolutions were unanimously passed overwhelmingly in support of Bishop John W. Howe’s opposition to the confirmation of Gene Robinson and same-sex blessings.   In the DIOCESE OF ALBANY, Bishops Dan Herzog and David Bena got resounding affirmations from their people in holding the line on same-sex unions and against the confirmation of Gene Robinson. Five resolutions were overwhelmingly passed. An attempt by an alternative group of clergy and laity to reverse the bishop’s vote, and diocesan thinking, was shot down by orthodox voices at the special diocesan convention.     And in the DIOCESE OF VIRGINIA, Bishop Peter Lee, a one-time moderate and now firmly in the camp of ECUSAS’s revisionist bishops got an earful from biblically orthodox clergy and laity living in the northern half of his diocese about the way he voted for Robinson at GC2003. AND IN THE SPIN FROM ECUSANATIONAL HEADQUARTERS about the effect of lost monies from orthodox dioceses, the revisionists who run the church said that if funds were withheld the national church would cut its budget that benefit children, women, the poor and the underprivileged. Nasty is as nasty does.     And in an evangelical Anglican conference in Blackpool, England Oxford theologian Dr. Alister McGrath ripped into New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham, telling more than 2,300 Evangelicals gathered at a four-day conference on mission, that he had lost the theological war and was forced to use canon law to get his way in the diocese. Ingham should be awarded the Spong medal for liberal bravery in the face of overwhelming theological arguments, he told an approving audience. Ingham would win the award in spades, he said.When I was younger, liberals and conservatives respected each other. In New Westminster we have an intellectually bankrupt liberal, and in desperation he is forcing his will on believing evangelicals, said the Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, an evangelical college that trains ordinands for the ministry. This is the unacceptable face of liberalism and it exposes the harshness, bullying character and dogmatism of this man.     END OF PART FOUR   *****

Ed: The news below comes as no surprise to us, given the ongoing issues with integrity and clergy discipline in Episcopal Church, as well as lack of accountability and lack of urgency. We cannot overstate the importance of the Episcopal Church cleaning up its act. In my eighteen years of parish ministry, I have had a bit of an eye roll every time new statistics come out. Don’t get me wrong, I think we all need markers of measurement to see what our church is doing well, and where we need to improve. I was not ready to receive the last set of numbers that I received from my bishop. At the House of Bishops meeting in March, the bishops gathered received some truly telling statistics that I will unpack and propose what I think we need to consider to address the issues: First, what does Sunday look like in the Episcopal Church right now? The last decade has been rather disastrous. In 2014, our  in person average Sunday attendance (ASA) was 604,938 . A decade later, the  latest statistics place it at 398,887 . Over a third (34%) of those regularly worshipping with us ten years ago were lost to death, indifference, or simply got out of the “church habit’ during the COVID-era lockdowns. Those same lockdowns gave us a new metric which really has too little data to be an effective tool – online average Sunday attendance. To be clear, one only needs to watch a portion of the service online in order to be counted. For 2024, 113,698 appear to have worshipped online as opposed to in-person. I do not wish to disparage this, since for the first time in the history of the Church, most congregations are finding ways to reach outside of their four walls and bring their services to living rooms and dens across the world. The congregation I serve even has those who worship online from other states and still provide needed pledge dollars for the work of the parish. The real question is, what does this metric really measure – and I’m not sure we can even figure that out for a few more years. Next, let’s consider Easter attendance. In  2014, 1.37 million  worshippers joined in our celebrations of the risen Jesus. Ten years later that number had fallen to  859,241 (a 37% decline) . It would seem as we dip further into a post-Christendom culture, even the tradition of twice yearly attendance in church for those with the most marginal of commitments is failing. I am among others who have noticed that the great number of pastoral sized parishes that dotted rural and county seat towns all over America have shrunk to the point where they can no longer retain one full-time clergy presence. In fact, the number of congregations that are now  under 50  on an average Sunday has increased dramatically.  In 2014, those congregations numbered 2,489 . As of last year, that number had climbed to  3,102  (an increase of 613 congregations. Those same congregations have a number of options to weigh ; part-time coverage, licensed lay ministry leadership, long term supply – none of those options really has a statistical bent on growth. In fact  one of the most trustworthy ways of ensuring some stability is a full time resident priest who commits to stay for a long tenure.  With the failing ability of smaller churches to attract, call, and retain a capable rector, the numbers will get only worse. But what about our larger congregations? For many years, I had heard that there was a law of outward tendency. Smaller churches would get smaller and larger ones would tend to grow. The new statistics really are punching a hole in that theory. In congregations reporting over 200 on an average Sunday, the decline is downright shocking. In 2014, there were  679 worshipping communities that had over 200 . By 2024, that number  dropped to 291 . So what is it, money problems? Hardly. The money is there, but it is in some limiting pockets. In 2014, the total dollar amount of endowments throughout the church was  $4.2 Billion . That increased to  $7.9 Billion by the close of 2024.  That figure does not include Trinity Wall Street, as their holdings in Manhattan properties would seriously skew the sample. But 20% of those funds are controlled by only 32 worshipping communities. In a religious environment like the Episcopal church, this is troubling simply because the funds are likely to remain at the parish level while more financially strapped congregations may fail. END

(Part 5) By David W. Virtue VIRTUOSITY In the orthodox DIOCESE OF PITTSBURGH, bishop Robert Duncan was called evil at a special diocesan convention by pro-sodomite revisionist forces with bleeding heart liberal laity writing letters saying that he had stolen the church from them. Duncan had said he would allow parishes who did not agree with General Convention election of Robinson to choose their own pathway. In the DIOCESE OF ALBANY, a small faction of liberal priests unhappy with the way Bishops Dan Herzog and David Bena voted at GC2003 tried to pull off a coup d’etat hoping to turn the diocese towards sexual inclusion (read perversity) with an alternative vision for the diocese. They tried and they failed. And in the DIOCESE OF COLORADO the new bishop Robert J. ONeill who came in on a ticket of moderation and inclusion to replace the compromised Jerry Winterrowd asked two of the most revisionist bishops in the Episcopal Church - Tom Shaw of Massachusetts and the former suffragan Barbara Harris to co-consecrate with James Jelinck at his own consecration. Griswold threw down the gauntlet and told the ANGLICAN COMMUNION DROP DEAD! He told Associated Press that he openly supported Gene Robinsons confirmation because Episcopalians in New Hampshire had overwhelmingly chosen him in their local election and had the right to make that choice. Griswold also argued that Scripture does not condemn same-sex relationships, a position conservatives vehemently reject. In the UK The Church Society, an evangelical organization within the Church of England, called for the expulsion of the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion for promoting a non-celibate homosexual to the episcopate. In a letter addressed to the Primates of the Anglican Communion dated September 15, the Church Society argued that the recent action by the Episcopal Church of the USA in agreeing to consecrate Gene Robinson is not an isolated incident but it serves to show how that body acting corporately has set themselves outside historic Christianity. The denomination has become a (North American) sect. Then news came that CANON JOHN PETERSON of the Anglican Consultative Council was attempting to manipulate the agenda of the primates October meeting in order to nullify conservative outcomes. Some classified documents were inadvertently given to Dr. Paul Zahl, an American orthodox Dean and a member of the International Anglican Doctrinal and Theological Commission [IADTC]. This deep-sixed Peterson control of the Primates meeting. AMIA BISHOP John Rodgers said that two overlapping jurisdictions in the ECUSA were untenable. There must be one Anglican Province in the country-region in fellowship with Canterbury, not two the concept of two overlapping jurisdictions is untenable for several reasons. For the Archbishop of Canterbury to remain in communion with those bishops, clergy and congregations that endorse the election and consecration of Bishop elect Robinson would morally and doctrinally corrupt the Anglican Communion itself. SYDNEY ARCHBISHOP Peter Jensen weighed in suggesting that the American arm of the worldwide church be expelled. He said time was running out for the Archbishop of Canterbury to act on homosexual issues dividing the worldwide Anglican Church. A GATHERING OF NEARLY 3,000 ORTHODOX ESPICOPALIANS IN DALLAS still shell-shocked by GC2003 decision to confirm Robinson, heard the Rev. David Roseberry issue a clarion call, we are finally free and we know what is at stake. God still does change lives and that we declare. We declared our support at General Convention on August 5 and we stood up on the votes and we asked for the intervention of the Primates. At Dallas, A PLACE TO STAND - A CALL TO ACTION was distributed to the attendees. The statement upheld the Great Commission, repudiated the actions of General Convention, repented for its part in the sins of the Episcopal Church, and called upon the Episcopal Church to repent and to reverse the unbiblical actions of the General Convention, stating its objection to the consecration of Canon Robinson as a bishop of the Church. FORWARD IN FAITH LEADER Fr. David Moyer called for full cooperation with Evangelical and Charismatic wings of the ECUSA, to achieve the goal of cleansing the Church and working towards renewal and reform. THE POPE SENT PRAYERS TO THE AAC meeting through Cardinal Ratzinger, bypassing  815 and a rebuke to Frank Griswold, a pointed at that did not go unnoticed by revisionists. A wrenching split in the fabric of the Communion if the Primates did not act it was predicted. Courage breeds courage, said the Bishop of Pittsburgh to the 2,700 attendees. THE PRIMATES also said they would intervene in the Episcopal Church then they met in Lambeth, and move to throw Frank Griswold and the Episcopal Church out of the Anglican Communion. THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE Some 37 Primates were ready to act as they gathered in Lambeth. And act they did. What emerged was the most honest, most difficult meeting any could recall reflected Robert Duncan with reports of the power of prayer and the falling of the Holy Spirit reported. Questions of law and constitutionality nearly derailed the meeting. The Communions center and its power shifted to the Global South. The Primates Meeting replaced the Anglican Consultative Council as the Communion’s key decision-making body (between Lambeth Conferences). Rowan Williams achieved presidency on his terms and his turf and the imits of Anglican diversity were clearly delineated. Scripture and Lambeth Conference teaching were determinative and Provinces could break communion with errant partners and Ecumenical and Inter-Faith considerations mattered profoundly. It was also a time to organize provincial responses to schism. Midway into their deliberations an unscripted press conference was held on the grounds of Lambeth Palace. Irish Archbishop Robin Eames told reporters that the Primates were telling their stories representing the cultural differences, while saying that there was a tremendous anxiety to maintain the Anglican Communion on a basis of collegiality, cooperation and the common faith. The UK movement REFORM urged the Primates to stand firm. A Statement at the conclusion of the meeting by the Primates said the actions of New Westminster to authorize a Public Rite of Blessing for those in committed same sex relationships, and by the 74th General Convention of the Episcopal Church (USA) to confirm the election of a priest in a committed same sex relationship to the office and work of a Bishop, threatened the unity of the Communion as well as relationships with other parts of Christ Church, as well as mission and witness, and relations with other faiths, in a world already confused in areas of sexuality, morality and theology, and polarize Christian opinion. The Primates of the Communion were givenenhanced responsibility entrusted to them by successive Lambeth Conferences, and they re- affirmed their common understanding of the centrality and authority of Scripture in determining the basis of their faith. In a unanimously-agreed statement, they strongly reaffirmed the global Anglican teaching on homosexuality, with the Primates concluding that if this consecration proceeds, we recognize that we have reached a crucial and critical point in the life of the Anglican Communion. They said that the future of the Communion itself would, therefore, be put in jeopardy. If Robinson is made a bishop, the statement said, his ministry would not be recognized by most of the Anglican world, with many provinces likely to consider themselves out of communion with the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA). AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES SAW VICTORY AT LAMBETH with Frank Griswold being told in clear and blunt terms that if appeared at, and/or consecrated Gene Robinson he would be declared anathema by the Archbishop of Canterbury and in time expelled from the Anglican Communion. Lines hardened and there was no way back for the leader of the theologically liberal Episcopal Church if he went through with the consecration of Gene Robinson. In an effort to put the best spin on the Lambeth meeting the Diocese of New Hampshire issued a statement saying, we echo their affirmation that what we hold in common is much greater than that which divides us in proclaiming Good News to the world. We commend their resolve to follow the 1998 Lambeth resolution calling for the Church tolisten to the experience of homosexual persons, and ... to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptized, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ. But the Coptic Orthodox Church at its Annual Clergy convention presided by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark formally condemned Homosexuality, the Ordination of Homosexuals and Same-Sex Marriages. In the meantime The AMERICAN ANGLICAN COUNCIL prepared for a realignment. We are beginning the process of realignment of Anglicanism in North America that the Primates laid out for us in their statement. Our course is getting clearer each week, said the Rev. Canon David Anderson, AAC President. With the Archbishop of Canterbury encouragement, the AAC Bishops Committee on Adequate Episcopal Oversight is coordinating requests for oversight, said Canon Anderson. We are proceeding deliberately and carefully to insure that this oversight is available sooner rather than later. The AAC Board also moved forward with the establishment of a Network of Confessing Dioceses and Parishes in the Episcopal Church. In a separate note Archbishop Drexel Gomez who attended the Extraordinary emergency meeting of primates said the appointment of Robinson was  unacceptable by an overwhelming majority of Primates, and said dreadful consequences of sodomy to a state, and on the extent to which this abominable vice may be secretly carried on and spread, we cannot, on the principles of sound policy, consider the punishment as too severe. ROBINSON CONSECRATED Amidst much hoopla Robinson was consecrated on an ice hockey rink in Durham, NH Nov. 2, 2003.  First came the objectors. The Rev. Dr. Earle Fox launched into a statement about the high percentage of homosexuals who engage in anal and oral sex. After he began to talk about rimming he was interrupted by Griswold who asked him to get to the main point of his speech. Fox then talked about the physical and spiritual consequences of homosexual behavior and that God would never bless such a behavior. Next up was a woman parishioner from the parish of St. Mark Episcopal Church in Ashland, NH. Meredith Harwood read a prepared statement that said to press forward with this consecration was to turn one back on almighty God, and the clear teaching that sexual activity outside of marriage was wrong. Inclusivity without transformation is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, she said. Finally the Suffragan Bishop of Albany, David Bena stood up and read a statement on behalf of 38 ECUSA and Canadian bishops, and said the chosen lifestyle of Robinson was incompatible with Scripture and that to proceed with this consecration stands at odds with that teaching. Krister Stendahl read a letter from the Archbishop of Uppsala commending the occasion. In his speech Robinson spoke of those who find themselves on the margins and who have not known the year of the Lord’s favor. Following the objections a group of dissenters left the ice rink and attended an alternate Eucharist at Durham Evangelical Free Church. Worldwide outrage reached fervor pitch. The AMERICAN ANGLICAN COUNCIL protested the consecration and twenty Anglican primates who opposed the ordination of homosexuals announced that they would split from their North American counterparts. The primates made public their decision to break away from the Episcopal Church of the USA. THIRTY-EIGHT BISHOPS signed a letter of objection to the consecration. Their statement read in part said, In keeping with our consecration pledge to guard the faith, we, the undersigned bishops are registering our objection to the consecration of a person whose chosen lifestyle is incompatible with Scripture and the teaching of this church. We endorse the assessment of the Primates of the Communion who wrote that as a result of this consecration...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 the Episcopal Church (USA). A number of Primates of the Global South responded to the consecration of Gene Robinson saying, It is with profound sadness and pain that we have arrived at this moment in the history of the Anglican Communion. We are appalled that the authorities within the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) have ignored the heartfelt plea of the Communion not to proceed with the scheduled consecration of Canon Gene Robinson. They have ignored the clear and strong warning of its detrimental consequences for the unity of the Communion... CENTRAL FLORIDA BISHOP JOHN W. HOWE blasted Griswold saying he should  resign.  My heart is breaking over yesterday consecration of the Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire, he wrote. By virtue of this action, we in the Episcopal Church, USA have ignored the counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Meeting of the Anglican Primates (as recently as two and a half weeks ago, which you yourself signed!), the Anglican Communion Council, the most recent Lambeth Conference (in 1998), and the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops. IN THE DIOCESE OF NEW JERSEY a pregnant lesbian priest who runs Diocesan happenings, a sort of Cursillo for youth was exposed by Virtuosity with both bishops approving her position, seeing nothing contrary to Scripture or even common sense, to allow this awful role model to run a youth program. WHILE IN CANADA the New Westminster Bishop came down hard on seven orthodox parish priests and said he was bringing them up on charges. The bully of Vancouver, Michael Ingham, officially charged all seven clergy with disobedience. AND IN THE DIOCESE OF PUERTO RICO, The Rev. David Alvarez was inhibited, one of three orthodox priests including a university professor for standing up to the bishop there, a bishop who supported ECUSA same-sex blessings and the ordination of an avowed sodomite. MEANWHILE ECUSA LEADERS WRESTLED OVER the meaning of Episcopal oversight. The first view, that of adequate episcopal oversight, was being pushed by the American Anglican Council with the blessing of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates. ECUSA Presiding Bishop had a different take on what that means. He argued for alternative Episcopal care, a different notion altogether. What the orthodox wanted was a flying bishop arrangement not unlike that in the Church of England. The AAC created an application process for congregations seeking adequate episcopal oversight.

(Part 4) By David W. Virtue THEN ANOTHER BOMBSHELL EXPLODED. On Saturday, June 7th, the Rev. Canon V. Eugene Robinson was elected by the Convention of the Diocese of New Hampshire to succeed the current diocesan bishop. A practicing homosexual canon who left his wife was the favorite to be the next Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire. Canon Gene Robinson, 53, the second most senior figure within the diocese of New Hampshire beat out three other candidates and was elected bishop coadjutor. He replaced the retiring Rt. Rev. Douglas E. Theuner. Canon Robinson was described as the most dangerous man in the American Church. Seminary Dean Dr. Peter Moore (TESM) opined that the election of an openly gay man to be the bishop of New Hampshire would provide comfort and encouragement to a tiny minority within the worldwide Anglican Communion. Revisionist Washington Bishop John Chane said the election of Robinson would be a challenge to the Holy Spirit. Canon Bill Atwood of EKKLESIA said the Global South majority of Primates and bishops were so offended by the conduct of Canada, UK, and ECUSA in the last ten days, they were no longer going to be willing to have parallel jurisdiction. I’m guessing, he writes, that what will emerge is replacement jurisdiction. By doing so it will not allow for the cancer to continue without being addressed. The Brazilian Diocese of Recife promptly declared itself out of Communion with both the Diocese of New Westminster and New Hampshire. Bishop Robinson Cavilcanti in a letter to VIRTUOSITY said the acts by those two dioceses was contrary to Scripture and the Lambeth Conference resolution. And in the ECUSA the first parish in the DIOCESE OF TENNESSEE left the Episcopal Church for the AMIA. It was the 51st Episcopal Church to  leave the theologically fractured denomination. The new congregation took the name Faith Anglican Church. The parish located itself in the rapidly growing suburb of Memphis. The 15th Annual Assembly of FORWARD IN FAITH, NORTH AMERICA met in Rosemont, at the Church of the Good Shepherd, near Philadelphia and announced that the creation of an orthodox Province of the Anglican Communion in North America was just around the corner. The group also called for the immediate consecration of two orthodox bishops. The Assembly was held at the Evangelical Anglo-Catholic parish in Rosemont, whose rector, Fr. David Moyer has been deposed by ultra-liberal Bishop Charles E. Bennison. Among the dozen bishops from the Church of England, Africa, the Southern Cone, Australia and the Continuum were five bishops from The Episcopal Church including the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman, (Quincy) Rt. Rev. William Wantland, (Eau Claire, ret) Rt. Rev. Donald Parsons, (Quincy ret.) Rt. Jack Leo Iker (Ft. Worth) and the Rt. Rev. Edward W. MacBurney (Quincy, ret.). Meeting under the      Banner We have This Gospel to Proclaim - Good News for Today’s World, delegates heard leaders tell them that now was the time for the creation of an orthodox Province of the Anglican Communion in North America. The province must exist and must exist now, said Australian Archbishop John Hepworth, the new leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion, (TAC) a continuing Anglican group that broke with the ECUSA at St. Louis in 1978. We want to consecrate bishops because we are going to the same place and we have the same destination. FIFNA and the TAC have resolved one way or another, to have an orthodox province of Anglicans in the world. The Rt. Rev. John Broadhurst, chairman of Forward in Faith International and Bishop of Fullam (UK) said the situation was just another nail in the coffin of unity. We are divided over women bishops and moral teaching, which different people hold passionately. It is gospel unity verses passionately held beliefs. The CHURCH PENSION GROUP issued a blockbuster report mid-year expressing alarm that not enough young people were being attracted into the ordained ministry, with far-reaching implications for The Episcopal Church itself. A sobering analysis of church attendance revealed that on an average Sunday, 17.5 percent of the people in the pews were attending only 3.3 percent of Episcopal churches. At the same time, only 15.4 percent of Episcopalians attend 47.5 percent of Episcopal churches on an average Sunday. The CPG asked the question, Are we still a denomination of small churches? Nearly 50 percent of the churches are in the family group with an average Sunday attendance of one to 75 people. FOR SOME 3,465 CHURCHES THE ACTUAL SUNDAY ATTENDANCE WAS 37, a startlingly low number, the report said. By contrast there are only a handful of really big churches. In what the CPG calls there source category, those churches with an average Sunday attendance of over 400, there were only 245 churches. Further lamentations about the election of a gay bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire came from the Bishop of Albany, Dan Herzog and the Bishop of Tennessee, Bertram Herlong. VIRTUOSITY wrote at the time that the battle for the soul of the Anglican Communion, which had been simmering for some years in the Anglican Communion, had now broken out into full-scale war. Revisionists and Evangelicals were now locked in fierce combat over the Church doctrine on what constitutes true morality. The injunction against the former Accokeek rector, the Rev. Samuel L. Edwards was lifted bringing closure to that nasty little battle between the former Bishop of Washington Jane Dixon who had filed a lawsuit against the ECUSA Anglo-Catholic priest. Edwards left ECUSA and joined with the Anglican Province of Christ the King. TWENTY-FOUR orthodox bishops of the Episcopal Church signed an open letter to the primates of the Anglican Communion stating that a crisis of faith and order now existed in The Episcopal Church and they called on them to address the situation under your leadership. In their letter they state that the election in New Hampshire of a man who openly confesses an active homosexual relationship to be Bishop Coadjutor, and the inclusion of a measure affirming the blessing of same-sex unions on the agenda of the upcoming General Convention, served as symbols of a desperately confused, errant and disintegrating Anglican province. At stake were the fundamental doctrines of apostolicity and of marriage.  Separation was now a conceptual reality in The Episcopal Church. The 24 bishops also declared themselves out of communion with the Diocese of New Westminster and Bishop Michael Ingham. GENERAL CONVENTION loomed on the horizon with promises of moral and theological strife. No one was disappointed. An Ad Hoc Committee sponsored petition calling for the rejection of homosexual marriages and the election of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson garnered 52 Episcopal Church Wardens and 1,000 laity, but it failed to move the powers that be. A meeting of six Primates, 15 orthodox ECUSA bishops, several theologians and a number of concerned clergy met at Truro Episcopal Church in northern Virginia to discuss a strategy if ECUSA General Convention passed either one or both resolutions concerning rites for same sex blessings and consents for Gene Robinson to be the next Bishop of New Hampshire. An official press release said that a constitutional crisis and dramatic realignment would take place if the ECUSA House of Bishops passed either of these two resolutions. Virtuosity was told by Charles Nalls, who heads the Canon Law Institute that at least 100 large ECUSA parishes are seeking legal advice and turning over tough decisions regarding their future. These are parishes with no fixed churchmanship. They range from Evangelicals to Anglo-Catholics, said Nalls. Seeing the crisis facing him PB Frank Griswold plead for understanding in a Letter to the Primates on July 22. The polity of our church places the election of a bishop and the nomination process which precedes it entirely in the hands of the electing diocese. Rowan Williams expressed his own concern and in a letter to the Primates he said anxiety threatened the Anglican Communion common life. He raised the question whether the communion wanted to be a Communion, or just a federation of local churches. The Archbishop launched into the Episcopal Church mess urging Episcopalians not to pick a gay bishop. In a private letter to his fellow primates, Dr Rowan Williams urged individual provinces in the worldwide Anglican Church to delay unilateral decisions that could destroy its unity. His plea was seen as an 11th-hour attempt to persuade the Episcopal Church, the American version of the Church of England, to prevent Canon Gene Robinson becoming Bishop of New Hampshire. His appeal fell on deaf ears. GENERAL CONVENTION OPENED with deep foreboding. The bishops quickly approved a procedure for Robinson to get consents and after all the politicking was over the votes were in from both the House of Deputies and House of Bishops, and Robinson was confirmed among the elect. This despite charges that Robinsons OUTRIGHT website for homosexually oriented youth, exposed by VIRTUOSITY, was only a click away from hard core porn. Robinson also managed to weather sexual harassment charges, paving the way for his election to be the next Bishop of New Hampshire. Following his confirmation some 20 orthodox ECUSA bishops lead by Bishop Duncan decried the confirmation and with deep emotion in his voice he read a statement that said the Episcopal Church would be subject to discipline, and had divided itself from millions of Anglican Christians around the world. But the outcry and outrage from Primates and orthodox bishops from within ECUSA over his election would rage on for several months. WEST INDIES archbishop Drexel Gomez wrote to Frank Griswold saying that you seem not yet to have taken the full measure of the destructive potential General Convention affirmation of a new teaching and order with respect to homosexuality will have for the communion God has granted us, nor do you seem to acknowledge sufficiently that the divine gift itself comes as something with a defined nature for whose integrity we are responsible, individually and collectively.  Griswold ignored his pleas. Some 4500 petitions were received from several conservative ministries opposing same-sex unions and the nomination of Gene Robinson to be the next Bishop of New Hampshire were received at General Convention. This petition is an expression of the grave concern that the overwhelming majority of Episcopalians feel for the items that have become central to this convention over the last 30 years, but do not connect with the real issues of how to keep marriage and family together in the parish. Another story by-lined Gay Rites Would Not Bless Ecumenism Could also Impair Anglican Work Overseas, said that Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and the formularies of every mainline Protestant denomination except for the United Church of Christ opposed blessings same-sex unions or allowing non-celibate gay clergy. Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan expressed his grief and a Statement from Anglican Mainstream greatly regretted the vote to confirm the appointment of a gay bishop. The Bishop of the Diocese of Nelson, New Zealand issued a statement condemning the confirmation and Australian Archbishop Peter Jensen noted with profound regret the confirmation of the election of Canon Gene Robinson. He said it violated the clear traditional teaching of the Christian Church, which is based on the clear teaching of the Scripture. The Anglican Communion in New Westminster made up of 11 biblically orthodox priests and eight congregations came out in support of Anglican Mainstream over the confirmation of Robinson. The whole Communion roiled in turmoil. Four ECUSA dioceses - Springfield, Florida, Central Florida and South Carolina held special Diocesan Conventions to discuss the crisis in ECUSA. The withholding of funds to the National Church became the new game in town. In a Virtuosity interview with AAC PRESIDENT CANON DAVID ANDERSON, the mainstream president said he would convene a meeting in Plano, Texas on Oct 7, 8, 9 for leaders of dioceses and parishes who are biblically orthodox to come together, take counsel and seek God leading. He also applauded the Archbishop of Canterbury for calling an extraordinary meeting of the worldwide Anglican Primates in London in October. Bishop Duncan, Chairman of the AAC Bishops Network wrote, I am confident that the Archbishop will make adequate provision for mainstream Anglicans in North America. FORWARD IN FAITH wrote a press release with a headline that screamed ECUSA HAS IGNORED CANTERBURY.  Fr. David L. Moyer said the revisionist majority had taken the Episcopal Church out of the Christian religion and severed it from any claim to uphold Biblical, Catholic, Apostolic, and Evangelical Faith and Order. The Episcopal Church had ignored and dismissed the counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and has rejected the mind of Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church as a denomination had willfully created a new religion. Following Robinson election a raft of international primates, bishops and orthodox diocesan ECUSA bishops came out with statements condemning the actions of General Convention. The most potent came from the Anglican Church of Uganda.  Homosexuality will not be tolerated, said its leaders. Canon Jackson Turyagyenda, the provincial secretary at Namirembe cathedral  said we protest the inclusion of gays in church activities, let alone as church leaders. Our position has not changed, we are not ready to have communion with those who ordain or bless marriages of gay people. In Uganda as in numerous African Provinces and diocese their leaders were furious. Peter Steinfels wrote in The New York Times that the Episcopal Church tottered on the brink of schism even self-destruction, theologically and ideologically fractured, like many American religious groups, over homosexuality and other issues prominent in the nation's culture wars. In a no brainer vote, George Werner handily defeated Louie Crew two to one to continue his role as president of the House of Deputies. But a little reported on RESOLUTION B001 revealed the true state of the ECUSA. It came before the House of Bishops, authored by Bishop Keith Ackerman of Quincy, asking the HOB to affirm their continued belief in two things. The first was the statement found in the Articles of Religion, the church constitution, and in the Ordination Services that we believe The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to contain all things necessary for Salvation. The resolution was voted down. Stunned, Bishop Ackerman asked for a roll call vote. One by one the Bishops rose and were counted.  Eighty-four of them refused to affirm that scripture contains what is needed for salvation. Eighty- four of them refused to affirm the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral.  Only sixty-six voted for these core truths. The failure to pass what Scripture and the Prayer Book affirmed spoke volumes more than the issue of sexuality it touched the very core of Anglican faith and practice. Its defeat truly signaled the end of ECUSA as a Christian denomination. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams republished an essay affirming committed homosexual relationships a move designed to ratchet up the anger in the Anglican Communion, making schism seem inevitable. PRIOR TO THE EMERGENCY LAMBETH CONFERENCE a group of Southern hemisphere Primates met in Nairobi. The conservative archbishops were increasingly confident that they could force the expulsion of the American Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion over its liberal line on homosexuality. Rowan Williams, contemplated for the first time the possible break-up of the 70 million-strong worldwide Anglican Communion. When things looked like they couldn’t get much worse for Griswold, two letters suddenly appeared in Virtuosity written by Griswold to Charles Bennison Bishop of Pennsylvania over Fr. David Moyer saying that Bennison's heavy hand in dealing with the Anglo-Catholic priest was autocratic and monumentally unpastoral. Griswold cited Gerry Wolf and her willingness to let Keith Ackerman make a visitation to her orthodox parishes as an example. The letter fell on deaf ears. A second letter by Griswold to Bennison only ratcheted up the pain on the PA revisionist bishop. Griswold wrote[The Archbishop of Canterbury] made it absolutely clear to me that he regards the situation as very serious in the life of the Communion. He also said that your stance serves to justify the actions of Rwanda and Singapore in the eyes of many around the Communion. THE FALLOUT FROM THE ROBINSON BEGAN TO REVERBERATE with whole dioceses and individual parishes beginning to withhold monies. Griswold himself wrote in a desperate plea to his fellow Primates of the crisis saying, my own sense is that one of our Anglican gifts is to contain different theological perspectives within a context of common prayer. This is not a matter of compromise but of acknowledging that the truth as in Jesus is larger than any one point of view. The Global South Primates did not buy it. IN THE DIOCESE OF NEW WESTMINSTER the eight orthodox ACiNW parishes welcomed three Primates from Africa, India, and South American to a special service to celebrate their unity a special service on September 7, in Tsawwassen, British Columbia. Some1600 attended from across the globe came to celebrate, covenant and commission and to move forward in faith and hope, praying for the sweeping fires of spiritual revival in Canada. They also came to support the Rt. Rev. Terry Buckle the Bishop of the Yukon who was providing ecclesiastical cover for the ten besieged parishes. It was payback time and New Westminster Michael Ingham invoked a rarely used church canon and fired the wardens, trustees and entire parish Synod delegation of St. Martins, a traditionalist parish in North Vancouver, saying the church had an irresolvable pastoral crisis. He attempted on Saturday to change the locks on the doors of St. Martins parish while the conference in Tsawassen was in progress and then sent his archdeacon to read a statement from himself to the congregation in which he alleged the parish was in turmoil because of its failure to replace a biblically orthodox priest who resigned over the Bishops approval of same sex blessings. Bishop Ingham promptly named his own replacements for the parish positions. The Primates promptly condemned his actions. The Yukon bishop was commissioned by two primates to serve the ten orthodox parishes in the Diocese of New Westminster under siege by their bishop. BACK IN NEW YORK a group of ECUSA bishops met with Griswold and gave him an earful about disaffected parishes leaving the ECUSA. He was told a massive rally of orthodox Episcopalians would meet next month in Dallas to consider their future in ECUSA. Griswold responded in a letter on the meeting saying that the Robinson decision clearly caused pain, confusion and disbelief in many parts of the church, and a sense of rightness in other parts. He further said the meeting was very helpful to me in thinking about how we can assist our church in living through this time in faithfulness, taking care not to lose sight of the mission we share as members of Christrisen body, and the fact that our church is everywhere filled with life and a deep desire to embody the gospel. It was total rubbish that nobody was buying. WITHHOLDING FUNDS became the new pastime. The DIOCESE OF FLORIDA and the DIOCESE OF DALLAS both said they would withhold funds from the National Church as did a slew of orthodox parishes around the country. THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN RWANDA issued a statement on the actions of the 74th General Convention of the Episcopal Church saying the life style of a homosexual relationship is not expected of the character and qualification of an ordained man or woman Bishop, Priest or Deacon. The DIOCESE OF FLORIDA decided to uninvite Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold for the much- anticipated consecration of John Howard as our Bishop Coadjutor. He replaces Bishop Stephen Jecko. And the DIOCESE OF SOUTH CAROLINA passed three resolutions critical of the Episcopal Church. One declared the Episcopal Church under significant judgment by God because of its drift away from orthodox Christianity, as evidenced by the General Convention approving an openly gay bishop and accepting same-sex blessings. The second called on the top leaders of the Anglican Communion to require Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold to explain why he lobbied for the approval of the Rev. Gene Robinson, who is in a homosexual relationship, as bishop of New Hampshire. The resolution accused Griswold of leading the Episcopal Church into an entirely new teaching of the church in the area of human sexuality and called on the primates of the Anglican Communion -- the top leaders of the Episcopal Church parent body -- to ask him to explain his position. The third resolution promised to help non-Western church leaders who lost financial support for speaking against the Episcopal Church’s approval of homosexual behavior. And in what must have been one of the most interesting newspaper turns, the Philadelphia Gay News, featured a front-page story on Charles Bennison the revisionist, pro-gay Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania. In a three-column banner headline, Bishop Warned Not to Remove Priest, the Associated Press article blasted Bennison for attempting to remove Fr. David Moyer from his parish - the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, PA. THE INTERNATIONAL ANGLICAN FURNACE continued to heat up. The feisty hard-headed Primate of Nigeria, Peter Akinola has taken on Archbishop Ndungane of Southern Africa, and blasted him saying ,Isn’t it a paradox that the Archbishop of Southern Africa sees no arrogance in those whose flagrant disregard of the stand of the entire Anglican Communion has plunged us into this sad and avoidable controversy. Akinola also made it clear he would not be influenced by Western money, and he was prepared to cut ties with Western liberal dioceses and provinces that disobey Scripture. Archbishop Akinola was elected president of the Council of African Provinces of Africa (CAPA) this week. IN THE ECUSA itself, in one diocese after another, special diocesan conventions revealed more hidden anger than was ever known. Griswolds notion of graceful conversation was now a bad joke. In the DIOCESE OF CENTRAL FLORIDA five resolutions were unanimously passed overwhelmingly in support of Bishop John W. Howe’s opposition to the confirmation of Gene Robinson and same-sex blessings. In the DIOCESE OF ALBANY, Bishops Dan Herzog and David Bena got resounding affirmations from their people in holding the line on same- sex unions and against the confirmation of Gene Robinson. Five resolutions were overwhelmingly passed. An attempt by an alternative group of clergy and laity to reverse the bishop’s vote, and diocesan thinking, was shot down by orthodox voices at the special diocesan convention. And in the DIOCESE OF VIRGINIA, Bishop Peter Lee, a one-time moderate and now firmly in the camp of  ECUSAS’s revisionist bishops got an earful from biblically orthodox clergy and laity living in the northern half of his diocese about the way he voted for Robinson at GC2003. AND IN THE SPIN FROM ECUSANATIONAL HEADQUARTERS about the effect of lost monies from orthodox dioceses, the revisionists who run the church said that if funds were withheld the national church would cut its budget that benefit children, women, the poor and the underprivileged. Nasty is as nasty does. And in an evangelical Anglican conference in Blackpool, England Oxford theologian Dr. Alister McGrath ripped into New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham, telling more than 2,300 Evangelicals gathered at a four-day conference on mission, that he had lost the theological war and was forced to use canon law to get his way in the diocese. Ingham should be awarded the Spong medal for liberal bravery in the face of overwhelming theological arguments, he told an approving audience. Ingham would win the award in spades, he said.When I was younger, liberals and conservatives respected each other. In New Westminster we have an intellectually bankrupt liberal, and in desperation he is forcing his will on believing evangelicals, said the Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, an evangelical college that trains ordinands for the ministry. This is the unacceptable face of liberalism and it exposes the harshness, bullying character and dogmatism of this man. END OF PART FOUR *****

Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent The Guardian Wednesday December 31, 2003     Evangelicals opposed to gay people within the Anglican communion presented an email petition yesterday to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, calling on him to provide alternative oversight for those congregations which oppose bishops supporting Gene Robinson, the gay bishop of New Hampshire.     The petition’s organisers claimed it was backed by more than 13 million church-goers. The move was the latest flexing of muscles by traditionalists who have mobilised recently against any relaxation of the church opposition to homosexuals. It came against a backdrop of threats to split the worldwide communion which Dr Williams heads.     But there was some doubt about how many of those who had allegedly signed up either knew of the petition or supported it, since heads of families, clergy, bishops and archbishops were allowed to sign on behalf of all their family members, parishes, dioceses and provinces.   Support for the document rose from about 500,000 to 13 million in the last few days.   The organisers claimed the support of five primates, all from the developing world, eight bishops, though none from English dioceses, 4,013 individuals,  3,192 families, 249 parishes, eight of the communion500 dioceses and everyone in the five provinces represented by the archbishop signatories. That included the entire church in Uganda, south-east Asia, the Congo, Central Africa, Kenya, the Indian ocean and the 22,000 Anglicans living in South America.     Described to those signing it as your Christmas gift to the Anglican communion, the petition was said to be your chance to make the Anglican communion as God intends it to be. The organisers claimed it showed a majority of the church70 million members across the world opposed the consecration of Canon Robinson, whose election by the New England diocese was endorsed by US Episcopalians meeting at their annual convention in Minneapolis in August.     The petition dismissed the majority votes, including two-thirds of US bishops, as showing contempt by a minority group within the church.     Bishop Robinson was consecrated in New Hampshire by the head of the US church, Frank Griswold, in November and will succeed the current diocesan for the state in the spring.     The petition was organised by Anglican Mainstream, a group of conservative English evangelicals, which sprang up following the group successful mobilisation of opposition to the appointment of Jeffrey John, a gay priest, to the suffragan bishopric of Reading last summer.     Dr John was forced to stand down by Dr Williams, who had earlier endorsed his appointment.     The group is centered on the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, which supports evangelical theological training for students from the developing world and has received funding from the Californian fundamentalist billionaire Howard F. Ahmanson.     The petition called on Archbishop Williams to no longer recognise the ministries of any bishop who attended Bishop Robinson’s consecration and to authorise traditionalist bishops to minister to congregations which can no longer20 support their bishops.     The organisers also promised to pray for the archbishop and for all thosewho are confused or living in sin.     END       LATE BREAKING FIGURES FROM ANGLICAN MAINSTREAM     www.anglican-mainstream.net/index2.htm   Support So Far 13,628,200 Including Most Revd Livingstone Mpalanyi-Nkoyoyo and the Church of the Uganda Archbishop Yong Ping Chung and the Province of South East Asia Presiding Bishop Greg Venables, Southern Cone Archbishop Fidelis Dirokpa and the Province of the Congo Rt Rev Dr Bernard Malango and the Province of Central Africa Most Rev Benjamin M Nzimbi and the Anglican Church of Kenya Rt Rev Peter John Lee and Bishops Council, Diocese of Christ the King, CPSA Rt Rev Jack Iker and Diocese of Fort Worth   Rt Rev Stephen K Nyorsok and Diocese of Kitale Kenya   Rt Rev Dr Glenn N Davies, North Sydney   Rt Rev Stephen Hale, Melbourne   Rt Rev Colin Bazley, Former Primate Southern Cone   Rt Rev Louis Tsui Eastern Kowloon   Rt Rev John Junichiro Furumoto, Diocese of Kobe, Japan   Canon David Anderson (AAC)   David Peterson, Principal, Oak Hill College   Peter C Moore, Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry   Rev Ulric Gerry University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania   Evangelical Fellowship of Irish Clergy     Rev Jude Edomwonyi, St Augustine, Bahamas   Preb Richard Bewes and All Souls Langham Place, London   Rev Susan H Crane and Iglesia de San Mat=EDas, Tennessee   Rev Vincent Rakotoarisoa, St PeterAmbanidia, Antananarivo, Madagascar   Rev Ed Hird and St Simons, New Westminster   Rev Paul Harcourt and All Saints Woodford Wells, Chelmsford   Holy Spirit Anglican Church, Recife, Brazil   Church of the Redeemer, South West Florida   Rev Joanne Beacon and Humboldt Parish Saskatoon   4.013 individuals   11,665 in 3,192 families   69,922 in 249 parishes and organisations   198,600 in 8 dioceses   13,334,000 in 5 provinces   As of 1200 GMT, 29/12/03   New Hampshire Consecration Attending Bishops Primates   The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and Chief Consecrator   The Most Rev. Martin De Jesus Barahona   Primate of the Province of Central America and Bishop of El Salvador     International     Bishop Krister Stendahl, Lutheran Church of Sweden, Bishop Emeritus of   Stockholm and Co-consecrator   The Rt. Rev. Bruce Stavert, Bishop of Quebec (Anglican Church of Canada)   The Rt. Rev. Michael Ingham, Bishop of New Westminster (Anglican Church of   Canada)     Episcopal Diocesan Bishops     The Rt. Rev. Joe Burnett, Bishop of Nebraska   The Rt. Rev. John B. Chane, Bishop of Washington   The Rt. Rev. George Councell, Bishop of New Jersey   The Rt. Rev. Thomas Ely, Bishop of Vermont   The Rt. Rev. James J. Jelinek, Bishop of Minnesota   The Rt. Rev. Chilton Knudsen, Bishop of Maine and co-consecrator   The Rt. Rev. James A. Kelsey, Bishop of Northern Michigan   The Rt. Rev. Jack=A0 M. McKelvey, Bishop of Rochester   The Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE, Bishop of Massachusetts   The Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith, Bishop of Connecticut   The Rt. Rev. Douglas Theu

By MICHAEL MASSING The New York Times January 4, 2004     Throughout his nearly 19 years as the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, Peter James Lee has been an unwavering centrist and consensus builder. His diocese, the largest in the Episcopal Church, is diverse, with giant urban churches and tiny rural ones, liberal mainline congregations and conservative evangelical ones, and Lee has managed to hold them all together by astutely finding the midpoint on any controversial issue and luring both sides toward it. At the Episcopal Church general convention last summer in Minneapolis, Lee oversaw publication of a daily newsletter that offered a middle-of-the-road perspective on the many contentious issues facing the church. He called it Center Aisle.   The most contentious of the issues, of course, was the nomination of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest who had been living with another man for 14 years, to be the bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. For the 107 bishops in attendance, their vote on his confirmation would be the most scrutinized of their careers. And, based on Peter Lee record, there seemed little doubt about where he would come down. On matters of sexuality, his diocese was largely traditional, and Lee, throughout his reign, had resolutely refused to bless same-sex unions or to ordain noncelibate gay or lesbian priests. Under his leadership, in fact, the diocese has adopted an explicit statement that the normative context for sexual intimacy is lifelong, heterosexual, monogamous marriage.     In the weeks leading up to the vote, though, Lee reflected back on the nearly 200 bishops whose candidacies he voted on over the years. Some were divorced and remarried. Others held theological views that were sharply at odds with his own. Some had refused to ordain women, a practice Lee endorsed. Yet he had voted for them all. Lee did not know Gene Robinson personally, but the Episcopalians of New Hampshire clearly felt he would make a good bishop. And so, on Aug. 3, the day before the vote, Lee sent a letter to his diocese indicating his intention to confirm. I am convinced of the need to respect the Diocese of New Hampshire decision, in spite of my personal reservations and our current diocesan policy, which would not permit Canon Robinson to be ordained in Virginia, he wrote. It was his prayer, he added, that the people of Virginia would unite in the mission we share, even as we acknowledge respectfully differences among us.     The next day, Lee became one of 62 bishops to vote to confirm Robinson (with 45 against). However, his hope that the people of Virginia would unite behind him proved in vain. His vote set off a furor of an intensity and duration that stunned Lee. Since the end of the general convention in August, there have been forums and workshops on the issue of the gay bishop, and also protests. Rectors (as church heads are known) have been overwhelmed by phone calls from angry and confused parishioners. Hundreds have left their churches, and thousands more have insisted that none of their church contributions be passed on to the diocese. Already the diocese has lost more than $250,000 in anticipated revenues, forcing Bishop Lee to impose a hiring freeze.     Lee himself has received more than 1,000 letters and e-mail messages, and while some have been supportive, most have been critical and some downright abusive. You have betrayed the calling of Christ to be faithful, wrote a parishioner. I have lost total respect for you and am ashamed to be a part of this denomination.     The uproar has been loudest at four giant churches located in the high-tech, sprawl-ridden, conservative suburbs southwest of Washington. These churches, with their combined 5,000 congregants, are evangelical in outlook -- they stress a personal relationship with Jesus and a literalist interpretation of the Bible. They also have strong ties to the American Anglican Council (A.A.C.), an orthodox organization within the Episcopal Church that is dedicated to fighting what it sees as the church theological flabbiness and capitulation to popular culture. Since the election of Gene Robinson, these churches have been a hotbed of resistance. All four parishes have made it clear to Peter Lee that they would not welcome his presence, and their rectors are exploring alternative forms of ecclesiastical oversight -- an arrangement some see as a step toward creating a new orthodox body that would be independent of Episcopal Church U.S.A., while remaining within the worldwide Anglican communion.     The Episcopal Church has been struggling with the issue of homosexuality since long before Gene Robinson was consecrated. In 1977 Bishop Paul Moore of New York ordained the first openly homosexual priest. In the 1990s, Bishop John Spong of Newark moved even further, provocatively citing Scripture in support of embracing gays and others outside the traditional mainstream. The church, with just 2.3 million members, no longer has the exclusively Establishment character it once did today it prides itself on its social activism and its big tent character. Louie Crew, the founder of Integrity, an Episcopal gay organization, estimates that as many as 20 percent of all Episcopal priests are gay or lesbian (though most are not open about it). Jo Belser, the lesbian daughter of a fundamentalist preacher who lives in Alexandria, Va., says that she joined the Episcopal Church because itthe only one that lets gay people grow spiritually without requiring that they stop being gay.     Even while mainline parishes in the Northeast and the West Coast were moving to the left, however, an opposing force was gaining momentum in more conservative regions of the country. Over the last 20 years, the evangelical fervor that has swept America has seeped into the Episcopal Church too. Evangelicals and other conservatives remain a minority -- of the 7,300 Episcopal parishes nationwide, about 260 are affiliated with the traditionalist A.A.C. -- but they have loudly proclaimed their view that the church is an elitist, liberal institution too ready to sacrifice biblical purity on the altar of secular culture.     After years of quiet organizing, some of the evangelicals are using the Robinson election to push for an autonomous body that will serve as the true voice of the church. If the dissidents -- led by such people as Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh and Bishop Jack Iker of Fort Worth -- are to realize their goal, they will have to win over the congregants and rectors in places like the Diocese of Virginia. Extending from the Potomac River in the north to the James River (which bisects Richmond) in the south, it is home to both red and blue America. In the diocese urbanized northern reaches, near Washington, parishioners work at policy centers and nonprofit agencies, lobbying and law firms, Congress and the State Department. The presence of the Pentagon, in Arlington, packs the pews with military officers, defense contractors and intelligence analysts. To the south, Richmond, a bastion of mainline Episcopalianism, has two dozen churches boasting members who trace their ancestry back to the Jamestown settlement.     Bishop Lee oversees the diocese189 churches from a converted 19th-century mansion in downtown Richmond. The bishop’s office has soaring ceilings, parquet floors and, staring down from above the fireplace, a portrait of the Right Rev. James Madison, the state first bishop. With his ruddy complexion, silver hair, piercing blue eyes, purple bishop’s shirt, and sonorous, sermon-ready voice, Peter Lee projects an air of ecclesiastical authority. But his equanimity has been shaken by recent events. In the last few months he has faced what one conservative church activist calls a theological lynch mob. Parents have expressed concern about having him touch their children at confirmation ceremonies. He had been told he would spend eternity in hell. Psychological studies of clergy show that we are people who like to be liked, says Lee, who is 65. It is painful that there are churches where I’m not welcome -- that there are people who feel I’ve betrayed them.     The sense of betrayal so many parishioners feel is, in a way, a measure of the moderate stance Lee so carefully cultivated. When he took over the diocese, in 1985, it was torn by regional rivalries and lingering disputes over the decision to revise the prayer book. A patient listener, Lee picked up the pieces, notes Russ Randle, a lawyer and active member of a church in Alexandria. Like Cal Ripken, he kept showing up every day. Faced with sensitive issues like homosexuality, Lee set up a group that periodically brought clergy and lay leaders together to air their views. The diocese thrived, with a new church opening in nearly every year of Lee’s tenure, and Lee strengths as a moderator -- or a fence sitter, depending on your sympathies -- were at least partly responsible for its stability.     Viewed against this backdrop, Lee’s decision to support Gene Robinson seemed uncharacteristically bold. How, I asked, had he arrived at it? He began his answer by describing his gradual evolution on matters of social equality. I was born in Mississippi and raised in Pensacola, Fla., along a stretch of the Gulf Coast known as the redneck Riviera, Lee said. His father, the manager of a manufacturing plant, was a lay officer of a local Episcopal church. It, like the schools Lee attended, was segregated.     In the spring of 1963, while he was working as a copy editor for a newspaper in Richmond and pondering the ministry, Lee followed with interest the nonviolent demonstrations being organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to protest segregation in Birmingham. Several local clergymen criticized King for moving too quickly, but Lee was moved by King’s argument that injustices would never vanish by waiting until everyone was ready. Clerical leaders, the young Lee concluded, should use their authority to fight discrimination.   But Lee was not a natural activist. In 1965, when he was attending the Virginia Theological Seminary, several of his fellow students went to Selma to march with King. Lee did not join them. Emotionally, I wasn’t there -- I wasn’t ready to demonstrate, Lee recalls. Soon after, on a visit to his parents in Pensacola, he gave a ride to their housekeeper, a black woman who worked for the family for many years. She said, Mr. Peter, I saw all these young preachers walking with Dr. King, but I didn’t see you, Lee said. That was a sore that went deep into my soul.     In Lee’s telling, his opposition to racial discrimination began to extend to sexual orientation in the 70s. At that time, he was the rector of a church in Chapel Hill, N.C., a liberal university town. The local chapter of Integrity invited Lee to perform the Eucharist. I’m pretty conservative on these things, he said. But my experience showed that the chapel was a refuge for gays and lesbians from all across North Carolina.     As the bishop of Virginia, Lee met many gay and lesbian couples, and they seemed to be faithful churchgoers. In 1997, he began consulting with a prominent Roman Catholic psychiatrist on sensitive pastoral matters. He convinced Lee that you do real damage to gay and lesbian people by telling them that the way they are made is somehow defective, Lee told me.     This past summer, in the weeks before the general convention, Lee tried to sort through his many conflicting impulses on the role of gays in the church. He still didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of blessing same-sex unions. And he wasn’t ready to personally ordain a noncelibate gay priest. But his growing awareness of gays as flesh-and-blood members of the church was tugging him in the other direction. He immersed himself in Scripture. As he well knew, the handful of Biblical passages that deal explicitly with homosexuality are almost uniformly negative. Yet he also knew that on many moral issues -- divorce, slavery, stoning adulterers to death -- the interpretation of Scripture had changed along with shifting cultural norms. Rereading the 15th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Lee was struck by how the early leaders of the church adapted the requirements of Jewish law to the realities of the gentile world. This seemed to him a clear call for an inclusive church.     Finally, Lee spoke with his wife of 38 years, Kristina. She’s been very forceful on this, Lee said. She said, Peter, do you want to be on the side of the future or of the past? That was a significant question for me.     Lee decided to embrace the future. Yet, still very much the young man who couldn’t bring himself to march with Martin Luther King Jr., he decided to keep his real reasons to himself. And so, in the letter he sent from Minneapolis, he stressed what he felt was the innocuous principle of local autonomy, hoping to avoid controversy.     Instead, he provoked a storm. The emotions unleashed by his vote proved so explosive that he decided to hold a series of forums at which parishioners could vent their views. Waking up in the middle of the night, he fitfully went over in his mind all those critics had said about him. He then set to work on a new statement explaining his vote, deciding to go public with the intellectual journey hed made.     The first of the meetings took place in a diocesan boarding school in Middlesex County, east of Richmond, on Sept. 15. Lee, armed with his middle-of-the-night musings and a new determination, described the long hours hed spent in prayer, the many bishops he’d consulted. Studying Scripture anew, he said, he had come away convinced that the Gospel is ever-increasing its power to erase the barriers that we human beings erect among ourselves. And, rereading Martin Luther King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail, he was reminded that significant change, especially change that involves new understanding of justice, often comes in a disruptive and disturbing manner. In the end, Lee told the audience, the vote on Gene Robinson’s consecration presented a conflict between hope and fear. Hope for God’s grace versus fear of change. I chose hope.     It was a remarkable moment for Lee, a coming out of sorts for a man who had spent his whole career keeping his views to himself. The audience, however, sat silent. Shortly after, the Rev. Jeffrey Cerar, who had opposed Gene Robinson in Minneapolis, got up. Our general convention has abandoned the teaching of the universal church, he proclaimed. This is not just a difference of opinion. It is a departure from the very purpose and identity of the church. When he was done, much of the audience rose to its feet and cheered.   I became aware at that first meeting that my statement was not going to change anybody’s mind, and that my task was to receive the hostility of the people with as much grace as I could muster and not become hostile in return, Lee says.     His effort at stoicism would receive its greatest test at a forum held at the Virginia Theological Seminary. One after another, parishioners rose to accuse him of being an apostate and of turning his back on the Bible. And then, in front of the crowd of some 500 people, a woman from All Saints, one of the big four evangelical churches, read from a letter to Lee from the church lay leadership regarding his scheduled visit to preside over a confirmation class. We would respectfully ask that, instead of you visiting All Saints on Nov. 9, 2003, you send Bishop Gray for confirmation, the parishioner read. Our people are so distressed by your views that contradict the very clear teaching of Scripture that your visit this fall would be painful and divisive. Gasps arose from the crowd.     It was very painful to be uninvited from All Saints, and in so public a way, Lee later told me. The insult was compounded by the fact that the letter had been sent to him weeks earlier, and that he had already told the church that he would agree to send another bishop in his place.     I asked John Guernsey, the rector of All Saints, why the church had insisted on reading the letter at the gathering. With all the turmoil in the Episcopal Church, Guernsey told me, we’ve been reassured by the fact that our bishop has held to the orthodox faith of the church and upheld the historic Christian teaching about sexuality and marriage. Then we found the rug pulled out from under us. Lee subsequent efforts to explain his vote only made things worse, Guernsey went on Initially, he said it was a matter of autonomy. Since then, he has been defending the rightness of his vote. He’s been quoting Martin Luther King, saying that it is not simply regrettable what the church has done but that it is the right thing, that this is a justice issue. If anything, he has exacerbated the pain, the sense of betrayal. In light of this, he said, the church vestry felt it was appropriate to make a public witness of our position.     All saints, together with the Falls Church, Church of the Apostles and Truro Church, constitute a bloc of evangelical churches that have led the charge against Peter Lee. For months their rectors have been talking with the bishop, trying to hammer out a deal that would allow for alternative oversight while leaving broad authority in the hands of the diocese. Leading these discussions has been Martyn Minns, the rector of Truro. To see how the resistance looked from the inside, I arranged to visit him. I was surprised at what I found.     Located in the city of Fairfax, about 15 miles southwest of Washington, Truro attracts 1,400 people on a typical Sunday, making it one of the 10 largest Episcopal congregations in the country. On matters of morality, it is among the staunchest. Its congregation includes many Republican activists -- people like Diane Knippers, the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, which works to expose what it considers the liberal excesses of mainline Protestantism. Some top figures in the American Anglican Council also worship here. Minns himself has worked closely with the council, and Truro has been host of a number of A.A.C. events.     A sturdy 6-foot-2, Minns is an imposing figure in his clerical black. With his angular face, dark complexion, neat beard and thinning dark hair, Minns, who is 60, seems to have stepped out of the eastern Mediterranean world in which Paul evangelized. Lining the walls of his office are handsomely built shelves filled with books. A modernist print of a crucified Jesus hangs on one wall. African crafts are scattered about.     This is a very painful time for us, Minns says, his voice carrying traces of his native Nottingham, England. I’ve gotten about 40 letters from people saying they are leaving. I’ve been involved in this parish for 12 years, and to watch it fall apart is very painful. He speaks quickly and to the point -- a man in a hurry.     Every society draws lines about what is behaviorally accepted, he says. The line Im drawing is the one that Judaism and Christianity have been teaching for 2,000 years. To move away from that to basically a free-for-all -- where do you draw the line? . . . I draw the line on the basis of Biblical revelation.     Couldn’t people have different ways of interpreting the Bible and learn to live with those differences? I asked. That’s a postmodern idea, Minns said dismissively. I’m trained as a mathematician. Either something is true or it isnt. When Gene Robinson says his sexual activity is sacramental and I consider it to be sinful, in my mind it has to be one or the other.   Minns training in mathematics came at the University of Birmingham. After graduating, he was hired by Mobil to work in New York. Feeling a call to the ministry, he entered Virginia Theological Seminary in 1975. After being ordained, he served in several parishes, including one in Manhattan. Minns arrived at Truro in 1991 and slowly built it into a powerhouse. He created and expanded ministries to work with inner-city kids, battered spouses and pregnant women. In 1998 he founded Five Talents, which extends small loans to budding entrepreneurs in the developing world. Minns has used the good will generated by the program to strengthen his ties with like-minded bishops in Africa, Asia and Latin America. I spend more time with bishops in the global south than with the bishop of Virginia, he observed with glee. In July, for instance, Truro was host of a visit by five Anglican archbishops from Africa, Asia and Australia, including Peter Akinola of Nigeria. Akinola joined Minns and 50 other conservative Episcopalians in a warning that confirming Gene Robinson could precipitate a dramatic realignment of the church.     Given his conservative moral views, I wondered how Minns fared during his three years in Manhattan – America’s own Sodom. He brightened. I love New York -- the energy, the craziness, he said. I still miss the Upper West Side -- his church, All Angels, is on West 80th Street. You open the door and you never know what will hit you. Minns church was next to Zabars, the iconic food emporium, and whenever he returns to the city, he goes there. It’s my idea of living, he said.     In a corner of his office, I noticed a shofar. It reminded me of a conversation I had the day before with Jo Belser, a leader in Virginia Integrity organization. Integrity, she told me, had invited Minns to speak, and he had accepted. While his talk left little doubt about where he stood on homosexuality, the fact that Minns addressed the group at all distinguished him from many of his conservative brethren, she said. Noting his love of books, modern art and New York, she added, I think he has a Jewish soul.     When I mentioned this to him, Minns told me how, when his mother was dying several years ago, she revealed that his great-grandfather was Jewish. I was delighted, he recalled. I felt very proud. One of my missions in life has been to get Christians to focus on their Jewish roots. Without that, we lose a lot. I was having a hard time fitting Minns various parts together, and I told him so. I’m very hard to typecast, he said with relish. He recalled how in New York, we had everyone you could imagine coming into my church -- crack addicts, a transvestite in full regalia. I loved them. They became a part of the congregation. Id say God put us here to work. Are you willing to do that? And I saw some profound changes. God, he added, can change lives -- even those of homosexuals. Minns says he believes that gays can be converted to heterosexuality through Christ-centered counseling -- an idea that almost all gays vehemently reject.     So, I wondered, what did this one-eighth-Jewish evangelical who regarded gays and lesbians as grievous sinners think Truro should do? Should it leave the Episcopal Church? It was hard getting him to say. At times during our talk, Minns sounded like a loyal foot soldier of the American Anglican Council at others, he oozed conciliation and accommodation. For a man with such strong opinions, he seemed maddeningly hard to pin down.     I started to see why when I sat down with five of his parishioners, whom Minns had arranged for me to see. We met in his office while he was off tending to pastoral matters. Clean-cut and articulate, the group was unanimous in expressing outrage over the idea of a homosexual bishop, even while insisting that homosexuality was not the issue. The core issue is not homosexuality but biblical authority, said Jeff Fedorchak, a 42-year-old consultant. It’s not open to interpretation. It’s homosexuality this time -- what will it be the next? In our conversation, the word clear as applied to Scripture and its meaning kept coming up. On all sides these devout Christians felt assaulted by the lurid offerings of consumerist America -- half-dressed teen idols, gore-filled video games, Internet porn a click away -- and, seeking a lifeline, they had grasped hold of the Bible. Gay rights seemed especially threatening, for they saw it as challenging the sacrament of marriage, the foundation of their moral universe. At the same time, the intensity of their feelings about Gene Robinson indicated that something more profound was at work, that the issue of homosexuality touched them in a very visceral and vulnerable spot.     In the end, there was only one point on which the group disagreed, and that was how Truro should respond. I think we should stand up for the truth, said Bill Mullins, a lawyer, expressing a desire to leave. We should declare ourselves not in communion with this and suffer the consequences. Jamie Brown, a college student, was less certain. I’m torn on what to do, he said.   To judge from their comments, Truro seemed far more divided than its public face would suggest. And Minns own statements reflected this. Dropping in at the tail end of our discussion, he began talking expansively about Trurorelations with the Anglican Communion. He urged everyone to read The Next Christendom, by Philip Jenkins, a professor at Pennsylvania State University. The book describes the rapid growth of Christianity in the developing world and argues that, given the thoroughly evangelical nature of the faith there, Christianity in the West will inevitably follow. Jenkins thinks the U.S. church has a big dilemma, Minns said. Is it going to go where world Christianity is going, or will it be left to an elite group of Unitarians? Such remarks would seem to support a militant stance. Yet, in his very next breath, Minns counseled caution Our hope is not to jump into a separate province. I believe we can find a way not to have to do that. He added, I’m concerned about practical stuff -- about people being fired and churches closed.     He was referring to Episcopal canon law, which holds that if a parish leaves the church, its diocese retains possession of its buildings and other assets. If Truro were suddenly to pack up and leave, the Diocese of Virginia would lay claim to its property -- a church complex, an office building, three large houses and eight acres of land. Lawsuits would inevitably follow. The Truro congregants might be forced to start anew. I have lots of wonderful lawyers who keep me from breaking the law until Im sure I want to, he went on. I don’t want to give $10 million  -- the value of Truro assets -- to an institution I don’t agree with. Whatmore, Minns is mindful of his many parishioners who love Truro, are raising their children there and would hate to have to leave.     I was beginning to detect in Minns a pattern tough rhetoric combined with pragmatic action. It would be on full display that evening, when some 400 people attended a church meeting to discuss Truro’s future. Standing under a giant gold cross suspended above the altar, Minns described the new network of dissenting dioceses that he and other conservatives were hoping to form -- a structure that could become an independent province if that time came. Then, with barely a pause, he turned to the proposal for flying bishops, sympathetic prelates who would minister to Truro and the other conservative churches, thus allowing them to stay in the Episcopal Church.     It was only toward the end of the meeting, after nearly a dozen parishioners had expressed their outrage at Bishop Robinson’s confirmation, that Minns was pressed to clarify his position on secession. Im really maddened by this process, declared a young woman with smartly cut short hair. She and her husband, she said, had decided to leave the Episcopal Church. They would, however, consider returning if conservative Anglicans got their own, independent province. Was the new network Minns had discussed likely to lead to such an outcome?     This network could become such a province, Minns responded. Peter Akinola has said he cannot be at the same table as Frank Griswold, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and a supporter of Robinson. So quite possibly this will split the entire Anglican Communion. But he sidestepped the issue of whether this would necessitate Truro leaving the Episcopal Church.     Later I observed to Minns that he seemed to be trying to channel the congregational anger, and, ultimately, contain it. He agreed. This crowd is self-selecting, he said. Those who feel the most aggrieved about these matters are the ones who show up at such events. He had heard from many other congregants who either disagreed with his stand on Gene Robinson or who didn’t know what to think. He said he felt dutybound to represent their views as well.     In many ways, then, the ambiguity I had sensed in Minns was intentional, a reflection of his dual constituencies. One is the militants, the people who share the goals of groups like the A.A.C. and the Institute on Religion and Democracy. These outfits have a sharp-edged political agenda that can be satisfied only by a full break with the church. At the same time, he has a flock to minister to, and many of its members fear the consequences of a break -- fears that Minns himself fully appreciates. So he has two hats, the one political and the other pastoral, and he is trying to wear them both.     Ita strange paradox Martyn Minns, the insistent evangelist, is seeking compromise, while Peter Lee, the pragmatic fence sitter, is standing on principle. Together, the two are lurching toward a middle ground that would satisfy the conservatives desire for autonomy while respecting the bishop’s ultimate authority over such matters as choosing rectors, deciding whom to ordain and enforcing church laws.     This lurching seems emblematic of the church as a whole. In mid-December, the network Minns referred to at the Truro meeting came into being -- sort of. Robert Duncan, the outspoken bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, announced the formation of a new Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, under his supervision. Thirteen of the church100 dioceses in the United States were said to be joining the new network. While not seceding from the Episcopal Church, Duncan said, the group would try to win recognition from Anglican bishops overseas as the authentic Episcopal Church. Yet, within days, several bishops from those 13 dioceses disavowed their connection to the network, saying that the announcement had been premature. The affair had a Keystone Kops air about it, and it pointed to the hurdles the conservatives are facing as they push for an alternative to the Episcopal Church.     According to James Solheim, the director of the Episcopal News Service, the conservatives not only constitute a small minority within the church, but many of them are saying schism is not the answer. The idea of being bound up for years in costly and distracting litigation weighs heavily on them. Truro typifies that. That a rector as conservative as Martyn Minns is so intent on remaining within the Episcopal fold bodes ill for the advocates of a rupture.     None of the current bureaucratic machinations over extra-provincial structures address the fundamental divide over sexual orientation in the church, or the hurt it has caused people like Jo Belser. Frank Griswold says that most Episcopalians are neither outraged nor exultant at the election of Gene Robinson rather, they are confused. That certainly seems true in Virginia. Most of its 189 parishes are fitfully trying to come to terms with the seismic events of the past few months. In sermons, forums and Bible-study groups, parishioners have been discussing, arguing and educating themselves about the rightful place of gays and lesbians in a church that for two millennia has shunned them. However great their differences, most seem to feel that the Episcopal tent is large enough to accommodate them all.     In my conversation with Bishop Lee, I asked when he thought Virginia might ordain a gay or lesbian priest. We already have, he said, noting that a half-dozen or so clergy members -- some of whom he had ordained -- had already come out to him privately. The bishop remains opposed to ordaining noncelibate gays, because of both his own personal resistance and that of his diocese. Heonly willing to go so far. But, he says, I cannot imagine that in 30 years people are going to have difficulty with pastors in any mainstream denomination ordaining gays who are in committed relations.     Reflecting on the events of the past few months, Lee said that, for all the pain they’ve caused, they’ve deepened my prayer life. And I like to think that down the road Ill be remembered as a bishop who did the right thing, who brought the diocese through a difficult time and who helped find a way to let people live together with their differences.     Michael Massing is writing a book about the rivalry between Erasmus and Martin Luther and how it shaped European history.     *****

(Part Three)    By David W. Virtue VIRTUOSITY     Tensions heightened in the Diocese of New Westminster when the bishop, Michael Ingham delivered his final ultimatum to the Vancouver 11 and their eight parishes - reject Yukon Bishop Terence Buckle offer of spiritual sanctuary and accept my authority, or I will throw the lot of you out of your parishes and out of the Anglican Church of Canada. Declare your obedience or face discipline, he told the faithful. The Anglican Church in New Westminster (ACiNW) - that core of faithful parishes responded telling Ingham, in so many words, NUTS. We will not surrender to accommodate your miserable sexual morality.     The CANADIAN ESSENTIALS GROUP asked the House of Bishops to accept Bishop Buckle’s offer of alternative episcopal oversight saying it would make it possible for them to remain within the Anglican Church of Canada.     But Vancouver-based Bishop Michael Ingham appointed Bishop William Hockin, 64, the soon to be retired diocesan Bishop of Fredericton, New Brunswick as an episcopal visitor to parishes that oppose the Diocese of New Westminster decision to bless same-sex unions and feel themselves adversely affected. The Episcopal Visitor measure was offered as a part of the blessing motion at the Synod 2002 in New Westminster. The eight parishes rejected it then, and have continued rejecting it ever since.     But Hockin, along with several traditional Bishops from Canada and the United States did urge the Diocese of New Westminster not to proceed with a rite of blessing for same sex unions. But the central core of the problem was that Bishop Terry Buckle (Yukon) offered Ingham oversight WITH JURISDICTION for the beleaguered eight. That was not what Ingham was offering Hockin. The truth we all learned was that Ingham would not yield an inch on jurisdiction to Buckle or anyone.     Archbishop David Crawley, British Columbia metropolitan started disciplinary action against Bishop Buckle even though Bishop Buckle had done nothing except make an offer.     Canadian Primate Michael Peers perhaps feeling the pressure announced he would resign.     Canon Bill Atwood, EKKLESIA, an international organization linking Western orthodox and Global South bishops said what was needed now was not parallel jurisdiction, but replacement jurisdiction. Certainly, the church was heading in that direction.     The CHURCH OF ENGLAND was told to rethink its bar on sex before marriage. The C of E was told it should consider changing its teaching on sex before marriage and preach that cohabitation should be viewed as a new path from the single state to the married one.     And ANGLICANS ONLINE offered an unqualified apology to the Jensens of Sydney, for its editorial blast at the two men. The Rev. David C. James came out with an unqualified apology saying,We were out of place to express an opinion of that nature. Our motives were pure, as we expect that the Jensens were, too, and any differences that we might or might not have with the way a diocese is operating, we should keep to ourselves or communicate in private.     The Bishop of Jos, NIGERIA, Benjamin Kwashi weighed in on Bishop Bennison’s outrageous remark that Jesus was a sinner and wrote VIRTUOSITY saying, This only goes to show that the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan (Bishop of Pittsburgh) was right! It also further proves Fr. David Moyer (Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont) was right. The [Episcopal] Church is definitely in trouble and Bennison is only a symptom. His statement will be unacceptable to Islam and one wonders who he wants to please. This is shocking and a pity,mene, mene, tekel, peres.     The House of Bishop Theology Report, which nixed same-sex rites for homosexuals truly gored the ox of the Rev. Michael Hopkins, president of Integrity. He like Louie Crew was outraged at the report and said he and the Claiming the Blessing crowd, were struck by the scant amount of theology contained in a report which defines itself as theological. Hopkins said the terms gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people were accepted by the world-wide LGBT community to describe the rich diversity of our own reality.     THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY convened a three-day meeting of Christian and Muslim scholars in Doha, in the Gulf state of Qatar. Dr Williams said the seminar, Building Bridges, was a clear demonstration that we do not have to be imprisoned in mutual hostility and misunderstanding. About 30 scholars attended the meeting, which was a follow-up to one held in Lambeth Palace in January 2002 by Lord Carey, when he was still Archbishop.     Then came shattering news revealed by Dr. Kirk Hadaway, Director of Research at the Episcopal Church Center, that the typical Episcopal congregation had average Sunday attendance of 80 persons. It is the typical Episcopal Church that has been our primary source of growth during the last decade. Not very heartening news, but then if you don’t have a discernible gospel to declare why should bishops and priests believe that people are going to knock down the doors looking for New Life when none is to be found?     The episcopal left blind-sided by the U.S. victory in Iraq took a body blow in the person of its arch-defender Frank Griswold when the television image of the caste iron figure of Saddam Hussein fell to the ground. The elitist left in the ECUSA establishment got mud all over their collective faces when it was finally apparent to the world that the US forces of liberation had won a war with unbelievably light American casualties.   CATHOLIC AND EPISCOPALIANS proposed joint-bishop meetings to foster Christian unity. The idea was part of the Americans response to a 1999 report on church authority produced in international talks between the Vatican and the Anglican Communion (in which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch). The American paper said Episcopal and Anglican bishops should accompany Roman Catholic colleagues when they make their periodic reports to the pope and attend Vatican synods, and participate in meetings of the U.S. bishops conference with a voice but no vote. Similarly, Catholic bishops would join regular meetings of Episcopal and Anglican bishops. On the authority issue, the paper says are formed understanding and practice of the papacy is needed for reunion, and that Anglicans have problems with Catholic views of infallible teaching and lay participation     This all later collapsed when the openly homosexual V. Gene Robinson was consecrated Bishop of New Hampshire.     The DIOCESE OF MICHIGAN voted at their diocesan convention for same-sex unions in disobedience to world Anglican opinion.     In a message to the 8th Anglican Indigenous Network (AIN) Meeting in New Zealand, Frank Griswold said, A gift of our Anglican Communion is that we are able to come together to share in one another realities and contacts, and therefore have a better understanding of how Christ moved throughout the world.     The search for a new Bishop of NEW HAMPSHIRE heated up with some interesting candidates. The most interesting was of course, V. Gene Robinson the current Canon to the Ordinary, an openly homosexual man who announced his divorce to his wife at a Eucharist, and later moved in with his new male lover, became Dean and now wanted to be a bishop.   THE AMERICAN ANGLICAN COUNCIL the conservative wing of the ECUSA, and the Claiming the Blessing/Integrity leaders met in Maryland with the leaders agreeing to be nice to one another when they met at GC2003 in Minneapolis. Both sides would present their respective points of view at GC03, but they acknowledged that the struggle was going to be difficult for everyone.     Movements and rumblings in the ANGLICAN CONTINUUM continued with Archbishop Louis Falk resigning as head of the Traditional Anglican Communion, the largest of the international Continuing Church groups. The TAC has 80,000 followers in India and another 80,000 in South Africa and about 3,000 in the U.S. Other TAC members can be found in Australia, Torres Strait, England, Canada with missions in the US and Puerto Rico, Central America, Mexico and Columbia. The new Primate John Hepworth of Australia was named to replace him.     Inter communion relations progressed with closer ties between two longtime--and long- divided--Continuing Church bodies - the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) Metropolitan, Archbishop-Brother John- Charles FODC, recently called on his entire flock to pray for the leaders of both the ACC and the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK), whose leader Archbishop Robert Morse also sought to heal damaged relations between the two bodies and pave the way for mutual work...in fulfilling our joint mission.   But a split occurred in the APCK with members, forming the Diocese of the Holy Cross moving for the establishment of a free or third province for English traditionalists with Forward in Faith, UK (FIF-UK).     In RIDGECREST, North Carolina 1,000 Episcopalians and Anglicans from a dozen Anglican provinces, 30 Episcopal dioceses, two seminaries, over a dozen Episcopal bishops and another dozen bishops from overseas, 200 clergy and hundreds of laity came together to explore ways to be obedient to the Great Commission, proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, make disciples, build the kingdom and plant churches. New Wineskins for Global Mission 2003, sponsored by the Episcopal Church Missionary Community, Ambridge, PA has become the most ambitious and successful Episcopal Mission outreach in the ECUSA today.     Lady Caroline Cox a feisty British Baroness and a world authority on Christian persecution gave a moving presentation on the persecution of Christians in the Sudan.   She blasted President George W. Bush for reneging on the US hard line policy against the Government of the Sudan opposing the slaughter of Christians in the southern part of that country. She said the Bush administration had gone back on its policy of no compromise with the government while it continues to slaughter Christians in the south over oil and religion and a petition was drawn which was forwarded to the White House.     The CANADIAN HOUSE OF BISHOPS thumbed their collective noses at the wider Anglican Communion by repudiating their own guidelines and Lambeth, which forbade the blessing of same-sex unions. Some revisionist like BC Archbishop David Crawley (a 100 percent Ingham supporter) said he was not worried at all about the views of Primates from around the world and how upset they were. Many orthodox bishops in the Canadian House were sickened, appalled and infuriated by the decision.     The Bishop of Pennsylvania, Charles Bennison tasted more of his own shoe leather by  comparing God to Saddam Hussein saying God uses Weapons of Mass Destruction. The flood was the first weapons of mass destruction. His mouth became a WID - Weapon of Individual Destruction. Bennison then proceeded to moderate a meeting at the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia, which included a gay rabbi, the first openly gay ordained Episcopal priest and a Muslim homosexual. It was part of what used to be called PrideFest. His actions only alienated him further from the orthodox in his diocese.     DEPOSED MEXICAN BISHOP said he was innocent of stealing more than $1 million dollars. The Bishop of Northern Mexico, the Rt. Rev. German Martinez Marquez wrote a letter to the US Episcopal Church saying that he was innocent of the charges of grand larceny leveled at him by a fellow bishop, and urged the Episcopal Church to send funds to support he and his family. Both he and the Archbishop and Primate of Mexico Samuel Espinoza were found guilty of the theft of millions of dollars over a period of years money given by the ECUSA and were deposed.     BY MID YEAR it was apparent The Episcopal Church was caught in three great crises. The first was a crisis of false teaching, the second was a crisis of catholic order, and thirdly a crisis of courage. Nothing was solved, the crisis got worse as the year progressed.     The Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall dropped a bombshell while in New York City talking up Benedictine spirituality. In a private conversation with ECUSA Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, he asked him, are we a federation of churches or a communion? He raised the question just prior to the meeting of the Primates in Brazil.     The Anglican Church of Canada acknowledged that it had closed 954 churches of which 526 were closed between 1992 -1994 (almost 5 a week and very close to one every day). And while this was going on in Canada, the Church of the Province of Nigeria was adding literally millions of new Anglican believers with whole new dioceses, bishops and archbishops. This prompted Fr. Charles Nalls, a priest and head of the Canon Law Institute, in Washington, D.C. to say thatreal communion means real relationship real relationship means workable discipline. None was forthcoming.     ST. JAMES THE LESS in Philadelphia closed its school doors because of the litigation by Bishop Bennison. Fr. David Ousley, parish priest and headmaster of the school still faces being tossed out of his parish and rectory. His case is on appeal.     The British queen’s representative in AUSTRALIA. Peter Hollingworth stepped down over rape claims. Hollingworth, 68, denied the rape, which allegedly happened in the 1960s but only surfaced this year. His accuser, Rosemarie Anne Jarmyn, 57, committed suicide.     Integrity Uganda, a knock-off of ECUSA sodomite organization and a plant on African soil, fabricated a false Griswold invitation and put out a press release saying that they had been asked by the Archbishop of Uganda to be part of the welcoming committee for ECUSA Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold when he came in June. Virtuosity smelt a rat and got the truth. The Anglican Archbishop totally repudiated any such offer and Canon Stanley Ntagali wrote and told Virtuosity that it was all a fabrication.     THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION38 Primates representing some 70 million Anglicans globally gathered in Gramado, Brazil to contemplate their future together as an undivided communion.     Prior to the Gramado meeting a group of African archbishops, known as CAPA - the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa - met behind closed doors in Sao Paulo, with only a handful of the archbishops aware that such a meeting was taking place. CAPA is comprised of all the provinces of Africa, though only seven Primates were present at this meeting. CAPA was formed to provide links for common concerns for the Anglican provinces in Africa. They met very discretely in San Paulo a day before the Primates gathered in Gramado to weigh the implications of the book True Union in the Body and the possibility of broken communion if Western provinces continue to perform same-sex marriages. There was clear agreement that the same-sex agenda had the capacity to split the communion.     THE 36 ARCHBISHOPS met in the Serrano hotel in their first closed-door meeting where Archbishop Drexel Gomez (West Indies) made a brilliant presentation speaking for 30 minutes on the book True Union in the Body which came down hard and fast against same-sex marriages and the blessing of same.     After considerable discussion the PRIMATES declared rites for same-sex unions unacceptable. The Primates said in a Pastoral Letter that rites for same-sex unions have no theological consensus, and therefore, we as a body cannot support the authorization of such rites. The question of public rites for the blessing of same sex unions was still a cause of potentially divisive controversy, they declared. The Archbishop of Canterbury confirmed that there was no theological consensus about same sex unions.     An Integrity response to the Pastoral Letter from the Primates of the Anglican Communion condemned the report arguing that their stories were not heard.

YEAR IN REVIEW – 2004 – Part Two   By David W. Virtue   Part Two     Frank Griswold continued to put his foot in his mouth, this time the boot belonged to former President George W. Bush who took an implied swing at Frank Griswold in a brief speech about the 15 billion dollars the United States, courtesy of the American taxpayer, will pour into fighting global AIDS. Two US presidents had now publicly smacked a sitting Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church - the first in recorded history.   In order to do damage control for his outrageous remarks, Griswold tried to spin his own words, and in private correspondence to President Bush wrote My comments were taken out of a larger context and had to do with my international travels as Presiding Bishop and my opportunities to meet with bishops and archbishops in other part of our worldwide Anglican Communion many in countries overwhelmed by poverty and disease.     Lies and nonsense. If he was so misunderstood why didn’t he return President George Herbert Bush phone call to his New York office? He didn’t. Griswold said he was out of the country and couldn’t return the call. No call forwarding at 815? Aware that he had blown it, Griswold wrote a form letter to all who expressed outrage at him saying, These are anxious days as war with Iraq is an ever-present possibility and our economy causes grave concern. We are profoundly aware of our personal and collective vulnerabilities. Only his revisionist pals bought that line.   Two bishops, The Rt. Rev. Claude E. Payne (Texas) and the Rt. Rev. Don A. Wimberly wrote saying that while many have taken offense at Bishop Griswold’s rhetoric, no one is compelled to agree with him totally or at all. He followed his conscience in making the remarks. Some conscience.     Episcopalians for Traditional Faith urged Griswold to apologize for his anti-American slurs saying he had embarrassed Episcopalians everywhere. His anti-American comments are entirely inappropriate for someone who owes his position and good fortune to the very nation he publicly rebukes. Instead of defending the Faith against those who hate us, he seems reluctant even to mention that faith, said Jan Mahood president of ETF.     The American Anglican Council (AAC) emerged as the organization of choice for Evangelical Episcopalians in 2003 and quickly voiced its support for Bush pledge of funds to combat AIDS on the African Continent and in the Caribbean.     The British-based CHURCH SOCIETY took another swing at the Archbishop of Canterbury warning of the threat of false teachers in the church. We are confident that if false teaching is refuted by our appointed leaders then the pressure that exists to seek alternative oversight will evaporate. Last year, the Church Society criticized the Archbishop himself for false teaching.     And some 30 US denominations agreed in a proposal to create the broadest alliance of Christians ever formed in this country. The steering committee of the budding effort, tentatively called Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A. invited a wide range of national church bodies and agencies with five segments of U.S. Christianity, listed in the plan as Evangelical/Pentecostal, Historic protestant, Orthodox, Racial/Ethnic and Roman Catholic. The Catholic Church and most evangelicals and Pentecostals do not belong to the National Council of Churches, now the largest U.S. ecumenical group but in serious decline. There was one sticking point The nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, was reluctant to join though it had an observer at the meeting. The alliance gathered groups that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as God and savior according to the Scriptures and worship and serve One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.     In Pittsburgh, the Bishop, Robert Duncan announced that Trinity Cathedral was in serious financial troubled describing the situation as bleak to alarming and declared it a transitional parish, firing most of the staff. The Dean, the Very Rev. Richard P. Pocalyko resigned. There were no plans to replace him.     In other Episcopal news the Dean of the University of the South School of Theology in Sewanee, The Very Rev. Guy F. Lytle III , an orthodox theologian, stepped down as dean over allegations that he sexually harassed a student but would remain on the school faculty after taking a leave of absence. This action against the dean subsequently turned out to be more political and theological in nature with the Dean coming under fire because he was orthodox in faith and morals, facing revolt from a growing liberal/revisionist faculty.     The San Francisco parish of St. Johns, a predominantly gay parish, was torn apart by ecstasy-fueled rave dances and reached a new ecstasy level with Episcopal Bishop William Swing accepting the resignation of its rector, the Rev. Kevin Pearson, and ending the Divine Rhythm Society all night dance and drug-related antics. The vestry resigned as well. The bishop said he was especially concerned about parish drug use in light of the recent deaths of two participants at an unrelated New Year’s Eve dance party at the Cow Palace. The rector reportedly said, “We use entheogens to reach for God, not to get high.” Really.     In the DIOCESE OF PENNSYLVANIA, the prestigious and venerable 217-year old Episcopal Academy announced it would have workshops on homosexual acceptance, with the tacit approval of the head teacher Mr. Hamilton Clark and the Bishop of Pennsylvania Charles E. Bennison. A national homosexual organization called GLSEN - Gay and Lesbian Straight Education Network which actively promotes homosexuality was doing so right inside the Episcopal Academy on Philadelphia pampered mainline.     The Episcopal Church Executive Council convened Jan. 27-30 in the Dominican Republic got into power issues with a Separation of Powers resolution passed that would keep separate fiduciary and executive responsibilities assigned to Executive Council.     At issue was the sudden collapse of negotiations to relocate the Church Center from its current mid-Manhattan location to the campus of the General Theological Seminary about 20 blocks further southwest. Frank Griswold was on the hot seat and in deep trouble because he was told to implement and facilitate the move to General Theological Seminary and at the last moment brushed it aside for what he calls his missional objectives. What happened was that inside policy wonks at 815 could see their power evaporate in a puff of smoke if a move was made and Griswold nixed it. It was an enormous power struggle with Griswold on the hot seat.     A group calling itself Claiming the Blessing a coalition of pansexual forces announced it was building a third of a million-dollar war chest to promote liturgical rites for same-sex blessings at the upcoming GC2003. This was just the beginning a campaign to promote sodomy at all levels in the church, with the triumph of V. Gene Robinson consecration as the next Bishop of New Hampshire.     In the Church of England, the Queen approved the nomination of Reverend Canon of Dr Nicholas Thomas Wright, Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey, to be the next Bishop of Durham. Tom Wright, as he is better known to most Anglicans is a prolific author and debater, who appears regularly on the circuit defending orthodoxy with rival and debating pal Marcus Borg over whether the New Testament accounts of a divine Jesus were myth or history.     And in Raleigh, NC, St. Andrew pled her case in front of the NC Court of Appeals for their property.  ECUSA Bishop Clifton Daniel III, of East Carolina wanted the property and spared no effort or money, to take it back from the Rev. King Cole and his AMIA followers. The bishop ultimately won, but got a virtually empty parish for his troubles.     The new ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY gave an interview to the London Telegraph and said basically No to same sex blessings.     Questioned on why some evangelicals seem to be very worried about him and did he understand why? The archbishop opined that underlying problem was that they had difficulty with what they thought he believed about Scripture and Revelation.     Because I have emphasized in some of what I have written the sheer difficulty of talking about God, they have thought I cant have a doctrine of Revelation, I must be agnostic. I would want to put it exactly the other way around. It is precisely that it is because it is   God that is revealed in Jesus Christ that you would expect some difficulties in talking about it.     Questioned on his left wing social commitments Williams had this to say My Left-wing commitments have come from two main impulses which have been deep anxiety and unhappiness and distaste about the individualism which has sometimes characterized the Right in the last two or three decades and something which I suppose does come from  deep in the Welsh non-conformist tradition, not pacifism exactly, but a deep-rooted internationalism which makes me extremely skeptical about war as a solution to international problems.     Heir to the throne Prince Charles said he must be Defender of Faith, and not simply Defender of The Faith. His remarriage was also not a done-deal and his living in sin was found to be something of an impediment to orthodox folks who felt that his living arrangement with Camella Parker Bowles still rated a concern.     ECUSA Integrity organization for homosexual acceptance found its counterpart in an organization called Changing Attitudes set up in the Church of England. An Anglican priest Colin Coward and claims 200 Anglican members established the group. They are being funded by charity money raised from the National Lottery and Comic Relief, a telethon program which was originally set up to raise money for children dying from hunger in Africa.     World Anglican leaders condemned the war on Iraq stepping up to the plate to condemn the US going to war unless sanctioned by the United Nations. Those criticizing US foreign policy were American, England, Canadian and Australian leaders who are, for the most part, theologically and socially liberal. The UN has become the new secular god to which everyone must bow regardless of its morality. It also signaled a complete handover of moral decision making and authority to this organization known more for compromise than legitimate peace.  ECUSA Peacenik Presiding Bishop told The Chicago Sun-Times  that we are in a state of corporate desolation. Speaking at an Episcopal conference called. Will Our Faith Have children? Griswold opined that the only sense of community we have now is shared fear or anxiety. He asked rhetorically, Will our children have a world?   To keep the pressure for peace on the front burner, the new Bishop of Washington, John Chane zipped across the Atlantic to have a chat with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to try and persuade him to see the peaceful light and to help our President see the same light also. The light bulb he shone had low wattage. The UK and US went to war anyway and won it.     In the DIOCESE OF LONG ISLAND Bishop Orris Walker tried to secretly reinstate a priest, one Lloyd Andries, formerly of St. Gabriels, Brooklyn who was exposed in a 1996 Penthouse story, The Boys from Brazil. This story revealed a secret cadre of gay and bisexual cross- dressing Episcopal priests whose private lives included the most bizarre rituals imaginable and prompted the priest to resign from his parish. Andries even married one of his Brazilian boys. The bishop wanted him back as a supply priest and got the Diocesan Standing Committee in secret, to make it happen. It all fell apart when a number of diocesan priests got wind of it and Walker could not get enough bishops to sign on to his stupid idea. It died. Four contiguous dioceses had to give their approval for the reinstatement  with Bishop Daniel Herzog (Diocese of Albany) refusing to do so.     And in the DIOCESE OF OREGON one of the candidates looking to be the next bishop said he went around with a ventriloquist Dummy called Dexter to enhance his sermons.   Being light in the loafers as a bishop is one thing, and acting like a dummy is quite another the marvelous feat is managing to be both.     NORTH OF THE US BORDER in Canada talks broke down between The Diocese of New Westminster and representatives of the eight orthodox parishes. Revisionist Bishop Michael Ingham blamed the dissident parishes saying the parishes wanted to talk about separation, not reconciliation. Not true said representatives of the parishes, that interpretation was entirely false. But a group of clergy and lay leaders from the DIOCESE OF ALGOMA in the Province of Ontario sent a letter to Bishop Ingham and the lay leadership of the Diocese of New Westminster arguing that marriage was strictly for heterosexuals and the Diocese and bishop had no business changing the church teaching. The eight parishes then hosted Chuck Murphy, Bishop of the Anglican Mission in America to Vancouver, and several of the ACiNW priests were in Pawleys Island, SC at the AMIA headquarters to listen and talk things over at their annual gathering. AMIA leaders came in support of Bishop Buckle with an oversight resolution arguing that overlapping jurisdictions within the Communion were a good thing. FORWARD IN FAITH stepped up to the plate to stand with the eight orthodox parishes commending them for their faithful commitment to Biblical Faith. We see this action as being completely in line with the call for alternative oversight from the Lambeth Conference of 1998, and with that of the Primates Meeting of 2001. We urge all bishops, especially in the USA and in Canada, to support Bishop Buckle in his stand, they said.     THE ENTHRONEMENT of the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, took place at Canterbury Cathedral, England, on February 27 at 3 p.m. beginning a new era following the Evangelical George Carey. A demonstration by a number of British, Canadian and US orthodox priests was held in support of traditional teaching. Several priests wore black armbands outside Canterbury Cathedral in protest. It was an action to show positive support for traditional teaching rather than as a protest or demonstration since the latter automatically seems to portray those protesting in a negative light, said the dissenters.     While the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams was being enthroned another drama was being played out down the street. A number of Primates including the Archbishop of West Indies, The Most Revd Drexel Wellington Gomez, the Archbishop of Central Africa The Most Revd Bernard Amos Malango, the Archbishop of Kenya The Most Revd Benjamin M. P. Nzimbi, the Archbishop of Congo, The Most Revd Dr. Fidele Balufuga Dirokpa the Archbishop of Rwanda, The Most Revd Emmanuel Musaba Kolini and the Archbishop of South East Asia, the Most Revd Datuk Yong Ping Chung met to discuss the unfolding situation in the Diocese of New Westminster where eight parishes are under siege from New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham.     These parishes are being asked to violate their consciences and Holy Scripture by having to agree with their bishop on blessing same-sex unions. They wont. There were in fact two meetings one in a hotel and the other at St. Mary Bredin Church in Canterbury, and the sole question on their minds was how to provide alternative oversight for the New Westminster 8. Also present was a member of the Anglican Communion in New Westminster (ACiNW) Paul Carter who was seeking to get the involvement of the Primates.   As it turned out, an historic breakthrough came in the person of the Bishop of the Yukon, the Rt. Rev. Terence O. Buckle who swept down from the North like a knight in shining armor to offer alternative Episcopal oversight to these New Westminster parishes, and he did so with the full support of these overseas Primates. Bishop Buckle submitted an offer to the Bishop of New Westminster to provide alternative episcopal oversight to the parishes of the ACiNW, and to other orthodox parishes in the diocese that may wish to join the ACiNW in the future. But this went over like a lead balloon and Michael Ingham immediately fought back saying he would inhibit Buckle if he so much as stepped foot in the Diocese of New Westminster.     IN a report from England the ax was out for bishops in the C of E facing catastrophic decline. Bishops were being urged to resign over the Church decline with a report saying that its decline is far greater than its leadership is willing to admit. It says that the Church collapse isa cross the board and calls on the bishops to take responsibility and go.     IN SOUTH AFRICA, the Dean of St. George Cathedral in Cape Town came out of the closet and declared himself a homosexual. The Very Reverend Rowan Smith said he hoped and prayed that one-day he and his partner would be able to enter into a homosexual relationship blessed by the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (CPSA). This is the first known case of a high cleric in the Anglican Church on the African continent being outed, and in a country which has the highest incidence of AIDS in Africa and in the most liberal African province.     SEWANEE SEMINARY was exposed as dysfunctional by Virtuosity with an independent report saying the faculty was so divided there seemed little hope of the institution emerging from its problems with any resolution in the foreseeable future. At the center of the storm, for the past 11 years, was the strong, able figure of Dean Guy Lytle III, who had come under repeated hostile fire from a number of theologically liberal faculty who have wanted him removed from the University of the South seminary because of his orthodox views. Seminary leaders started to spin my story on their dysfunction. They circled the wagons putting out this statement to all Faculty and Staff of the University of the South saying We, the faculty and senior administrators of the School of Theology of the University of the South, wish to make known the following We are aware of fallacious and ill-informed criticisms of the faculty both as a whole and as individuals.  We regard such comments as a calumny that applies to all of us. While making no claim to perfection, we affirm our ability to work together and celebrate our differences as expressions of the vitality of thought required by scholarship and the spirit of inquiry preserved through Sewanee’s rich tradition of academic freedom.     FIRST TALKS aimed at healing the breach between The Reformed Episcopal Church, The Anglican Province of America and The Anglican Church in America began, with news that Donald Perschall, Presiding Bishop of the American Anglican Church (AAC) had gone over to the Episcopal Church to become rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Mount Vernon, Illinois.     But homosexual misbehavior continued on the radar screen of ECUSA and in Texas the Episcopal Church joined with a number of homosexual advocacy groups to seek repeal of the state of Texas anti-sodomy statute in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Griswold filed an amici (friend of the court) brief on behalf of a Texas man accused of violating the state statute prohibiting homosexual conduct, the Episcopal News Service reported March 7. The matter has become a cause celebre among homosexual activists.     THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION continued to roil from crisis to crisis. From the UK to Cyprus, from Australia to Vancouver, from Tennessee to Pennsylvania the Anglican Communion twisted and turned.     IN CYPRUS, delegates from around the Communion meeting at the Anglican Communion Mission Organizations heard The Revd. Riaj Jarjour, General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches, remind delegates that the mission of Jesus was to restore the dignity and worth of all and set free a groaning creation. We need a mission to Muslims, not to bring people to Christ but to proclaim Christ, Jesus the peacemaker, Jesus who came with justice and Jesus the reconciler.   IN AUSTRALIA the new Dean of Sydney St. Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral, Philip Jensen, made a striking debut. In his inaugural sermon at the cathedral, Dean Phillip Jensen - brother to the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Peter Jensen - attacked what he saw as excessive relativism in the media treatment of Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. They cant all be right, he argued. The media called him a Fundamentalist and out of step with contemporary thought.     AND IN VANCOUVER, the Dissident 8 received public support from the American Anglican Council (AAC) the evangelical wing of The Episcopal Church USA. They came out with a statement applauding the Bishop of Yukon (Canada) Terence Buckle for offering sustained pastoral care to New Westminster parishes. The parishes voted overwhelmingly to accept Yukon Bishop Terry Buckle offer of Alternative Episcopal Oversight. The decision allowed Buckle to act as an alternative bishop with full jurisdiction for those parishes that were effectively orphaned by the decision of their diocese governing body and Bishop in June 2002 to bless same-sex unions. The congregations - all of them members of the Anglican Communion in New Westminster (ACiNW) coalition -- also approved a motion offering to enter a discussion with the Bishop of New Westminster, the Rt. Rev. Michael Ingham, to implement the plan with a view to maintaining peace, harmony and goodwill between the parties. The motion passed with an average 98% majority in each of the parishes, including Canada’s largest Anglican church, St. John(Shaughnessy), as well as all the Chinese congregations in the Diocese. But Bishop Michael Ingham told the CBC that there was no change in his position to accept such oversight. He threatened to make a presentment against Bishop Buckle or anyone else who intervened in his diocese.     AND IN PENNSYLVANIA Bishop Charles E. Bennison won another round in his fight to take back parishes that wanted to uphold the catholic faith. St. James the Less in Philadelphia got plastered by the judge and the parish was told it had to turn over its property and the rector leave the parish manse to the bishop, who can then put in his own vestry and rector. The parish appealed but by year end they were still meeting in their church, though their future remains uncertain.     THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH’S wish list to double the church by 20/20 came under scrutiny by Virtuosity when it was learned that some $2 million was being thrown at this ministry to make this fantasy come true. The Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, earmarked $2 million dollars to address 20/20 energies. That’s a lot of expensive energies. The national church budget, all $125 million plus dollars will also provide funds for a national identity campaign with a bunch of ads telling people who we are corporately.     The HOUSE OF BISHOPS issued a pastoral letter on the pending war with Iraq expressing unhappiness at the Bush administration, urging peace and prayer all around.   As your bishops, we commit ourselves to adopt a discipline of fasting and prayer for the return of peace.     But an editorial in ANGLICANS ONLINE a news service with 200,000 readers with a strong liberal bent, made the observation about the war in Iraq which they opposed saying We see the first as proof that Satan is real and present, and the second as proof that God is real and present. Such is our life and our world an omnipresent God and an omnipresent Satan.     The HOUSE OF BISHOPS THEOLOGY COMMITTEE issued a report which said no to same-sex rites. The committee, which consisted of thirteen persons including six bishops and seven academic theologians representing diverse theological viewpoints, wrote that while they acknowledged deep diversity and division over homosexuality in the church, it was imperative that the Episcopal Church refrain from any attempt to settle the matter legislatively.     Archbishop Williams in a pastoral letter to Anglican Primates expressing his concerns about the conflict in Iraq and his hope for a positive future for the region. In his letter to the Primates of the Anglican Church38 Provinces, Dr Williams spoke of his concern for Christian communities of the Middle East, and of his prayers for them and their neighbours of other faiths. Acknowledging Iraq as the homeland of Abraham, Dr Williams also voiced hopes for reconciliation and justice in the region.     FORWARD IN FAITH called on Griswold to provide episcopal pastoral care for the orthodox in ECUSA. In a letter they called upon him to use his considerable influence   to bring this proposal to fruition. However, we would be less than forthright with you, and fail in our responsibility to those we represent, if we did not go on to say that the House of Bishops proposal for supplemental episcopal pastoral care seems to us to fall far short of the appropriate episcopal care which the Communion has promised and our constituency requires. The issue of pastoral care become a recurring issue throughout the year.     A British bishop broke rank to back the Iraqi war. The Bishop of Chester, the Rt Rev Peter Forster, lent his unqualified support to military action, saying it was morally and legally justifiable. His statement echoed comments by the Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Rev John Oliver, that military action had become the least morally repugnant option. Support from the senior clerics cheered No 10.     Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen called for a speedy and just resolution to the Iraqi War saying the outbreak of war in Iraq constituted a solemn moment, with many dangers and threats and potential for great human suffering.     And UGANDAN Archbishop Mpalanyi Nkoyooyo of the Anglican Church of Uganda and Simeon Kayiwa, leader of the National Fellowship of the Born Again Churches of Uganda, said the attack on Iraq was justified. Saddam Hussein has been a dictator for too long, committing atrocities even on his own people, Nkoyooyo said. He also said the Government was right to support America.     The bishop’s Gift of Sexuality Theology report of the House of Bishops was welcomed by the AAC saying that though we don’t agree with every element of this report, it is apparent that the Bishops have offered measured and thoughtful recommendations intended to prevent schism in both the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion, said the Very Rev. David C. Anderson.  Episcopalians United under the leadership of the Rev. Todd H. Wetzel also supported the findings of the HOB Theology report.     The UNITED ANGLICAN CHURCH that had earlier set about merging with the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) decided that such a merger was not possible. The UAC left the TAC citing TAC collaborative decision making.   And to round off the mad month of March, Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison wrote in the Pennsylvania Episcopalian that Jesus was Sinner. The revisionist bishop who had denied a number of basic doctrines of the Christian Faith, said that while Jesus forgives sins, He acknowledges his own sin. His call is to preach repentance and forgiveness.   Bennison, who supplanted former Bishop Newark Bishop Jack Spong as ECUSA leading revisionist had also written a Visigoth Rite of marriage for both heterosexuals and homosexuals had also failed to affirm basic doctrines of the Christian Faith such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the only way of obtaining salvation, the authority of Scripture and more.     END OF PART TWO   ***