Anglican Mission in America Waiting for Meeting of Anglican Primates in March
Episcopal News Service. January 26, 2001 [2001-16]
Jan Nunley
(ENS) Some 800 Episcopalians, former Episcopalians, "continuing Anglicans" from congregations not in communion with Canterbury, and the merely curious met January 17-21 at the spacious campus of All Saints Church in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, for the first Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) "Homecoming" Winter Conference.
Conference organizers reported that participants came from 114 parishes in 39 states. The vast majority, however, hailed from southern or western states, where AMiA's influence is strongest. Of the 21 named congregations or small groups which have left the Episcopal Church to affiliate with the AMiA, ten are from the south, seven from the west, three from the Midwest, and one from New England. The locations and names of another nine AMiA "church plants" were not identified.
The meeting was the first gathering of the AMiA since its formation from two conservative groups, First Promise Roundtable and Anglican Association of Congregations on Mission (AACOM) in June 2000. The group is headed by leaders of both its predecessor organizations: Charles H. "Chuck" Murphy III of First Promise, rector emeritus of All Saints, and John H. Rodgers of AACOM, former dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Both men were consecrated January 29, 2000, as missionary bishops, Murphy for the Province of Rwanda and Rodgers for the Province of Southeast Asia, and given the charge of planting churches and receiving congregations and clergy who "can no longer conscientiously remain in the Episcopal Church."
Call for 'deep change'
Although the four-day gathering featured rousing worship sessions and workshops on such topics as "Releasing the Prophetic," "Intimacy with God," and "Renouncing Idol Gods," it was clear that for most the "main events" were the afternoon plenaries featuring Murphy, Rodgers, and the African members of AMiA's Council of Bishops: Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini and Bishops John Rucyahana and Venuste Mutiganda, all of Rwanda.
Speaking on Thursday to a capacity crowd in the sanctuary of All Saints, Rucyahana, the bishop of Shyira who defied American canons by accepting an Arkansas parish into his African diocese in 1998, took for his text Revelation 2:1-7 as he called upon the Episcopal Church to "repent [and] put to the test false apostles." Several times in his talk he dismissed the need for seminary-educated leadership and exhorted his listeners to share a simple Gospel message despite "rebukes" from within and without the church. "They may even tell you you are arrogant...fundamentalist, short-minded, limited--primitive, like us Africans," he said with a wry grin, clearly still stung by then-Newark bishop Jack Spong's reference to certain African bishops' theological views as "superstitious" just prior to the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
After Rucyahana spoke, Murphy took the microphone for a speech laden with metaphors from church growth experts, business management gurus--and the archbishop of Canterbury. "George Carey had a prophecy that churches die from the top down," Murphy said, citing statistics that show the Church of England at its lowest attendance levels since the Reformation. Citing business writer Robert Quinn, he called for "deep change" in the church, although it was not clear at some points whether he meant the AMiA or ECUSA.
Leaders in the church, Murphy said, need to "break the rules," "step outside the box," "battle the bureaucracy," and "lead by lone example." "Deep change requires a form of deviance," he said, rather than seeking what he called a "peace with pay" attitude on the part of ECUSA leaders.
Flexibility with limits
During a question-and-answer session with Murphy, Rodgers, Kolini, and retired West Tennessee bishop Alex Dickson, who serves on AMiA's Council of Bishops, the four repeatedly referred to the upcoming March meeting of the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion at Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina.
Several pressing questions were all met with a similar answer. Outreach to congregations and clergy in Canada? Wait until Kanuga. Replacing ECUSA as Anglicanism's representative in North America? Wait until Kanuga. A bishop to replace John Rodgers, set to retire in March? Wait until Kanuga.
Participants hoping for clear guidance on which Prayer Book the fledgling group will endorse (1662, 1928 or 1979) were disappointed. "I'm not suggesting we'll all end up alike," said Rodgers, citing a guiding principle of "flexibility with limits."
He said that "there will not be one given prayer book any time soon." As for theology, Murphy said, the Catechism of the 1979 Prayer Book, the 39 Articles of Religion, and the Lambeth Quadrilateral would do just fine for now as "effective defining instruments."
But at least one participant was troubled by what he saw as a difference in motives between the Rwandan bishops and their American colleagues, and professed disinterest in international Anglican politics. "The majority of Anglicans are in the global South," he said, "but it seems like 100% of the argumentation is in the United States. Is that really at the heart of what we're talking about?" Rodgers assured the questioner that once congregations pass into AMiA's care, their focus shifts to mission--when it isn't taken up with legal battles over property, as Murphy admitted.
Steps towards a Concordat
Even before the public sessions of the conference, leaders of the AMiA met privately with representatives of various "continuing Anglican" churches to begin discussions about bringing them into the Anglican Communion through AMiA's connection with the Provinces of Rwanda and Southeast Asia, although archbishop of Canterbury George Carey does not recognize Murphy and Rodgers as bishops.
Bishops of the AMiA, the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of America signed an "agreement concerning steps toward a Concordat" between the three groups, declaring their common adherence to the Bible, classical Christian creeds, the historic episcopate and Anglican liturgies, and the 39 Articles as the basis of their future intercommunion. Representatives of other "continuing" groups, such as the Charismatic Episcopal Church and the Anglican Evangelical Church, were also on hand for the conference.
Leaders of Forward in Faith North America, formerly the Episcopal Synod of America, signed an agreement with AMiA's leadership to work together on mission projects.
(Click here to see sidebar on Bishop Chuck Murphy): See 2001-016S