A Reply to Jim Naughton

From the NPR post below:
"Things don't become so because they say they're so," says Jim Naughton, the canon for communications at the Diocese of Washington, D.C. "They can decide that they are naming their collection of churches a province, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world will regard them that way. All these folks have managed to do is put a bow on the status quo, and call it a present."

Naughton says neither the archbishop of Canterbury nor the rest of the worldwide communion would allow foreign bishops to carve out a new church in the U.S. without permission from the Episcopal Church.

Reply: Naughton is caught in the old paradigm which is dying. The pecusa that he defends is losing 1,000 members a week, while the churches of the global south are growing by at least hundreds of thousands every year. What Naughton is unwilling to admit is that power has shifted in the Anglican Communion from Britain and North America to the Global South. The bishops gathered at GAFCON represented nearly one half of the Anglican Communion. All the bishops of the Global South represent nearly two-thirds of the Anglican Communion. They do have the power and are growing in the moral authority to "carve out a new church in the U.S. In fact, they are doing so.

The AMIA and CANA are growing in the U.S., partially by defections from pecusa and another part by planting new churches. The Common Cause Partnership of the Anglican Communion Network is gathering many of those who left pecusa over earlier spasms of liberalism. A new province is forming in the U.S., one that will be recognized by the majority of the Anglican Communion primates, and there's nothing that Naughton, Schori or Williams can do about it.