FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY
There is every indication that the Anglican Mission in the Americas, heretofore one of the strongest conservative Anglican groups in North America, is ripping apart. This is how George Conger reports it:
Bishop Chuck Murphy has rejected the godly admonition of Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje and he and the members of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) House of Bishops have broken with the Church of Rwanda.
In a letter dated 5 Dec 2011, Bishop Murphy and the AMiA House of Bishops announced that the Lord “is now doing” a “new thing” and that its bishops had decided to reject the discipline and oversight of Anglican Church of Rwanda .
Whether the clergy and congregations of the AMiA will follow their bishops into schism and out of the Anglican Communion is not known at this time. However by this second secession in eleven years along with the adoption of a distinct Roman Catholic ecclesiology and sacramental theology, the AMiA appears to have given up its claim of being Anglican in order to follow its leader, Bishop Murphy.
From Christianity Today:
An 11-year-old denomination that has prided itself on its submission to majority-world leadership broke away from that leadership Monday. Amid a dispute over authority, bishops in the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMIA) resigned from their positions in the Anglican Church of Rwanda.
More than a decade ago, the association of churches launched as an alternative to the Episcopal Church. In 2000, Emmanuel Kolini, the archbishop of Rwanda, and Moses Tay, the archbishop of Singapore, ordained two Americans—Charles Murphy and John Rogers Jr.—as missionary bishops to the United States. The maverick bishops’ assignment: to promote orthodox teaching and practice in the wake of infighting among American church members over sexual ethics.
Months of Rwandan concerns and accusations over AMIA’s oversight, finances and long-term direction reached the boiling point with a letter last week (Nov. 30) from Rwandan Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje to Murphy.
“You have constantly disregarded the decision and counsels of the House of Bishops,” Rwaje wrote to Murphy, giving him a week to submit to the Rwandan bishops’ authority. “You have misused the authority given to you. … You have insulted our house using abusive language (knucklehead, reversed colonialism, lawlessness, etc.). You have dogged [sic] questions of financial transparency.”
This week (Dec. 5), Murphy responded by resigning his leadership position in the Province of Rwanda. In his resignation letter, he said AMIA’s relationship with the African church was a “voluntary submission” that would not be renewed at the association’s upcoming winter conference.
“In not renewing our voluntary submission to the Canons and Constitution of Rwanda, we recognize that we remain bishops of the Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in good standing,” Murphy wrote in a letter that listed eight other AMIA bishops —all but two—as endorsing his statements and similarly resigning their membership in Rwanda’s House of Bishops.
Stand Firm is doing its usual exemplary job of covering this story as is Kendall. And, as you might expect, many people who left TEO or entered the Anglican tradition at AMiA are distraught. Read the comments at both those links.
Here is the letter to which Conger refers which suggests (hell, screams) that while ego might not be driving this car, it’s sitting in the front passenger’s seat reading the map and giving directions. The Lord’s doing a new thing? Really? Frank Griswold called, Chuck. You do know that Frank gets a royalty any time anybody uses that line, don’t you?
Oh and Chuck? Indirectly comparing yourself to Moses seems to be a really stupid way to communicate the sort of humility that truly great Christian leaders so desperately need. This isn’t about you, Chuck.
It’s about Him.
This story is both sad and infuriating. It’s sad because AMiA has had a considerable influence on Anglican Christianity in North America. In less than ten years, this church here has done more to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Anglican tradition in eastern Missouri than the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri has done in forty.
And it’s infuriating because the self-destructiveness of conservative Anglicanism never ceases to astound. Continuers may be forgiven their slight tinge of schadenfreude but it’s as if Anglican traditionalists simply cannotunite.
This person must receive a crozier and miter while that person must take second place. And if that person does not receive a crozier and miter, off he goes and forms his own “Anglican” church in order to get his own crozier and miter.
Conservative Anglicans should unite, say these “leaders.” But unless conservative Anglicans unite under my leadership and mine alone, they might as well stay in the Episcopal Organization for all the good it will do them.
Quite frankly, I’m sick to bloody death of the whole business. I don’t see any point in continually arguing about where the line should have been drawn, whether at the prayer book or women’s ordination or Gene Robinson or some other issue.
But a line should have been drawn somewhere. And once it was, Anglican traditionalists should have declared that we cannot go where the left would take us and if that meant formally and finally abandoning Canterbury, then conservatives should have formally and finally abandoned Canterbury en masse.
Instead, we get factional fight after factional fight after factional fight and “leaders” who fetishize Anglican “legitimacy” or who are so full of their titles that they lose sight of and interest in what is supposed to be the goal of all of us.
I’ve said for years that Anglican traditionalists had better unify and do so quickly even if that means that some people who currently style themselves “Bishop” no longer get to. Because if they waste any more time, conservative Anglican priests or bishops may climb into their pulpits some Sunday and see nothing but empty pews staring back at them.
Bishop Chuck Murphy has rejected the godly admonition of Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje and he and the members of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) House of Bishops have broken with the Church of Rwanda.
In a letter dated 5 Dec 2011, Bishop Murphy and the AMiA House of Bishops announced that the Lord “is now doing” a “new thing” and that its bishops had decided to reject the discipline and oversight of Anglican Church of Rwanda .
Whether the clergy and congregations of the AMiA will follow their bishops into schism and out of the Anglican Communion is not known at this time. However by this second secession in eleven years along with the adoption of a distinct Roman Catholic ecclesiology and sacramental theology, the AMiA appears to have given up its claim of being Anglican in order to follow its leader, Bishop Murphy.
From Christianity Today:
An 11-year-old denomination that has prided itself on its submission to majority-world leadership broke away from that leadership Monday. Amid a dispute over authority, bishops in the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMIA) resigned from their positions in the Anglican Church of Rwanda.
More than a decade ago, the association of churches launched as an alternative to the Episcopal Church. In 2000, Emmanuel Kolini, the archbishop of Rwanda, and Moses Tay, the archbishop of Singapore, ordained two Americans—Charles Murphy and John Rogers Jr.—as missionary bishops to the United States. The maverick bishops’ assignment: to promote orthodox teaching and practice in the wake of infighting among American church members over sexual ethics.
Months of Rwandan concerns and accusations over AMIA’s oversight, finances and long-term direction reached the boiling point with a letter last week (Nov. 30) from Rwandan Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje to Murphy.
“You have constantly disregarded the decision and counsels of the House of Bishops,” Rwaje wrote to Murphy, giving him a week to submit to the Rwandan bishops’ authority. “You have misused the authority given to you. … You have insulted our house using abusive language (knucklehead, reversed colonialism, lawlessness, etc.). You have dogged [sic] questions of financial transparency.”
This week (Dec. 5), Murphy responded by resigning his leadership position in the Province of Rwanda. In his resignation letter, he said AMIA’s relationship with the African church was a “voluntary submission” that would not be renewed at the association’s upcoming winter conference.
“In not renewing our voluntary submission to the Canons and Constitution of Rwanda, we recognize that we remain bishops of the Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in good standing,” Murphy wrote in a letter that listed eight other AMIA bishops —all but two—as endorsing his statements and similarly resigning their membership in Rwanda’s House of Bishops.
Stand Firm is doing its usual exemplary job of covering this story as is Kendall. And, as you might expect, many people who left TEO or entered the Anglican tradition at AMiA are distraught. Read the comments at both those links.
Here is the letter to which Conger refers which suggests (hell, screams) that while ego might not be driving this car, it’s sitting in the front passenger’s seat reading the map and giving directions. The Lord’s doing a new thing? Really? Frank Griswold called, Chuck. You do know that Frank gets a royalty any time anybody uses that line, don’t you?
Oh and Chuck? Indirectly comparing yourself to Moses seems to be a really stupid way to communicate the sort of humility that truly great Christian leaders so desperately need. This isn’t about you, Chuck.
It’s about Him.
This story is both sad and infuriating. It’s sad because AMiA has had a considerable influence on Anglican Christianity in North America. In less than ten years, this church here has done more to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Anglican tradition in eastern Missouri than the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri has done in forty.
And it’s infuriating because the self-destructiveness of conservative Anglicanism never ceases to astound. Continuers may be forgiven their slight tinge of schadenfreude but it’s as if Anglican traditionalists simply cannotunite.
This person must receive a crozier and miter while that person must take second place. And if that person does not receive a crozier and miter, off he goes and forms his own “Anglican” church in order to get his own crozier and miter.
Conservative Anglicans should unite, say these “leaders.” But unless conservative Anglicans unite under my leadership and mine alone, they might as well stay in the Episcopal Organization for all the good it will do them.
Quite frankly, I’m sick to bloody death of the whole business. I don’t see any point in continually arguing about where the line should have been drawn, whether at the prayer book or women’s ordination or Gene Robinson or some other issue.
But a line should have been drawn somewhere. And once it was, Anglican traditionalists should have declared that we cannot go where the left would take us and if that meant formally and finally abandoning Canterbury, then conservatives should have formally and finally abandoned Canterbury en masse.
Instead, we get factional fight after factional fight after factional fight and “leaders” who fetishize Anglican “legitimacy” or who are so full of their titles that they lose sight of and interest in what is supposed to be the goal of all of us.
I’ve said for years that Anglican traditionalists had better unify and do so quickly even if that means that some people who currently style themselves “Bishop” no longer get to. Because if they waste any more time, conservative Anglican priests or bishops may climb into their pulpits some Sunday and see nothing but empty pews staring back at them.
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