wfn.org | [ENS] Conservatives plan to replace Episcopal Church with their

["mika larson" <mini.mika@verizon.net>]

own Anglican province

10/13/2003  

Conservatives plan to replace Episcopal Church with their own Anglican
province

by Jan Nunley 

[Episcopal News Service] On the AAC conference's second day, attention
shifted from the past and present to the future. 

A morning panel dramatically titled "Intervention!" opened with the Rev.
Bill Atwood, general secretary of the Ekklesia Society, speaking about
the viewpoint of the Anglican primates and bishops of Africa and
Asia--the global South. Atwood, who describes himself as a "facilitator"
for conservative primates, described churches that largely reflect the
evangelical theology of their founding missionaries and the
communitarian values of their surrounding cultures-and for whom Western
individualism and liberalism are antithetical.

"One archbishop said to me, 'You know, when the missionaries came here,
they introduced us to Jesus. Now we don't have to travel to the West to
ask Him what He thinks. We ask Him here,'" Atwood related.

Global South churchgoers maintain a "cultural repugnance" for
homosexuality and find the idea of "parallel jurisdiction" alongside
those who do not share that view unacceptable, he said. "As one
archbishop said to me, 'We cannot be in a position of condoning evil.'"
Threats of losing Western funding don't faze them, Atwood maintained,
quoting Bishop Ben Kwashi of the Nigerian diocese of Jos: "'A pile of
money? You can't make a pile of money so big it can insulate me from the
flames of Hell.'"

No more 'muddling through'

"God willing, the defining battle of the war for Anglicanism's soul will
be fought next week," intoned Pittsburgh bishop Duncan, even as he
warned that the "war" itself would take "days and months, and to some
extent years."

He characterized the conflict as one between archbishops in the global
South and those of the "disintegrating, old" West, with Archbishop of
Canterbury Rowan Williams caught in the middle. "This time 'muddling
through' will not suffice," he warned sternly. "For Rowan Williams, the
last British empire is his to lose."  

Duncan predicted that the primates will rebuke ECUSA's Presiding
Bishop, the bishops who voted for Robinson's confirmation and tolerate
same-sex unions, and the Diocese of New Hampshire. He also said they
will demand that Robinson not be consecrated, but that, if he is, he and
bishops who participate in his consecration not be recognized as such.
All who voted for the objectional resolutions would be called to public
repentance within a few months.

Admitting that such actions "sound pretty un-Anglican," Duncan then
speculated on the outcome if the primates decline to rebuke ECUSA.
"Quite simply, that failure would come at the price of a wrenching split
in the whole fabric of the Communion. I am convinced that the Global
South would largely separate itself from the old West," he said.  "The
Archbishop of Canterbury would become little more than the titular head
of a moribund and declining British, American and Australian sect. The
dynamic Anglicanism of Africa, Asia and Latin America would realign with
a 'first among equals' whose see might have a movable name, including
places like Lagos or Nassau or Singapore or Buenos Aires."

Gradually, as Duncan described it, a "Network of Confessing Dioceses and
Parishes" would emerge in North America, aligned with African and Asian
Anglicans-a remnant ecclesiola in ecclesia, a church within a church.
The AAC would facilitate the process, providing structures for the new
"replacement province," which will embrace a variety of breakaway
Episcopal churches, ranging from the Reformed Episcopal Church to the
Anglican Mission in America (AMiA).

The only sticking point, Duncan admitted, might be the ordination of
women-which is acceptable in some parts of the global South and not in
others. Duncan chalked that up to the failure to sustain "a process of
reception" about the issue. "We need to develop understandings of how
our two integrities can proceed alongside one another, until our Good
Lord eventually makes this matter plain to our children and
grandchildren," said Duncan. 

-- The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News Service.