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New Anglican province comes into being in US
by Pat Ashworth
 His flock: Bishop Bob Duncan with those who attended the first worship gathering of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), at the Wheaton Evangelical Free Church, Illinois, on Wednesday of last week AP |
| THE NEW Anglican province in North America proposed by a coalition of conservative Anglican groups in the United States and Canada published its draft constitution and canons in Wheaton, Illinois, last week (News, 28 November).
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), formed by the Common Cause Partnership, says it has 700 congregations and about 100,000 members. It “will seek to represent orthodox North Americans in the councils of the Anglican Communion”. It will have an Archbishop — initially the Rt Revd Bob Duncan, former Bishop of Pittsburgh, and the Moderator of Common Cause.
At a press conference on Wednesday of last week in Wheaton, Bishop Duncan told the gathering: “The Lord is displacing the Episcopal Church.”
In the new provincial structure, congregations and clergy are related together “in a diocese, cluster, or network, whether regional or affinity-based, united by a bishop”. These are defined in the canons as consisting of a minimum of 12 congregations with an Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) of at least 50 each, and a collective ASA of at least 1000. They choose which bishop they want to be under: “A duly ordained male presbyter of at least 35 years of age.”
The canons do not curtail the freedom of member groups to continue ordaining women as deacons or priests if that has been their practice. Bishop Duncan told the press conference: “Scripture is unclear” on the subject.
Regarding property, the canons stipulate that all congregational property “owned by each member congregation now and in the future is and shall be solely and exclusively owned by each member congregation, and shall not be subject to any trust interest or any other claim of ownership”.
The leadership of the Common Cause Partnership declared in a press release that it had “begun forming the new Church in response to a request from the Primates . . . of the Global Anglican Future Conference [GAFCON] in Jerusalem last summer”. Those Archbishops — of Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone — said after a council meeting in London last week that North American Anglicans had been “tragically divided since 2003”.
Lambeth Palace responded to the announced by stating that there were “clear guidelines” for new provinces. A legislative process to form a new province, which would be undertaken by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), would take years, and had not yet begun. Bishop Duncan’s spokesman, the Revd Peter Frank, told The New York Times: “This is not being put on hold while we wait for a committee in England to tell us which form to fill out.”
The Rt Revd Martyn Minns, a bishop for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, told the paper: “One of the questions a number of the Primates are asking is, why do we still need to be operating under the rules of an English charity, which is what the ACC does? Why is England still considered the centre of the universe?”
At the time of going to press, there had been no official response from the Epicopal Church in the US. But the Revd Charles Robertson, Canon to the Presiding Bishop, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, said before the new Church was announced: “We will not predict what will or will not come out of this meeting, but simply continue to be clear that the Episcopal Church, along with the Anglican Church of Canada and La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico, comprise the official, recognised presence of the Anglican Communion in North America.”
He went on: “We reiterate what has been true of Anglicanism for centuries: that there is room within the Episcopal Church for people with different views.”
Dr Williams met the five GAFCON Primates last Friday, at their request. They made no comment after the meeting, and have issued no statement. Members of the Group SOME members of the new Church began breaking away before the present crisis. One ACNA partner, the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), split from the Episcopal Church in the United States as long ago as 1873. The Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA), affiliated to Rwanda, was, in 2000, already moving towards establishing a separate province, after the irregular consecrations of Bishop John Rodgers and Bishop Chuck Murphy in Singapore. The AMiA had 23 parishes in 2000. Now it says it has 140, including 12 in Canada (who are members of the Anglican Coalition in Canada, its subsidiary).
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 New structure: Bishop Duncan, who told a press conference, “The Lord is displacing the Episcopal Church” |
| Leader and other Comment Should the Primates’ Meeting recognise the new province? Vote here |
