Leaders representing Canadian and US orthodox Anglican jurisdictions approved applications for membership of 28 dioceses and dioceses-in-formation and finalized plans for launching the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Twelve Anglican organizations are uniting to form the ACNA.

The ACNA Leadership Council, in addition to accepting these dioceses as constituent members, finalized a draft constitution and a comprehensive set of canons (Church bylaws) for ratification by the provincial assembly. A list of the new dioceses, the constitution and the canons will soon be available at www.united-anglicans.org.

"It is a great encouragement to see the fruit of many years’ work," said the Right Reverend Robert Duncan, archbishop-elect of the Anglican Church in North America and Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. "Today 23 dioceses and five dioceses-in-formation joined together to reconstitute an orthodox, Biblical, missionary and united Church in North America."

The Anglican Church in North America holds its inaugural provincial assembly 22-25 June 2009 in St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas. Delegates to this inaugural provincial assembly will be selected by the 28 constituent dioceses and dioceses-in-formation according to an agreed apportionment (contained in Title I, Canon 5).

In addition to the official delegates, a number of other Anglican and ecumenical Christian leaders are expected to be present at the provincial assembly, demonstrating the breadth of recognition and fellowship accorded ACNA. Already, three prominent Ecumenical leaders are confirmed speakers at the ACNA provincial assembly:

* Pastor Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church,
* His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah, the Archbishop of Wash ington and New York and the Metropolitan of All America and Canada for the Orthodox Church in America, and
* the Rev Todd Hunter, Director of West Coast Church Planting for the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

Earlier this month, seven Primates (Archbishops leading Churches in the Anglican Communion) issued a statement recognizing the Anglican Church in North America as an Emergent Province. These Primates, who represent 70 per cent of committed Anglicans worldwide, said in their statement, "Though many Provinces are in impaired or broken communion with TEC [the Episcopal Church] and the Anglican Church of Canada, our fellowship with faithful Anglicans in North America remains steadfast. The FCA [Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans] Primates’ Council recognizes the Anglican Church in North America as genuinely Anglican and recommends that Anglican Provinces affirm full communion with the ACNA."

The Anglican Church in North America unites some 100,000 Anglicans in 700 parishes into a single church. Jurisdictions which have joined together to form the 28 dioceses and dioceses-in-formation of the Anglican Church in North America are: the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Quincy and San Joaquin; the Anglican Mission in the Americas; the Convocation of Anglicans in North America; the Anglican Network in Canada; the Anglican Coalition in Canada; the Reformed Episcopal Church; and the missionary initiatives of Kenya, Uganda, and South America’s Southern Cone. Additionally, the American Anglican Council and Forward in Faith North America are founding organizations.
 

3rd April, A.D. 2009
Feast of St. Richard

TO ALL THE CLERGY AND PEOPLE:
Beloved in the Lord,

With this letter comes the publication of the complete set of canons proposed by the Governance Task Force to the Common Cause Leadership Council. The Leadership Council is scheduled to meet and to act as the Provincial Council of the Anglican Church in North America on April 24th and 25th, 2009.

The draft canons attempt to order the life of the Church, consistent with the Provisional Constitution (now proposed for slight amendment) and nine initial canons adopted by the Council in December of 2008. Several principles should be obvious:

1. confessional unity, expressed in matters of Faith and Order;
2. subsidiarity, where what may be wisely left to the local level (both diocesan and congregational) is left to the local level, including property ownership;
3. missionary focus, especially in structures, roles and representation;
4. flexibility, recognizing the diversity of Godly approaches common among the partners coming into union;
5. disciplinary reform, including address of concerns for Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders, as well as provision of a provincial tribunal.
6. collegial accountability, especially in matters relating to bishops.

The charge to the Governance Task Force was to provide a strong skeleton around which a living Church could be built.

This letter is being sent to the whole Church as an introduction to the basic work that has been done, and in order to outline the process of discussion, adoption and ratification now ahead of us. Simply put, the whole Church discusses, the Provincial Council adopts, and the Provincial Assembly ratifies or sends back.

The principal time for suggesting changes to the draft canons is between now and the April meeting of Council. Comments and suggestions should be given to the jurisdictional representatives who compose the Common Cause Leadership Council by April 24th or sent to the chair of the Governance Task Force, Mr. Hugo Blankingship (ahblankingshipjr@theacna.org), no later than noon on Monday, April 20th. The Council can then consider these matters in deciding the form in which the canons are adopted. Once adopted, another period of publication and comment follows, but this time the advice from the local Church to its representatives to the Provincial Assembly (June 22-25) would take the form of recommendations on whether to ratify or reject individual canons or sections of canons. If, however, substantial concerns are identified in this latter period, it should be noted that it would be possible for the Council to meet, adopt and circulate further revised canons prior to the Provincial Assembly.

Along with the draft canons now being released by the Governance Task Force, the preliminary schedule for the June meeting of the Provincial Assembly (and the College of Bishops preceding) is also being published. As previously announced, St. Vincent’s Cathedral and School in Bedford, Texas, has agreed to host both the College of Bishops and the Inaugural Provincial Assembly.

Canons and schedules are, in themselves, not meant to be exciting, only a framework. What is exciting is the rebirth of the biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America for which so many have prayed for so long and that the proposed constitution, canons and schedule represent. Just three weeks ago, the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) – representing one-quarter of the world’s Anglicans – declared “abiding and full communion” with our movement. We trust that many other parts of the Anglican and Christian world will see in us their true gospel partners. God’s vision for us is that we reach our continent and the world with the transforming love of Jesus Christ.

St. Richard prayed that we might “see Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, and follow Thee more nearly, day by day.” Let that be our prayer and our work in all of the challenges and tasks now before us.

Faithfully in Christ,

The Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan
Anglican Bishop of Pittsburgh
Moderator of the Common Cause Partnership
Archbishop-Designate of the Anglican Church in North America
 

Attachments (4 in pdf format):

Constitution

Canons

Appendix A

Proposed Schedule

(Clip)

We are especially concerned about those who are using large sums of money to lure our youth to see homosexuality and lesbianism as normative. We must consistently and faithfully teach about God’s commands on this ungodly practice and help those with such orientation to seek deliverance and pastoral counsel. 

It was also our great delight to welcome to our meeting, the Rt. Rev Bob Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh in the USA, and Moderator of the Common Cause Partnership which is a fellowship of about 11 Anglican groups that are determined to maintain the Biblical and historic convictions of our faith, including CANA (also represented at this meeting by our own Bishop Martyn Minns). We have declared ourselves to be in full communion with the emerging province of the Anglican Church of North America, praying that they will remain solidly rooted in the foundations of our faith.

We have expressed our grave concerns over the relentless aggression against Christians in the North of Nigeria and have again drawn the attention of our governments to this unhappy scenario. We are calling for a national conference of all stakeholders to deal with the issue of religious intolerance and guarantee a peaceful and just future for our beloved country. We especially call on our members in the National Assembly to keep alert to this threat to our corporate existence. Most of all we call on our churches to pray earnestly about the future of our nation.

Read here.

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) expects to receive at least five, and perhaps as many as eight, applications for official recognition as a diocese when it meets for its first provincial assembly in June.

A letter sent in January by the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan to members of the Common Cause Partnership encouraged the formation of dioceses.

“Consistent with all Anglican practice, congregations are a part of an Anglican province because they are part of a diocese, which in turn, is part of a group of dioceses banded together as a national (or international) church,” Bishop Duncan wrote. “This principle is critical to understanding the provisional constitution of the [ACNA], and to the steps we all need to take as we move toward our first provincial assembly.”

Bishop Duncan is Archbishop-designate of the ACNA and Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh that is now under the auspices of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone. The Rev. J. Philip Ashey, chief operating officer and chaplain for the American Anglican Council, told The Living Church that Pittsburgh is one of the five applications for recognition as an ACNA diocese that have already been received. The deadline for applications is April 15.

Earlier this month, the Rt. Rev. John H. Chapman, Bishop of Ottawa in the Anglican Church of Canada, said he would authorize a congregation under his oversight to begin performing same-sex blessings in part because “while our church struggles to honor the call for gracious restraint in blessing same-sex unions, those who are proponents of cross-border interventions have and continue to show no restraint.”

That view was echoed this week during the House of Bishops’ spring retreat by Bishop Dan Edwards of Nevada. Bishop Edwards posted a blog entry noting that a number of bishops are considering the repeal of Resolution B033 because of what they perceive as a lack of reciprocal restraint by the ACNA.

Fr. Ashey countered that it is unrealistic to expect the ACNA to postpone its efforts to organize while same-sex blessings continue to occur unofficially in a number of dioceses in both the U.S. and Canadian churches.

“[Ottawa and Nevada] have already made their decisions and are now looking for an excuse to implement them,” he said. “We have responded to the invitation from the GAFCON primates to form an orthodox Anglican province in the Americas.”

The ACNA has been welcomed “in abiding and full communion” by the standing committee of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. The March 20 announcement also noted that the standing committee recommended that the Church of Nigeria send a delegation to the provincial assembly in Bedford “to demonstrate our enduring partnership in the gospel.”

Editor’s Note: Bishop Robert Duncan has written to the Common Cause Partnership outlining details of the first Provincial Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America. The meeting will be held June 22 – 25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

TO ALL COMMON CAUSE PARTNERS:
Beloved in the Lord,

The purpose of this letter is to give formal notice of the Provincial Assembly to be gathered from noon, Monday, June 22nd, to noon, Thursday, June 25th, 2009. This meeting is being convened under the Provisional Constitution of the Anglican Church in North America. The place of gathering is St. Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas.

The agenda of the Provincial Assembly will include:

1) Worship;

2) Presentations in support of the mission of the Province;

3) Scripture teaching;

4) Addresses by international leaders;

5) Consideration for ratification of the (Provisional) Constitution;

6) Consideration for ratification of a Code of Canons;

7) Reports from committees and task forces.

Each diocese, cluster or network will have representation as provided for in the provisional constitution and initial canons set out by the Common Cause Leadership Council (acting as Provincial Council) on December 3rd, 2008. The actual apportionment cannot be accomplished until the April meeting of the Council, so this notice is being distributed widely for initial planning purposes. The actual selection and certification of voting members of the Assembly are to be done diocese by diocese. Most will be represented by their bishop(s), two clergy and two lay persons. Representation is, however, proportional; linked to each additional thousand Average Sunday Attendance.

The hope for the Provincial Assembly is that it be “more like AMiA’s Winter Conference than TEC’s General Convention.” Consideration of matters to be voted will, of course, be limited to the certified representatives. But the gathering as a whole will be open to all.

The expectation is that many more will be present in Bedford than are actually members of the Provincial Assembly. We welcome this and several hundred hotel rooms have been blocked for observer-participants. The Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) airport is a short distance from the meeting site. A list of area hotels accompanies this announcement (pdf file here).

I covet your prayers for this Inaugural Provincial Assembly, and for all that surrounds its preparation. These are momentous days.

Faithfully in Christ,

Bob Pittsburgh
Moderator

On behalf of the Advisory Committee of the Communion Partner Rectors, and on behalf of our Bishops and Primatial colleagues, we wish to acknowledge the remarks recently published from Bishop Iker and Bishop Duncan at the Charleston conference hosted by ‘Mere Anglicanism.’ They speak of wanting the Communion Partners and Common Cause to support one another.

For our part we will continue to pray for solid progress at the level of Covenant Design Committee work and for the Instruments of Communion, especially the Primates Meeting shortly to commence. We cannot know how the efforts associated with Common Cause will turn out, including the idea of building a ‘new province,’ but we note with interest that recent news indicates the Archbishop of Canterbury has suggested ways for this endeavor to move forward in relationship to the Instruments of Communion. Together with ACI, we have been concerned that failure to attend to the integrity of Dioceses which see women’s ordination a matter still in reception, is creating unnecessary stress and strain. We ask that the wider Anglican Communion offer guidance here, as a variegated polity elsewhere appears to be both possible and charitably negotiated.

We do not know how the proposal for a new province will be received nor are we entirely clear what its proponents are proposing; that is probably unavoidable given the hardships all around. We understand that many see the situation as demanding this option. For our part, we accept the promise of those associated with this movement that they will honor our own commitments. Communion Partners will pray for the Common Cause proponents and will assume that promise of cooperation entails a charitable acceptance that another way forward is to be honored and that we can move forward on parallel tracks and not ‘recruit’ from each others’ daily purpose, honoring the jurisdictional integrities of respective bishops. God will be in charge of the next season, as He has always been.

When the Primates meet in February we anticipate that our separate ways of moving forward will be acknowledged and honored. We pledge our prayers for all involved and ask God’s blessing on all of us in a very difficult time. With gratitude for his grace and mercy, again this 2009 Epiphany we remain, yours in Christ, on behalf of Communion Partners,

(The Rt Revd) Bruce MacPherson, Communion Partner Bishops
(The Revd Dr) Russell Levenson, Communion Partner Rectors
(The Revd Canon Professor) Christopher Seitz, Communion Partners and ACI

“The healing of the Anglican Com­munion began today,” said Cynthia Brust, a lay leader of the Anglican Mission in the Americas, at the news conference last week, after the adoption of the provisional constitution of the Anglican Church in North America. The next day, in a lead article in The New York Times, a senior professor of religion at Duke University called the coming together of so many Anglican fragments “un­precedented”.

It is fair to ask, of course, just how this begins healing the Communion. Some of our friends continue to hope that what has been dubbed the Cov­enant process will accomplish that. They have publicly taken us to task for our decision to form the Anglican Church in North America.

We acted — not because we reject the Covenant process, or reject efforts on its behalf, no matter how unlikely their success may seem — to begin dealing constructively with the incredibly complex reality on the ground here in North America. We are uniting 700 Anglican churches that exist today, and more are joining almost every week.

Many of these are congregations or portions of congregations that left the Episcopal Church in the United States, or the Anglican Church in Canada. Covenant or no covenant, it is simply no longer realistic to expect those congregations to rejoin provinces that have sued them and defrocked their deacons, priests, and bishops for standing up for what mainstream Anglicans believe.

Instead, another more permanent solution than temporary ties to gen­erous Anglican provinces over­seas is needed. We need a unified body both to heal the divisions among ourselves and to give the broader Anglican Communion a unified and coherent partner with which to be in relation­ship.

Forming the Anglican Church in North America is a significant step forward on both these fronts. It is an amazing God-given healing of that internal division and an opportunity for forming constructive relation­ships within the Communion.

Eleven fragments of “mainstream” Anglicanism in the United States and Canada were involved in the adop­tion of the provisional constitution: the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Coalition in Canada, the Anglican Communion Network, the Anglican Mission in the Americas (Rwanda), the Anglican Network in Canada, the Convocation of An­glicans in North America (Nigeria), Forward in Faith North America, the Missionary Convocations of Kenya, Southern Cone (including the Bolivia and Recife networks), and Uganda, together with the Reformed Episcopal Church.

These fragments draw together some 700 congregations in North Am­erica, with an estimated 100,000 worshippers on average on any given Sunday. This constellation is thus numbered as larger than 13 of the provinces of the Anglican Com­munion (including Scotland and Wales), and compares to the 750,000 the Episcopal Church in the United States claims to draw every Sunday.

The provisional constitution begins with eight fundamental (theological) declarations, which are consistent with classical Anglicanism. The constitution’s vision is of a mission­ary Church: the principal agents of the mission are the people of God; the fundamental agency of the mis­sion is the local congregation; the purpose of the diocese and the provincial assembly is to strengthen the mission. A derivative provincial council, elected by the provincial assembly, “governs” the province.

By providing that existing leader­ship, structures from the phase of the Common Cause federation are to become the first organs of the new province. Thus the annual leadership council of Common Cause becomes the initial provincial council, and the Moderator of Common Cause be­comes the first archbishop and Primate. The genius of this decision means that already agreed and re­spected leaders continue to guide the new province in its early years.

A governance task force con­tinues to shape minimal canons in preparation for the first Provincial Assembly, which has now been called for 22-25 June 2009 at St Vincent’s Cathedral in the diocese of Fort Worth. Task forces on prayer book and common worship, ecumenical relations, evangelisation and Islam, as well as committees on education and on mission are carried over from Common Cause days. The third meeting of the College of Bishops — the first was in September 2007, and the second at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in June 2008 — will immediately precede the Provincial Assembly.

About 25 “dioceses, clusters [and] networks”, both geographical and affinity-based, each of which is gathered around a bishop or vicar-general, will be represented at the initial Provincial Assembly.

Since the call to form the province originated with the GAFCON meet­ing in Jerusalem, there is a reasonable expectation of recogni­tion early on by the Primates Council and prov­inces of the GAFCON movement.

The simple truth is that one of the three principal issues identified in the Windsor report — that of boundary-crossing — is most effectively and completely addressed by general recognition of the new province now proposed.

The excitement among the parti­cipants drafting the provisional constitution, the deep unity to which we are committed, and the vision of a Church effective in presenting the gospel to 140 million unchurched and dechurched souls bodes well for a renewed Anglicanism in North America.

Bishop Bob Duncan is the Moderator of the Common Cause Partnership.

There is very positive news coming out of Chicago this week: the launch of the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as an outgrowth of the Common Cause Partnership, which will keep everyone watching for further developments. Numerous planned meetings of Primates in smaller and larger groups, sometimes with the Archbishop of Canterbury and sometimes not, and together with laity in Jamaica as the Anglican Consultative Council, will be occurring over the next six months, guaranteeing that the issues brought forward by GAFCON, the formation of the GAFCON Primates’ Council, and now ACNA, will stay in the center of attention for some time to come.

The launch of the new Anglican Church in North America, an outgrowth of the Common Cause Partners Federation, has been positioned such that there is reasonable hope that Primates of the Anglican Communion, perhaps beginning with the GAFCON Primates’ Council, might begin to recognize the entity as a province in the Anglican Communion. The Jerusalem gathering of GAFCON gave a call for such a new province to be formed, and the approval of a provisional Constitution and Canons of the ACNA is seen as the beginning of this process.

The formation of ACNA, which is a coming together of Anglican judicatories under an Archbishop, leaves two of its sponsoring organizations in a here-and-there position. Both Forward In Faith-North America (FIFNA) and the American Anglican Council (AAC) are advocacy and affinity organizations that overlay actual ecclesial judicatories, and although both are presently headed by bishops, the bishops and the members are all embedded in separate actual church structures.

Since its inception in 1996, the AAC has worked for reform and renewal in the church. At first it was limited to reform and renewal in the Episcopal Church (previously referred to as ECUSA, and now more recently as TEC), but considering the theological troubles of the last five or so years, the AAC has broadened its scope to the entire Anglican Communion, since these are finally Anglican Communion issues.

Presently a fair number of our AAC Board of Trustees, parish affiliates and general membership of individual lay and clergy are in still in TEC, and some will most likely remain in TEC for the foreseeable future. The ministry and work of the AAC is built to encompass their needs as well as those who are not a part of TEC. Recently the AAC created a specific "Episcopal Church Desk" to handle the issues that were specific to TEC, provide a direct channel for questions and issues to be raised, and to assist with planning for the AAC to have a presence at TEC’s General Convention in Anaheim this summer. Additionally the Vice President of the AAC, the Rt. Rev. Peter Beckwith, Diocesan Bishop of Springfield, will be the Bishop-liaison, having chaplaincy to the "Episcopal Desk."

Although the AAC is an original signatory to the Common Cause Partners document going back several years, it is in an unusual category because it is an advocacy organization that exercises a ministry of communication, education, ministry resource and parish advice and counsel and is not an ecclesial judicatory. Among the membership are bishops, priests, deacons and laity from a variety of Anglican affiliations, each of whom has an ecclesial home in an actual Anglican judicatory (parish, diocese, or denomination such as the Reformed Episcopal Church). The AAC’s co-sponsorship of the new hoped-for province does not automatically change anyone within the AAC’s membership. In time, the ACNA will expand as parishes and dioceses from all over have an opportunity to decide and enroll, but the AAC, as a ministry organization without an internal ecclesial structure, does not obligate or move parishes or members into or out of TEC, into or out of Common Cause, or into or out of the new ACNA.

Bishop Beckwith and myself and the other bishops on the AAC Board of Trustees do not have our episcopal orders through the AAC but are and will remain tied to the Anglican Provinces that hold our Letters. Some of our AAC bishops and members who are in TEC might well remain in TEC for the long term, and those who are in other judicatories might do the same, or they might apply for membership with ACNA. In any event, the AAC will keep its distinct and separate life as an advocacy organization working for the reform and renewal of the church, both in TEC and in the entire Anglican Communion.

Because some TEC bishops are hostile to members or congregations joining or remaining a part of the AAC because of our clear stand against the increasing heterodoxy of the Episcopal Church, a new type of membership is available, called "In Pectore," which means in the heart. It will be an unpublished list of members who individually know that they are members, and we know that they are, but no one else but God knows that. This list will be treated as Top Sacred, realizing the danger that is present for the orthodox today in many TEC dioceses.

Speaking of danger, however, is always relative, because as we receive more news of the slaughter of our brother and sister Anglicans in the Nigerian Diocese of Jos by Muslim activists, we are aware that lives and families and church communities are being shattered by genocide directed at those who believe in and follow Jesus. Pray for our Anglican family in Jos and the surrounding areas. Pray also that the government will follow through and actually arrest the guilty and punish them instead of letting them go. Muslims killing Christians has to stop being acceptable by governments charged with keeping justice and peace.

The red doors on many Anglican churches in North America are a reminder that the blood of Jesus and the blood of the martyrs have purchased and maintained for us the faith and access to God our Father. We come to the Father through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and the faith is passed down to us and given to us by the faithful witness of those who give their life and blood for their faith in Jesus. May our Lord relieve their suffering, provide for their needs, and give them the courage to continue to stand, and may we be given the courage and faith to stand with them.

Blessings and peace in Christ Jesus,

The Rt. Rev. David C. Anderson, Sr.

President and CEO, American Anglican Council

It is time for plain speaking: The Episcopal Church in the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada have prostituted the Christian faith and authorized that which God has anathematized.

The hour of reckoning has arrived. How the Archbishop of Canterbury responds will determine much. Early signs are not good. Whether the views of the Archbishop or his staff, the official Lambeth statement about the meeting tomorrow between six archbishops is terse if not defiant.

Ruth Gledhill writes, TimesonLine "Today Lambeth Palace, although not the Archbishop of Canterbury in person, has at last made a comment on this, and the comment at first glance seems to make it clear that this new province will not receive formal recognition any time soon. In fact it appears pretty brutal in its dismissal of the Common Cause initiative. Hong Kong, don’t forget, was recognised extremely fast once its three dioceses decided to seek independence.

Timothy C. Morgan in Wheaton, Illinois | 12/04/2008 Christianity Today

In a history-making gesture, conservative evangelical Anglicans, deeply alienated by the decline of the U.S. denomination, sounded a shofar to herald the creation of the Anglican Church of North America.

On a snowy Wednesday evening, about 1,000 worshipers, mostly from the U.S. and Canada, gathered in Wheaton, Illinois, for a worship service to celebrate the creation of the new entity, which comprises 656 congregations, 800 clergy, 30 bishops, and 100,000 people in regular worship. They represent the evangelical, charismatic, and Anglo-Catholic traditions within Anglicanism.

During a pre-service press conference, Bob Duncan, the former Episcopal bishop of Pittsburgh and now archbishop-designate for the new church, told news media that he expects the Episcopal Church (TEC) to continue its decline and that in time, the new province will come to replace it.

He said, "The Lord is displacing the Episcopal Church."

This year, TEC leaders have seen the decades-long downward spiral continue in both attendance and finances. By some estimates, attendance and membership are declining by 1,000 people per week. Many dioceses are cutting budgets and staff, and drawing down endowment funds to maintain operations. The denomination has about two million members. It is spending millions of dollars on court actions to prevent individual churches and dioceses from pulling out.  Read here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/decemberweb-only/149-43.0.html

[Episcopal News Service] A spokesperson for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has responded to the Common Cause Partnership’s December 3 release of a provisional constitution and canons that outline the formation of what they are calling a new Anglican province in North America.

"There are clear guidelines set out in the Anglican Consultative Council Reports, notably ACC 10 in 1996 (resolution 12), detailing the steps necessary for the amendments of existing provincial constitutions and the creation of new provinces," the spokesperson said. "Once begun, any of these processes will take years to complete. In relation to the recent announcement from the meeting of the Common Cause Partnership in Chicago, the process has not yet begun."

The ACC10 resolution is available here.

Full ENS coverage will follow.

BREAKING NEWS…..

WHEATON, IL: Constitution Approved for New Province
Christ Awakening Event draws 70 Anglican leaders from multiple jurisdictions to explore Mission

By David W. Virtue in Wheaton, Illinois
www.virtueonline.org
12/3/2008

Virtueonline has learned that a Constitution has been approved of by the Common Cause Council with no abstentions to establish a new North American Anglican Province. Canons for a new province are being voted on and should receive approval shortly.

A Christ Awakening event is being held here on the campus of Wheaton College prior to the formal announcement of a new Anglican Province later tonight. The event has drawn some 70 Anglicans from multiple jurisdictions who have come together to offer a vision of mission. To date there have been four Christ Awakening events, in Chicago, Akron, Vancouver and New England. There purpose is to raise Jesus up, said the Rev. Doc Loomis.

More news as it becomes available… .

From the Anglican Network of Canada:

“The Common Cause Partnership bishops (including ANiC’s Bishop Don Harvey) met Monday and today near Chicago. Today and tomorrow the full Common Cause Council… meets to finalize a draft constitution for a new North American Church which will be officially launched on Wednesday evening at a celebration service.

AnglicanTV plans to live stream the Common Cause celebration service from Wheaton, Illinois on Wednesday (Dec 3) at 7:30pm Central Standard Time [Noon Thursday Sydney time].  Earlier in the day, AnglicanTV will also live stream a news conference – at 5:30pm CST [10:00am Thursday Sydney time] – at which the constitution of the new Anglican Church in North America will be released.”

Other details from Anglican TV.

The news of the unveiling of the constitution of the new Anglican Church in North America the first week in December has generated a great deal of excitement and a lot of speculation on the Internet. From different sources I have gleaned two conflicting accounts of what is going to happen in Wheaton, Illinois, at the Common Cause Partnership Council meeting on December 3.

The first is that the draft constitution for the new province will be made public after the CCP Council has received it. It will remain a draft for up to a year until it is ratified, during which time public comment will be invited.

The second is that if the CCP Council approves the draft constitution, it will no longer be a draft constitution. It will be the constitution for the new province. It then will be sent to each Common Cause Partner to ratify. They can ratify it and become a constituent judicatory in the new Anglican Church in North America or they can decline to ratify it in which case they will not be included the new province. Both accounts come from within the Common Cause Partnership, from individuals in a position to know what is going on.

While it may be rather late to be proposing a model for the new province, one model the Common Cause Partnership Council might want to consider for the new province is a modification of the Australian model for an Anglican province. [1] In this modification of the Australian model the constituent judicatories of the new Anglican Church in North America would be non-geographical. They would be based primarily upon theological affinity. In practice this means that a particular region or locality of the United States or Canada might have two or more judicatories of the new province represented in it-one confessional, one Anglo-Catholic, and so on. Existing and newly formed or admitted judicatories would be free to plant new churches and to organize new networks of churches throughout the entire territory of the new province.

While the new province might initially consist of the four breakaway Episcopal dioceses and Common Cause Partners, existing and newly formed churches in the new province would be free to network together and to form new judicatories in the province. Existing networks of churches and newly formed networks of churches outside the province seeking admission to the new province would not be required to amalgamate or merge with an existing judicatory in order to gain admission to the province. They would be admitted as a new judicatory if they so desired. Clergy and congregations would be free to transfer from one judicatory to another without any loss of pension contributions or property.

The constituent judicatories of the new Anglican Church in North America would be relatively autonomous in such matters as liturgy, doctrinal and worship standards, ordination of women, and the like. This autonomy would make room for the significant differences between the theological schools of thought represented in the new province. For example, confessional evangelicals have a different understanding of the Eucharist than Anglo-Catholics. Practices like reservation and extended communion are not acceptable to confessional evangelicals nor is a liturgy that gives expression to the idea that the Eucharist is in some way a sacrifice.

The new province would not have a strong central authority. The locus of power would be a network of judicatory-to-judicatory relationships. A number of critical decisions of the provincial General Synod would require the ratification of a majority of all the judicatories. Individual judicatories would be given the liberty of choosing not to apply a provincial canon in a number of cases. For example, a judicatory would, if it chooses, be able not to use the common liturgy that the new province develops and to adopt an existing liturgy (e.g. 1662 or 1928 BCP) or a liturgy that it develops itself. The primate of the new Anglican Church in North America would also serve as the bishop of a constituent judicatory.

This modification of the Australian model for an Anglican province would enable the theologically disparate group of Anglicans and Episcopalians-Anglo-Catholics, charismatic evangelicals, and confessional evangelicals-that has become disaffected from the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church over these provinces’ theological and moral innovations, to coexist more or less peacefully in the new Anglican Church in North America. It would give the different theological schools of thought represented in the new province freedom to plant new churches and organize new networks of churches across the United States and Canada. It would also make the new province more representative of global Anglicanism.

I hope that the CCP Council has the foresight and wisdom to adopt a model for the new Anglican Church in North America, which is flexible enough for the world’s seventh largest mission field and the world’s largest English-speaking mission field-a model which makes ample room in the new province for new networks of churches and does not limit the new province to the four breakaway Episcopal dioceses and the Common Cause Partners. We will find out whether it does on December 3.

Endnotes: [1] In What’s Up Down Under? Dale Rye describes the Australian model of an Anglican province and discusses the unique history of the Anglican Church in Australia that produced that model. I have adapted the model to North America.

—Robin G. Jordan is a life-long Anglican who lives and writes in Kentucky. He is a founding member of the Heritage Anglican Network and serves as the administrator of its blog, The Heritage Anglican Network, at http://heritageanglicannetwork.wordpress.com.

The leaders of the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) are set to endorse a draft constitution to govern the loose coalition of breakaway dioceses, congregations and Anglican jurisdictions in the United States.

In a statement released on Nov 17 by the American Anglican Council on behalf of the CCP, AAC spokesman Robert Lundy said the “the draft constitution of an emerging Anglican Church in North America” will be released on Dec 3. The leaders of the CCP will “formally subscribe to the Jerusalem Declaration of the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) and affirm the Gafcon Statement on the Global Anglican Future.”

The Dec 3 ceremony will not launch a new province, CCP moderator Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh said, but will be an “an important concrete step toward the goal of a biblical, missionary and united Anglican Church in North America.”

Speaking in Boston on Nov 15 in a sermon broadcast by Anglican.TV, Bishop Duncan said the CCP leaders will “receive and god-willing commend a draft constitution” for the “Anglican Church in North America.”

We want to “bring Jerusalem to American” and “claim our place as members of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans,” he said.

A final draft of the CCP constitution was completed on Oct 31 following meetings in Northern Virginia. The CCP Council is scheduled to meet Dec 1-3 in Wheaton, Illinois at the Billy Graham Center and is expected to ratify the constitution and governing documents of the coalition of American and Canadian Anglican churches that draw over 100,000 worshippers every Sunday. Statistics released by the national offices of the Episcopal Church state that in 2007, the average Sunday attendance for the Episcopal Church was 727,822.

Read HERE

Despite the flurry of organizational activity among Anglican conservatives following the controversial 2003 ordination of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, some groups had expressed pessimism saying that a new North American Anglican Province was many years away. If forming a unified front was possible at all. As little as a decade ago, there were few Anglican congregations in the United States that were formally recognized by any other Anglican branches around the world.

In a recent weekly newsletter from the American Anglican Council, CANA Bishop David Anderson said:

“We feel with some real certainty that [a new North American province] will be a reality before Easter of 2009, and perhaps much sooner. We are actively at work with the other Common Cause Partner (CCP) church judicatories to develop the infrastructure and financing for the new province, protocols for joint recognition of orders, and inter-province governance.”

Similarly, Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh recently told the Beaver County Times in western Pennsylvania that the province could receive recognition as early as December.

The Rev. John Spencer, press officer for the recently separated Quincy Diocese, told the Quad-City Times that the timeline for the new organizational structure would involve some kind of provisional recognition in late December or early January. Spencer said formal approval of the new North American Anglican Province may come by early February, after the worldwide Anglican Primates’ council meets in Egypt.

Most recently, the CCP groups have announced a December 3 unveiling of a draft constitution for the proposed new province.

Two things have significantly changed leading to the likely acceleration of this process:

First, the CCP, a loose federation of eight conservative Anglican bodies, organized a college of bishops in September of 2007. Composed of the Anglican Communion Network (ACN), which enveloped a large faction of conservative parishes and dioceses within the Episcopal Church, the partnership also brought in the Rwandan-sponsored Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) and the Nigerian-sponsored Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA).

Perhaps most interestingly, the partnership has simultaneously attracted others including low-church bodies such as the Reformed Episcopal Church along with Anglo-Catholic high church bodies like Forward in Faith North America. Each of these organizations has vastly different histories. The Reformed Episcopal Church split from the Episcopal Church in 1873, whereas some groups departed the Episcopal Church quite recently. They have seen very different growth patterns: the AMiA has grown through aggressive church planting, while CANA’s growth comes from the recruitment of recently departed Episcopal parishes.

The CCP created a mechanism through which bishops began talking to each other with regularity, and clergy began sharing and joint missions and development partnerships took hold. The CCP mission statement includes as one of its four points: “to ensure an orthodox Anglican Province in North America that remains connected to a faithful global Communion.”

In an October 15 article in the Washington Post, Michelle Boorstein reported that “the [Virginia Episcopal] breakaway congregations, like dozens of others across the country, have voted to temporarily place themselves under more conservative branches of the Anglican Communion, mostly in Africa. After decades of being tiny, separate splinter groups, they have begun working together, have held their first summits with their overseas allies and are seeking recognition as their own U.S. church. They now comprise more than 580 congregations made up of more than 100,000 people, said Peter Frank, a spokesman for the new umbrella group, called Common Cause Partnership.”

"A lot of people’s willingness to take a step away from the Episcopal Church depends on the existence of a place to go," said Steffen Johnson, an attorney who attends The Falls Church and is also co-counsel for the breakaway churches. "Now people who are leaving and people who have left can say, ‘Let’s join together.’ It builds momentum."

GAFCON Primates’ Council

The second development that has accelerated the establishment of a new North American province was the successful Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which met in Jerusalem earlier this year and established a Primates’ Council. This grouping of Global South primates represents the vast majority of Anglicans in the world; it also provides a new authoritative instrument within the Anglican Communion alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Previously, groups held an Anglican identity primarily via their recognition by and relationship with the See of Canterbury. With the boycott of the 2008 Lambeth Conference by over 200 bishops, representing a majority of the world’s Anglicans, there has been a clear challenge to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s traditional role as the primary facilitator between these national churches and the touchstone of Anglican unity. Where Canterbury might be reluctant to alienate the Episcopal Church by recognizing a new North American Anglican Province as a co-equal, recognition by the GAFCON Primates’ Council of such a province would create the de-facto recognition of the province’s legitimacy.

A communiqué issued following the first meeting of the Primates’ council in London in August said that the twofold task of the Council is ‘to authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and congregations and to encourage all Anglicans to promote the gospel and defend the faith.’ The primates also said that, in developing the GAFCON movement, “it is expected that priority will be given to the possible formation of a province in North America for the Common Cause Partnership.”

Next Steps

With domestic Anglican groups organizing, and a new authority within Anglicanism posed to recognize a new province, things seem to be speeding along. That being said, I believe there are several important issues that need to be ironed out in the creation of a new province.

The first is who gets to be a bishop. The past year has seen a flurry of episcopal consecrations and installations within the various CCP member bodies. These bodies will have to agree upon a mutual review of candidates for bishop before consecration. There also may be too many bishops for a province that will probably number no more than 200,000 members in its infancy, assuming significant new defections from the Episcopal Church once the province is recognized.

Second, clergy intending to transfer from other bodies will want to bring their credentials. Establishing a standardized practice for this will take time. On the grassroots level, cooperation has already been seen on this front between CANA and the Ugandan-aligned churches, through their close association in groups like the Anglican District of Virginia. CANA bishops have visited Ugandan-aligned parishes, and Ugandan-credentialed clergy serve in CANA parishes. Since both bodies are relatively recent departures from the Episcopal Church, they have a high degree of flexibility and there are minimal differences between them. Establishing the same relationship between groups like the CANA and the older splinter groups will be more complex.

Third, the shape and nature of common episcopal oversight will need to be decided upon. Anglican churches have a history of organizing in either conciliar, hierarchical, or federation models, and a new North American province could employ any of these. Most of these bodies look to African churches with their very hierarchical episcopal structures, but many of them came out of the Episcopal Church, which has a model far closer resembling a federation with strong lay representation.

Lastly, ordination of women as either deacons or priests will continue to be a significant issue. Many of the splinter churches that left the Episcopal Church did so in the 1970s over women’s ordination. Even now, three of the four dioceses defecting from the Episcopal Church are doing so partly as a rejection of female priests. Some bodies, like the Ugandan-aligned parishes, recognize and ordain women to the priesthood. Other groups, like CANA, ordain women deacons but have yet to reach a consensus about women priests (note: CANA Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns has said he hopes CANA can be a model for groups that contain both kinds of congregations). Yet other groups reject female clergy as heretical. In some cases, this is the most active point of contention between evangelical and anglo-catholic bodies. A consensus may not have to be reached, but a structure will need to be adopted that organizes the women-ordaining bodies and the non-women-ordaining bodies separately, under separate bishops, also under a common North American provincial authority.

Data on the Common Cause Partners:

The American Anglican Council (AAC); the Anglican Communion Network (ACN); the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA); the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC); the Anglican Province of America (APA); the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA); the Anglican Essentials Federation (AEF); Forward in Faith, North America (FIF/NA); the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC); as well as bishops and congregations linked with Kenya, Uganda, and South America’s Southern Cone.

Statistics:
Reformed Episcopal Church
135 Congregations
13,400+ members

Convocation of Anglicans in North America
70 Congregations
11,000 members (estimate)

Anglican Mission in the Americas
133+ Congregations (62 more in the process of being formed)

Issues:
Transfer of Clergy credentials from other denominations
Ordination of women as either deacons or priests
Mutual review of candidates for bishop before consecration
The shape and nature of common episcopal oversight (conciliar, hierarchical, or a federation model)
 

Dissident Anglican churches in Canada and the United States say they will form a new conservative jurisdiction in the next year, adding that the Archbishop of Canterbury has lost the moral authority to have any real say in blocking the radical move.

Parishes that have left their national churches over the issue of same-sex marriage and a general trend toward liberalism want to create a single "province" that would report to a conservative North American bishop who shares their values.

"I believe the next year will be critical," said Rev. Peter Frank, a spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, which voted last month to leave the U.S. Episcopal Church. "The first proposals will be formed in the very near term, in a matter of weeks, frankly."

Mr. Frank said that any opposition from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, will be moot because the spiritual head of Anglicanism has lost his moral authority. "Frankly, [he] is not in a position to do anything. At this point, the leaders of a majority of the world’s Anglicans are going to recognize us when we [separate]."

But he added it would make it more difficult if Mr. Williams did not give his blessing.

Dissident Canadian and U.S. churches are now under the oversight of Archbishop Gregory Venables, head of the Province of the Southern Cone in South America. The move has always been considered temporary until a more permanent, indigenous structure could be formed.

The number of breakaway parishes is still a small percentage of the total number of churches in Canada and the United States. However, conservatives believe their views are more in line with the majority of the world’s 80 million Anglicans and that the Canadian and American national churches have fallen out of faith with the global communion.

They say that true Anglicanism is more prominent in the Third World, especially Africa, where churches generally hold much more conservative Christian views. Rwanda, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, for example, now have more than one-third of the world’s 80 million Anglicans and the Church is growing far faster there than any other place on the planet.

Last summer, the African churches, along with other orthodox provinces, met in Jerusalem. A statement from that meeting said, "While acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury."

It went on to say, "In particular, we believe the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America."

Archdeacon Paul Feheley, the principal secretary to Fred Hiltz, the Archbishop of Canada, said he does not believe the Anglican Communion would approve a new province. He said if it did, there would be no end to splinter groups, each with their own particular gripe, demanding a new jurisdiction.

"Where do you start and stop? A group could oppose the ordination of women. Do we create a new province for that group? We are not in favour of them creating a new province," Mr. Feheley said.

In February, Mr. Williams stated that the Anglican Church of Canada is indivisible.

"[I] am quite content to repeat that I do not endorse any cross-provincial transfers of allegiance," he wrote in February, "and that this office and that of the Anglican Communion recognize one ecclesial body in Canada as a constitutive member of the Communion, the Anglican Church of Canada."

Last November, a parallel national church was launched in Canada under the Anglican Network in Canada. The group is meeting again this week in Burlington, Ont., to discuss the future of the orthodox cause.

Cheryl Chang, the director of the Canadian group, agreed that it does matter to Anglicans what Mr. Williams thinks, but a new province would go ahead without him.

"The churches in North America don’t have any option. They have been systematically kicked out, persecuted in their own church … while the Archbishop of Canterbury has done nothing to support our cause. In order to remain part of the global fellowship, we have to form a province to be more structurally connected. The only other choice is to shrink or die. It’s either die or get on with it."
Read here http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=947756

It is clear that the partnership is moving forward despite repeated attempts by the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada leadership to squelch Common Cause as well as other orthodox Anglican congregations who in good conscience cannot follow the direction promoted by the current leadership.

In August the GAFCON Primates Council indicated in their official statement that they "expected that priority will be given to the possible formation of a province in North American for the Common Cause Partnership."

Please keep these leaders in prayer as they meet at the Church of the Epiphany in Herndon, Virginia.

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