Disaffected, breakaway bishops debate cooperation around parallel 'Anglican' province
Episcopal News Service, Pittsburgh. September 26, 2007 [092607-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Fifty-one bishops and bishops-elect representing several self-identified Anglican organizations were told at the beginning of a three-and-a-half-day meeting September 25 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that they needed to overcome differences if they are to succeed in their attempt to create a united, missionary and orthodox Anglicanism in North America."
Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told the gathering that before any unified orthodox Anglicanism could be expected to emerge in North America, relationships among the organizations need to be reordered.
"Our shortcoming is not 'right Faith,'" he said. "Our shortcoming is 'right Order' and 'right Mission.'"
He asked that the bishops agree to consult each other as they plant congregations, mutually review candidates for bishop before consecrations, share ministry initiatives instead of duplicating efforts, work actively together at the local level, and allow those ordained in one jurisdiction to function in all jurisdictions.
Duncan's earlier invitation to the gathering acknowledged that it would "lack the voice of the laity [and] is not a full synod of the Common Cause Partners, but it is the next step agreed upon by the Common Cause Roundtable."
Duncan convened the meeting in his role as moderator of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDP), also known as the Anglican Communion Network. The gathering is being called the "first-ever Common Cause Council of Bishops."
Duncan has said that the meeting's purpose is, in part, to "initiate discussion of the creation of an 'Anglican Union'" such as the one envisioned by the Primates of the Global South when they called for a new "ecclesiastical structure of the Anglican Communion in the USA."
The gathering overlapped the end of the September 20-25 meeting of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops in New Orleans. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams met with the House during the first two days.
The bishops issued a statement on September 25 responding to requests that were made in a communiqué from the Primates at the end of their February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The communiqué asked that the bishops make "an unequivocal common covenant" that they "will not authorize any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention" and asks them to "confirm that the passing of Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention means that a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent; unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion."
In their statement, the bishops reminded the Primates that the Episcopal Church has never authorized a public rite for blessing same-gender unions. They also reminded the Primates that their communiqué acknowledged the need for a "breadth of private response to situations of individual pastoral care."
The bishops pledged "not to authorize for use in our dioceses any public rites of blessing of same-sex unions until a broader consensus emerges in the Communion, or until General Convention takes further action."
They reiterated the language of B033 and noted that the Report of the Communion Sub-Group of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates said B033 expressed "the clear view of the Convention" and complied with a 2005 request of the Primates for a moratorium of bishops living in same-gender relationships until a new consensus emerged in the Communion.
The bishops reiterated their declaration in one of three "Mind of the House" resolutions issued after their March meeting that gay and lesbian persons are "full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church."
The statement also said the bishops "deplore incursions into our jurisdictions by uninvited bishops and call for them to end."
In his invitation to the Common Cause gathering, Duncan predicted that the House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans would reiterate decisions that, he wrote, "will mean that the Church is 'walking apart' from the rest of the Anglican Communion."
Duncan did not comment on the House of Bishops statement in his address. He and a handful of bishops left the New Orleans meeting before the final work on the statement began.
Most of the Common Cause meeting is closed to the public because, Duncan said, "We need to speak the truth to one another. We need to do some hard thinking and hard talking. The future of Anglicanism in North America is at stake."
A news conference is planned for midday September 28.
In addition to his fellow Episcopal Church bishops in the NACDP, Duncan invited the bishops and observers from the American Anglican Council; Anglican Mission in the Americas, which appears to be a combination of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) and the Anglican Coalition in Canada; Anglican Essentials Canada; the Anglican Network in Canada; the Anglican Province of America; the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA); Forward in Faith North America; and the Reformed Episcopal Church.
According to the NACDP, Common Cause was formed in 2004 and connects "Anglican bodies" that "have committed to working together for 'a Biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America.'" The members have written and adopted a common theological statement and articles of federation. A diagram of the organization is available here.
In September 2006, a self-selecting group of Anglican Primates who lead Provinces in the global south met in Kigali, Rwanda and issued a statement in which they called for such a structure because of what they called a "doctrinal conflict" that was causing "a growing number of congregations and dioceses in the USA and Canada who believe that their Anglican identity is at risk" to appeal to them for help "so that they might remain faithful members of the Communion."
It is unclear how many, or which, Primates actually endorsed the communiqué or saw it in its final form prior to publication on the Internet. After the statement was released, at least two Primates, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Southern Africa and Episcopal Church in the Philippines Prime Bishop Ignacio C. Soliba, disavowed the communiqué.