RWANDA: Three former Episcopal priests elected missionary bishops for North America
Episcopal News Service. September 6, 2007 [090607-02]
Matthew Davies
The Episcopal Church of Rwanda's House of Bishops, meeting September 4 in Kigali, Rwanda, elected three former Episcopal priests to serve as bishops for the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA), which describes itself as a "missionary outreach" of the Rwanda Church.
The Rev. Terrell Glenn, the Rev. Philip Jones and the Rev. John Miller will be consecrated January 26, 2008 following the AMiA's Winter Conference in Dallas, Texas, a communiqué from Rwanda's House of Bishops announced.
Glenn once served as a deputy to General Convention from the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and is former rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Mount Pleasant. Miller, a former member of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida's standing committee, was rector of St John's Episcopal Church in Melbourne. In 2004, he formed Prince of Peace Anglican Church. Jones was dean of the Episcopal Pro-cathedral Church of St. Clement in El Paso, Texas, for seven years. He is currently rector of the AMiA's St. Andrew's Anglican Church in Little Rock, Arkansas.
According to the Church of England newspaper, the Episcopal Church of Rwanda announced that nearly half of its bishops will be former Episcopal priests by January 2008. The three new consecrations will take the total number of Rwanda's House of Bishops to 16, with seven U.S. missionary bishops and nine Rwandan diocesan bishops.
The AMiA is not officially recognized as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion and the consecrations of its bishops have been described by Anglican Communion Office and Lambeth Palace officials as irregular. The AMiA bishops are among those the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has not invitated to the 2008 Lambeth Conference.
"In 2000, when the consecrations took place in Singapore on behalf of AMiA, at that time Archbishop George Carey said in a letter that he could not accept the consecrations as regular and that he would not regard himself as being in Communion with the bishops consecrated," the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, told Episcopal News Service on May 22, the date the invitations to the Lambeth Conference were announced. "The Primates, meeting in Oporto in 2000, also distanced themselves from these consecrations and affirmed the content of Carey's letter."
Rwanda's announcement comes just days after the irregular consecrations of three former Episcopal priests in Kenya and Uganda. The Rev. John A. M. Guernsey was consecrated September 2 as a bishop in the Church of Uganda to provide oversight to conservative congregations in the United States, while in Kenya the Rev. William Murdoch and the Rev. Bill Atwood were consecrated August 30 as suffragan bishops of All Saints Cathedral Diocese to serve congregations and clergy in the U.S. under Kenyan jurisdiction.
Such events have been described as "interventions" or "boundary crossings" by official councils or representatives of the Anglican Communion.