wfn.org | ACNS3277 Dialogue with separated Anglican churches moves

["Anglican Communion News Service" <acnslist@anglicancommunion.org>]

ACNS 3277     |     USA     |	  24 JANUARY 2003

Dialogue with separated Anglican churches moves forward

by Thomas Ferguson

[ENS] In an historic meeting that took important first steps to dispel years
of ignorance and suspicion, delegations from the Reformed Episcopal Church
(REC), the Anglican Province of America (APA) and the Episcopal Church USA
(ECUSA), met at St Paul's College in Washington, DC, 15-16 January.

The meeting was a direct result of resolutions from the 1998 Lambeth
Conference of bishops of the Anglican Communion, calling for dialogue with
separated Anglican churches, as well as Resolution D047 of the 2000 General
Convention. A previous meeting with other Continuing Anglican churches was
held in December 2002.

The Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of America were
invited to participate based on two main factors. First, both churches have
previously engaged in ecumenical dialogues with the Episcopal Church - the
REC most recently in 1993, the APA most recently in 1987, when it was known
as the American Episcopal Church. Second, the two churches are in the middle
of a 10-year process towards organic merger. The REC was formed in 1873 by
the Episcopal Assistant Bishop of Kentucky, George Cummins, largely in
response to disputes regarding liturgical and ecumenical matters. The
Anglican Province of America is the successor of the American Episcopal
Church, formed in 1968 in reaction over the Episcopal Church's reluctance to
discipline Bishop James Pike of California.

Representing the Episcopal Church were Bishop Edward Salmon of South
Carolina, chair; the Revd Stephen White, Episcopal chaplain at Princeton
University; the Revd Thomas Rightmyer, retired executive secretary of the
General Board of Examining Chaplains; Diane Knippers, member of the Standing
Commission on Ecumenical Relations; and staff from the Episcopal Church's
Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations.

Participants from Reformed Episcopal Church included Presiding Bishop
Leonard Riches; Bishop Royal Grote, vice-president of the General Council
and bishop of the Diocese of Mid America; Bishop Ray Sutton, rector of the
Church of the Holy Communion in Dallas, Texas, chair of the Inter-Church
Relations Committee of the REC and suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Mid
America; and the Revd David Hicks, canon to the ordinary of the Diocese of
the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

The delegation from the APA included Presiding Bishop Walter Grundorf; the
Revd Mark Clavier, chair of the APA's Ecumenical Committee; the Revd Paul
Blankinship and Frank Warren, members of the Ecumenical Committee.

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