Akinola Announces

Nigerian Church In America

By Robert Stowe England

In another sign of de facto realignment within the Anglican Communion, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola announced October 5 that he aims to provide ?another spiritual home? for expatriate Nigerian Anglicans ?alienated? by the liberalism of the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA).

Akinola told reporters at Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, that he was on a ?pastoral? swing through the U.S. intended to help launch a U.S. ?convocation? for Nigerian Anglicans in the U.S. who are in ?pain? and ?agony? over ECUSA?s approval of a practicing homosexual bishop.

Akinola, who oversees a flock of nearly 18 million in his home country, estimates there are five million Nigerians in the U.S. and that at least five percent of those--250,000--are Anglicans. ?That?s a lot of people,? he said.

Akinola said the convocation would chiefly serve Nigerians who have already left ECUSA, or who want to leave. He noted that during his visit to All Saints?, Chevy Chase, Maryland, the prior evening he was approached by a Nigerian expatriate and mother. He quoted her as saying: ?We are in trouble because of our problem. I no longer go to church. My children no longer to go church? because they cannot accept what ECUSA has become. ?What are you going to do for us?? she asked.

Akinola asserted that, in overlapping ECUSA or the Anglican Church of Canada, the prospective ?Church of Nigeria in America? (CONA) would mirror parallel jurisdictions already extant within the Communion. For example, he noted that both the Church of England and ECUSA have convocations in Europe, where there is already an Anglican presence in some countries.

The convocation will operate as a companion to the Anglican Communion Network of Dioceses and Parishes. Its exact relationship to the Network--which is still intertwined with ECUSA--is not yet defined, noted Fr. Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Church, who was present at the briefing.

Akinola said the Network link for the convocation was urged by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams when the two leaders earlier discussed the matter. That much was confirmed by a spokesman for Dr. Williams; however, he denied that the Archbishop had been told of or approved a plan for a non- geographic Nigerian diocese, independent of ECUSA, on U.S. soil.

It was evident, however, that Akinola sees no choice but to provide some sort of rescue for his American-based flock. While his move may have appeared to pre-empt the October 18 publication of the Windsor Report--which scored such foreign interventions--it was actually ?two years behind schedule,? in Akinola?s view.

That is because there was an original arrangement to provide a special ministry for U.S.-based Nigerians as a joint venture with ECUSA, with the agreement of Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. It was the result of serious efforts by the two leaders to forge good relations.

But the whole initiative--and relations between ECUSA and Nigeria--fell apart when the 2003 Episcopal General Convention endorsed the consecration of Gene Robinson and same-sex blessings. ECUSA officials even fired the ministry?s Atlanta- based Nigerian chaplain, Gordon Okunsanya, without notifying him, Akinola maintained.

Akinola tried to repair the situation by making a personal plea to Griswold when Anglican primates met for their ?crisis? meeting in October 2003. But his effort failed, and Akinola said he knew then that the Communion would be ?torn to pieces.?

The convocation--which would probably be the largest of the foreign beachheads that have been established on ECUSA turf in the wake of the General Convention--is to have a bishop, as yet unnamed.

It will both set up new parishes and accept into its fold ECUSA parishes with a significant numbers of Nigerians, Akinola said. Expatriate Anglican Nigerians will not be told to leave where they are and attend a CONA church, but will merely be given the opportunity.

?If [they] are happy where they are, fine. My concern is for those who have already left, or are about to leave,? the prelate said.

Others in North America who also feel estranged from ECUSA or the Canadian Church are free as well to join a Nigerian convocation parish, Akinola said.

He indicated that the convocation had received offers of worship space from extramural bodies such as the Reformed Episcopal Church; the Anglican Province of Christ the King is also assisting in at least one venue.

Recalling that he originally opposed setting up the Anglican Mission in America--sponsored by the Anglican provinces of Rwanda and Southeast Asia--Akinola now says that that action was an early but appropriate response to what has been happening in North America.

ECUSA revisionists have set up ?a new religion that says what God says is sin is no longer sin, a religion that doesn?t take Scriptures seriously,? he said. ?We are not in communion with the Episcopal Church now,? he said.

The Diocese of Washington is a probable location for one of the Nigerian congregations--a development likely to be resisted by Bishop John Chane, who earlier this year commissioned a rite for same-sex blessings and performed it for a local priest and his male partner.

The diocese estimates that some 500 to 700 Nigerians attend services in a few of its churches, including St. John?s, Mount Rainier, and St. Michael and All Angels, Adelphi, both in Maryland.

Dismissing Akinola?s move as ?just politics,? diocesan spokesman Jim Naughton said after the press briefing that neither of the two parishes had complained as a congregation to diocesan officials, or expressed the need for alternative episcopal oversight.

Naughton did concede, however, that individuals from both parishes had scored Bishop Chane for his support of Robinson?s consecration, as well as for blessing same-sex unions, when the bishop visited the congregations.

During his U.S. visit, Akinola also made stops in New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, Oklahoma City and Chicago. n

A ?Historic Moment? For The

U.S. Continuing Church

Key Continuing Bishops, FIF Leaders.

Gather For Events In Two States

By Auburn Faber Traycik

Veteran Continuing Church members might well have said it could never happen.

But it did.

So it was that bishops of the three core Continuing Church bodies--the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK), the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC), and the Anglican Church in America/Traditional Anglican Communion (ACA/TAC)--came together in Wisconsin September 24-26 for prayer, worship, and free and frank discussions.

Not only that, the prelates were joined by the Rev. David Moyer, head of the Episcopal Church traditionalist organization, Forward in Faith, North America; and the Rev. David Chislett, Vice Chairman of Forward in Faith-Australia.

The ?extramural? Anglican bishops and Frs. Moyer and Chislett gathered in Fond du Lac primarily for the APCK?s pilgrimage to the grave of Anglo-Catholic luminary, Blessed Bishop Charles Grafton (Second Episcopal Bishop of Fond du Lac 1889-1912), a biennial APCK event geared to provide participants an opportunity for prayer, and spiritual instruction and refreshment. Some 100 persons from across the U.S. took part in the pilgrimage.

It was all at the invitation of APCK Archbishop Robert S. Morse, though the Archbishop himself says it was really the Holy Spirit--and quite possibly Bishop Grafton--who ?arranged a confluence of events? leading to the ecumenical gathering. ?I think Bishop Grafton might have interceded for us,? the tall, white-haired prelate said, smiling.

Whoever was most responsible for it, Morse?s invitation to the bishops, clergy and laity of the two other leading Continuing bodies and two FIF leaders reached across the divides created by the Continuing Church?s difficult early history with new signs of hope for the future. It came, interestingly, at a time when a serious chasm had opened up between ?official? Anglicanism?s faithful majority and liberal minority.

?It was a beginning,? Archbishop Morse told TCC. TAC?s Primate, Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, termed it a ?historic moment for the Continuing Church in the United States.?

While the APCK and ACC, led by Archbishop Brother John-Charles of Australia (who was unable to be present), had engaged in dialogue over the past year, it was the first real opportunity for bishops of the APCK (which may now be the largest U.S. Continuing body) to meet and talk (either for the first time, or for the first time in many years) with bishops of the ACA and TAC, the largest international Continuing Church fellowship. The ACA is the TAC?s U.S. branch. Together, the APCK, ACC and TAC include an estimated 265,000 orthodox Anglicans.

Hepworth also saw Morse?s outreach as significant because the TAC and FIF have already forged a communion relationship.

Bishops attending the pilgrimage in Fond du Lac, in addition to Morse and Hepworth, included, from the APCK: Bishop James Provence (Diocese of the West), Frederick Morrison (Southwest), and Rocco Florenza (Eastern States); from the TAC: Archbishop Louis Falk (ACA Primate); Bishops Louis Campese (ACA-Eastern U.S.) and James Stewart (West); from the ACC: Bishops William McClean (Mid-Atlantic States), Rommie Starks (Midwest), and then-Bishop-elect Presley Hutchens (New Orleans).

The pilgrimage was marked by frank and collegial discussions among bishops and clergy as well as opportunities to join in the Mass and at prayer and in study. On Friday, September 24, the Holy Eucharist was celebrated by the APCK?s Bishop Florenza, and sung Evensong by Archbishop Hepworth. Bishops and clergy of the TAC/ACA received Holy Communion at the crowded Mass. Later, the Rev. Dr. Paul Russell, professor of theology at Mount St. Mary College and an internationally recognized patristic scholar, presented a well-received program to the pilgrims on the teachings of the Desert Fathers.

The day was capped by a banquet at which Archbishop Hepworth offered a toast to Archbishop Morse, saluting his example of steadfastness in the faith.

On Saturday, pilgrims, clergy and laity, joined in a religious procession through the streets of Fond du Lac to the cathedral of the (still-conservative) Episcopal diocese, which houses the shrine of Bishop Grafton. Traditional Anglicans, arrayed in a line stretching over several city blocks, sang hymns as they marched to the cathedral with banners and pennants fluttering against a grey Wisconsin morning.

At the Mass celebrated by Archbishop Morse, Bishop Morrison preached on the unity of the Church in the Blessed Sacrament. The theme was most appropriate to a gathering of brethren who often appear to be separated, and emblematic of the spirit of this historical Grafton Pilgrimage.

NOR DID THIS NOTEWORTHY ECUMENICAL EVENT conclude in Fond du Lac. ?Part II? took place as Archbishops Morse, Hepworth and Falk, Bishop Provence, and Frs. Moyer and Chislett joined in Evensong and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at Moyer?s parish, Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, on the evening of Sunday, September 27. Good Shepherd?s magnificent choir made the service, attended by over 100 persons, especially memorable.

The visiting leaders greeted congregants at a reception following the service, and then were warmly hosted by Fr. Moyer and his wonderful wife, Rita, at a private dinner at the rectory.

Further discussions between the bishops and clergy at Rosemont, focusing on TAC?s eight-year discussions with the Roman Catholic Church, followed before the leaders parted company early in the week.

Morse, now 80 and the leader of the APCK since its inception some 25 years ago, told TCC he believes ?rapport? was established among the leaders at Fond du Lac, and he seemed open to the possibility of further similar encounters. He indicated his concern that Continuers fulfill Christ?s basic call to Christians to be ?people who love one another.?

Moyer told TCC that, in the APCK, Archbishop Morse ?has something that works, something that he has sacrificed for that is bearing fruit.? But he believes that the prelate is so committed to the ?depth of Anglican Catholicism? that he knows that more is needed for the APCK?s future.

Hepworth revealed that, when he was a young priest, Morse was his ?hero? for his fight for the faith. Therefore, Hepworth said, it was ?deeply moving? for him when he ?knelt at the communion rail and received Holy Communion from Archbishop Morse personally.?

The ?emerging relationship? between the APCK and TAC/ACA which grew out of the Fond du Lac meeting was ?deepened? by participation in the Evensong at Good Shepherd, Hepworth said.

The ACC bishops at Fond du Lac refrained from receiving Holy Communion at any of the pilgrimage Masses, due to the presence of bishops from the ACA. The latter was formed in 1991 from a merger of part of the ACC and of the entire American Episcopal Church (dating from the 1960s). The ACC severely criticized the move on several grounds, and is (obviously) not in communion with the ACA. But ?at least [the ACC bishops] appeared,? Morse said.

Moreover, Hepworth said he had received from ACC Archbishop Brother John-Charles a document setting forth a ?pathway? for closer ties between the TAC and ACC--an indication that the ACC?s top leader, at least, sees greater unity among Continuers as a priority. n

Akinola: Griswold?s ?No?

Doomed Anglican Communion

By Robert Stowe England

Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola believes that Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold?s insistence that he could do nothing to stop the consecration of an actively gay bishop--and his refusal to even try--doomed the Anglican Communion to crumble.

Archbishop Akinola told reporters at Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, October 5 that his appeals for Griswold to take steps to prevent the consecration of Gene Robinson for the sake of the wider Communion were rebuffed by the p.b. when the two talked during a break at the October 2003 crisis meeting of Anglican primates (provincial leaders) in London. Akinola?s comments appeared to be the first-ever public mention of the encounter.

The Archbishop?s personal attempt to resolve the issue came after the primates? gathering at Lambeth Palace almost collapsed.

?At a point, the meeting became tense--very, very tense,? he said. ?[Archbishop of Canterbury] Rowan [Williams] said sort of jokingly, ?Are you calling for the dissolution of the Communion???

Akinola replied: ?Well, not quite, but if there [is to be dissolution], well, so be it--and we laughed.?

When the primates took a tea break shortly thereafter, Akinola recalled, ?I called Frank Griswold...out, and we embraced each other. And I said ?You and I have come a long way in the past three or four years; we have established a new relationship, new friendship, new rapport, new understanding.??

But he told Griswold: ?`Look at the situation your church has led us into. Look at [your brother from] Pakistan, in tears, [from] India, in tears over what you have done. Our hearts are bleeding. You can save the Communion this costly problem by putting a stop to this agenda. You can stop the consecration of a practicing gay priest.??

According to Akinola, Griswold answered: ?We have gone through the normal process. I as presiding bishop have no authority. I cannot stop it.?

Again the African leader pleaded with him. ?What does the Bible say? If by eating meat, my friend, my neighbor, stumbles, I can live without eating meat; that?s what Paul told the Corinthians. Even if you think it is very dear to your culture, to your people, for the sake of the rest of the world, you can?t do it,? Akinola told the p.b.

But Griswold said ?no.?

?At that moment I knew the fabric of our Communion was going to be torn to pieces,? Akinola said, ?because it was very clear to me then that [this] was being done deliberately and intentionally.?

The leader of nearly 18 million Nigerian Anglicans faulted Griswold for claiming he had no power to influence Robinson, the Diocese of New Hampshire, or the House of Bishops, arguing that the p.b. had persuasive and moral power to forfend the consecration.

?He simply said no,? Akinola said. ?At that point, I knew that there was no turning back.?

Jim Naughton, spokesman for the Diocese of Washington, asked Akinola if he thought that if Griswold had actually agreed to stop the consecration that he had the power to do so.

?It wasn?t impossible to find a way to stop it,? Akinola responded.

He noted that Griswold could have reminded Episcopal bishops of the overwhelmingly-approved 1998 Lambeth Conference sexuality resolution; he could have urged that the U.S Church honor the relevant statements of the primates since 1998, statements to which Griswold had ?been a party?; he could have told ECUSA that it should respect and be accountable to the primates. But he did not.

While agreeing with fellow primates in October 2003 that Robinson?s November 2 consecration would have devastating consequences for the communion, Griswold did not even absent himself from that rite, rather serving as the gay prelate?s chief consecrator, Akinola noted.

The Archbishop was asked if he thought it ?ironic? that the Africans were now pushing the British to remain faithful to what they had been taught by missionaries from the north in the 19th century.

English missionaries were the ones who gave Christianity ?roots? in Africa, he replied, and told the Africans how to live a Christian life. This was ?at the expense of our culture. We accepted it, because Christianity is light and life,? Akinola said. But now some northern brethren are saying that ?what we were taught not to do is not that bad; you can do it now!?

?We know what is right. We won?t let you mislead us,? the prelate stated. ?If you want to create a new religion, go ahead and do it, but you won?t impose it on us.?

Africans no longer need to go to Canterbury to become Christian, or to New York to learn to conduct services, he said. ?We don?t want a new religion; the religion we have is good enough for us,? Akinola declared.

But when he was asked if the global South primates see themselves as taking on a larger role, as steering the ship of the Communion, he replied: ?I wouldn?t say we are steering the ship. No one is interested in taking that away from [the Archbishop of Canterbury].?

?All we are concerned with is making sure that the historic faith...is kept,? he said.

In response to another question, Akinola said that churches within the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (which he leads) already consider themselves out of communion with ECUSA. Asked about the ultimate exclusion of ECUSA from the Communion if it does not repent, he said, ?Can two walk together unless they agree?? n

Oz Oddities

Australian Anglican Church

Defies Expectations On Women,

Gays, and Even The Continuing Church

By The Editor

Possibly, it has something to do with having to live upside down. But, as Anglican provinces go--especially Western, largely liberal-led ones--Australia is definitely unique. Any attempt to impose on ?Oz? a northern set of expectations seems laughably futile.

That, anyway, is how it appears to an outsider observing the results of the Anglican Church of Australia?s October 2-8 General Synod meeting in Freemantle, Western Australia.

When it was over, the ACA, which approved women priests in 1992, had narrowly failed to approve women bishops--for the second time--to the disbelieving dismay of proponents. The bishops produced more than the needed two-thirds majority for the innovation, but both the clergy and laity fell short by 60 and 64 percent, respectively.

What?s more, the Synod had defeated proposals to permit the blessing or ordination of those in ?committed? homosexual relationships.

This, despite the fact that Australia?s liberal primate, Peter Carnley, had made gay-friendly remarks--literally. At the start of the Synod, for example, Archbishop Carnley urged Anglicans to think of homosexuality in the category of friendship rather than marriage, that is, of not necessarily indicating ?sexual activity.?

Firmly pro-women?s ordination, Carnley also created a flap just before he became primate in 2000 with his unorthodox ideas on the doctrine of the atonement. He also disputes the notion that life begins at conception.

But--hold on to your seat--it was Carnley who, at the recent Synod, gave tacit approval to the global fellowship of Continuing Anglicans, the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC)--on which more in a minute.

Key to the defeat of the liberal proposals at the Synod, evidently, was the ?combined efforts of the growing Gospel-centered Evangelical conglomerate of Sydney Diocese and the smaller but also Gospel-centered Anglo-Catholics from around the country,? wrote the Rev. Nigel Zimmerman in AD 2000, a Roman Catholic publication.

While some Anglican Evangelicals support female ordination, outspoken Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen led the opposition to women bishops on the basis of the Bible?s model of headship. He also warned of danger to the unity of the church. Men and women ?are equal but have different roles, just like in a family, and the church should reflect that,? Jensen said.

All of which makes sense, until one considers that the Sydney Diocese has long harbored what seem to be a bunch of folks desperate to institute ?lay presidency?; that is, to allow laypeople--men or women--to celebrate the Eucharist. The innovation is widely rejected in the ACA and Anglican Communion at large, and Australia?s Appellate Tribunal said it could only be legally implemented with General Synod approval. But Sydney supporters have argued that it would be lawful, biblical, and meet present and future pastoral and missionary need in some places.

But Sydney surprised yet again, when it suddenly dropped its latest plan to start lay presidency by a sort of back door measure--a proposal not to punish the practice. In October, it deferred once more a step it has discussed and tried to find a way to legally take for a number of years.

The decision seems to have been influenced most by the General Synod?s recent condemnation of the practice, and the admission by the proposal?s main mover, the Rev. Dr. John Woodhouse, that Sydney?s plan had been perceived as a ?call to illegality? and needed further work.

But the outcome might also have been affected by the then-imminent release of the Windsor Report, or a decision to show restraint in light of conservative successes on key issues at the Synod. While lay presidency is not off the table, subsequent reports noted Sydney?s plans to create a permanent diaconate, for which lay ministers would be eligible.

Carnley, FIF, And TAC

The real study in Australian contrasts these days, however, is almost certainly Archbishop Carnley. He is a man who seems theologically simpatico with Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, but starkly different from him pastorally.

Griswold pioneered openly gay bishops in America, for example, while Carnley pioneered women priests in Australia (even before the ACA approved them).

But in America, a pastoral plan like that devised by the ACA?s Forward in Faith (FIF) chapter and the TAC (which is already in full communion with FIF internationally) would be rejected by the man who lives atop 815 Second Avenue in New York City in, well, a New York minute.

Carnley, however, is in that upside down world, wherein aims of annihilation can, it seems, actually become desires for cooperation.

The Australian FIF-TAC plan emerged after 12 years of patient but futile requests for some form of alternate episcopal care for ACA traditionalists, and surprisingly cordial exchanges in recent months between TAC Archbishop John Hepworth (also of Australia), Carnley, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

In simple terms, it calls for a candidate agreed by FIF and TAC--the Rev. David Chislett, SSC, rector of All Saints? Wickham Terrace, Brisbane, and FIF-Australia?s Vice Chairman--to be consecrated a bishop by TAC and Communion prelates, and ?shared.? He would minister in the TAC as well as to ACA parish and clergy aligned with FIF.

FIF and TAC would fuse into a single jurisdiction, perhaps as a kind of religious order, or as a parallel jurisdiction, and property questions resulting from the overlapping arrangement would be deferred for 20 years--long enough, one hopes, to bring to them a calmer historical perspective.

At least until the disappointments of the Windsor Report, the plan had been part of a wider effort by the TAC--which has a presence in something like 15 countries--to offer itself as a potential part of the pastoral solution for ?Canterbury Communion? traditionalists buffeted by changes in faith and order. Archbishop Hepworth had suggested that some sort of relationship between the two global fellowships could be established if Dr. Williams was able to simply recognize the TAC without demanding full communion.

The consecration of Fr. Chislett remains probable in early 2005, though (at last check) no firm date or place had been set. Plans were to consecrate at the same time a bishop for U.S. traditionalists, the Rev. David Moyer, president of FIF-North America, though of course no one expects Griswold to be open to this idea, as Carnley seems to be.

Indeed, the astounding thing is that Carnley viewed the orthodox initiative as a ?bridge? developing between the ACA?s FIF clergy and the TAC, instead of a potential ?schism.?

He admits that the shape of what is developing is not yet clear, and that, while there is a clear desire for a ?pastoral? rather than ?canonical approach to extended episcopal oversight,? some constitutional and canonical and even disciplinary questions have been raised.

But Carnley is undaunted. He reportedly confirmed in September that he had ?written to the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss these proposals of [FIF] which have now been developed in various parts of the world.? He noted that it is not possible for a person to be simultaneously a member of the Anglican Church of Australia and of another church not in communion with the ACA. However, he said it is not clear whether clergy can be licensed by two different churches at the same time, and evidently planned to put that question to the ACA?s Appellate Tribunal. ?As I understand it, a significant number of [FIF] clergy of the Anglican Church of Australia are also licensed to Archbishop Hepworth [TAC],? Carnley noted.

Meanwhile, he told the General Synod after updating delegates on this matter that, ?a commitment to the spirit of ecumenism leads me to the view that we must preserve the most friendly and creative relationship possible with Archbishop Hepworth and the member churches of the Traditional Anglican Communion.?

Can anyone imagine Frank Griswold ever saying such a thing?

Just why Dr. Carnley caught this vision, at least as far as Australia goes, is fascinating to ponder, and he never responded to our invitation to comment. Perhaps he is a liberal who is, after all, really liberal, which most of his co-religionists are not. Perhaps his impending retirement is a factor. As well, the TAC, which has several hundred thousand adherents worldwide, may have become something to be reckoned with in Australia, where it has two provinces.

And then there was the analysis offered by Fr. Zimmerman, who asserted that Carnley is ?a man facing the very real extinction of Anglicanism in this country with some honesty, unlike many of his liberal friends who appear to be avoiding the inevitable.?

?Declining numbers, the recent...mishandling of sexual abuse matters, an increasing irrelevancy among the general public: these are all matters which have not been curbed by the advent of women priests or the loose morality preached from many an Anglican pulpit,? he wrote.

?To even mention either FIF or the TAC in earshot of many liberal bishops in Australia is to immediately attract venom and often outright anger,? Zimmerman noted. ?There seems to be a genuine fear that many Anglicans have really lost interest in the great experiment of liberal Anglicanism. And after all, where are all the liberals under 55??

Most of them may still be in the Anglican episcopate. Despite Carnley?s remarks at the General Synod, Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Brisbane--Chislett?s superior and with whom the priest thought he had a ?good dialogue going?--attempted to pass a ?Canon To Restrain Certain Consecrations?--Chislett?s, obviously. The measure appeared to be unprecedented.

The real, but unnamed, target of the motion, however, was Bishop Ross Davies of The Murray, the only ACA bishop who belongs to FIF, Zimmerman said. Davies has publicly supported Chislett?s episcopal election, and it was feared he would help consecrate the cleric if no legal obstacles are found.

?The bill which would have prevented [Davies?] involvement in such a consecration failed,? Fr. Zimmerman noted.

?The problem for the liberal Anglican establishment is that there have been soundings from all over the country of support? for Chislett?s episcopal candidacy. ?Liberal bishops who have not been willing to provide orthodox Anglicans with alternate episcopal care are running scared that a ?new evangelization? will be taking place because of Fr. Chislett?s consecration.

?What we are all left with,? Zimmerman concluded, ?is a strong will to achieve a place for orthodox Anglicans in Australia, an even stronger confident Evangelical majority, and of course a sad group of 1960s-style Anglican liberal bishops--ruthlessly protecting their property and their finances, but lamentably out of touch with what is really going on in their parishes.? n

Sources: The Messenger, AD 2000, The Living Church, Church Times, The Church of England Newspaper, Anglican Media, The Advertiser

Windsor Report Creates

?Gulag? For Traditionalists,

TAC Primate Charges

Below is the full statement on the Windsor Report (more briefly noted in our special report) from Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, the primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, an international body of several hundred thousand orthodox Anglicans extramural to the ?official? Communion.

Over the last year, Archbishop Hepworth has had cordial contacts with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the primate of Australia--some of the resulting correspondence was shared with the Lambeth Commission--and has moved the TAC closer ?to the boundary of the Anglican Communion.? This was in the hope that the TAC could be of service in ministering to those ?who cannot survive within contemporary Anglicanism,? particularly orthodox Anglicans in provinces which have decided to ordain women.

It had appeared that this endeavor was bearing fruit, and that the Lambeth Commission might declare alternative episcopal oversight normative for dealing with differing convictions on key issues such as women?s ordination.

However, Hepworth told TCC he believes that the Windsor Report not only inadequately addresses the Communion?s current crisis, including in the area of alternative episcopal oversight, but in the process ?entrenches women?s ordination,? (which the 1998 Lambeth Conference declared was still in a long testing or ?reception? process). Moreover, the report takes the position that there was no serious division over moves to break from catholic, apostolic order, and that Anglicans hurt, persecuted or forced out of the Communion over this issue ?don?t exist,? he said.

This outcome will likely add further impetus to the TAC?s eight-year dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, which appears to be well advanced. (See separate story in this section).

Here follows Archbishop Hepworth?s full reaction to the Windsor Report.

I react with anger and deep hurt.

My representations at every level of the Anglican Communion from the Archbishop of Canterbury to local deaneries have attempted to convince the Communion that there are already hundreds of thousands of Anglicans feeling deep alienation from their church. That alienation has now been immeasurably deepened.

The [Windsor Report] achieves a number of notable results:

*It ends the ?period of reception? of women as deacons, priests and bishops by claiming that this innovation has been achieved ?without division.?

*It suggests that this process is a model for the discernment of a church policy on homosexuality.

*It trivializes the destruction of unity with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, while upholding unity as the most significant attribute of the Anglican Communion.

*It upholds a form of alternative episcopal oversight already condemned by every group that has sought oversight as a matter of conscience.

*In doing so, it trivializes individual conscience for the sake of crude conformity masquerading as unity.

*It creates a new Anglican understanding of the Church, in which there is no longer any point of reference to the existence of a Church beyond Anglicanism.

This report is a triumph for the agenda of (liberal) Affirming Catholicism (one of whose founders was the present Archbishop of Canterbury) which sought to remove the issues of women?s ordination, homosexuality and unity with Rome from the Anglican agenda.

In creating an Anglican gulag, an invisible and nameless group who cannot in conscience accept Anglicanism?s abandonment of Catholic order and sacramental practice over the past 30 years, the report owes more to Stalin than to Christ. Those who are already under persecution--the priests being expelled from their parishes (or already expelled) and the people driven from their parishes--find absolutely nothing in this report--not even an awareness that they exist. It is an invitation to further marginalization for those still within the Anglican Communion, and a fierce rejection for the Continuing Churches who exist beyond its borders.

We in the Traditional Anglican Communion have drawn closer to those borders in recent years. We have always claimed to be in communion with those Anglicans whose faith is traditional and orthodox (as stated in the 1977 Affirmation of St. Louis - Ed.). We have offered ourselves as servants to those who are hurt, so that a healing, sacramental life could be sustained during the process of ?doctrinal discernment.?

Instead, as we became visible we have been shelled and bombed. Offers of pastoral service have been rejected, leaving the wounded to their own devises.

Earlier in the year, I assured the Archbishop of Canterbury that this Communion would not consecrate any new bishops to exercise alternative oversight until the contents of this report were known. I have kept that promise. So complete is the rejection of our pastoral ministry, so complete is the denial of our existence, that that offer is now terminated.

Next Sunday, bishops from Japan, Africa and Australia will join in consecrating bishops for indigenous people (in Australia?s Torres Strait - Ed.) who have been ridiculed for their adherence to the faith they received with joy only decades ago. Other consecrations, for churches in the [U.S.] and Australia will follow.*

Twelve years ago, when the last great Anglican crisis of conscience occurred, Anglican Catholics looked to Rome for the unity and authenticity that had been snatched from them. Many made that journey, often alone. The twin goals of achieving Christian unity and continuing the Anglican tradition are now more clearly understood on both sides. Once again, retreat from Canterbury turns one towards the Alps. Next week, we will submit to the Holy See our Communion?s response to The Gift of Authority.

Any healing must begin with a diagnosis of the disease. Sin can only be forgiven by confessing it and seeking forgiveness. This report is produced by a Communion in denial, seeking neither diagnosis nor forgiveness. The language of apology is not the language of contrition. The language of diplomacy is not the language of God.

I cry for an Anglicanism once again driven to the wilderness.

*Learn more about the prospective Australian and U.S. consecrations in the story titled ?Oz Oddities? in this section. n

TAC: Communion With Rome?

While not underestimating the difficult task ahead, Archbishop John Hepworth of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), the largest international Continuing Church body, has reported the possibility that Rome could recognize the TAC as an Anglican Church in full communion with the Holy See.

As such, TAC members would not become Roman Catholics, but remain Anglican Catholics, with their own bishops, canon law and ethos, in communion with Rome.

As a sign of progress in the some eight years of dialogue between TAC and Roman Catholic officials, Hepworth said that Rome may in the near term release a document recognizing the holy orders of TAC bishops and clergy. However, he indicated that TAC clergy are willing to undergo conditional ordinations and consecrations if needed to effect the communion relationship.

TAC has suggested that its policy of allowing married clergy be continued for now, but revisited by the two parties perhaps as much as a century into the future, he told TCC.

Among reasons Hepworth believes that the communion relationship has become a live possibility is that, as obstacles to dialogue with official Anglicanism have grown (chiefly due to women?s ordination and the gay issue), Rome has become more concerned that there be a ministry ?back into the Anglican Communion,? seeking lost or suffering sheep still in that fold. The TAC is among the few Continuing bodies that ?take seriously the statement in the 1977 Affirmation of St. Louis that we?re still in communion with faithful orthodox Anglicans wherever they are to be found,? Hepworth said. n

Sources also included The Messenger, U.S. Anglican

Windsor Report ?Riddled

With Theological Confusion,?

Continuing Church Bishop Says

The Windsor Report, which was supposed to help resolve the Anglican Communion?s crisis over authority and homosexuality, is ?riddled with theological confusion, question begging, and both subtle and manifest arrogance,? says the ecumenical department chairman of the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC), a leading Continuing Church body.

?However, some very powerful folk in the decomposing Anglican Communion, who swallowed the camel of women?s ordination, now are straining at the gnat of deviant sexuality, and they may be tempted to take this report seriously,? said the Rt. Rev. Mark Haverland, who also serves as the ACC?s Bishop of the South.

?To the ACC, the gnat is the predictable aspect of the abandonment of Scripture and Tradition which was implicit in the earlier error. Our early repudiation of the corruption of official Anglicanism now proves itself to be wise,? Haverland said.

In the ACC?s view, the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) ?died in 1976, when its official and effective decision concerning the ordination of women directly implied a claim of superiority over the central and universal Tradition of the Catholic Church.?

ECUSA, ?by acting so as to break a universal practice of the great Churches, East and West, past and present, on an important matter of doctrine and polity, thereby converted itself from a part of the Catholic Church into an eccentric sect,? the bishop said.

?The Anglican Communion effectively died no later than the early 1990s, when the Church of England followed [ECUSA?s] lead, and when the other provinces and dioceses of the Communion nonetheless maintained their ties of communion? with ECUSA and the C of E.

The ACC was formed in the latter 1970s by those who decisively separated themselves from ?our former, now deceased, Church home. We were right to do so,? Haverland said.

Yet a body ?does not decompose immediately upon death, nor is decomposition uniform. There is a lot of ruin in a Church, as in a nation, and it has taken time for the ecclesiastical demise to become apparent,? he continued.

The only question of interest for the ACC regarding the Windsor Report ?is the reaction it will meet from those who have inconsistently remained sound on matters of sexual behavior while staying in a Communion that is fundamentally unsound. Such folk may attempt a conservative Protestant answer (pick and choose by rejecting homosexuality while keeping other errors from the 1970s and later), may conform to the official Communion?s new errors, may abandon Anglicanism of any sort altogether by converting to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy, or may turn to our Church, which acted presciently almost 30 years ago. I suspect few will take the last, best option. Those who do must be made welcome by the ACC...Better late than never.?

The ACC is led by the Most Rev.-Brother John-Charles, FODC, a former Anglican Communion bishop who resides in Australia.

Source: The Trinitarian

England: Battle-Ready On

Proposal For Women Bishops

Opponents Strive For Province

As Some Say They Should Leave

By Robert Stowe England

A working party report released in early November lays out a process by which the Church of England could have women bishops sometime between 2009 and 2012, but presents several options for handling opposition to the move among traditionalists and conservative Evangelicals.

The options recommended in the report, produced by a panel chaired by the Bishop of Rochester, Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, have evoked fierce opposition from both advocates and opponents of women bishops.

Supporters of female prelates are outraged by the possibilities, cited by the ?Rochester Report,? that women could be limited to being suffragan bishops, or not allowed to become archbishops. Also cited is the option of requiring female prelates to be part of a team with at least one male bishop.

Some opponents of women bishops rejected entirely any move to allow their introduction, even with the establishment of a proposed ?third province? for those opposed. A spokesman for the (Evangelical) Church Society, for example, stated that the Church has no authority to ordain female prelates.

?The doctrines, canons and legal establishment of the Church mean that it has no power to establish something that is contrary to Holy Scripture,? he said. Evangelicals cite St. Paul?s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 6, which states: ?The man shall be the head of the woman.?

Traditionalists are taking a different approach. They concede that it is illogical to ordain women priests and not women bishops, and would not stand in the way of the development in return for a third province for those theologically opposed--one of the seven options cited in the Rochester Report. The C of E currently has two provinces: Canterbury and York.

In October, the traditionalist Forward in Faith-United Kingdom released a book edited by Jonathan Baker, Consecrated Women?, that lays out the theological arguments against women priests and bishops. It notes a coherence in the traditionalist view that priests and bishops serve as icons of Christ, a male, and Evangelical concerns about the biblical model of headship.

The Rt. Rev. John Broadhurst, Bishop of Fulham and Chairman of Forward in Faith, noted in a preface to the FIF book that a total of nearly 600 priests had resigned since the ordination of women to the priesthood was approved in 1992. If the 1993 Act of Synod had not allowed for flying bishops, he argued, the church would have lost closer to 2,000 priests. Though one option in the Rochester Report calls for a further extension of current provisions, FIF argues that complications created by women bishops would be such that a separate province for traditionalists is the only way to prevent another mass exodus. FIF has presented a draft General Synod measure showing that it would be possible to create such a province.

Under the FIF proposal, parishes would be able to vote on whether they wished to become part of a new traditionalist province ?annexed? from the provinces of Canterbury and York. The entity would govern itself as do other provinces. Its presiding bishop would be considered a primate; he and other bishops would be elected by those in the province, rather than chosen by Britain?s Prime Minister.

Some opponents of the third province think that traditionalists instead should be prepared to leave the C of E in the event of women bishops.

For instance, the Bishop of Salisbury, David Stancliffe, said: ?If this is the mind of the church, people will be faced with a choice whether to stay or leave. The present arrangements will no longer be able to hold,? Stancliffe said, meaning that the flying bishops and alternative oversight could not continue once female bishops were approved.

Even one traditionalist General Synod member, the Rev. Stephen Trott of Northampton, thought that a clean break would bring a more workable peace to both sides; he suggested that new financial and other provisions might be made to enable the departure of orthodox clergy, and parishes with their property, to Continuing Church bodies or elsewhere.

However, many say the C of E?s financial resources are now too strained to compensate hundreds more clergy leaving for reasons of conscience.

The Rev. Geoffrey Kirk, secretary of FIF-UK, promised that the orthodox organization would wage a tough battle for a third province. He also issued a warning to those who say traditionalists should leave the church.

?The Church of England gave solemn and binding undertakings to those who could not accept women bishops or priests,? Kirk said. ?There will be righteous indignation throughout the church if solemn promises are not kept and the legislation is pushed through with a steamroller. If they do not provide a free province, ecclesiastical chaos will result.?

The General Synod will debate the report on women bishops in February. The report will then be debated by diocesan synods. If a majority of diocesan synods back the report, it will then go back to the General Synod, where it will have to garner the support of two-thirds of the bishops, clergy and laity to be approved. The total legislative process could take four years.

The legislation passed would be taken up by the Parliament?s Ecclesiastical Committee and presented for a vote by both houses of Parliament before it can receive the Royal Assent and be ?promulgated.?

The Crown Appointments Commission would then be free to select a woman to fill any episcopal vacancy, with the Prime Minister making the final decision and recommendation to the Queen for the post. In addition, a diocesan bishop, if he wished, could immediately appoint a woman as suffragan bishop after the measure becomes law. Currently, 39 out of 44 diocesans support women bishops. n

Sources: The Times, The Sunday Times, Church Times, The Church of England Newspaper, Forward in Faith

Alternative Oversight

Sought By Reform

Galvanized by liberal drift in the Church of England, the activist Evangelical group, Reform, appears poised to seek alternative episcopal oversight in a number of dioceses.

Dioceses led by seven liberal bishops who publicly supported the appointment of gay cleric Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading last year could be the first to be targeted by Reform members. The Bishops of Leicester, Newcastle, Ripon & Leeds, St. Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Salisbury, Truro and Worcester might all receive letters from Reform churches asking them to declare their position on the homosexual issue.

But a Reform spokesman, the Rev. Rod Thomas, said that ?impaired communion? already exists between Reform members and their bishop in those dioceses, and others like Oxford, St. Albans and even Canterbury. However, he said that it is up to Reform churches to work out what that impaired communion actually meant in practice.

While it was not clear that Reform had decided on a particular path toward obtaining alternate oversight at its recent annual conference in Swanwick, Thomas said that the organization would now formally approach primates of the global South to learn ?to what extent they would be prepared to offer us assistance...?

The Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, Gregory Venables, who was consultant at the conference, said that geographical jurisdictions which were possible when there was unity over doctrine were now increasingly untenable. He noted that people are increasingly eclectic and drive to a church where they feel at home rather than attend their parish church.

He said that it was likely that sympathetic primates would want to help Reform parishes, but that legal considerations would have to be taken into account.

The Reform conference was marked by more immediate controversy over the remarks of the Dean of Sydney Cathedral, Philip Jensen. In a rousing and apparently well-received speech to the assembly, Jensen said Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams should resign because he is ?taking his salary under false pretenses.? This is because he holds private liberal views which differ from his public ones, something Jensen likened to ?theological and intellectual prostitution.?

Jensen later denied that he called Williams ?a prostitute,? as some media reports maintained. ?I did not even refer to him by name or title,? he argued. ?I pointed out that when the chief office bearers publicly subscribe to the Church?s official set of beliefs, but privately pursue a different agenda while still in the pay of the Church, we do in fact have corruption.? n

Source: The Church of England Newspaper

Fund Launched To Aid

Provinces Refusing ECUSA Help

An Anglican Relief and Development Fund (ARD) has been launched to aid global South provinces that have refused funding from the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA) because of its endorsement of homosexuality.

In another sign of a rapidly-shifting Anglican landscape, the moderator of the Anglican Communion Network (ACN)--widely regarded by global South bishops as the authentic Communion body in America--said the ARD fund will help channel support from U.S. Anglican donors to brethren in economically poorer countries.

Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan said that ARD represents ?an exciting new partnership between the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes with the Anglican Churches in the global South, and with Geneva Global,? an established, Pennsylvania-based firm described as ?a research and donor partner.?

?The love of Christ for all of His people and all of His creation calls us well-nourished Episcopalians in peaceful and relatively prosperous North America to help our Anglican brothers and sisters to help themselves,? Duncan said.

With a number of key gifts already pledged, ARD is set to make a positive difference in the lives of tens of thousands of people. According to Bishop Duncan, the new organization will parallel Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) and the United Thank Offering (UTO) in giving Episcopalians ways to help those suffering around the world.

The significance of the new fund and what it connotes about the ACN did not seem lost on ECUSA prelates. The Episcopal House of Bishops, meeting in Spokane, Washington, responded by stating that it would now be necessary to carefully ?distinguish the identity of ERD, with its 60-year record of service, from the similarly-named ARD.?

Formation of the new fund came after a September 23 statement from Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi, declaring that his province would no longer accept grants from ERD or UTO. Uganda?s Bishop of Luweero ?has notified UTO that he is returning the $30,000 recently received from a 2004 UTO grant to his diocese,? Orombi wrote. Other African leaders had earlier pledged to refuse badly-needed subsidies from pro-gay western sources.

Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola has accepted the role of patron of the new fund. The Very Rev. Peter C. Moore, President Emeritus of Trinity Episcopal Seminary, will serve as the Chairman of the ARD Board of Trustees.

?ARD exists to maximize life change through relief and development projects organized and run by local Christians,? Moore said. ?In many Anglican dioceses, the churches have used existing grassroots organizations to start projects to alleviate poverty and suffering. Many of these are among the more effective and cost-efficient projects in the world because they are run by local leaders working for local wages who know the local people, the local environment, and the local culture. We will channel North American Anglicans? contributions directly to the best local projects in poorer countries.?

Dean Moore also announced the appointment as trustees of the fund four global South Anglican primates ?who will represent emerging Anglicanism in the funding process.? They are the Archbishops Orombi of Uganda; Datuk Yong Ping Chung of South East Asia; Drexel Gomez of the West Indies; and Dr. David Gitari, (retired) of Kenya.

?Geneva Global is both research and donor partner,? Moore said. ?Geneva?s professional staff of over 50 and its existing volunteer field force of over 400 will work with our own Episcopal and Anglican missionaries to identify and research the best high impact projects in the Anglican Communion. Projects that have been carefully qualified will be sent to the Fund?s Trustees for their consideration. Geneva currently does similar work for other donors?Through its own Foundation, Geneva Global has also offered to match the first $2 million raised with an additional $500,000 contribution.?

The Rev. Simon Barnes, Senior Vice-President of Geneva Global and an Episcopal priest, said the new arrangement is ?a natural fit for Geneva Global.?

ARD?s office is located with Geneva Global in Radnor, Pennsylvania. n

Sources: ACN News, Virtuosity

Virginia Prelate Joins

In Skipping Bishops? Meeting

Charges ?Moral Inconsistency?

An assistant bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia boycotted the September meeting of the Episcopal House of Bishops (HOB), saying the church leaders? ?moral inconsistency? had forced him to mount a ?public and prophetic protest.?

In a surprise move, Bishop Francis Gray--who is not a member of any of the main conservative church groups--joined several other bishops, most of them linked to the Anglican Communion Network, in skipping the HOB?s September 23-28 meeting in Spokane, Washington. Gray stayed away because of what he called a ?disregard for unity and discipline [that] makes governance impossible? among Episcopal bishops.

Writing HOB members with ?great sadness,? Gray said the HOB ?lacks the discipline to govern itself with any degree of authenticity.?

He noted that last year the HOB overturned at General Convention a recommendation it accepted three months earlier, to postpone any legislative handling of the gay issue. He cited the lack of any punishment for homosexual ?marriages? performed by the bishops of Los Angeles and Washington and the lack of sanctions against other bishops who are divorced.

?We have disciplined bishops for extramarital affairs, but we fail to address the divorce and remarriage of bishops,? he said. ?We have never addressed the moral implications of homosexuality as it pertains? to HOB members.

?The future seems clear. There will be sporadic and unfocused discipline for selected heterosexual issues, but silence on homosexual issues, and silence on issues of divorce and remarriage for members. This moral inconsistency is quite disturbing.?

?The faith of the Church inheres in Christ through the scriptures, creeds and the Book of Common Prayer, as does the doctrine of the church,? Gray wrote.

?By consenting to the New Hampshire consecration, the House of Bishops has endangered the future of the Anglican Communion. Further, approving the consecration before authorizing a rite to celebrate the relationship in which that person lives signals deliberate disregard for the order of the Church. Doing so against the expressed request of all the instruments for unity in the Anglican Communion is arrogant. Doing so against the strenuous objections of our ecumenical and interfaith partners is a break in the unity to which we are called. By comparison, the Episcopal Church?s decision is not unlike the United States foreign policy regarding Iraq.?

Bishop Gray was the only one of Virginia?s three bishops to openly oppose the election of divorced, actively homosexual priest V. Gene Robinson last year. Diocesan Bishop Peter Lee, who voted for Robinson?s consecration, was in Spokane with Virginia Suffragan Bishop David Jones.

?I think [Bishop Gray] reflects the concerns of many of us,? said traditionalist Quincy Bishop Keith Ackerman. ?He said it in a humble and loving way. Bishop Gray would never be seen as a right-wing rabble-rouser.?

*MEANWHILE, THE HOB, having earlier produced a plan for alternative oversight that seemed designed to discourage it, took another step to narrow options for conservatives who feel hemmed in by the bishops? imperious revisionism.

The prelates adopted a ?mind of the House? resolution that effectively seeks to keep priests who can no longer in good conscience serve in ECUSA from transferring their canonical residence to bishops in other provinces of the Anglican Communion but continuing their ministry in the U.S. The resolution apparently tries to head this off by barring bishops from providing transfer letters for clergy in such cases (though not every province requires them). The resolution states that ?the transfer of a canonical residence to a diocese in another province of the Anglican Communion shall meet the following guidelines: (a) The bishop is satisfied that the ministry of the person requesting the transfer is to be exercised within the geographic boundaries of the diocese or...province of the...Communion to which the transfer is to be made; (b) The bishop is satisfied that there are no pending disciplinary proceedings or related matters regarding the individual requesting the transfer.? n

Sources included The Washington Times, The Parish Paper

Pittsburgh Ends Unconditional

Accession To ECUSA Decisions

The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has approved a constitutional amendment allowing the diocese to reject any U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA) decision that the diocesan convention determines to be contrary to the ?historic faith and order of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.?

Among delegates at the diocese?s 139th annual convention November 5, clergy voted 79 in favor, 14 against, the constitutional amendment ending Pittsburgh?s ?unconditional accession? to ECUSA?s decisions and regulations; eight clergy abstained. Lay delegates approved the amendment by a vote of 124 to 45, with three abstentions.

?This amendment allows us to continue in full relationship with the whole Anglican Communion, affirms our stand as a diocese for the historic faith and order of our church and confirms the actions we took as a diocese last fall to distance ourselves from our national church?s recent theological innovations,? said Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, who also leads the conservative Anglican Communion Network within ECUSA.

However, the bishop said he hoped the constitutional provision to differ with the national church on theological matters would not often be used.

?It gives us no joy to be forced to choose between mainstream Christianity and some of own church?s teachings.? He hoped that ECUSA would ?heed the call? of most of Anglicanism and wider Christianity ?to turn back and repent.?

Pittsburgh is the second Episcopal diocese to allow a local judgement on theological matters. The first, Fort Worth, passed a similar measure in 1997. A third diocese, San Joaquin, approved the first reading of a similar amendment in October.

MEANWHILE, in an apparent first, the convention refused to re-elect Canon George Werner, the liberal-leaning president of the House of Deputies, a diocesan deputy to General Convention.

In addition, Bishop Duncan, speaking with diocesan standing committee support, raised the possibility that the next convention could cut ties with two liberal parishes in his diocese that refuse to drop a lawsuit they filed against diocesan leaders over a year ago.

The parishes--Calvary, East Liberty, and St. Stephen?s, Wilkensburg--filed suit against the diocese?s two bishops and 16 other clergy and lay leaders after Duncan introduced a resolution providing for local ownership of parish property, following the consecration of gay cleric Gene Robinson. The resolution, which bucks ECUSA?s 1979 ?Dennis Canon,? was later withdrawn by Duncan, but the plaintiffs still want a court to declare it illegal.

?Diocesan canons provide that the convention may dissolve the connection to a parish in cases [of] egregious breaches of church faith or...order,? said a diocesan press release. ?By any reckoning, a congregation suing the entire leadership of the diocese is an egregious break of church order,? Duncan explained.

He said he hoped that the diocese does not have to pursue this course. But the decision of the two churches to continue in their lawsuit had brought them into direct conflict with the clear injunctions of scripture, he asserted. ?Both our Lord and St. Paul deal with this question very directly, saying that Christians don?t sue other Christians,? Duncan said.

He also noted that, for 30 years, ECUSA had ?avoided its disciplinary canons. Because of this, we have become a family that is terribly out of order. We are not going to become that in this diocese.?

?We will not withdraw the suit,? said the Rev. Harold Lewis, rector of Calvary. The lawsuit was filed ?to protect the diocese...We are trying to help the church adhere to its own canonical laws,? he explained. The two parishes think the national church would overturn any effort to oust them from the Pittsburgh diocese.

Lionel Deimel, head of the liberal Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, called Duncan?s remarks ?very disturbing, mean- spirited and vindictive,? and spoke of trying to get support from other churches. n

Sources: Diocese of Pittsburgh, The Associated Press

Three Calif. Church Property

Suits May Be Combined

An Orange County, California, Superior Court judge was to decide on December 9 whether to combine into one the lawsuits filed by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles against three parishes that seceded from the national church.

Until he resolves that matter, Judge David Velasquez refused to rule November 16 on several motions filed on behalf of the three parishes. They included one asking him to dismiss the case, arguing that the diocese?s property claims have no legal basis, said Eric Sohlgren, an attorney representing the churches.

In a move that has garnered international attention and greatly riled Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno, St. James Church in Newport Beach, All Saints? in Long Beach, and St. David?s in North Hollywood quit the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA) in August, citing its liberal views on homosexuality, the divinity of Jesus Christ and the supremacy of the Bible. Bruno helped localize these problems by voting for the consecration of homosexual cleric Gene Robinson and conducting a same-sex blessing involving a Los Angeles priest.

The parishes placed themselves under Uganda?s Diocese of Luweero, with the agreement of Ugandan Anglican Archbishop Henry Orombi. Orombi in turn delegated retired Texas Bishop Maurice Benitez to provide episcopal oversight to the trio of parishes; Benitez has already visited the congregations.

It is just the sort of anomalous activity that the recent Windsor Report wants to quash, though that is unlikely as long as maverick revisionism remains unquashed in the Anglican Communion.

Bruno inhibited the parishes? five clergy, but they were accepted into the Ugandan province, and licensed by Springfield (Illinois) Bishop Peter Beckwith.

At this writing, Bruno had also moved replace the parishes? vestries and put the churches under the oversight of two assistant bishops, but the buildings were still under the control of the congregations, which continued to worship in them. Bruno had not yet launched disciplinary action against Benitez.

In September, the L.A. diocese filed suit, laying claim to the parishes? buildings. Bruno claimed he had no choice but ?to preserve these churches as houses of worship for faithful Episcopalians as they have been since their founding...? One suit was filed in Orange County and the two others in the Los Angeles Superior Court.

The three parishes contend that the buildings belong to them-- and it is indeed possible that California case law will back their assertion.

They said that the diocese?s lawsuit is ?devoid of fairness and compassion? and an attempt to ?punish? the three congregations and their clergy ?for exercising their religious freedom of choice to affiliate with another diocese and bishop in the Anglican Communion.?

Indeed, the suits appear to exceed in their punitive nature most of their precursors around ECUSA, since they sue and seek damages from unpaid, elected parish leaders. The suits demand as well all ?church funds and assets, investments, intellectual property and non-fixtures, such as Bibles, chalices and other articles pertaining to worship.?

An analysis by the Anglican Communion Network Think Tank also notes ?melodramatic rhetoric? from Bishop Bruno. Among other things, the bishop reportedly alleges in the suit against St. James that its clergy and vestry ?conspired, plotted and schemed? against ECUSA and to ?steal? the parish?s property. Bruno decries the idea that property he thinks should serve only Episcopalians is being used by members of a ?foreign, non-Episcopal church.?

Bruno even accuses the St. James flock of unfair business practices and false advertising, evidently in a bid to keep them from calling themselves ?Anglicans.?

If Velasquez decides to combine the three actions, trial would likely be in the Orange County Superior Court, noted Sohlgren, who said he would support combining the cases.

On October 8, Sohlgren filed a ?demurrer? in response to the diocese?s lawsuit. That document asks whether, even if everything the diocese has alleged turns out to be true, any legal wrong has been done. If the court agrees with Sohlgren and the churches that there is no legal wrong, the case would be over. n

Sources: The Los Angeles Times, Virtuosity

The Anglican Crisis:

More Feuding And Fallout

Selected news briefs noting some of the latest developments following on serious breaches of global Anglican sexuality policy in the American and Canadian Anglican provinces.

*SOME 270 EPISCOPALIANS AND EX-EPISCOPALIANS gathered at the Rhode Island Convention Center October 16, to launch a regional section of the conservative Anglican Communion Network (ACN) within the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA). Out of the gathering came word that four new congregations are being formed, including two on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, that will not be part of ECUSA. They will instead seek oversight from a foreign Anglican bishop who shares their opposition to last year?s consecration of divorced, openly homosexual priest Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

*THE NEW ANGLICAN CHURCH OF THE WORD, comprised mostly of congregants who left a Pembroke Pines Episcopal parish in the Diocese of Southeast Florida, has joined the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), the U.S. effort overseen by the Anglican primates of Rwanda and South East Asia. The congregation has some 120 members.

*TWO WASHINGTON STATE Episcopal parishes severed their ties with ECUSA on October 19, the day after the Windsor Report was published. St. Stephen?s, Oak Harbor, and St. Charles, Poulsbo, placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the conservative Anglican Bishop of Recife, Brazil, Robinson Cavalcanti.

*HOWEVER, BISHOP CAVALCANTI himself--one of the few conservative prelates (if not the only one) in his province--is under seige by Brazil?s largely liberal leadership. Without any notice, Brazilian Primate Orlando Santos de Oliveira placed 14 ?liberal? parishes in Cavalcanti?s diocese under alternative episcopal oversight. The Brazilian province also has begun to withhold funds from the Diocese of Recife. The moves are apparently in retaliation for the fact that the Recife leader joined five senior Episcopal bishops in confirming some Ohio Episcopalians in March, without the local bishop?s permission. De Oliveira attempted to discipline Cavalcanti at a subsequent meeting of the Brazilian House of Bishops, but the prelates decided that no canon had been violated. At last check, Cavalcanti was seeking support for the remainder of his flock from the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, led by conservative Archbishop Gregory Venables.

*THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION IN CANADA, a small group of parishes outside the ?official? Anglican Church of Canada, welcomed three new congregations as members in October. They will now come under the care of AMiA Bishop Thomas Johnston, who was appointed by five foreign archbishops to offer the ACiC faithful ?temporary adequate episcopal oversight.? Two of the new parishes are in southern Saskatchewan: The Anglican Church of the Redeemer, meeting at Rogers Chapel at Western Bible College, Regina, and led by the Rev. Thom Needham; and St. Jude?s Apostolic Anglican Church, meeting at a home in Indian Head, and led by the Rev. Olukayode Abedogun. Located on Vancouver Island is the Lighthouse Church, formed by about 30 former members of St. James, Nanaimo, and led by the Rev. Ron Risley; the congregation meets at a Seventh Day Adventist church in Nanaimo.

*A PENNSYLVANIA RECTOR recently quit ECUSA following strong pressure from his bishop, who firmly opposed the 11-to-1 decision of the priest?s vestry at Christ Church, Williamsport, to align the parish with the traditionalist Forward in Faith, North America (FIF-NA), a part of the ACN. A majority of active parishioners also backed the affiliation. The Rev. Daren Williams left Christ Church on October 31, with plans to form the Church of the Incarnation under the authority of Archbishop Louis Falk of the Anglican Church in America, a part of the Traditional Anglican Communion. All or most of the parish?s leadership and most of its active parishioners left with Williams. The departure came after Bishop Michael Creighton came down hard on the vestry and parish over the FIF matter at a meeting in September.

*OTHER CLERICS WHO HAVE LEFT ECUSA recently, citing its degraded morality and theology, are:

*The Rev. Eric L. Bergman, 33, who had been rector of the Church of Good Shepherd, Scranton, Pennsylvania, a parish under Bethlehem Bishop Paul Marshall, who supported Gene Robinson. He plans to seek secular employment.

*The Rev. Frank D. Gough II, who resigned as vicar of Shepherd of the Hills Episcopal Church, Lecanto, Florida. He started an AMiA congregation, the Anglican Church of Our Redeemer. in Citrus County, with ?a large portion of the faithful from Shepherd of the Hills, including approximately half the vestry,? he said.

*LEGAL CHARGES have been filed against the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York for the wrongful dismissal of Fr. Simon Howson, 38, an orthodox priest. Since coming to St. James in Batavia in 2003, the cleric had increased attendance at the parish from some 30 to nearly 200. The complaint against the diocese claims that Howson was sexually harassed (?to an awful extent,? one source claimed) by a diocesan dean, Fr. Jerry True, rector of St. Luke?s in Attica, New York, who had been appointed as his spiritual director by Bishop J. Michael Garrison, a liberal. Howson alleges that Garrison did nothing about his complaints about True, instead suspending Howson for ?conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.?

Garrison claimed he had dealt with the matter, that True denies any misconduct and had completed recommended counseling, but that Howson did not respond to his advice. The Buffalo News said Garrison issued a statement detailing Howson?s removal from ministry by a tiny Continuing Church group, the United Anglican Church (though it was not clear whether this was new or old information).

Howson?s attorney, Andrew Fleming, said his client will seek injunctive relief as well as money damages for wrongful termination, reported Virtuosity.

*THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF MISSOURI and ECUSA have prevailed in their bid to retain the property of a seceded congregation, located in Town and Country, Missouri, reports Episcopal News Service. In October, a St. Louis County Associate Circuit Court Judge, Mary Schroeder, ordered the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd and its now-deposed rector, the Rev. Paul Walter, to vacate the church property. No deadline was set for the move by the Good Shepherd flock, which earlier aligned itself with the Anglican province of Rwanda via the Anglican Mission in America. Schroeder ruled that Good Shepherd?s property was subject to a trust in favor of the diocese and national church, and that the parish?s rector and vestry exceeded their corporate authority when they sought a court-approved amendment of the parish?s charter to allow members wishing to secede to remove the parish property from the diocese.

*IN A SURPRISE MOVE, pro-gay Massachusetts Bishop Thomas Shaw has agreed to let a just-retired Canadian Anglican prelate become an episcopal visitor to the conservative Holy Trinity, Marlborough. The parish had been without a rector for three years, and had found it difficult to hire a conservative priest willing to be in a liberal diocese. The Rev. Michael McKinnon, a member of Forward in Faith, agreed to come if the parish had ?adequate episcopal oversight from an orthodox bishop,? said search committee head Steve Walker. Shaw?s invitation to Bishop Donald Harvey (retired of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador) limits Harvey?s role at Holy Trinity to ?pastoral? oversight and ?spiritual help.? The arrangement will be reviewed every two years.

*DELEGATES TO THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA?S recent convention could not find common ground on resolutions defining the sacrament of marriage. But they agreed to extend for another year the option for congregations and individuals to ask the diocese to direct their money away from the national church and toward other missionary work. Currently, less than three cents of every dollar from a collection plate in the diocese goes to ECUSA headquarters, reported Jim DeLa, diocesan director of communications. Last year, all redirected funds went to the Diocese of the Dominican Republic; this time diverted funds will be divided between that diocese and the Diocese of Haiti.

*OTHER SERIOUS FINANCIAL LOSSES continue to be reported in a number of ECUSA dioceses in the wake of Gene Robinson?s consecration a year ago. As of early November, income shortfalls or projected shortfalls had been noted in the Dioceses of Southeast Florida (over $200,000), Minnesota ($170,000), Los Angeles ($300,000), and Long Island ($293,000). The Diocese of Western Michigan reportedly was $90,000 behind with its bills and could not pay its $120,000 pledge to the national church. The Diocese of Colorado is $500,000 short on giving this year, prompting the bishop to send parishes a plea to halt financial withholding. In Minnesota, the diocesan bishop, James Jelinek, had asserted that last year?s General Convention, which consented to Robinson?s consecration and to local option on same-sex blessings, would cause people to flock to ECUSA, but Minnesota?s council reportedly has to cut its 2004 budget by over $164,000. n

Sources included The Miami Herald, Boston Globe, Buffalo News, Rocky Mountain News, Episcopal News Service, The Living Church, Anglican Journal, Virtuosity, ecusadollars.blogspot.com

St. James Wins Round, As PA

High Court Agrees To Hear Appeal

By The Rev. Charles H. Nalls

Pennsylvania?s Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of the orthodox St. James the Less, Philadelphia, in its ongoing church property dispute with the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania and its liberal bishop, Charles Bennison.

Handing the Episcopal-turned-independent parish a signal victory, the court indicated in a brief per curiam order September 24 that it will address two issues:

1. Whether the appellate court (Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court) erred in deciding that St. James ?must turn over its property? to the Diocese of Pennsylvania, contrary to a 1979 opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court in Jones v. Wolf and the 1965 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Presbytery of Beaver-Butler v. Middlesex Presbyterian Church.

2. Whether the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I of the Pennsylvania Constitution preclude the diocese from taking the property of St. James under state statute or under an Episcopal Church canon (the 1979 Dennis Canon) to which the parish ?never agreed to be bound.?

St. James? congregants, led by the Rev. Dr. David Ousley, were encouraged by the way the court framed the issues to be decided.

First, the question of whether the parish ?must turn over its property to the diocese? seems to presuppose that the property indeed belongs to St. James.

The court also agreed to consider judicial precedents that St. James contends were ignored by the appeals court in ruling for the diocese.

Finally, its agreement to look at whether an Episcopal Church (ECUSA) diocese can claim St. James? property under a canon to which the parish ?never agreed to be bound? appears to constitute a significant challenge to the Dennis Canon, which has frustrated many a congregation?s desire or attempt to leave ECUSA with its buildings. Adopted by the 1979 General Convention, the canon asserts that all parish property is held in trust for the diocese and wider church.

The one downside for St. James was that the state Supreme Court would not enter a stay of the Commonwealth Court?s order while this new appeal is litigated.

In April 1999, St. James left its theologically hostile Episcopal diocese and ECUSA by a nearly unanimous vote and adopted independent status. After nearly two years, the diocese filed suit to force the congregation from its property. In March of 2003, Judge Joseph O?Keefe of the Court of Common Pleas? Orphan?s Court division found for the diocese, invoking a 1935 state statute that he believed entitled Bishop Bennison and his standing committee to have control of St. James? property. The parish then appealed.

On October 7, 2003 the Commonwealth Court handed down a split decision in the litigation. The majority of the court affirmed the lower court?s decision in favor of the diocese, although on different grounds. That decision would have required the congregation to turn over the property to the diocese, ending many years of ministry in its East Falls/Allegheny West neighborhood. Indeed, due to pending litigation with Bennison and the diocese, the parish was forced to close its acclaimed inner city school.

A robust dissent in favor of St. James, written by the Commonwealth Court?s presiding judge, set the stage for the current state Supreme Court appeal.

A high court decision for St. James would add to two other recent church property decisions favoring parishes in other states.

The Rev. Charles H. Nalls is Executive Director of the Canon Law Institute in Washington, D.C.

REC, Nigerian Province

Seek Formal Ties

The Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), a well known ?separated? Anglican body, has recently entered into a process aimed at establishing a formal relationship with the some 18 million-strong Anglican Province of Nigeria, at the request of Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola.

REC Presiding Bishop Leonard Riches announced word of the talks at the 124th Council of the REC?s Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic in Pennsylvania November 3, according to church journalist David Virtue.

Riches said that he had been personally invited to meet with Akinola while the latter was visiting Houston in October, as part of a U.S. visit to explore the establishment of a convocation to minister to expatriate Nigerian Anglicans. (See more on this in a separate story in this section.)

At Akinola?s recommendation, Riches said he has set up a commission which will meet twice during the next four months to work toward a formal relationship between the two jurisdictions.

The effort is just one way the REC is responding to what Riches said is a renewed need for Anglican convergence and realignment, ?occasioned by a radical departure from historic faith and order? in parts of the ?official? Anglican Communion.

?Faithful Anglicans worldwide need to continue to build networks of relationship and common mission in order to bear effective witness to the Gospel and to build the Kingdom of Christ,? he told more than 150 delegates. n

APA And FIF-NA: A Done Deal

The Provincial Synod of the Anglican Province of America (APA), a Continuing Church body, unanimously approved in September a ?Declaration of Full Communion? with the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) traditionalist organization, Forward in Faith, North America (FIF-NA), whose annual assembly had affirmed the relationship in June.

By this agreement, APA parishes that have joined FIF-NA are recognized as affiliated parishes, and will be allowed deputy representation at FIF-NA annual assemblies.

Led by the Rt. Rev. Walter Grundorf, the APA is the second Continuing Church body to come into full communion with FIF-NA; the first was the Traditional Anglican Communion.

The new relationship adds another dimension to the widening, trans-jurisdictional network of faithful Anglicans. Earlier this year, FIF-NA became a non-geographical convocation of the conservative Anglican Communion Network within ECUSA, and several groups in and outside of ECUSA, including the APA, joined in a cooperative alliance with the Network. Also part of the alliance is the Reformed Episcopal Church, with which APA has plans to merge. Next June, the APA and REC will hold a simultaneous synod and councils at St. Alban?s Cathedral in Oviedo, Florida. The Anglican Primate of the Southern Cone, Archbishop Gregory Venables, will preach at a joint service of Holy Communion.

In other action at the APA?s September 16-17 Provincial Synod in Delray Beach, Florida, the Anglican Rite Synod of the Americas, led by Bishop Larry Shaver, was received as a non-geographical diocese to be called the Diocese of St. Augustine.

Delegates also approved the application of the APA?s Missionary Diocese of the West to become a full diocese. n

Sources included FIF-NA, Christian Observer

What A Difference A

Year Makes, REC Mission Finds

It had begun humbly, with just eight worshipers, led by the Rev. Dr. Robert Bowman.

By its one-year anniversary in September, Holy Trinity Mission in Fairfax, Virginia, numbered over 60 souls, and welcomed the Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), Leonard Riches, to confirm nine young persons.

The REC mission meets in space it rents from the local parks and recreation agency, which it ably transforms for worship. The historic faith is clearly what is most important to this congregation, though its growth rate likely portends a change of venue in the foreseeable future. The mission?s expansion is the more interesting when one considers that there are two prominent conservative Episcopal parishes nearby.

Bishop Riches preached what parishioner Robert Turner aptly called ?a dynamite sermon on the Holy Trinity, using St. Paul?s classic benediction ?The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost? as his text.?

The service was followed by a sumptuous pot luck lunch, during which Riches spoke to parishioners about the REC, the Anglican Communion, mission, and the spread of the gospel.

The REC, a ?separated? Anglican body launched by former Episcopalians in the latter 19th century, is in the thick of today?s conservative Anglican movement. It is--among other things--on a path toward merger with the Anglican Province of America, and was recently invited by Nigerian Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola to develop a formal relationship with his province.

Mr. Turner, who switched with his family from the U.S. Episcopal Church to the REC last year, noted the novelty of being able ?to brag about your bishop.?

?Bishop Riches is just awesome. He?s a fantastic preacher and a bold defender of the faith with a warm pastoral heart and care for his flock,? he said. n

Visit Holy Trinity on-line at www. fairfaxrecus.org

ACC Bishop Consecrated

For New Orleans

The Rev. Canon Denver Presley Hutchens was consecrated the third Bishop of New Orleans within the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC), a leading Continuing Church body, on the Feast of St. Wilfrid, October 12.

Bishop Hutchens succeeds the Most Rev. Brother John-Charles FODC, who resigned the see a year ago to return to his native Australia, where he serves as missionary bishop, and continues as ACC?s Metropolitan.

Hutchens? consecration took place at the Cathedral Church of St. Edward the Confessor, Indianapolis, with the Rt. Rev. Mark Haverland, Bishop of the South, as chief consecrator.

The rite was set in Indianapolis to coincide with the meeting the following day of the College of Bishops. Bishop Haverland was chief consecrator on a warrant from Archbishop John-Charles. Co-consecrators were the ACC?s Bishop of the Midwest, Rommie Starks; and Assistant Bishop for Latin Affairs in the Patrimony of the Metropolitan, Roger Dawson.

Also joining in the laying on of hands were the Bishops of the Dioceses of the Resurrection, Stanley Lazarczyk, and Holy Trinity, James Mote (retired). Several other clergy from across the ACC also were in attendance, including the Dean of Christ Church Pro-Cathedral, Metairie (New Orleans), Donald Rice. Music was provided by the Schola Cantorum of St. Edward the Confessor, under the direction of Luke Reese; and Dan Kahlenberg, organist.

Bishop Hutchens was enthroned at Christ Church Pro-Cathedral, Metairie, on the Saturday within the Octave of All Saints?, November 6. Bishop Haverland officiated and the Rev. Canon John A. Hollister, provincial chancellor, preached.

Born in Perth, Western Australia, but brought up in Texas, Bishop Hutchens graduated from East Texas State University and the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.

At first an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church, he served a number of congregations in Texas from 1968 until 1985, when he entered the U.S. Navy and served as a chaplain in active duty until 1990 and in the reserves until 1996. At present, he is the ACC?s endorsing agent for ministry to the armed forces.

He became the ACC?s first military chaplain upon his ordination to the diaconate and priesthood in 1988. He has served ACC parishes in Texas and Louisiana, and was administrative assistant to the Metropolitan from 2001-03.

He was elected the third Bishop of New Orleans on the third ballot during a June election synod in Metairie.

Bishop Hutchens and his wife, Alexa, have five children and live in Natchitoches, where they own and operate a bed-and-breakfast inn.

Source: The Trinitarian

Not Quite Good As New?

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams took hits in the press not long ago for commending a novel translation of the New Testament that (inter alia) alters the Bible?s approach to homosexual and heterosexual sex and gives Bible figures modern nicknames.

More recent information makes one begin to wonder if the favorable foreword that Dr. Williams wrote has much at all to do with the Bible translation in which it appears, Good As New by a retired Baptist minister, John Henson.

When Central Florida Bishop John Howe queried Archbishop Williams about his foreword to Good As New, the Archbishop reportedly replied:

?Thank you for your note about the Henson book. I have drafted a standard response explaining that my commendation was written two years ago and written for a slightly different collection of material; also that the preface does not imply that I agree with every detail of the translation or notes or authorial introduction. I am in touch with the author and publisher about the fact that I didn?t see a final copy of the text before it went to press. But I hope that reaction will not be disproportionate: it is, largely, a very stimulating effort to convey biblical meanings accurately and in genuinely contemporary English; it is flawed by some ideologically weighted versions at two or three points.?

Given the flap over Dr. Williams? support for the book, it was not clear why he did not release this statement generally.

More curious, though, were Henson?s comments in an interview. He said that the foreword to Good As New ?was originally written for my book The Other Temptation of Jesus--that book used this translation for its Biblical passages. The publisher asked if he could use the same foreword and that was approved.

?As the texts have been circulating for 12 years,? Henson went on, ?I?m not sure how much Dr. Williams has read or used them. They have constantly been refined so I am not sure even if he saw the final work.? n

U.S. Election Evokes Responses

From Griswold, Akinola

America?s November election--which saw George W. Bush returned to the White House and gay marriage defeated in all 11 states in which it was put to a vote--was not without its impact on the Anglican Communion, and particularly the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA).

The election results--widely seen as an affirmation of historic moral values--revealed ECUSA as out of sync with American culture as Episcopal leaders had read it, and to which they have insisted that ECUSA must respond.

This fact did not seem completely lost on the main spokesman for ECUSA?s vigorously pro-gay stand, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.

The P.B. sent out a statement saying it ?may be very difficult to find our way forward? given ?the polarizing rhetoric that has been employed throughout the campaign.?

He urged a genuine effort to ?move beyond entrenched positions and to seek common ground? (though ECUSA?s hierarchy has given no sign of moving from its ?entrenched position? on homosexuality in the wake of the Windsor Report).

Bush had consistently named his religious faith as the guiding force of his decisions, Griswold reminded his flock, and the country pledged itself as one nation ?under God.?

?Such obedience obliges us to ground our national policies in much more than self-interest and self protection,? he stated.

PROMINENT AFRICAN PRELATE Peter Akinola of Nigeria, meanwhile, congratulated President Bush on his re-election and said his victory put to shame the liberal American churches that promote same-sex unions.

In an open letter to Bush, the African leader said that U.S. Episcopalians should learn from the election result.

?We have watched with interest throughout the electioneering campaign your declared opposition to same-sex unions and admirable courage in upholding firmly the timeless values of the historic faith of the Church,? Akinola wrote Bush.

?By your victory at the polls, you have put to shame the revisionists and their agenda in the Church of Christ, and particularly in [the U.S. Episcopal Church],? he added.

?I hope that by your election victory, these ordained men and women will feel rebuked and be forced to repent of this grievous sin of repudiating the word of God.?

REPORTS SAY THAT PRESIDENT BUSH was aided in his re-election by concerns about moral values, including sanctity of life issues, which helped spur larger turnouts of Evangelical Christians, 79 percent of whom supported him. Such concerns also helped garnered a larger share of Roman Catholic votes for Bush, a Methodist, rather than his opponent, whose Catholic credentials were undercut by his pro-choice policies. Bush took 52 percent of the Catholic vote nationwide, a five point increase from the last election.

Voters in 11 states approved (in some cases by large margins) constitutional amendments limiting marriage to one man and one woman; six other states had already done so. The 17 states which have constitutionally banned same-sex marriage are Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah. (The decision in Louisiana has since been overturned in court but will be appealed). Another four to nine states look likely to follow suit in the near future.

Supporters said the amendments were needed in the 11 states, none of which had allowed gay marriage, to guard against state court rulings like the one in Massachusetts that forced the legalization of same-sex marriages.

However, due to the U.S. constitution?s ?full faith and credit? provision (requiring one state to recognize another?s legal acts), the state victories are not totally secure. Many see them as a prelude to the real battle, as gay supporters file lawsuits intended to strike down marriage in the states--even those that adopted amendments to protect it--and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

By deadline, several court actions had already been initiated, including a lawsuit seeking to declare the federal DOMA unconstitutional. The issue is considered highly likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court eventually, though obviously the outcome there is uncertain.

Many conservative groups believe that, ultimately, only an amendment to the U.S. constitution, defining marriage in traditional terms, will protect that time-honored and God-instituted estate. (Such an amendment could leave questions of benefits for gay couples up to the states, though not all agree that even homosexual ?civil unions? should be legally supported.) A proposed federal marriage amendment failed, however, in the U.S. Senate in July and more recently in the U.S. House, though the question almost certainly will be put again in the new Congress. n

Sources: The Washington Times, Newsmax, News 24, Church Times, LifeSite News, virtueonline.org, Culture of Life Foundation

--LATE NEWS--

From L.A. To London,

Gay Crisis Rocks On

Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno is 0 for 2 in twin bids to try to alleviate local and international repercussions of his liberal policies.

In an attempt to win back three L.A. parishes that seceded, Bruno recently said he would stop blessing same-sex unions, though his clergy could still conduct such rites. He also called for an international church conference including the three parishes and the African bishops under which they placed themselves.

Both initiatives had fallen flat by presstime. In a polite but strong letter, Ugandan Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi explained why Bruno and his diocese must repent in word and deed of their ?participation in and promotion of unbiblical behavior and teaching? before any meeting could take place.

Meanwhile, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams--who recently rebuked Anglican conservatives for what he saw as their hostile language towards gays--was said to be leading a closed-door ?summit? on the Anglican crisis over homosexuality, involving more than 50 Church of England bishops. The Lambeth Palace meeting, for which no specific dates were cited, also was to discuss the recent Windsor Report. n

Sources: The Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph