Anglican Communion Network
Biblical Missionary Uniting
535 Smithfield Street
Suite 910
Pittsburgh, PA 15222 412-325-8900
Fax: 412-325-8902
Contact: Jenny Noyes
Phone: 412-325-8900 x108
March 9, 2007
The Rt. Rev. Robert Wm. Duncan, Moderator of the Anglican Communion
Network, is requesting all Network priests to read the following
letter to their congregations this Sunday or make hard copies
available to parishioners. You are receiving an advance copy of this
letter. This document has not yet been released to the general public.
The Network will make the letter public on Monday by posting it on our
website at www.acn-us.org and releasing it to the press. Please do not
publish this letter online in any fashion until Monday, March 12.
Due to the latest of this email, please f eel free to read this letter
to your congregation on a subsequent Sunday and to send it
electronically or post it on your own website after Monday, March 12.
We appreciate your partnership in the Network and hope that this
letter is an encouragement to your parishioners. Thank you.
9th March, A.D. 2007 Third Friday of Lent
TO ALL WHO ARE A PART OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION NETWORK OR ARE ALLIES
IN ITS WELFARE:
Beloved in the Lord,
The Primates' Meeting in Tanzania considered in great depth the plight
"of those congregations and dioceses within the Episcopal Church who
have sought alternative pastoral oversight because of their
theological differences with their diocesan bishop or with the
Presiding Bishop."[1] The hope of the Primates' Meeting, in the words
of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is that a "sufficiently strong
scheme" can be put in place so as to be "sufficient for all dissenting
congregations and dioceses to fi nd their home within it."[2] Another
way to say this is to say that a sufficiently strong plan must be
found for the congregations and dioceses of the Anglican Communion
Network (plus any others from the wider Windsor coalition that may
desire similar insulation). The responsibility for developing such a
system has been given to the wider coalition of Windsor Bishops who
signed on to the " Camp Allen principles" – a group that includes the
Network Bishops – to shape such a system, a system to be led by a
Primatial Vicar. [3]
There is much question as to the degree to which the vision for an
international Pastoral Council and a domestic Primatial Vicar would
leave the Network "within" the Ep iscopal Church. At the start, one has
to say that the eighty-six congregations of the Network's
International Conference ( Uganda, Kenya, So. Cone and Central Africa)
are neither under nor within the Episcopal Church, anymore than are
the one hundred and forty churches in the Anglican Mission and CANA.
Since the Key Recommendations of the Dar es Salaam Meeting anticipated
"a place for [AMiA and CANA] within these provisions," there is
envisioned something much different than can be described as "within"
the Episcopal Church.
For the hundreds of Network congregations in the Network Dioceses and
Convocations, (who claim to be what they have always been, which is
the Episcopal Church where they are) I want to share the following
assessment. Most of us are at present within the Episcopal Church.
This is where the Network was principally called to stand. One can be
"within" something and not "under" it. The Network has been proving
that for the last three years. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué and Key
Recommendations represent a last attempt at reconciliation in the
Anglican Communion and in the Episcopal Church. What the global
leadership of the Anglican Communion has proposed is a marital
separation. Pastorally, the church recommends such separations because
they sometimes bring restoration of right relationship. Both parties
are still technically within the marriage. But marital separations
never leave one party "under" the other; such an arrangement would be
doomed to failure from the start. The words of the Dar es Salaam
Communiqué and Key Recommendations are care fully chosen. Any sense
that the Pastoral Council and Primatial Vicar are "under" majority TEC
is absent from the documents themselves, would surely doom the vision
to failure, and could hardly prove "a sufficiently strong scheme."
Whether this last effort to reconcile both the Episcopal Church to the
Anglican Communion and the two parts of the Episcopal Church to each
other can succeed is, in human terms, up to the Network, to the
Windsor Bishops, and to the wider House of Bishops of the Episcopal
Church. Three things must be said:
1) As Network Moderator, I will do everything I can to bring the
hopes of the Primates Meeting to fruition. Necessarily, I will attend
the meeting of the House of Bishops about to convene. The Archbishop
of Canterbury has asked for "generosity and graciousness" in response
to what the Primates have done. I will go in that spirit. Attendance
at the meeting of the House of Bishops, however, should not be
construed as anything more than doing what the situation requires. It
remains that "the theological differences" with the Presiding Bishop
and with those Diocesan Bishops who have taught and acted contrary to
received Faith and Order (as upheld in the Windsor Report, and the
Dromantine and Dar es Salaam Communiqués) are of such magnitude that
discussion of the issues before us is the limit of our participation
in the life of the House of Bishops at the present time. This
represents no alteration of the grounds on which most Network Bishops
have participated in the House of Bishops since August of 2003.
2) The Windsor Bishops (which includes the Network Bishops) – all
those who adopted the Camp Allen principles [4] – will meet shortly
after Easter to shape our part of what the Primates' Meeting has
envisioned. Obvious agenda items include discussion about a Primatial
Vicar, about a "sufficiently strong" plan for the Network and Windsor
minority, and about imagining whether any form of ministry could be
designed that would be acceptable to those who have gone out.
3) The House of Bishops will have to respond to us and to the
recommendations of the Primates' Meeting in a vastly different manner
than has characterized the majority's behavior toward us in recent
experience. As already stated, the Archbishop of Canterbury has called
on all to "approach [the] challenges with a spirit of graciousness and
generosity." [5] Pray toward this end.
From the earliest days, we in the Anglican Communion Network have
known that our vocation is to stand for the Faith once delivered to
the saints, in submission to the whole Anglican Communion. From the
earliest days, we appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the
Primates [6] to make that possible in an increasingly hostile
environment here in the United States. Again, the Archbishop and the
Primates have heard us. Again, they have spoken. They have determined
to give the Episcopal Church one more chance to make it clear about
the majority's intentions vis a vis the teaching of Lambeth I.10, the
Windsor Report and the Dromantine Communiqué.
Most of us, but certainly not all, in the Anglican Communion Network
now believe that it is the Episcopal Church majority's clear and
continuing intention to "walk apart" in matters of Faith and Order.
Nevertheless, we owe it to our beloved Communion to follow the
Primates' wisdom as to how to take a last step in that discernment.
The Primates have established a deadline of September 30th for the
Episcopal Church's entire House of Bishops to make an "unequivocal"
respon se. [7] For all that is ahead, the Anglican Communion Network
will continue to work with those "within" and with those who have
"gone out" for a biblical, missionary and united future for North
American Anglicanism. There can be no turning back from that Godly
commitment: the Network's vision from the beginning. "And since we
have this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart." [2 Cor.
4:1]
Please continue to pray with fervor for me and for all who lead, as
well as for all who are having an especially hard time with yet one
more time of waiting and of testing. Your prayers are the vehicles of
our Lord's victory realized in the crises and crosses we face at every
level both great and small.
Faithfully in Christ,
Moderator, Anglican Communion Network
[1] Archbishop Rowan Williams, Pastoral Letter to the Primates, 5th
March 2007.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Key Recommendations of the Primates, 19th February 2007.
[4] Ib id.
[5] Archbishop Rowan Williams, Pastoral Letter to the Primates, 5th
March 2007.
[6] Dissenting Bishops' Statement, 5th August 2003.
[7] Key Recommendations of the Primates, 19th February 2007.
No comments:
Post a Comment