Conservative Anglicans form breakaway church in revolution led from the south

[Note: The title of this post, which was the Guardian's headline, is very misleading. Conservative Anglicans are not forming a "breakaway Church". As the article describes below, they are working to preserve Anglicanism and establish reform within the Anglican Communion.]

"All around the world the sleeping giant that is evangelical Anglicanism and orthodox Anglicanism has been aroused by what happened in Canada and the United States of America. It was an act of folly." - Archbishop Jensen (Sydney)

Conservative evangelicals representing half of the world's Anglicans launched a new global church yesterday, challenging the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury and vowing to rescue people from the forces of "militant secularism and pluralism" created by a "spiritual decline" in developing economies.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, Foca, will sever ties with the main churches in the US and Canada, whose leaders they accuse of betraying biblical teaching. Foca architects will tomorrow go to the conservative evangelical church of All Souls, in central London, to discuss global Anglicanism and English orthodoxy.

Hundreds of disgruntled clergy, representing many Church of England parishes, will be in the audience and the speakers will include the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, and the Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi.

Great swaths of Anglican provinces, including Africa, South America and Asia, are furious with their counterparts in the northern hemisphere, accusing them of being in thrall to contemporary culture, with the ordination and consecration of gay New Hampshire bishop Gene Robinson acting as a turning point. The creation of Foca is a schism in all but name.

Outraged over the "false gospel" being promoted in the west, Foca pledges a return to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, ignoring 21st-century additions and interpretations. It will train its own priests by sending them to hardline theological colleges such as Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and Oak Hill, London, and will insist on more orthodox practices in its churches.

There will also be a primates' council, comprising senior bishops and archbishops who attended the Jerusalem summit that led to Foca's inception.

At a press conference Jensen said they would bring "order to a situation of turmoil" and help to deal with "the chaos caused in the Anglican church through revisionist activities". [the article continues]

Read it all at The Guardian

JERUSALEM: ANGLICAN COMMUNION FACES SPLIT

North American Province Will Become a Reality

By David W. Virtue in Jerusalem
www.virtueonline.org
June 28, 2008

Believing that God has called them to a "new work", Primates at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) announced tonight that they have launched a movement of Confessing Anglicans that will, in effect, be a rival Anglican Communion.

Tomorrow, when orthodox Anglicans meet for their final day of pilgrimage, 1,200 representatives including 303 bishops of the Anglican Communion representing more than 70% of the Communion, will announce the formation of a new Anglican body that will affirm "'the faith once for all delivered to the saints"' as a bulwark against the growing and rampant liberalism in the mostly Western church.

While the word "schism" is not found in the text, it is, to all intents and purposes, a formal split from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the four Instruments of Unity.

The new global Anglican fellowship will act, for a time, within the present organization, but many see fragmenting synodical boundaries of the Church of England. In North America, a new North American Anglican Province will be set up to draw together members of Common Cause Partnership and various Anglican evangelical and Anglo-Catholics jurisdictions, setting it on a collision course with the liberal (some believe revisionist) Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada.

Coming as it does, just two weeks before some 600 bishops representing only 30% of the Anglican Communion meet in Canterbury, this fellowship meeting in the land of Jesus' birth, poses a direct challenge to the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, as well as to the Primate of The Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori and to Fred Hiltz, Primate of the Anglican Church in Canada. Most of the Anglican bishops here will not attend Lambeth.

This momentous decision, the likes of which we have not seen in 500 years of Anglican history, made by representatives from all 38 provinces, will directly affect nearly half the total number of provinces in the communion including, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, India, Sydney, and the Southern Cone, which makes up two-thirds of all worshipping Anglicans. [The article continues, concluding with the GAFCON Statement.]

Read it all at Virtue Online

Sermon Notes for Sunday June 29, 2008

The following are sermon notes for Sunday June 29, 2008

PROPER 8, YEAR A

Isaiah 2:22

Whom will we follow? Man/creature or God/Creator

Romans 9:20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?"

BAPTISM

Baptism is an act that not only symbolizes but also propels one into the reality of the thing symbolized.

Galatians 3:27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.

1 Cor. 12:13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Col. 2:12 . . . having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

What Jesus began in the wilderness, he guaranteed at the cross. Christ’s Reign of LIFE overpowered Satan’s reign of DEATH.

Why would we give back to Satan what Christ has delivered us from?

NEW CREATION

“Crucify” the old self [Romans 6.6] can also mean to “fence off” the old self.

Galatians 2:20 It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 6:14-15 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. [15] For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

If the old self has been crucified and buried, why do we exhume it and try to keep it going?

2 Cor. 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Col. 3:9-10 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices [10] and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Ephes. 4:22-25 . . . to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, [23] and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, [24] and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. [25] Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

SUBMIT TO GOD

Galatians 5:1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

James 4:7-10 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. [8] Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. [9] Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. [10] Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

This no game of ‘let’s pretend’; believers should consider themselves to be what God in fact has made them. It is no vain exercise but one which is morally fruitful: the Spirit has come to make effective in them what Christ has done for them, and to enable them to become in daily experience . . . what they already are ‘in Christ Jesus’ and what they will be fully in the resurrection life.

- F.F. Bruce “Romans”, p. 132, regarding 6:11

The Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin has fully complied with California State Law

The Diocese of San Joaquin: June 4, 2008
Fresno, California

The following facts are given to correct and clarify recently published misunderstandings and misstatements regarding legal claims against the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin.

All actions taken by the Diocese of San Joaquin were authorized by its governing bodies, namely, its Standing Committee and its Diocesan Council, along with Bishop Schofield. These actions were done in complete compliance with California law and were done to secure the property until a California court can rule on the issue of ownership. One of these actions was to retitle accounts held at Merrill Lynch; assets were not moved from Merrill Lynch. The property in question is owned by the Diocese and its parishes and not the Episcopal Church. The Diocese expects a favorable ruling by the California court on the issues of property ownership.

The Diocese of San Joaquin is a California unincorporated association that is governed by the California Corporations Code and its own internal Constitution and Canons (akin to bylaws). The Diocese is a corporate person; a legal entity recognized by the civil courts. In California, an unincorporated association is governed by majority vote of its members. There is nothing in the governing documents of the Episcopal Church which forbade or limited the right of the Diocese of San Joaquin from withdrawing and taking its property with it.

On December 8, 2007, the people of the Diocese of San Joaquin exercised their democratic right reserved to them under their Constitution to withdraw from membership in the Episcopal Church and to realign with another province of the worldwide Anglican Communion, the Province of the Southern Cone. The vote of the people of the Diocese of San Joaquin at a duly noticed and convened Annual Convention was overwhelming; nearly 90 percent were in favor of the realignment. Special provision was made for those who disagreed with the majority’s decision: each parish in the Diocese was given the option of staying with the Episcopal Church and those who did were permitted to keep all of their real and personal property with the blessings of the Diocese and its bishop, The Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield. Ultimately, some seven parishes decided to stay with the Episcopal Church.

Unwilling to abide by the decision of the majority, the seven stay-behind parishes, in concert with the Episcopal Church, purported to hold their own “re-vote” to reverse the 90 percent majority decision of the Diocese and have filed papers proclaiming themselves to be the “true” or “real” Diocese of San Joaquin and seeking all of the diocese’s real and personal property. These assertions are not legally tenable.

Bishop Schofield remains a fully ordained bishop and is a member in good standing of the House of Bishops of the Province of the Southern Cone, a constituent member of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Furthermore, at least five dioceses within The Episcopal Church have rejected or questioned the legality of the Presiding Bishop’s actions in deposing Bishops Schofield and Cox.

Anglican Province in legal moves to admit others

Monday, 19th May 2008. 10:21am By: George Conger. The Province of the Southern Cone has begun work to amend its Constitution and Canons to permit parishes and dioceses outside of South America to affiliate with the church.

In an address to the Diocese of Fort Worth on May 3, Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables of Argentina said his province had agreed to accept the diocese of San Joaquin into the South American church as a “pastoral” and interim response to the divisions within the US Episcopal Church. Work was now underway to alter the church’s constitution, removing language that limited membership to dioceses located in South America.

The “Anglican Communion in the United States has been hijacked,” Bishop Venables said, by a liberal clique that is less concerned with theological integrity than with power. They do not “mind what happens as long as they control it,” he said according to a report prepared by the diocese’s communications officer. Bishop Venables told Fort Worth that the question before them was “whether or not you can stand with a group of people who have denied that Jesus is the Son of God and that the Bible is the Word of God.”

He conceded that the invitation to the Diocese of San Joaquin made following its December decision to quit the Church and affiliate with the Southern Cone was irregular. However, “if we don’t do something,” he said, we would be “complicit” in their oppression.

Please read the rest of the article at Religious Intelligence

Bishop James Adams: Why some may say that the Episcopal Church is no longer a member of the Anglican Communion

Note: Bp Adams provides a clear explanation of how the recent misuse of canon law is indicative of the growing disconnect between TEC and the rest of the Anglican Communion.

June 2, 2008

A very interesting and disturbing phenomenon has occurred due to a reinterpretation of the Canons of the Episcopal Church. The decision was made to use a Canon formed to ease the transition for a priest to leave the Anglican Church (of which The Episcopal Church is a part) and go to another Apostolic faith community without trial or expenses, non-necessary paperwork and meetings, which a regular renunciation would have required.

A good Canon constructed to work as Christians together in one faith: when spiritual disciplines change and new callings and discernment lead us apart. But now that same Canon has been reinterpreted to mean that a bishop may depose a priest when they disagree or when that clergyperson sees that they can no longer remain in the Episcopal Church, but she/he may be called to another Anglican entity (Province, Church, Ministry) which shares, supposedly, the same faith and Holy Orders.

It has been used nearly 300 times in the past six years. The words have been reinterpreted to speak to a Bishop and his/her clergy instead of a Holy Order within the whole of the Anglican Communion. The interpretation now leans to saying that people are ordained to this Church (TEC) and not to the worldwide Communion.

This has been extended to bishops for the first time and now all pretence of investigation, trial, evidence and Anglican identity can be ignored to solve problems that should be dealt with pastorally.

Please read the rest of the article at VirtueOnline

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday, June 1st - Holy Eucharist, Rite II at 9:00AM

LESSONS

Proper 4

Deuteronomy 11:18-21,26-28
Romans 3:21-25a,28
Matthew 7:21-27
Psalm 31 or 31:1-5,19-24

O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.