Church of Ireland Gazette Supports Anglican Church in North America

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Editorial

Church of Ireland Gazette
http://gazette.ireland.anglican.org/2009/010509/editorial010509.html
May 1, 2009

The Archbishop of Sydney, the Most Revd Peter Jensen, made a significant impact on Church of Ireland evangelicals during his visit to the Evangelical Fellowship of Irish Clergy last week. In his address at Dollingstown (report, page 1), and in an interview with the Gazette (online audio), he made clear his own well known views on the current human sexuality issues dividing the Anglican Communion and also provided important insights into the work of Gafcon, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and the emerging new Anglican Church in North America.

Indeed, the recent meeting of Gafcon Primates was timely, with the 14th Anglican Consultative Council meeting about to take place in Jamaica, at which the Church of Ireland will be represented by the Revd Dr Maurice Elliott and Kate Turner. As we indicated in our editorial comment last week, the ACC meeting will have an important and wide-ranging agenda, and the Anglican Covenant project, even if the present draft is fully approved, is still several years away, at least, from being implemented throughout the Communion.

In these circumstances, it is important to recognise that the Anglican Church in North America initiative, while outside the normal process for creating a new Province, is an attempt to bring together Anglicans who have been splitting off from the established Anglican Churches in the US and Canada, mainly as a result of fundamental differences over the human sexuality issue. The intention is both positive and godly, and, rather than rejecting the move as irregular and as creating an unwanted parallel jurisdiction within the US and Canada (parallel to the US Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada), an accommodation should be sought with the new Anglican Church in North America that would enable it to be part of the Anglican fellowship.

Indeed, there is no doubt that those Anglicans who have formed the Anglican Church in North America are committed to the heritage of Christian faith and life as it has been transmitted in classical Anglicanism. Parallel jurisdiction may be an anomaly, but Anglicans are hardly strangers to anomalies.

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