Some 50 priests who signed the "First Promise" statement met in Atlanta March 2-3 to renew their call to reform the Episcopal Church at the parish level.

The First Promise statement originally was drafted last September at a meeting in Pawleys Island, S.C. It holds that the acceptance of the Kuala Lumpur Statement on human sexuality should be a condition of communion within Anglicanism.

Concluding that the bishops of the Episcopal Church are either unable or unwilling to keep their consecration vow to guard the faith of the church, especially in light of efforts to revise traditional moral teaching, the clergy present in Atlanta insisted that an authentic and effective gospel ministry requires an orthodox doctrinal foundation.

And they began to consider strategies for restoring that foundation, the most controversial involving the support of bishops from outside the Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Jon Shuler, the executive director of the North American Missionary Society (NAMS) and one of the First Promise founders, announced that his bishop, the Rt. Rev. Edward Salmon of South Carolina, had signed a letter dimissory releasing him to the Most Rev. Moses Tay, Archbishop of Singapore. Fr. Shuler will spend the next three months in Southeast Asia, but he expects to return to the U.S. in the summer to continue his work with NAMS, with Archbishop Tay as its "guardian archbishop."

He spoke of his dismay after last summer's General Convention. "I was devastated by the ease with which major decisions were made in Philadelphia which took the Episcopal Church away from biblical morality," he said. "When I returned to Pawleys Island in August I told the rector here what I believed to be the truth: 'The bishops of this church are not going to stop this drift into apostasy. We have waited for others to act, and now we must make our witness or stand condemned on the day of judgment'."

Five board members of PECUSA, Inc., were also present to report on the corporation which has been sued in federal court by the dioceses of Newark and New Jersey for its claim to the historic name of the Episcopal Church [TLC, Feb. 22].

"While we certainly do not welcome the lawsuit, it suggests that we have touched a nerve. When I saw the response, I knew we did the right thing," said the Rev. Chuck Murphy, rector of All Saints', Pawleys Island.

"Our lawyers believe that we will prevail, and so we will continue to keep the agenda open. PECUSA, Inc., is like an open vessel. It's there if God wants to fill it. We don't know how God will use it, but he can't use it if it doesn't exist," he said.

The conference also heard about a plan under consideration to create a national commission on ministry.

"We're calling it the Ministry Development Pilot Project of the American Anglican Council," said the Rev. Geoff Chapman, rector of St. Stephen's, Sewickley, Pa. "It will work within the existing canons, but it will get around obstacles that keep orthodox candidates from being accepted by local ministry commissions."

The attendees also pledged $50,000 so that bishops in the provinces of Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, the Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda can meet ahead of time to prepare for the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in July. According to the Most Rev. Livingstone Nkoyoyo, the Archbishop of Uganda, these seven provinces represent more than 20 percent of the worldwide Anglican population.

(The Rev.) Jeffrey Steenson