Episcopalians & American Anglicans Split

McManus - Ethics & Religion
November 19, 2008
Column #1,421

by Mike McManus

Last weekend three events provided snapshots of the now
permanent split between Episcopalians and American Anglicans who separated
themselves from The Episcopal Church, once the U.S. branch of the worldwide
Anglican Communion.

First, by a 4 to 1 vote, delegates of the Episcopal Diocese of
Fort Worth became the fourth diocese to abandon the The Episcopal Church
(TEC), and to vote, as Bishop Jack Iker put it, “as a matter of conscience
and conviction, to align ourselves with an Orthodox Province... The Anglican
Province of the Southern Cone,” based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Recently, the Dioceses of Pittsburgh and Quincy (IL), also voted
overwhelmingly for a similar split and realignment. A year earlier, the
Diocese of San Joaquin based in Fresno, CA, was the first to leave TEC for
the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.

Together, these four dioceses have 200 churches and 47,000
members. Not all of those churches will leave the Episcopal Church, but the
overwhelming majority will do so. In Fort Worth, five of 56 will remain with
the mother church, while 51 are out the door.

Never in the history of America, have dioceses of a national
denomination separated themselves and become part of foreign church bodies
as have these four Episcopal dioceses.

However, that’s only part of Episcopal Church’s woes. Another
300 parishes have left for nine splinter Anglican groups, such as the
Anglican Mission in America with 130 parishes and Convocation of Anglicans
in North America (CANA) with 63. Several of these groups have also asked
foreign Anglican Provinces to provide a spiritual umbrella: Nigeria and
Rwanda.

For parishes to separate from TEC is hazardous because many of
the dioceses they were a part of filed law suits to seize the church’s
property. Nine CANA parishes have spent millions in Northern Virginia. That
case exemplifies remarkable TEC arrogance since The Falls Church, for
example, predates the diocese. George Washington was once a vestryman.

The central issue dividing Episcopalians from fleeing conservatives is TEC’s
acceptance of the ordination of gay priests and a gay bishop in New
Hampshire, plus performance of same-sex “marriages” by many parishes. When
Proposition 8 to put into the state constitution a provision limiting
marriage to the union of a man and woman was being debated in California -
every Episcopal bishop opposed it.

After it was approved by 5.4 million to 4.9 million, Episcopal
Bishop Jon Bruno of Los Angeles asserted this weekend that Prop 8 was “a
lamentable expression of fear-based discrimination that attempts to deny the
constitutional rights of some Californians on the basis of sexual
discrimination.”

He asked those who supported Prop 8 “to make an honest and
dedicated effort to learn more about the lives and experiences of lesbian
and gay humanity whose constitutional rights are unfairly targeted by this
measure. Look carefully at scriptural interpretations, and remember that the
Bible was once used to justify slavery among other forms of oppression.”

Bishop Marc Andrus charged that Californians demonstrated a
“fear of human sexuality.” That’s “plain nonsense” says David Virtue, the
world’s most widely read Anglican journalist. “California is one of the most
sexually open and sexually experimental states in the country,” home of “the
porno industry.”

Equally fatuous is Bruno’s assertion that the “constitutional
rights” of gays were harmed. The Constitution does not guarantee gays the
right to marry. Rather, the public voted to affirm an understanding of
marriage going back to Genesis: “For this reason a man will leave his father
and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”

It is even a vote to protect those with homosexual orientation.
If the law sanctions gay marriage, that lifestyle will attract more men. A
study in the International Journal of Epidemiology reported that the “life
expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less
than for all men.”

The third major event was the announcement by deposed Pittsburgh
Bishop Robert Duncan, that a North American Anglican Province will be
created Dec. 2-3 in Wheaton by the Common Cause Partnership of the nine
Anglican groups which have split from TEC, with 100,000 former
Episcopalians.

This initiative will be fought by The Episcopal Church, Anglican
Church of Canada, Church of England and other largely liberal, white
jurisdictions. However, the step has support from Global South bishops.
Nigeria alone has 20 million church-going Anglicans, while there only
800,000 in England.

In time, the white liberals will have to yield to the
conservative blacks and Hispanics of the Global South, and their American
missionaries in North America.