Members and clergy of various local Episcopal and Anglican congregations say they are doing just fine, some of them boasting church growth in numbers of congregants, quality of fellowship and worship, or both, despite ongoing litigation over church property to which both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin lay claim.

The rector of All Saints Anglican Church, the Rev. John Riebe, said pending litigation does not worry him or his flock of 140 who attend two Sunday services. “The church is the people. It’s not the building,” he said. “We honestly believe that this is the Lord’s property and we are stewards of the Lord’s property. If we’re asked to give it up to find other property to work with, then that’s what we’ll do.”

He said only about five people left All Saints when “the separation” took place in December of 2008. “We have continued to see slow but steady growth. We have not had any decline as a result” of the split, he said.

“It’s a very thriving, energetic, Episcopal parish,” Grace Congregation member Mary Webb said about her church during the social hour following a recent Lenten service attended by about 65 worshippers. “We are very much alive and well. There are legal battles over property, but we move on.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Cono Sur [formerly Southern Cone] • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin • TEC Departing Parishes • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues

Leaders of a new religious body affiliated with the Anglican Communion are scheduled to speak next weekend at Christ Church on Johnson Square.

The Most Rev. Robert William Duncan Jr., Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), will deliver the sermon at the 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. services Feb. 14. The church is located at 28 Bull St.

The Rt. Rev. Charles Bernard Obaikol, recently retired Bishop of Soroti, Uganda, will teach a 9 a.m. Sunday school class.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Georgia

(The paper to which this responds is here--KSH).

On February 2, 2010, the American Anglican Council (AAC) released an accounting of how The Episcopal Church (TEC) has spent millions of dollars in over 50 lawsuits, deposed or inhibited 12 bishops and more than 400 other clergy, and violated its own canons numerous times. The Rev. Phil Ashey, AAC Chief Operating Officer and practicing attorney, authored the paper at the request of several members of the Church of England's General Synod in preparation for their vote regarding the nature of their relationship with the Anglican Church in North America. On February 4, Mr. Simon Sarmiento, member of the Church of England and founder of the blog Thinking Anglicans, published a rebuttal of what he called “factual inaccuracies” in the AAC’s paper. Mr. Sarmiento is not an attorney and admitted to having the help of, among others, The Episcopal Church’s lead lawyer, David Booth Beers, and the Presiding Bishop’s Special Council for property litigation, Mary E. Kostel.

Read it carefully and follow the links.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Polity & Canons

Q: What is the ACNA’s plan to reach out to America?

A: We want to be clear that the congregation is God’s fundamental way of doing things, just like the family is God’s fundamental building block for society. And if the chief agency is the congregation, the chief agents are the individual Christians. We have to disciple. We have to teach people to love God … and share their faith. We have to teach them how to engage the world in service, in Christ’s love.

Q What is your message for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams?

A: He should understand there really is realignment in Anglicanism. There is a new Reformation in the Christian West. I hope he sees the unity despite our diversity. It’s a unity in Christ. He should see the passion for mission. I trust he sees a people that look recognizably Anglican.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

The Six Bishops Are:

Blackburn
Winchester
Europe
Rochester
Beverley
Burnley

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention

Greetings to the Anglican Church in North America
from
the Church of Ireland Evangelical Fellowship


Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

The Church of Ireland Evangelical Fellowship includes in its membership lay people, clergy and bishops in the Church of Ireland. Our committee, meeting on 28th May 2009, unanimously resolved that we should write to encourage you in the formation of the Anglican Church in North America.

We have followed with sadness the unfolding developments in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. We know that many of you have suffered great loss (personal, parochial and diocesan) for upholding the orthodox faith in the face of radical innovation, and we want you to know that you have our full support.

We are glad to affirm you fully as fellow-Anglicans and we hope and pray that your new Province will be officially recognised by the Anglican Communion before long. We would like to share with you some words of the hymn known as St Patrick’s Breastplate*:

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One, and One in Three.
Of whom all nature hath creation;
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

We assure you of our love and prayers in these times of testing.

Yours sincerely in Christ



Dermot O’Callaghan
(Chair of the Church of Ireland Evangelical Fellowship)

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Church of Ireland

La Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur has grown by “leaps and bounds” over the past decade the Bishop of Bolivia, the Rt Rev Frank Lyons told delegates to the founding convocation of the ACNA in Fort Worth last week, with many dioceses doubling in size.

Bishop Lyons reported that at the March 28 meeting of the South American House of Bishops in Asuncion, the province authorized the creation of four auxiliary bishops for the Diocese of Chile, three auxiliary bishops for the Diocese of Peru, one suffragan bishop for the Diocese of Uruguay, and one suffragan bishop for the Diocese of Northern Argentina.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Cono Sur [formerly Southern Cone]

Last week more than 800 men and women gathered in Bedford, Texas, to elect an archbishop and ratify a constitution for the ACNA, a new alliance for churches that have left the Episcopal Church. Led by Robert Duncan, bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the ACNA comprises more than 700 theologically conservative churches with about 70,000 parishioners.

There were many central theological beliefs that last week’s attendees could agree on in their constitution and canon laws, including the full inspiration of the Bible, the centrality of baptism and Communion to church life, and the authority of the historic church creeds. But for the time being, ACNA leaders have not reached full agreement on female priests. At this time, each jurisdiction is free to decide whether or not to ordain women, but jurisdictions cannot force others to either accept women’s ordination or to stop practicing it. Women bishops are forbidden.

“For those who believe the ordination of women to be a grave error, and for those who believe it scripturally justifiable . . . we should be in mission together until God sorts us out,” said Duncan in last week’s opening address. “It is not perfect, but it is enough.”

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • * Culture-Watch • Women

The 750 churches in the newly formed Anglican Church in North America were once among the most charismatic churches in the Episcopal fold, said the Rev. Briane Turley, rector of Tulsa’s Church of the Holy Spirit Anglican.

Turley’s church is one of two Tulsa-area congregations in the new denomination.

Most of the congregations left the Episcopal Church over concerns that it was drifting from its biblical foundation.

“Most of the largest Episcopal churches have joined us,” he said.

Turley said that the largest Episcopal churches have tended to be evangelical and charismatic at their core.

“We’ve tended to attract the most evangelical, and the most Anglo-Catholic congregations,” he said, churches that adhere to the biblical record and also to traditional, liturgical forms of worship.

“It has to do with a thirst for the transcendent Christ, for knowing him, having entered into a deeper relationship with him,” he said.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Departing Parishes • * Theology • Christology

The reality is that the Common Cause Theological Statement has outlived its usefulness. What is needed is a new doctrinal statement, one which is not only more comprehensive in its recognition of divergent opinions among orthodox Anglicans but also displays greater solidarity with the Anglican entities that have supported the establishment of a new orthodox province in North America and extend their recognition to the ACNA as that province in formation. Such a statement need not be complicated—just a few well-chosen words—around which all orthodox Anglicans can in good conscience come together in the cause of the gospel.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

The Rev. Tom Foster of Modesto was a delegate to the historic inaugural provincial assembly of the Anglican Church in North America held June 22-25 in Bedford, Texas. He called the meeting "a gangbuster operation" and said the spirit of the gathering "was absolute joy."

The 29th province in the worldwide Anglican Communion was established to oversee U.S. churches and dioceses that have left the Episcopal Church, as well as those in Canada that similarly have split over doctrinal issues, primarily the interpretation of Scripture. ACNA will oversee 700 parishes four U.S. dioceses and about 100,000 people, organizers said.

The new province, which still must garner approval from two-thirds of Anglican leaders around the world, is not recognized by the Episcopal Church. The Rev. Robert Duncan, bishop of another U.S. breakaway diocese, was installed as ACNA's archbishop during the assembly, which included the adoption of a constitution and canons, or laws. That would put him on equal footing with Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and the other 27 primates, or leaders, around the world.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin

Early in the 20th century, some Orthodox leaders were willing to accept the "validity of Anglican orders," meaning they believed that Anglican clergy were truly priests and bishops in the ancient, traditional meanings of those words.

"It fell apart. It fell apart on the Anglican side, with the affirmation more of a Protestant identity than a Catholic identity," said Jonah, at the inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America, held in Bedford, Texas.

"We need to pick up where they left off. The question has been: Does that Anglican church, which came so close to being declared by the other Orthodox churches a fellow Orthodox church, does that still exist?"

A voice in the crowd shouted, "It does!"

"Here, it does," agreed Jonah, stressing the word "here."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin

"We're trying to be servants," Katherine Martin, a cleric from Auburn, Ala., told me. "I'm not being welcomed to consecrate [Communion] in Quincy [Illinois] or Fort Worth [Texas]," which are two dioceses that don't ordain women, "but both the bishops of those dioceses couldn't be more kind."

I wondered if the men would take a similar position, agreeing to be "servants" while limitations were placed on them.

"I'd be lying if I'd say I wasn't disappointed," said Canon Mary Hayes of the Pittsburgh Diocese. "I've been a priest 25 years. I'm delighted to be in a body of people who have different views. It's not about getting my way."

Read the whole thing.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • * Culture-Watch • Women

Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man living openly with a partner, whose 2003 consecration as bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire created a backlash among traditional believers within the U.S., church, told Ecumenical News International he does not believe the new Anglican grouping has long-term viability.

"A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that," Robinson told ENI after delivering a sermon on 28 June at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City during the city's annual gay pride festivities.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings

The creation of a second Anglican church in America for conservative Episcopalians angered by the liberal drift of their denomination has drawn high praise from the members of a Vero Beach church who attended the new denomination’s founding convocation in Texas this week.

“I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment,” said Judy Stull of Christ Church in Vero Beach, one of ten members of the church’s delegation to the Anglican Church in North America founding convocation held June 22-25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

Formed in 2007 after the clergy and a majority of the members of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach withdrew from the Diocese of Central Florida, the new church meets in the former Indian River County Tax Assessor’s Office in Majestic Plaza off U.S. 1 in Vero Beach. The 500-member church is one of 700 congregations comprising 100,000 former Episcopalians in the U.S. and Canada that make up the ACNA.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

In a Texas cathedral where the liturgical nuances of Anglo-Catholicism mingled with the joyous shouts of Pentecostalism, Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh called together a body representing 100,000 people who had left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Yesterday they adopted the constitution of the new Anglican Church in North America, which they hope will eventually be recognized as a province of the 80 million-member global Anglican Communion. The 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church is the U.S. province of the communion.

"There is a great reformation of the Christian Church under way. We North American Anglicans are in the midst of it," their new archbishop told a standing-room only crowd gathered in St. Vincent Cathedral in Bedford, Texas. It was the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth which, like the Diocese of Pittsburgh, had broken with the Episcopal Church, taking the majority of its parishes with it.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Please welcome the 39th province of the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church in North America. “Formal recognition awaits,” writes Ruth Gledhill, but the head of the ACNA, Archbishop Robert Duncan, is in talks with Rowan Williams and the new province is already in full communion with 30 million Anglicans around the world.

Great news, eh? Funny that it took Anglicanism 400 years to establish a presence in North America, but better late than never....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Three main problems face the newly formed ACNA, and they are all formidable. All of them in a sense limit the ability of ACNA to break free of its emotional and psychological attachment to that which has brought them to this point. The first revolves around property disputes. I wrote to bishops and deputies to General Convention today suggesting that a trust or trusts be formed to administer disputed property and to enter into temporary agreements in cases in which a vast majority of parishioners in such properties wish no longer to be in TEC, negotiating leases, shared arrangements and creative solutions to take these disputes out of the secular courts. I was not encouraged by the responses I received, most of which accused those leaving us off stealing property or of being so bigoted against gay and lesbians that in justice they should be shunned. Justice, I am told, trumps charity.

The second problem revolves around the language used to depose bishops and other clergy who have joined ACNA which, if language means anything at all, purports to laicise such clergy rather than merely to desprive them of the right to exercise ministry in Provinces in which they have no desire to exercise ministry.

The third is the problematic relationship between ACNA and the Instruments of Unity of the Anglican Communion which has exported American problems worldwide and threatens to destroy the unity of the entire Communion. If indeed the Communion comes apart because of what has happened here, ACNA will, whether it deserves to be blamed or not, bear a good deal of responsibility for a tragic schism, a responsibility in which it will ironically, be accused of sharing responsibility with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, to what extent perhaps is a judgment differently assessed by people on differing sides of this tragedy.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • Instruments of Unity • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues

If Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy, then Bedford is no Congress of St. Louis.

The 1977 gathering and its Affirmation were about sharply defining doctrine, with continuity both back to the origins of the Church of England, and setting a precedent for decades if not centuries to come. This week’s gathering was about fuzzing theological differences between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, while reassuring both parties that the ACNA is no TEC.

It’s possible that more truth, clarity and courage will be forthcoming, but right now I don’t have reason to be optimistic. If he wants to connect to those American Christians who believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church, Metropolitan Jonah still has a few dozen Schism I bishops yet to meet. Perhaps it’s time for the Congress of St. Louis/Schism I crowd to convene their own media event. If the Metropolitan isn’t available, they could invite Cardinal Kasper.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Anglican Continuum

Describing the assembly, Bishop Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), said “There was a marvelous mood of co-operation and hope there. We had allowed three sessions for the adoption of the constitution and the canons and it was done in less than two. Everything passed unanimously all the time.”

He was quick to add, however, that he was “not naïve enough to think that in future synods there won’t be discontents of some sort arising,” noting that ACNA is a coming together of a number of different groups. Along with ANiC, which says it represents about 4,000 Anglicans in 30 congregations across Canada, ACNA includes dioceses and parishes that have left The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Mission in the Americas; the Convocation of Anglicans in North America; the Anglican Coalition in Canada; the Reformed Episcopal Church; and the missionary initiatives of Kenya, Uganda, and South America’s Southern Cone. Additionally, the American Anglican Council and Forward in Faith North America are founding organizations. ACNA says it represents approximately 100,000 Anglicans in 700 parishes.

Bishop Harvey noted that some of the groups that have united have been out of the mainline of Anglicanism for a long time, in the case of the Reformed Episcopal Church, for more than 100 years.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

[Robert Duncan's] take on Islam echoed the more strident tone of conservative U.S. evangelicals and not those who have called for “inter-faith dialogue” with Muslims.

“We’ve got to be about the business of engaging Islam … secularism, and materialism, but especially Islam. Because there is only one way to the Father, it’s the only way. It’s a matter of life and death,” he said to warm applause.

On another note, he evoked the Church of England’s founding father Henry VIII — crowned King of England 500 years ago – and held him up as an example of ”a ruler in the end gone astray, confiscating the property of a church in an almost contemporary way.”

This comparison of the legal battles between dissident dioceses and the Episcopal Church over property to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries was probably meant in a light-hearted way. But it could also be taken as a jab from a new alliance that wants to come out swinging.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Of the 800 people present, 234 are delegates from the 28 groups that have broken away from the Episcopal Church of the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Bishop Duncan, deposed from the Episcopal Church in 2008 and now a bishop in the Province of the Southern Cone, was due to be installed as Archbishop of the would-be province on Wed­nes­day at St Vincent’s Cathedral.

The assembly has ratified its canons and constitutions, and pro­claimed its support for the Anglican Covenant, which it would like individual dioceses to be able to adopt, rather than provinces. It has retained a declaration that says: “We are grieved by the current state of brokenness within the Anglican Communion, promoted by those who have embraced erroneous teaching and who have rejected a repeated call to repentance.”

ACNA says it has 693 congrega­tions, 81,311 worshippers, and an average Sunday attendance of 69,197....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

The Episcopal Church is part of the global Anglican Communion. Anglican Church members say they remain part of the same Communion, even though they've left the Episcopal Church.

Bane said that after his retirement, he tried to remain active in Episcopal ministry but was shunned by the denomination.

Bane said he was more conservative than many members of the Southern Virginia diocese. In 2003, he voted against Robinson's ordination; other clergy and parishioners representing the diocese voted unanimously for ordination.

Asked why he didn't join the Anglican conservatives earlier, Bane said he'd hoped to remain a traditional voice within the Episcopal Church.

He said the Anglican Church "is probably where I should have been earlier."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts

Two Tulsa-area ministers are elated about the historic creation of the Anglican Church in North America, a denomination formed by conservative churches and members who left the Episcopal Church.

Six years after the Episcopal Church consecrated a gay bishop, setting off a firestorm of protests, delegates meeting in Bedford, Texas, this week officially constituted the new Anglican church with 700 congregations and 100,000 members.

"It's wonderful," said the Rev. Briane Turley, rector of Tulsa's Church of the Holy Spirit Anglican, which left the Episcopal Church several years ago over concerns that the church was drifting from its biblical foundation.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Conservative Anglicans disenchanted with the liberal drift in their U.S. and Canadian churches say they are confident that a new church body launched this week will one day gain a seat in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has been organized, its leaders say, as an alternative for Anglicans who disagree with the theology of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

"This is the beginning of a recovery of confidence in Anglicanism as a biblical, missionary church," said former Fort Worth Episcopal Bishop Jack Iker.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

The Anglican Church in North America currently is made up of 700 dissident Anglican churches, ranging from tiny Southern congregations that meet at Holiday Inns to larger congregations like St. Vincent's in Bedford.

"The challenge before them is obviously two-fold," says the Rev. Bill Sachs, an Episcopal priest and author of the forthcoming book, "Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism." "How do you meld all of these groups that have prized their particular identity? And the larger challenge is how do you transform a spirit of protest into a positive message that might even attract newcomers?"

Denominational realignment has dogged the Episcopal Church since it broke from the Church of England after the Revolutionary War. But never has such a large chunk of the church broken off in protest. Its intent is to form a polyglot communion with like-minded dioceses spanning from Rwanda to Argentina.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

(Church of Uganda) The House of Bishops of the Church of Uganda, in its regularly scheduled meeting on 23rd June 2009, made several resolutions concerning the state of the Anglican Communion and the future of global Anglicanism.

The Bishops reaffirmed their commitment to the Anglican Communion and to the GAFCON movement as a force of renewal within the Communion, and pledged to continue to be a voice of orthodox faith, which is the biblical and historic faith of Anglicanism.

The Bishops were deeply concerned that the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) refused to seat the Church of Uganda’s duly appointed clergy delegate, Rev. Phil Ashey, and deprived the Church of Uganda from the representation to which it is entitled. The Bishops said, “The Church of Uganda’s prerogative to choose who should represent us was abused by the ACC by refusing to seat our delegate. We consider this to be a profound violation of our rights by the Joint Standing Committee and the ACC.”

The House of Bishops also reaffirmed its commitment to not receive funds from the Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Anglican Church of Canada, revisionist TEC and Canadian dioceses and parishes, and funding organs associated with them. The Bishops also chastised and called to account those Bishops among them who have violated this collective and long-standing decision.

Finally, concerning the formation of the Anglican Church in North America, the House of Bishops resolved that it warmly supports the creation of the new Province in North America, the Anglican Church in North America, recognizes Bishop Bob Duncan as its new Archbishop, and declares that it is in full communion with the Anglican Church in North America.

Likewise, the Bishops resolved to release, effective immediately, the Bishops, clergy and churches in America under its ecclesiastical oversight and to transfer them to the Anglican Church in North America. The House of Bishops further resolved to continue its partnership and friendship with them in mission and ministry, extends its hand of fellowship, and wishes them well.

Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi said, “This really is the moment we have been waiting for. We have been longing to be able to repatriate our clergy and congregations to a Biblical and viable ecclesiastical structure in North America, and that day has now come. To God be the glory.”

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda

God, history, and provinces representing the overwhelming majority of the members of the Anglican Communion were on the side of the ACNA, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told the 234 delegates drawn from the ACNA’s 28 founding jurisdictions including four former dioceses of the Episcopal Church, representing some 700 congregations and 100,000 Anglicans in the US and Canada.

The break with the Episcopal Church was now complete, Bishop Duncan said. “There is no one here who will go back.”

Delegates attending the June 22-25 convocation formally adopted the ACNA’s Constitution and Canons and were also addressed by Bishop Duncan --- who was elected archbishop on June 21 by a meeting of the ACNA’s House of Bishops --- and California megachurch pastor Rick Warren, and Metropolitan Jonah, the head of the Orthodox Church in America.

Archbishop Duncan lauded the comprehensiveness and unity of the new province, which bridged the traditional theological divide between High and Low churchmen, Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, in addition to the modern question of the ordination of women.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

When it comes to blow-out church services, the Anglicans can sure put on the dog. I've been filing stories for the past three days on the constitutional convention for the Anglican Church of North America, the emerging 39th province of the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion. The big party to end it all was Wednesday night (it's 1:14 a.m. as I type this on Thursday) and it was a splasher.

The site was a Texas megachurch called Christ Church in Plano, a north Dallas suburb. Although I got lost getting there from Fort Worth (first ended up in Garland somehow), I knew when I finally drove up that this was the place. Talk about huge. Buildings everywhere and the sanctuary was cathedral-like in its vastness. All that was missing were side chapels and votive candles. The decor is a bit stark - no Christ on the main cross above the altar which goes along with low-church evangelicalism Texas-style.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

The spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church in America offered to begin talks aimed at full communion with the new Anglican Church in North America, then named a series of obstacles whose removal could tear apart the hard-won unity among the 100,000 theological conservatives who broke from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

"What will it take for a true ecumenical reconciliation? Because that is what I am seeking by being here today," Metropolitan Jonah said to a standing ovation from 900 people assembled in a tent on the grounds of St. Vincent Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

He spoke of St. Tikhon, a 19th-century Russian Orthodox missionary to the United States who initiated a close relationship with the Episcopal Church that later cooled.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

The new Anglican Church in North America will give former Episcopalians new confidence and pride in being Anglicans, Jack Iker, bishop of a Fort Worth group that has left the Episcopal Church, declared Wednesday.

"Over the last 30 years, our members have winced or shuddered when they saw a story about the Episcopal Church in the public press," he said, "because it has usually been about some scandal or outrageous thing one of our leaders has said or done."

Iker said the new Anglican body "gives mainstream clergy and laity a chance to recover confidence and enthusiasm in being an Anglican Christian."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC)

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

As I stated in my Bishop’s Address at our Diocesan Convention in March, I see little reward or benefit in expending our resources and energies in unfruitful expeditions trying to stem the tide of revisionism in The Episcopal Church. Certainly I ask those who are intercessors to pray that God would “stay the hand of the revisionists” at General Convention. And we who attend will, under God, carry out our roles in faithful witness to the truth as we have received it in Holy Scripture and in the traditions of the Church. But the creative thrust of the diocese—beyond the gospel imperative to preach the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches as missionary outposts of the Kingdom of God—needs to be elsewhere than in political machinations of the General Convention. As I’ve stated before, God has called us to help shape the future of Anglicanism through mutually enriching missional relationships and through inter-diocesan, inter-provincial accountability. Certainly, Kendall as our Canon Theologian will monitor the developments at General Convention 2009, but I believe it is in keeping with our declared vision as a diocese to focus on what we believe God is calling us to do, not on the strategies and battles he called us to engage in yesterday.

Before I conclude, let me address an issue that I find is sometimes confusing to many within the diocese, as well as those who are watching us in the reappraiser wing of North American Anglicanism, specifically in what is called “The Inside Strategy.” Among the writers and bloggers of North American Anglicanism there has emerged what some call the inside and the outside strategy in battling with heterodox teaching and practice in the Church. Some who were once Episcopalians have left because they were convinced that anything resembling orthodox belief and practice was lost. Many of these are now gathering at the ACNA convention. They are sometimes referred to as engaging in the outside strategy. That is, in the cause of orthodoxy in North American Anglicanism they have left previously official churches, such as the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church in the United States. According to this understanding it is believed the best way to revive or reform Anglicanism in North America is to work outside the established churches of the Anglican Communion. In distinction from those outside there are those who remain within TEC and the Anglican Church in Canada. Since they are staying, but still hold to the same understanding of the faith as those who have left, it is assumed by some that they must be carrying out an inside strategy of reformation. We in South Carolina are then said to be carrying out such an agenda—battling for orthodoxy, seeking to win back the day in The Episcopal Church in some maneuvering of ecclesiastical politics. While some within the Church may indeed be doing this, it is certainly not my intent. The stakes at present are much higher than what is happening in Episcopalianism or the continuing Anglican bodies in North America.

If we could be said to be carrying out an “Inside Strategy” it is not towards TEC: it is toward the Anglican Communion. Put simply, we remain inside the structures of the Communion to help shape the emerging Anglicanism of the 21st Century so long as we are able. It is ironic that as one of the few dioceses of The Episcopal Church with documented growth in every significant metric of measurement—membership, average Sunday attendance (ASA), spiritual vitality, finances, missional relationships through the last decade—we can influence the developments within global Anglicanism more effectively than we can influence our own Church! When conferences are held for bishops and leaders in TEC about growth and reaching new generations, why are experts brought in from non-Anglican sources and the prior architect of growth in the one diocese in TEC that has documented growth, Bishop Salmon, is not invited to speak? Why are the rectors in this diocese who have so clearly effectively reached their communities with the gospel never once referenced or consulted? Even the Presiding Bishop had to revise her statement that no diocese in TEC had seen growth, when documentation was cited that South Carolina had seen significant decadal growth. But, irony aside, getting back to my main point, our “Inside Strategy” is not to tilt at windmills in Quixotic fashion thinking we can turn back the clock to some prior age; it is to help shape the future that is emerging in global Anglicanism from within the Communion.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Statements & Letters: Bishops • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Episcopal Church (TEC) • General Convention • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • * South Carolina

His Beatitude, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) announced recently that his church has ended its ecumenical relations with The Episcopal Church, and will establish instead formal ecumenical relations with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA made the announcement June 24 at a plenary session of the ACNA’s founding convocation at St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

The Rev. Rick Warren brought hundreds of former Episcopalians to their feet in applause Tuesday when he called their exodus from the denomination "a historic event" and said God was "calling you out" of the Episcopal Church.

"I jumped at the chance to come here," Mr. Warren, evangelical pastor of the 24,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., told delegates to the constitutional convention of the newly created Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). "We will stand with you in solidarity as God does something new in your midst."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Love God and love people, the Rev. Rick Warren told founders of the new Anglican Church in North America on Tuesday as he advised them not to focus on property disputes caused by the exodus from their mother churches.

"You may lose the steeple, but you won’t lose the people," Warren said to long applause from about 1,000 packed into a tent outside St. Vincent’s Cathedral. "Christ did not die for property."

Anglicans from across the world are at the conference, where church members upset over the ordination of gays and other issues formed the new Anglican church. They had split from the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and the Anglican Church of Canada.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Seated on the dais at the inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America, alongside Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan, evangelical mega-pastor Rick Warren and Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America was a woman in a clergy collar.

The Rev. Mary Hays, canon to the ordinary -- chief of staff -- of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) had one of the most visible roles of an ordained woman in this assembly representing 100,000 people who broke with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. She moderated a discussion among 900 people and led them in prayer for the Rev. Warren, a Southern Baptist who addressed the gathering.

Once a prominent leader within the conservative movement in the Episcopal Church, she is the sort of woman who might have been called to be a bishop. But her new church, which hopes to join the 80-million member global Anglican Communion, forbids female bishops pending some future consensus by the Anglican Communion to permit them. Each of the 28 dioceses in the Anglican Church in North America can choose whether or not to ordain women as priests and deacons. Most don't do so.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

The Rev. Rick Warren used his Southern Baptist preaching skills to fire up a gathering of conservative Anglicans in Bedford on Tuesday.

"We stand with you in solidarity as God does something new in your midst," said Warren, author of the mega-bestseller The Purpose Driven Life, pastor of massive Saddleback Church in California, and invocation-giver at the Obama inaugural.

The Anglican Church in North America invited Warren to be one of the headline speakers for its first provincial assembly, which continues through Thursday at St. Vincent's Cathedral in Bedford.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

A survey of leaders in the Anglican Church in North America reveals a need for a greater emphasis on Christian training – traditionally known as “catechisis” – in the church. Among the survey’s findings are:

* Only 17% of respondents are very satisfied with the overall effectiveness of catechesis in the Church;<
* Where catechesis is offered, respondents believed it was often highly effective among adults, but generally saw it as less effective among children and, especially, adolescents;
* When asked, “What is missing from current catechetical content?” the most frequent answer was the inability to move from belief to action.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Watch it all thanks to BabyBlue.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Read it all and check out the pictures also.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops

Several hundred former Episcopalians, meeting in a school gym near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, ratified a constitution Monday for the fledgling Anglican Church in North America as a direct challenge to the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada.

About 800 people jumped to their feet and sang the Doxology, a hymn of praise, after the ACNA's new leader, Archbishop-designate Robert Duncan, told the group that it had "done the work."

"The Anglican Province of North America has been constituted," he said.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

In a Texas cathedral where the liturgical nuances of Anglo-Catholicism mingled with the joyous shouts of Pentecostalism, Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh called together a body representing 100,000 people who had left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Yesterday they adopted the constitution of the new Anglican Church in North America, which they hope will eventually be recognized as a province of the 80 million-member global Anglican Communion. The 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church is the U.S. province of the communion.

"There is a great reformation of the Christian Church under way. We North American Anglicans are in the midst of it," their new archbishop told a standing-room only crowd gathered in St. Vincent Cathedral in Bedford, Texas. It was the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth which, like the Diocese of Pittsburgh, had broken with the Episcopal Church, taking the majority of its parishes with it.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Fueled by disputes over many issues — including ordaining a gay bishop — conservatives who have left the national Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada approved a constitution Monday creating a new Anglican Church in North America.

After nearly unanimous adoption of the constitution, some 800 Anglicans — representing 700 dioceses and other groups with some 100,000 parishioners in the U.S. and Canada — stood and sang PraiseGod From Whom All Blessings Flow, in celebrating the new organization.

New canons and bylaws will be voted on Wednesday at the convention, being held at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Especially for those of our readers who are attending the ACNA assembly, we'd love to have you share your impressions and perspective on the gathering.

For those who are watching from home via the live feed, feel free to share as well, but we'd like to ask you to focus on what you "saw and heard" (to borrow a theme from well-known blogger Amy Welborn).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

So far here are some of the blogs we're following for the news and views from Bedford:

Peter from Anglican Essentials Canada
BabyBlue
TexAnglican
Wannabe Anglican

And of course the ACNA Assembly website with live streaming from AnglicanTV and much more is here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

One interesting tidbit of info offered is that one-quarter of the voting delegates are 25 or younger.

There are lots of purple shirts (bishops), all of whom have been booted out by the Episcopal Church - or they have volunteered to leave - due to the massive theological differences between the two camps. Some of us are looking around to see if Peter Beckwith, bishop of Springfield, Ill., and an Episcopal bishop in good standing, is there. I asked Bishop Beckwith last week if he was going to come after a spokeswoman for the denomination criticized him for being a liaison to the ACNA.

"If I came," he said, "it'd be as an observer. I will not become a member of the ACNA. The only reason I'd be there is to support and encourage people."

He added, "Apparently there are folks calling for my head. There is an effort to purse the Episcopal Church of orthodox people."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

Bishop Duncan is about to become archbishop of these groups who believe that the Episcopal Church and its Canadian counterpart have failed to uphold biblical authority and traditional doctrine on matters from the divinity of Christ to sexual ethics. Many of those present at the gathering are at risk of losing their church buildings, or have already lost them, in property disputes with their former denominations.

"I think there is no one who would go back," Bishop Duncan said, to cries of "No! No!" from the congregation in St. Vincent Cathedral, the seat of the Diocese of Fort Worth, which, like the Diocese of Pittsburgh, voted to break with the Episcopal Church.

"I hear this everywhere I go. There is no one who would go back. There has been suffering and loss. Some of it was very wounding. But we are so much better off than we were before."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

So we begin in worship and end in worship, and there is much doxology in every part of these days together. And we are here to learn and to be stretched and to be re-committed. That’s what our plenaries are all about.

We are here to grow in fellowship and trust, to deepen in love and respect for one another, and to receive healing and forgiveness, all the while acknowledging our differences in Christ.

We are also here to prove that a Christian Assembly – at least one that wants to reach the cultures and the peoples of its increasingly lapsed and unconverted continent – does not have to focus on resolutions and legislation, nor does it have to be overwhelmingly gray-headed. [More than 20% of the voting delegates of the Provincial Assembly are 25 years of age or younger!] Even in organizing this emerging Anglican Province – a Province in the mainstream of both global Anglicanism and biblical Christianity – we are here to illustrate that a system of ratifying or sending-back is an alternative to spending disproportionate amounts of time on things that are, in fact, not the “main thing.”

We are also here to show what God’s people have always known: just how much Godly business can be done in a tent (especially a tent) or a gym or a school or in simple accommodations.

We are here, above all, to proclaim to the world what our God has done among us, among us sinners…

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

The Anglican Church in North America Provincial Council has endorsed the Anglican Covenant and expressed solidarity with the Communion Partners.

The Covenant is a four-part document that outlines the basics of the Christian faith as Anglicans have historically understood and practiced it. It also provides for accountability among Communion members. The Covenant was initiated by the 2005 Windsor Report which in turn was prompted by the crisis in the Anglican Communion created by the deviation from Biblical teaching and morality in North America.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009

You can listen here, it began on my computer at 17:03 and continues until just before 21:00 (so just under 4 minutes total). There are a number of questions about the Archbishop of Canterbury which will be of interest to blog readers. Note that Archbishop Rowan Williams has sent Bishop Santosh Marray (retired bishop of the Seychelles) as his pastoral visitor to the ACNA assembly according to the interview.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Archbishop of Canterbury

This elf has been slacking lately and it is only today that it dawned on me that we need a new ACNA category on the blog. So from today onwards, you will now find all stories related to the ACNA here: Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)

News stories, primary source documents and commentary specifically about this week's ACNA Assembly will be found here: ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009. (we have re-categorized relevant blog entries from the past week or so)

All past blog entries about the ACNA from the past 6-7 months are under this category: --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • * Admin

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet

The Rev. Craige Borrett, my coworker in the parish where I serve, is going to watch and take notes and report to the diocese. I am posting this because I have already gotten many questions about it.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • * South Carolina

The link and the schedule is here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

As a result of developments in the Diocese of Springfield, Bishop The Rt. Rev. Peter Beckwith, Bishop of Springfield, will not be attending the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) Assembly which is scheduled to begin tomorrow at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops

This clip includes brief comments from Bishop Iker and Bishop Duncan among others.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • * Culture-Watch • Movies & Television

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who led the network of hundreds of congregations that broke from The Episcopal Church for the past five years under the banner of the Anglican Communion Network, will be installed as the new church body’s first archbishop on June 24 at Christ Church in Plano, Texas. Visiting bishops from as far away as South America, Africa and Asia, representing millions of Anglicans, are expected to attend the June 22-25 assembly.

“We look forward to celebrating the miracle that is the formation of a biblical, missionary and united Anglican Church in North America,” Duncan said in the days leading up to the assembly. “This meeting is historic because it heals decades of division and represents the answer to many years of prayer. It will be a momentous time for orthodox Anglicans everywhere.”

Leaders in the Anglican Communion Network – which will cease operation when the new province launches – had been calling on The Episcopal Church to repent and to get back in line with traditional Anglicanism and Scripture since it consecrated an openly gay bishop in 2003. But over the past couple of years, Duncan and other conservative bishops saw little hope that the U.S. church body would change direction from what breakaway Anglicans claim to be a departure from Christian orthodoxy.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

[Ian] Douglas is not convinced that this week's assembly is all that important.

"I've seen it before," he said, referring to earlier gatherings of those disenchanted with the Episcopal Church.

But another Episcopal priest, the Rev. William Sachs – a historian and author of the forthcoming book Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism – called the Bedford meeting "a very big deal."

He said the new group will be taken much more seriously if it emerges seeming united and willing to work through established procedures for recognition by the Anglican Communion.

Sachs added: "The challenge before them is to come out of there with a message that is positive and distinctive and not simply a shared spirit of protest."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

A congregation in York expects to be part of a proposed Anglican province in the U.S. whose leaders meet this week in Bedford, Texas.

In its 10th year, St. Alban Anglican Church meets in the basement chapel of Trinity United Church of Christ downtown and averages six to nine worshippers at Mass.

Parishioners said Sunday they're excited about being part of a larger church body.

"If you want to have something going for the future generations, you need to be part of something bigger," said the Rt. Rev. Barry E. Yingling, parish rector. "So you're taken seriously."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

St. John's Anglican Church in Vancouver will join a new group of conservative parishes, the latest move in an ideological battle over same-sex marriage with the local Anglican authority.

St. John's Rev. Canon David Short will be in Texas this week for meetings to create the Anglican Church of North America. It will include roughly 700 parishes, which are united in their belief in orthodox principles. All 30 parishes that make up the conservative Anglican Network in Canada will join.

The new group will be a permanent home for St. John's, the largest Canadian Anglican parish, with four services and roughly 1,000 worshippers most Sundays.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

The head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, is sending a "pastoral visitor" from his staff, says Duncan, which he says shows that "we are part of the family."

Williams himself will attend the Episcopal Church's governing meeting this summer to give a seminar on combating global poverty.

Jurisdictions that have joined together to form the 28 dioceses and dioceses-in-formation of the Anglican Church in North America are: the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Quincy and San Joaquin; the Anglican Mission in the Americas (including the Anglican Coalition in Canada); the Convocation of Anglicans in North America; the Anglican Network in Canada; the Reformed Episcopal Church; and the missionary initiatives of Kenya, Uganda, and South America's Southern Cone. The American Anglican Council and Forward in Faith North America also are founding organizations.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Representatives from breakaway Episcopal congregations and dioceses — bound together in opposition to gay priests and same-sex marriage as well as in their desire to preach the Gospel — will gather here this week to create a new Anglican province.

Some say the provincial assembly gathered at St. Vincent’s Episcopal Cathedral Church in Bedford may create something geographically unprecedented in the United States: a second Anglican province.

One province would be the new and theologically conservative Anglican Church in North America; the other, the established and theologically liberal U.S. Episcopal Church.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

The status of the new Anglican Church in North America, of which Archbishop-elect Duncan will lead, remains uncertain within the global Anglican Communion.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Martyn Minns recalls the moment he knew he had to leave the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It was 2005. He was rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., and he was talking with a young family who told him they could no longer attend a church that accepted gay bishops or diverged from what they called Orthodox Christianity.

"As I looked at them, I realized that I had a decision to make," he says. "Either I moved with them into a rather uncertain future, or I lost the heart of the congregation. So for me it was a matter of, 'Do I want the church of the future, or the church of the past?' "

Soon after that, Minns' church bolted from the American Episcopal Church and aligned itself with the conservative archbishop of the Anglican province of Nigeria. Now he and other church leaders representing more than 700 congregations, four dioceses and up to 100,000 churchgoers are meeting in Bedford, Texas. They hope to form a new Anglican province in the U.S. — one that would rival the Episcopal Church.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Springfield, Illinois – June 19, 2009

Notwithstanding suggestions to the contrary, Bishop Beckwith remains a faithful Christian within The Episcopal Church (TEC) as the Bishop Diocesan of Springfield, and intends to keep that status intact. Bishop Beckwith has also served as the Vice President of the American Anglican Council (AAC) for a number of years. A majority of AAC’s membership consists of communicants of The Episcopal Church. It is in this capacity that he has been involved in the Anglican Communion Network (ACN) and the Common Cause Partnership (CCP). Any involvement in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) Assembly scheduled for next week in Bedford, Texas, would be limited to being an observer. Furthermore, as an Episcopalian, Bishop Beckwith was asked to be a TEC Liaison to the Ecumenical Relations Task Force. In no sense is he a structural part of either the Task Force, or the ACNA.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts

The Anglican Church in North America will be formally founded next week, challenging the legitimacy of the U.S. Episcopal Church and posing a dilemma for the worldwide Anglican Communion over who represents Anglicanism in the United States and Canada.

When 232 delegates to the ACNA convention at St. Vincent's Cathedral in Bedford, Texas, approve the organization's constitution and canons on Monday, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan will become archbishop for this "emerging" 39th province of the communion, consisting of several groupings that have left the Episcopal Church over issues related to sexuality and biblical authority.

A ceremony celebrating Bishop Duncan's installation is set for June 24 at Christ Church in the Dallas suburb of Plano, the ACNA's largest parish, with more than 2,000 members. Also among the ACNA's members are 11 Northern Virginia parishes, including the historic The Falls Church and Truro parishes, which left the Episcopal Church to found the Convocation of Anglicans in North America.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops

Three Christian leaders, Pastor Rick Warren, Metropolitan Jonah, and the Rev. Todd Hunter have agreed to be among those addressing the organizing Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America scheduled for June 22–25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life and pastor of Saddleback Church, will speak on June 23. Warren, a longtime friend of orthodox Anglicans, has been repeatedly recognized as a key spiritual leader in America. Named “America’s Most Influential Pastor” by Christianity Today in 2003, Warren has also been called one of “America’s 25 Best Leaders” (US News and World Report 2006), and one of the “15 People Who Make America Great” (Newsweek 2006). Saddleback Church, founded by Warren in 1980, is an innovative evangelical congregation of 22,000 in Lake Forest California.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Leaders of a conservative group of Anglicans in the United States will hold an organizational meeting later this month.

The inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) will take place at the end of June in Bedford, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The meeting will bring together more than 700 congregations into a growing North American province in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) • ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009 • Common Cause Partnership • --Proposed Formation of a new North American Province