Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Thank you, LORD!

AMEN!

Let’s see how they resolve the issue of Women’s Ordination – that HAS TO be brought to an end before all can be seriously on the way to safety!

I think a see a bit of froth in the corners of KJS’ mouth.

To God The Glory!!

As one who has always felt the ordination of women to he priesthood and episcopate was a great error on the part of TEC (and others), I cannot agree with those who say that the issue must be resolved before the new province can move forward.

If +Iker can, in all sincerity, enter into communion with these other Anglican bodies while the issue is still open, then I trust his judgment.

One of the unique characteristics I am seeing in this province is a recognition of the authority and the attendant responsibility that is carried by the College of Bishops. The new Primate is not elected by a “House”. This is not going to be a democracy.

Perhaps with bishops acting like bishops the church will act like The Church.

I wept through much of the service tonight…it’s been a long journey from 2002 to tonight.

Thanks be to God for His deliverance!
Free to serve, free to lift up Jesus Christ – King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Alpha and Omega, First and Last, Now and forever,
Worthy is the Lamb to receive honor, power, glory.

Amen.

I agree with Sasha. I do hope everything goes well. Maybe we will get a church here, now.

On women’s ordination, they seemed to have decided not to decide. Whether that eventually dooms this enterprise or not remains to be seen.

Happy Birthday to the Anglican Church in North America!

Deciding not to decide on WO is a big step for some of these folks. Early on in the current crisis I was reading on blogs that TEC conservatives weren’t going to associate with those odd groups who “hate women.” Now, we have a full and respectful acceptance of the traditional ministry. This is a big change. I hope and believe that this body will understand that electing a woman bishop would break it up. My theory has been that a church which fully accepts Scripture and the patristic tradition will have fewer and fewer women priests. We’ll see how that goes moving forward.

“On women’s ordination, they seemed to have decided not to decide. Whether that eventually dooms this enterprise or not remains to be seen.”

I think it will slow and impede recognition from other quarters — RCC, Orthodox — that otherwise would have come quickly.

Not that it necessarily should be something for Anglicans to think about it, but this same Province without “women priests” would be for Rome exactly what Anglicanism was immediately after the Second Vatican Council: the “first” of all the Reformed bodies.

having heard Bp. Duncan–and others–speak on this matter on several occasions, my understanding is that they see WO as something that needs to be resolved–but something which, realistically, *can’t* be resolved until (a) all the messiness with TEC is sorted out, and (b) the new province both forms and has a chance to cohere a bit. They’re not ignoring, it, though.

I once respected the FIF/NA “orthodox opposition” (sic) within ECUSA, but this grows ever less, as I see how willing they are to settle for “partial orthodoxy.” This should not surprise me, though, since it seems to be an atavistic “call of the blood” that shows how deeply the spirit of the Erastian “Elizabethan Settlement” of 1559 is embedded in Anglican DNA.

The three FIF/NA dioceses had a once-in-eternity chance to become RC (= Really Catholic), but instead they chose to be AC (= Ambiguously Catholic, or Amateurishly Catholic).

The forst step of this new “church province” ought to be to canonize Queen Elizabeth I.

I am very happy for my conservative Anglican brothers and sisters, who have at last found some semblance of safe haven wherein they can worship as they wish freely, without fear.

At the same time, I cannot help echoing Pilgrim’s, Sasha’s, and Dr. Tighe’s reservations. I guess I didn’t realize how entrenched the WO thing was, even among conservatives.

On a related note…

Katherine wrote:

“My theory has been that a church which fully accepts Scripture and the patristic tradition will have fewer and fewer women priests.”

My theory, OTOH, is that a church which fully accepts Scripture and the patristic tradition will have NO women priests.

I guess that’s the source of my unease.

But I do wish my brethren well with this momentous enterprise.

Diane

[...] Filed under: Booklist — Thomas @ 9:53 am From Christopher Johnson’s Midwest Conservative Journal blog: The long-awaited new North American Anglican province has been announced.  It will be called the [...]

I like Elizabeth I myself.

It’s probably just as well to remember that for the TEC refugees – Fort Worth, Quincy, and San Joaquin, this is status quo, since they have been in communion with bishops who ordain women for 35 years. Their position is improved, since they are not to be hectored about their stance, but the essential relationship to the issue remains.

The big change is for the REC, which has been out of the TEC sphere of influence for more than a century; they are in for a real culture shock, and not just about WO. If memory serves, they also have a more low church, reformed orientation, having split from TEC over the influences of the Oxford Movement. Is that correct? There is a lot of real diversity in the collection of entities involved here, but most of them have been part of one denomination until the past few years. The REC is, essentially, a different denomination.

If I remember from the new canons, no women can serve as Bishops in the new province. Since I don’t have them right in front of me I’m not sure.

It will be interesting to see whether Bishop Duncan will be the first primate of this new province. If so, then it’s reasonable to assume that WO will be part and parcel of the new province for the short term.

Actually, I’ve always maintained that the sights are set too low on this discussion. I think GAFCON is the bigger concern. IMHO, GAFCON should repudiate WO. If GAFCON did that, then that would roll downhill to the new province in North America. But since GAFCON has blazed the path of “deciding not to decide” in classic Anglican Rowanian fashion, the new province can trail along under GAFCON’s cover.

I doubt that ++Akinola will confront ++Orombi over ++Orombi’s embrace of WO. The lion is getting soft and mellow. Hence, the writing is on the wall. GAFCON will have WO. The new North American province will have WO. On the bright side, it’s FAR, FAR, FAR better than TEc and the Anglican Communion. On the dark side, it still has a WO practice that is against Scripture, against Tradition, and against reason (look at the long-term ecclesiastical evidence of what WO has wrought).

Chris,

They have done more than decide not to decide. They have decided that it is not in the province’s competence to decide. They have decided that the discretion of lower-echelon elements in this is absolute, like Gothic chasubles versus Roman.

The choices for opponents of WO are: embrace Catholicism or Orthodoxy, or try to make the Anglican experiment work.

FW Ken, the REC has been moving away from its very, very low-church stance for some time. There are a few parishes which are still strongly anti-catholic, but mostly they’re not. Possibly the original REC people are spinning in graves, but there’s a whole lot of grave-spinning going on. My own parish is joining the REC, complete with a priest who kneels for the mention of the incarnation in the Creed, with introits and graduals from the Missal, the 1928 Prayer Book, and eastward celebration on an altar. All of these things have been specifically discussed with the REC bishops and approved/accepted. New world.

If by some miracle the new province is able to get beyond WO, then I believe the Continuum churches might be willing to sign on. As a member of the Anglican Catholic Church, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

And by “get beyond” I mean “repudiate.” As has been said by others here, the damage that practice has done should be pretty obvious.

Katherine –
I find it exceedingly odd that a willingness to abide by God’s ordnance and Church tradition (in regards to WO) can be characterized by the statement that we “hate women.” Nothing could be further from the truth. We just recognize that the priestly office is not one for women to fill. They have their own charism, but priesthood is not a part of it.

But for those who see the priesthood in terms of a secular job/vocation worldview, I suppose it does sound discriminatory. I suggest those who feel that way consult with the Creator of the Universe on that score. Seems to me that is who they should be arguing with.

By the way, I forgot to mention that I wish the ACNA well. I am saddened that they have delayed a decision on WO. But I will keep them in my prayers.

FW Ken, Good questions. The REC has become more mainstream orthodox. We still have very low church people. But we have our Anglo-Caths, too, now.

WO will be an issue for many in the REC, but nobody is going to make us recognize women priests as the constitution states.

Our liturgy is more formal than that of last night, but we promise not to be too snooty about that.

Allen Lewis, I agree that the idea that jurisdictions not ordaining women could be in any rational sense called “misogynist” is nonsense. But that is what I read in blog comments beginning about 2003, when people realized they might have to do something. That silly idea is no longer afloat among the majority of conservatives as far as I can see. They have realized that it’s a serious issue, and if they want to keep their Province afloat they’ll have to confront it.

ACI embraces WO. As far as I know, some of them are married to priestesses, thus they have a vested interest in WO.

I thought the following comment about ACI regarding the new province was spot-on:

“It continues to astound this writer that the ACI does not see merit in the new proposed province if only for this reason: that it offers hope for a continued, robust, and numerically significant Anglican witness in North America that they would acknowledge (by their surrender on the issue of reform) that the Episcopal Church no longer can, given its heterodoxy. If the ACI were truly Anglican, instead of merely Episcopal, one would think they would want those who will out of conscience leave the Episcopal Church to go somewhere other than the local Methodist or Presbyterian or non-denominational church, or to Roman Catholicism or big-O Orthodoxy. One senses, though, no small amount of petulant bitterness on their part toward those who do not share their institutional loyalty.“

Katherine and Wannabe –

Thank you for the updates. I knew there was some movement away from a dogmatic anti-ritual ethos, but had no idea it was that far along.

Best wishes for your new endeavor.

This is nothing more than a brouhaha over nothing.
It will lead to nothing.
There have always been conservative–Anglican–Anglo/Catholic types within the church.
And who really cares.
Why is what anyone does in their sexual practice matter to anyone else.
This nonsense will go away after these small minded people have their 15 minutes of fame.
As to the African and So. American Bhp’s who want to take over American churches it is a money deal to them.
The game is over and time has run out. So please all homophobes and those who want non inclusive churches please pack up and leave.
Knock your socks off join some really fundamentalist
group. You don’t belong in TECUSA.

I’m rather confused. This would appear to require that all member churches use the 1662 BCP (or an earlier edition, such as 1549*, 1552, or 1559).

There’s more than just a few minor differences involved in this – just review the 1662 baptismal ritual and baptism in the 1979 book. The communion service is also greatly different – after all, the first (1789) American BCP was based largely on the 1637 Scottish book, *not* the 1662 English. I can hardly see parishes that currently use the 1979 BCP changing to the 1662. And it’s even less likely that those whose worship is taken from the 1928 BCP will want to make this very significant change.

So, when the “exceptions” to the 1662 BCP being “the standard” start cropping up, won’t they undermine the whole idea?

Methinks that there’s been too little consideration given to the differences in the “Orthodox”/”Reasserter” element; the only real unifying precept for many of them is disapproval of same-sex blessings/clergy. It’s going to take more than that to forge the kind of bonds needed to make this new province work – at least, IMHO.

* – Oh, would I love to see the 1549 Book become the standard!!!!!!!!!

Echoing Mr Reed, with all due respect for the women clergy I’m acquainted with I don’t see how re-creating 1980s Episcopalianism, or creating a hybrid of it and English/Australian/Third World Evangelicalism, is ultimately a victory for Anglo-Catholics including the three such dioceses in this new denomination. It’s bought them a little time but I see this: ‘The Elizabethan settlement has failed so let’s re-create the Protestant Episcopal Church and watch it fail again.’

Canterbury not so privately agrees with the Episcopalians and the latter have, as Chris likes to say, mucho jack (money talks and so on) so I don’t see this new denomination easily being received into the Anglican Communion and/or replacing the Episcs in it thereby.

I read that as establishing BCP 1662 and its precursors (and Scotland 1637 would be one of “the books which preceded it”) as the standard by which other prayer books are to be evaluated, not as the only permissable edition. I believe that the American BCP of 1928 and the Canadian edition of 1962 would both be understood to pass this test.

Seitz takes exception to Hills of the North’s remarks about ACI:

“Would it be proper to conclude that if a larger number of conservative Primates do not decide to back this idea, they are also anti-Anglican and suffering from petulance? Is it not possible that people of good will can worry that such a scheme will only further fracture the communion, and will actually not produce a way forward? The legal battles will now go into overdrive, or is that in doubt? How will such a plan truly succeed? Are the courts now going to rule that TEC has no case and that these four dioceses and the individual churches they represent elsewhere can have their property? Nothing about these question involves petulance in the least—a new province is not something many of us want. The logic of a new province strategically–leaving aside matters of the Anglican Communion’s health–escapes many of us.”

I suppose the logic of a life boat which is speeding away from a TEctanic ship that is sinking fast under soul-destroying heresy and apostasy escapes Dr. Seitz.

An Institutionalist-Enabler fool.

What Dr. Seitz cannot seem to recognize is the cancer, which is killing the Anglican Communion, is massed (nothing theological intended or implied) in North America. TEO must be excised if the AC is to survive. When ACI and Co. are faced with real separation from their beloved communion, they will be pining for the lifeboats they are currently flipping off.

True to the character of those who are leading ACNA, there will be a warm welcome and ample forgiven.

WannabeAnglican:

“I like Elizabeth I myself.”

She was truly an amazing woman. There has never been another like her.

Congratulations to the latest entry in the Anglican Alphabet Soup: ACNA.

It is an achievement that such an accord has been made by such disparate entities. However, there are some truly nagging problems here beyond WO.

First, there is nothing here that even remotely resembles the Catholic, Orthodox or Anglican ecclesiastical structure. That structure is strictly territorial with a bishop who has juridical authority and possesses the real property of the church.

As long as the entities which are founding the ACNA continue to exist, this will not be anything like historical Christianity.

As long as the congregations own their own property, it is not historical Christianity.

The accord thus far is a marriage with a pre-nup, where the pre-nup actually prevents the marriage to be consummated. That is, this is not a marriage at all.

If Anglicans in North America are willing to be serious about their Christian commitments, they will have to submerge their own wills, set aside their egos and their claims on independence and submit to real authority. Submission to authority means the Church has to decide definitively what it believes on critical issues such as WO. It has to define its liturgy. In short, it has to do what Anglicans have never done–settle its theology, define what it believes and what it doesn’t.

This is the time for Anglicans in North America to correct the constitutional flaws that underlie Anglicanism and which have brought Anglicanism to this crisis. That is, they have to develop real authority structures and not let everyone do what they want, own what they want, and preach what they want. If the ACNA does not get this right now, it will find itself in a generation or so voting every few years on whether bestiality is a sin.

Just stopping by from The Episcopal Church for a look see and howdy-do. I’m so pleased you all have your new church at last. Now you likeminded folks can be happy together one hopes, and have the opportunity to focus your energies more on the Gospel Imperative rather than on the hostile ecclesiastical infighting that has been so prevalent.

The guy above me here says you ali have to do “what Anglicanism has never done.” Best of luck with that.

“She was truly an amazing woman. There has never been another like her.”

The same might be said of Catherine the Great, or, in another way, of Isabella of Castille — both of whom far outshine Elizabeth, the one in vice, the other in virtue, and both in legitimacy.

Father J, You wrote:

“That structure is strictly territorial with a bishop who has juridical authority and possesses the real property of the church.”

I don’t think that, in most jurisdictions at least, and here in the USA, Orthodox bishops own the property of churches in their dioceses, and of course there was a time when Catholic bishops didn’t, either.

Tale a look at this comment:

http://texanglican.blogspot.com/2008/12/eyewitness-report-from-wheaton-by-mb.html

Already the divisions begin to emerge, which is what you’s expect, when these “conservative Anglicans” seem intent on recreating a latter-day Elizabethan Settlement, with all of its incoherences and contradictions, but without the coercive authority of Bess the Bastard to hold it all together.

Dr. Christopher Seitz: “The logic of a new province strategically–leaving aside matters of the Anglican Communion’s health–escapes many of us.”

Christopher Johnson rebuttal to Seitz: “Many of us would really enjoy seeing actual suggestions from ACI that were a good deal more substantive than “[INSERT IDEA HERE] won’t work and would be the exactly the wrong thing to do.””

Rob Eaton+ rebuttal to Christopher Johnson: “It’s really quite a simple warning and demands more than just a “what else have you got” kind of response (along with “since there is no other option out there you are either with us or against us” defense): the Common Cause strategy has the highest potential of being the cause of a major breakdown of the Anglican Communion.”

This has GOT TO BE one of the most foolish, yet one of the most utterly revealing nonsense that I have ever read from an Institutionalist-Enabler. This Piskie Chamberlain has got the unmitigated gall to boldly assert that it’s the CCP which has the “highest potential” of being THE cause of a major breakdown of the Anglican Communion.

Eaton+, why don’t you mention the defiantly unrepentant heretics and apostates in TEc as THE cause of the Anglican Communion split instead of the CCP?

Answer: Because you and ACI (Seitz, Radner, and the Covenant-Communion bloggers et al) are Institutionalist-Enablers of soul-destroying heresy and apostasy … which in all candor makes you both complicit and culpable.

What was the point of their adopting the Articles of Religion in their Elizabethan form, rather than the American 1801 form? Do they intend to affirm (in the words of Article XXI) that “General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of
Princes?” If they are really serious about the 1662 Prayer Book, do they mean to start praying for the Queen? Why are they attempting to by-pass 1928 BCP?
Both the Articles and the 1662 Prayer Book have been dead issues in the C of E for quite a while now. How serious are these people about the historic formularies? I see more of Rick Warren than of John Jewell in the Wheaton event.

[...] The best overview of this event comes from Christopher Johnson – to read the entire article link here: [...]

I was going to reply to “there has never been another like her” with something along the lines of “fortunately”, but Dr. Tighe beat me to it.