Common Cause Leadership Council outlines plans for an 'Anglican union'
Episcopal News Service. December 19, 2007 [121907-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
A self-selecting group of clergy and lay people announced late on December 18 that they had "created the structure necessary for building a federation of orthodox Anglicans in North America."
Meeting in Orlando, Florida, the Common Cause Leadership Council said in a news release that the council, composed of three delegates from each of the Common Cause partners, elected Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh Bishop Bob Duncan as its "moderator."
Duncan is also the moderator of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDP), known as the Anglican Communion Network. Duncan and the NACDP have been major organizers of the Common Cause movement.
The meeting, which included forming the committees called for by the Common Cause articles of federation, was the next step in a process Duncan and 50 other bishops representing several self-identified Anglican organizations outlined September 28. After a four-day meeting in Pittsburgh, the bishops, most of whom were part of what they called the Common Cause Council of Bishops, said they would spend 15 months developing "an Anglican union," which they anticipated would be recognized by some Anglican Communion Primates and provinces.
The Council of Bishops said in September that the union would constitute the one called for in September 2006 by a self-selecting group of Anglican Primates who lead Anglican Communion provinces in the global south.
"Our actions today dramatically reversed the fragmentation and separation of the past," the Leadership Council said in a communiqué issued at the end of the December 18 meeting. "We stand committed to the ‘faith once delivered to the saints' as expressed in our now ratified theological statement. The Common Cause Partnership is united in faith with the vast majority of members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. We are especially grateful for the support and recognition given to us by the provinces of the Global South that have encouraged us to come together in common cause for the Gospel."
The communiqué thanked recently retired Province of Southeast Asia Primate Archbishop Yong Ping Chung for his presence at the December 18 meeting, saying he represented the Anglican Coalition in Canada and calling him "one of the earliest supporters of the rebirth of orthodox Anglicanism in North America." He once chaired the Anglican Consultative Council.
The December 18 communiqué said that the council is "beginning to explore the expanding possibilities for ecumenical contact with fellow Christians in North America and around the world."
The communiqué also said that the partners would each "continue to live out its unique role, maintaining its distinctive ministry and character" and noted the articles of federation's call for each partner's autonomy to be unrestricted by membership in the Common Cause Partnership.
According to 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 the common theological statement the council ratified on December 18 and articles of federation. A diagram of the organization is available here.
According to the organization's new website, the Common Cause partners include, in addition to the NACDP:
- American Anglican Council;
- Anglican Coalition in Canada;
- Anglican Essentials Canada;
- Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA);
- Anglican Network in Canada;
- Anglican Province of America;
- Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA);
- Forward in Faith North America; and
- Reformed Episcopal Church
While some of the groups, such as the AMiA and CANA claim affiliation with other Anglican provinces, none of them has been officially recognized as a consistent member of the Anglican Communion.
Some groups formed recently, some were formed in response to previous -- and at times -- still on-going disagreements with the direction of the Episcopal Church. The Reformed Episcopal Church began in 1873 by eight former Episcopal Church priests and 20 laymen who formerly belonged to the church. They had left over what the group's website called "the excessive ritualism and exclusive attitude of the Protestant Episcopal Church toward other denominations."
The Anglican Province of America's roots are in the 1960s and 70s, according to that group's website. They center around disputes about the House of Bishops' treatment of then-California Bishop James Pike whose theology some viewed as "heretical," the Episcopal Church's involvement in the civil rights movement, liturgical changes which culminated in the 1979 version of The Book of Common Prayer and the ordination of women.
In drawing such groups into the Common Cause Partnership, Duncan acknowledged in September that they ""were not in the midst of this fight" with the Episcopal Church.
Anglican Province in America Presiding Bishop Walter Grundorf said at a September news conference that "we are the exiles."
"This was a wonderful opportunity for those of us who consider ourselves sort of classical Anglo-Catholic types of Anglicans who are outside the church and in a lifeboat situation" to come together "in hope that somehow, some way we can find a broad enough church to bring us all together and to protect our particular issues that we feel very strongly about," Grundorf said.