The war of words, which has been simmering for some time, erupted recently when the Rev. Prof. Stephen Noll, former TESM theologian now V-P of Uganda Christian University (UCU) in Mukono, Uganda wrote an open letter to Anglican Communion Network bishops and Common Cause Partners arguing that the time had come for full and final separation between those in TEC who hold a false gospel and those who hold fast the truth revealed in Holy Scripture and the evangelical and catholic faith of the Church. "I find it hard not to conclude that any bishop who still hopes for reform and revival from within the current structure is in a state of denial."

He went on to say this: "There is no hope and a future for any diocese or parish that remains connected to TEC. The Mark Lawrence (wannabe Bishop of South Carolina) case and various abuses of the canons should make this clear. This is a spiritual fact: TEC is terminally ill and the cancer will eventually spread to every part of the body.

"Network bishops must prepare for separation as best they can and stay united in fellowship with each other and their Common Cause partners. Don't wait for the 'Windsor bishops.' Once there were 60 Irenaeus bishops, then 40 AAC bishops, now there are 20 'Windsor Bishops' and a dozen (and counting down?) Network bishops. Unless you are prepared to act and act in concert, you and your clergy and dioceses will be picked off one by one."

Noll ratcheted up the ante by saying that Network bishops and dioceses must be prepared to lose their rank and property. "Many faithful priests have already paid this price as a matter of conscience and been summarily deposed. Congregations have walked away from their sanctuaries and now worship in schools. It is now time for the Network bishops and dioceses to take this risk by breaking communion with false and lukewarm colleagues in TEC. Remember the fires of Oxford!"

Noll then went on to say that Network bishops must unite behind Robert Duncan, (Bishop of Pittsburgh) and Common Cause partners must uphold him in his role as a "focus of unity" within the faithful remnant in North America. "Let it be clear as day that our movement is directed toward true unity in the Body of Christ and not a fragmentation by personality and preference. Let our movement be truly catholic and ecumenical."

Noll observed that bishops of the Global South have stood firm against the heresy of TEC for a decade. Lambeth 1.10 would not have happened but for their insistence, nor would have the recent Primates' Communique. "They have harbored many refugees from our shores and refused money dangled before them by 815 & Co. They expect and deserve your strong and united response."

In a final plea Noll writes, "My brothers, please take heart, take united action, or we shall lose our precious Anglican heritage (Revelation 2:5)."

To theologian Philip Turner this was like a red flag to a bull, which prompted his immediate response in an open letter to Noll. Turner, a Senior Fellow with the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) and former Dean at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale cried foul. In a "dear Brother Stephen" letter Turner questioned Noll and asked "is the advice you have offered [in] accord with God's will for our troubled Church and our troubled Communion. I do not believe it does."

Turner responded angrily, "The first and most baleful effect of anger is sweeping and indiscriminate condemnation-an attempt to brand one's opponent with a damning epithet. 'Apostate' is one of the most common used by people who share our common concern for the theological and moral errors now common within TEC. 'Heretic' is another!"

Turner then held out an olive branch arguing that the phrase "hold a false gospel" as a reference to our common opponents is a better way to put the matter. "These people now control the levers of power within TEC, and are prepared to use those levers to propagate and on occasion enforce their convictions."

Turner admits "anger and frustration have brought significant numbers of people to conclusions similar to yours."

The former Yale scholar then offered a ten point declaration arguing why separation was wrong. He argued that the reform and renewal of Israel lay in the hands of God and that it was the job of the prophets of Christ to call for repentance placing their lives in the service of God's way for his people.

He then argues that a faithful witness, suffering, and patient endurance all generated by faith, hope, and love rather than separation on the part of a self-declared "faithful remnant" are the proper means of addressing error and conflict within the Church. Turner also ripped what he called "a continual state of division" arguing that reform and renewal were indeed possible. Turner acknowledges that come Sept. 30 TEC will "walk apart" unrepentant and the Anglican Communion will "morph into another creature altogether." He added, "I do not believe a hazy horizon is sufficient reason to found a rival Anglican presence within North America prior to reaching that horizon."

He also called Noll's "leave now" policy a "declaration of defeat" before Sept. 30. "Need I say that a strategy such as this carries all the marks of a self-fulfilling prophecy?"

Turner cautioned that "a state of anarchy within our Communion" will not further the future under God.

Turner then blasted the Network and "Windsor Bishops" asking if they are willing to stand and be counted in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury to show that there is, within TEC, an alternative presence to its current structure? "I am unwilling prematurely to declare all hope for such eventualities to be no more than a chimera."

Commenting on Bishops of the Global South, Turner said it was far from clear that they expected an "incipient alternative Anglican Province within North America."

Turner then turned on Noll saying that breaking communion with "false and lukewarm colleagues" might just include himself. He also said he owed his readers an explanation about who is a "faithful remnant" that they should remain in communion with. He then accused Noll of not doing the "hard theological work" demanded of us. "We have become the mirror image of those whom we believe to be in error."

Noll then fired back a letter to Turner. "You ask, 'Is the degree of hope for renewal and reform an adequate reason to separate from a part of Christ's body?' To which my answer is 'Yes', as such hard judgments are often required as a matter of spiritual discernment and Christian prudence.

"Many people have left the Episcopal Church over the past decades in grief and as a matter of conscience, convinced that their souls or the souls of their families and flock are in mortal danger from continued association with a false gospel. It seems ironic that these people are then accused of not embracing the way of the Cross when they are the ones who have been leaving behind their church buildings and graveyards. Many North American Anglicans have concluded that their church has 'morphed into another creature altogether,' to use your phrase. They conclude that the Lord has removed, or is about to remove, the lamp stand (being part of Christ's Body) from this particular ecclesiastical entity (Revelation 2:5). This is why they feel they have the right to salvage their church property if possible and why they seek recognition from international Anglican Primates.

"Many who thought the Episcopal Church would stop short of formal endorsement of the gay agenda are now convinced that that agenda will soon become the canon law of the Medes and Persians. Many who thought the formation of the Anglican Mission in America precipitous in 2000 have now joined it."

Responding to Turner's personal accusation that Noll was "taking the risk of breaking communion with false and lukewarm colleagues in TEC," Noll writes: "I do not retract it, but I shall try a clarify it. 'False and lukewarm' refers to two groups, not one. There are those who have lapsed into heresy (which I think is identifiable whether or not it is declared so by a Church council). There are others who 'tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet.' Many of us have been quite willing over the years to work within a church that included worldly leaders and comfortable pew sitters. We even tolerated the Pikes and Spongs, thinking we had the historic tradition and formularies on our side. This is no longer the case. Jesus uttered a paradoxical pair of statements when he said: 'He who is not with me is against me' (Matthew 12:30) and 'whoever is not against us is for us' (Mark 9:40). The time is coming and now is, I think, when the Spirit will dictate that only one of these courses is faithful. Hence it will be necessary to break communion with - not to judge the eternal destiny of - those who hold a true gospel while remaining in the Episcopal Church."

Noll then criticized Turner saying that it was not helpful to suggest a moral equivalence between Bishop Duncan and Presiding Bishop Schori, as if to call down a pox on both their houses. "If it so turns out that TEC remains standing in the councils of Lambeth after September 30, then I trust we can say together– again with Lincoln - the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. And at that point contingency will become reality for us all."

Also weighing in on the debate, ACI senior fellow the Rev Dr. Ephraim Radner and now professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe Theological College in Toronto, Canada, affirmed Turner's position and promptly resigned from Anglican Communion Network. In his statement of resignation Radner wrote saying that the Network was no longer an instrument of renewal but one of destruction. "Bishop Duncan has now declared the See of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference -- two of the four Instruments of Communion within our tradition - to be 'lost'. He has said that God is 'doing a new thing' in allowing these elements to founder and be let go. I find this judgment to be dangerously precipitous and unfair under circumstances when current, faithful, and hard work is being done by many to bolster these Instruments as servants of our common life in Christ.

"Bishop Duncan has, in the end, decided to start a new church. He may call it 'Anglican' if he wishes, though I do not recognize the name in these kinds of actions that break communion rather than build it up - for such building is what I have long perceived to be the 'thing' God was 'doing' with the earthen vessel of our tradition."

Radner accused Duncan of not working for the healing of our broken Body, but repeating the mistakes of Christians in the past. "I cannot follow him in this way."

Nashotah House President, the Rev. Dr. Robert Munday weighed in on the debate saying that Radner's "resignation" was nothing less than an unwarranted public attack on Bishop Robert Duncan. "Radner acts as if the direction the Network is taking is due to Bishop Duncan alone. Bishop Duncan is not a Pied Piper leading naive children. "The members of the Network Council who met this past week are bishops and elected representatives of the several dioceses that comprise the Network, along with representatives of regional convocations composed of several thousand Episcopalians and other Anglicans in parishes that are not in Network dioceses. These elected leaders are members of diocesan councils and standing committees, deputies to the Episcopal Church's General Convention--delegates with many years of experience at all levels of the Episcopal Church. These bishops and diocesan leaders re-elected Bishop Duncan as Moderator of the Network by acclamation. Dr. Radner, on the other hand, was elected by no one and speaks for no one other than himself and possibly the other scholars of the Anglican Communion Institute."

Munday went on to say that many of the Global South Primates and a growing number of bishops in Rowan William's own province have come to the conclusion that the Lambeth Conference may be lost as well. "If it is ultimately lost, it will be for no other reason than the ineffectual leadership of the present Archbishop of Canterbury."

Other former Episcopal Church theologians including the Rt. Rev. Dr. John H. Rodgers, now TESM dean and the Rev. Dr. Robert Sanders have left The Episcopal Church and joined with the Anglican Mission in America (AmiA), believing the Episcopal Church is lost and beyond hope of redemption. They cannot be discounted. The Rt. Rev. Dr. C. FitzSimons Allison (S.C. ret), while still remaining in TEC, has joined Pawleys Island based AMiA tacitly acknowledging that TEC is beyond hope of redemption. He has laid hands on bishops within that Anglican mission.

The ACI theologians in the affirmative have clearly answered the argument that schism is worse than heresy. Other theologians who believe that heresy must be countered by schism do not share that view. One wonders, if the ACI theologians who believe so passionately in unity, why they have not returned to the bosom of Rome, whose pope recently declared that all who do not belong to the one true church, his, hold invalid orders and whose churches are not true churches at all!

Meanwhile tens of thousands of orthodox Episcopalians and hundreds of clergy are answering with their feet by leaving The Episcopal Church. Perhaps that might be the best barometer of all. While theologians argue in their ivory towers and theological institutions, the great unwashed see the handwriting on the wall and declare that God has written Ichabod (the glory has departed from it) and have walked sorrowfully away never to return.

END