Plans for new province in US opposed by senior Anglican
The Archbishop of Wales has condemned plans to form a new province in the US saying it would splinter the Anglican Church Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent of the Times
A senior Anglican Archbishop from the UK has condemned plans by conservative Anglicans to form a new province in the US. The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, said he would oppose a new province “with every fibre of my being.”
He warned that if the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion allow traditionalists to set up a new province to exist as a parallel jurisdiction to the US Episcopal Church, no province would be safe and the worldwide Anglican Church would splinter into many fragments.
Dr Morgan is one of 39 Anglican Primates who will attend next week’s meeting of the heads of 38 provinces worldwide in Alexandria, Egypt. The Archbishops are to debate the damaging effects of the row over homosexuality at the meeting and discuss how to get their churches back on track.
Although it is not on the official agenda, it is understood that one of the conservative Primates will present the draft canons and constitutions of a new traditionalist province in the US, headed by the deposed Bishop of Pittsburgh, Bob Duncan.
In an interview with The Times, Dr Morgan said the concept of a new province in the US “makes no ecclesiological or theological sense.”
New provinces are usually set up for demographic or missionary reasons.
Dr Morgan said: “It makes no sense for a province to be founded on doctrinal grounds.”
The conservatives oppose the liberal trends in The Episcopal Church, which is led by the Anglican Communion’s only woman Primate, the Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, and which culminated in 2003 in the consecration of the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson.
Dozens of parishes have seceded and sought refuge under the pastoral care of African archbishops. Two dioceses from the US along with several parishes from Canada have also left and been taken in by the Southern Cone under the leadership of British-born Archbishop Gregory Venables.
Last week Dr Morgan addressed the diocesan convention in Virginia, where 11 parishes have left and joined the Congregation of Anglicans in North America, led by Bishop Martyn Minns, another English-born bishop who has worked for many years as a conservative rector in the US and was consecrated as a bishop in the Anglican Church in Nigeria.
The Episcopal Church is now embroiled in property disputes as it attempts to retain the buildings used by the secessionist churches.
In a victory for the Presiding Bishop, the California Supreme Court ruled that breakaway congregations cannot take possession of their properties, which are held in trust for a larger church body.
Things did not go so well in Virginia, however, where the 11 congregations won the first stages of their court battles to keep their properties. The Episcopal Church is in the process of appealing to the Supreme Court in Virginia.
Dr Morgan, who is among the Primates attending the meeting in Egypt next week, said most dioceses in the US were concentrating on other issues, such as helping the poor, missionary work and looking after parishioners and their families. The debate over homosexuality had moved into the background, he said.
“I would strongly resist a new province,” he said. “What happens in America today might well happen in Britain tomorrow. We would all be in danger because it would mean that a church can secede from a province and then ask the Anglican Communion for recognition for an alternative province.”
The Primates will meet behind closed doors at the Helnan Palestine Hotel and will also discuss the credit crunch, the new Anglican Covenant intended to provide a central structure of unity, Anglican development work, global warming and Anglican theology.
They will debate the latest developments in the row over gays as well, such as defections from and consecrations into US dioceses by traditionalists, and whether the proposed moratoria on same-sex blessings is working or is enforceable.
Dr Morgan said: “I hope we will see the same spirit of generosity and openness that we had at the Lambeth Conference last summer. There was then an overwhelming desire to stay together, and I hope that will be the same for the Primates’ meeting.”
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