INTRODUCTION:
Here follow the texts of two recent, noteworthy papers on Continuing Anglicanism presented at the September 17-19, 2009, meeting of the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen and the Anglican Guild of Scholars at St. Mary's Anglican Catholic Church in Wilmington, Delaware. Both papers look, in different ways, at the Continuum's past and present, and its trajectory for the future.
The first paper, "Rolling Up Our Sleeves: Taking the pulse of our witness as traditional orthodox Anglicans," was presented by the Rt. Rev. Paul C. Hewett, SSC, of the Diocese of the Holy Cross, a longtime Continuing Church cleric who has worked to strengthen ties and promote unity among orthodox Anglicans across jurisdictional lines.
In engaging, broad-brush style, Bishop Hewett's paper sets within the longer Christian historical framework the events that led to the advent of most of the U.S. Continuing Church in the late 1970s. The bishop enumerates what he thinks the Continuum did right; he also acknowledges the detrimental effects of the movement's fragmentation, though he suggests that it actually had some beneficial effects as well. Hewett goes on to explain, though, why he now believes the Continuum is not only regrouping, but is part of “`the converging church,' the re-alignment of Anglicanism." That "is not so much a split as a great reform, to return to the consensus of the undivided Church of the first millennium, to unite the catholic, the evangelical and the charismatic strands and to engage in Kingdom thinking for the unhindered proclamation of the Gospel. The Lord is freeing us to be Anglicans," he maintains.
The second paper, "The Continuum and Its Problems," was presented by Wallace Spaulding, president of the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen (as well as of the Foundation for Christian Theology) and a veteran observer of the orthodox Anglican movement within and outside of the "official" Anglican Communion.
His paper examines, with historical detail, the various areas in which conflicts emerged between adherents of the Continuing movement, and the effects of those conflicts. Disputes arose, for example, over matters of church government, e.g. the role of bishops and diocesan autonomy; churchmanship; the validity of orders; personalities; and even over attempts to reunite the bulk of the movement. Spaulding, while finding more unity in the Continuum than one would suppose, given the many disruptions it has suffered, does not seem to see Continuing bodies today in as much of a "convergence" mode as does Bishop Hewett. That is chiefly because, as Spaulding explains, they are taking somewhat varied approaches toward relations with other orthodox/conservative Anglicans. Still, the Continuum may have acted as a "leaven" in the development of the new Anglican Church in America, he suggests, noting that the Continuers' firm opposition to women's ordination is more strongly mirrored among ACNA's charter members than most probably expected.
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ROLLING UP OUR SLEEVES
Taking the pulse of our witness as traditional orthodox Anglicans
by the Rt. Rev. Paul C. Hewett, SSC, Bishop of the Diocese of the Holy Cross
Lent 2009
We look with gratitude to our inheritance from Christian Europe, and may reasonably ask whether this great civilization has a founder. If anyone could be said to have assembled, from the wreckage of the collapsed Roman Empire, the beginnings of a new Christian civilization, surely it is Benedict of Nursia in the 6th century, the Father of Western monasticism. The Benedictines build Christian Europe, and much of the Church in England.
But the foundations of Christian civilization in the British Isles are laid by the Celtic Church from the first century A.D. The British Church joins forces with the Benedictines and converts the Anglo-Saxon invaders in the 7th century. King Alfred, in the 9th century, the only English king called “the Great,” is among their progeny. He saves Anglo-Saxon-Celtic Christianity from the barbarian Danes, and sets the stage for their conversion to Christ. He strengthens the Church and lays the foundation for what is to become the British Empire, an Empire so great that its language is today spoken throughout the world.
The English language is distilled through centuries of worship with the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible, priceless gifts to the rest of the Body. When English spirituality, culture and freedom are threatened in our time by gnostic barbarism in Germany, God raises up Winston Churchill to save the Church and our civilization. Paris, Rome and Athens are liberated largely by Anglicans.
The fault line that first opens the Christian West to gnosticism and the hordes of hell cracks apart in August, 1914, says Solzhenitsyn in his book by that title. The fault goes back to the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, but the opening of it, and the proleptic end of our civilization, can be dated from 1914, the beginning of a ferocious 30-year civil war in Europe. Gnosticism involves the impulse to re-define human nature apart from Christ. The communist is gnostic because he says that redemption comes through eliminating the wrong class of people. Jesus is not the Head of redeemed humanity, the proletarian is. The nazi is gnostic because he says that redemption comes through eliminating the wrong race of people. The aryan superman, not Jesus, is Lord.
The Anglo-American alliance will defeat gnosticism in its first two guises. This victory leaves deep scars and social chaos. The devil will now change his tactics and up the ante and insinuate gnostic feminism into our culture, a form of the heresy far more subtle than communism or nazism. Redemption comes by getting rid of patriarchy. The Christian, however, sees the root problem as sin, not class, race or sex. The root solution is redemption from sin through the Blood of the Saviour, the Son of God. To bring down the West the devil will first attempt to bring down the United States. And to do that, what better way than to bring down the Episcopal Church? After all we are basically the founders of this country. Today we see the meltdown of family life in so many places. We see the fulfilment of Chesterton’s prophecy, that by the end of the 20th century, the most radical thing in society would be Christian fatherhood.
With the purported ordinations of women in 1974 and 1976, the Episcopal Church crumbles, cracks and breaks. We now have a form of ministry which can never be recognized by the universal Church. We can no longer sustain a claim to be part of the Catholic Church. Our relations with the Greek Orthodox and the Polish National Catholic Church, and indeed, with all Catholic bodies, are now completely bent out of shape. A book of alternate services is substituted for the beloved Book of Common Prayer. By this time the marriage canon has been turned into a divorce canon. A nod is given to abortion on demand. Hundreds of parishes leave the Episcopal Church, or rather, more accurately, declare that the Church has left them. Scores of these are taken to court. It is estimated that 50,000 communicants leave in this first wave of departures, many of whom will set up the first Anglican Church in North America, with the help of the one bishop in the House who will stand apart as a prophet, Albert Chambers, retired of Springfield.
This is a horrible, devastating time for an orthodox Episcopalian, the early and mid-seventies. So many bishops, clergy and seminary professors, embracing the faddish gnosticism, leave believers standing in shock, dismay and betrayal. The Greek Orthodox, and other Orthodox bodies, with whom an astonishingly close post WWII relationship had developed, are utterly shocked and betrayed. The deep, underlying theological issue is identified as the Incarnation. Is Jesus God-in-the-flesh or not? If He is, then He is Lord, and we must obey Him. We must accept His mind for the Body. If He is not Lord, we can write the rules as we go along. The moral issues are identified as the family, marriage, and sexual identity. What does it mean to be a man-in-Christ? What does it mean to be a woman-in-Christ? Prophetic voices can be heard at this time, warning that in one generation, the ordination of women will accelerate a crisis in fatherhood and masculine identity, the worship of the mother-goddess, ever more abortions and the acceptance of practicing homosexuality. The hermeneutic that gives us the ordination of women is the same hermeneutic that brings acceptance of practicing homosexuality. All these issues are part of the gnostic impulse to re-define human nature apart from Christ, the divine Logos and Bridegroom of the Church.
The faithful at this time, whether they know it or not, are overrun by an alien force, the way France was overrun in 1940. To the astonishment of the world, Charles de Gaulle stands up in June, 1940, to declare himself to be France, thereby launching the Free French underground, a reconnaissance force to prepare the way for the Allied invasion and ensure that the Third Republic would continue. In 1976, some 30,000 who want to continue as Episcopalians in effect adopt the model of the Free French, to mount a resistance, and blaze a trail for a movement that might someday have a quarter million Anglicans, somewhere around the number needed for national visibility and impact on the culture.
The Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen convenes the St. Louis Congress in September 1977, the first bright ray of hope for those who can in conscience make no political compromises with the new establishment. Those who are willing to make compromises, and live in the system, are making a terrible mistake, like the Vichy collaborators. They are underestimating their enemy, or not even identifying who the enemy is, or are not able, or willing, to deal with the enemy. The enemy is not a house of genteel Episcopalian bishops, usually willing in the past to play on a level playing field. The enemy is Satan and the hordes of hell, who unleash themselves on the Episcopal Church, to utterly crush it, by marginalizing and destroying all faithful witness. With the Episcopal Church out of the way, the demons can roll up the rest of the Anglican Communion. The Christian West will be grievously undermined, and the rest of our Lord’s Body will be absent the one element that can help to reveal her essential unity, the Anglican ethos.
With hindsight one can see now that there could have been much more cooperation between those who left and those who stayed. As with a chess game, some will see sooner than others when they are about to be checkmated. Everyone’s timetable is different. It is important to recognize that all traditional, orthodox Episcopalians are refugees…those who join a continuing church as well as those who remain in the old system. In the early days, a continuing church body might assume that it is some sort of final solution to the crisis. That assertion is no longer credible. A continuing church body is a holding pattern in a re-alignment in which we are all refugees. In France, during WWII, the Free French underground worked at every turn with those who appeared to collaborate, who would, for example, offer a cellar for a printing press or an attic for a radio transmitter. So it is more constructive to see the continuing churches not as the solution, but as a reconnaissance operation, to map the minefields and blaze a trail for the main body of the army. Our vocation has been like that of John the Baptist, to be a voice in the wilderness, “to make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
The St. Louis Congress, and the Affirmation it promulgates, in September, 1977, rally the new reconnaissance operation. Already scores of new parishes are being organized. Bishop Albert Chambers, with others, consecrates four priests to the episcopate on January 28, 1978, in Denver, Colorado, to end run the House of Bishops and set up the ecclesiastical equivalent of the de Gaulle Free French. The new bishops divide the country into four quadrants, and at the first Constitutional Convention in Dallas in 1979, rename the new body the Anglican Catholic Church.
It is fashionable to belabour the divisions that arose in this body. Of course personalities were involved. But there was a real vocational issue to face. Are we going to be backward looking, with a bunker mentality, closed to those still struggling in the system, clothing ourselves with hundreds of canons to protect ourselves from any repetition of the awful pain, looking forward to a funeral with the 1928 Prayer Book? Or is our vocation to update the Church for the unseen years of the coming century, by making the reforms we always knew were necessary? Should not our vocation be to get our young people excited about God? Partly over this vocational challenge the Anglican Catholic Church began immediately to fracture, and within ten years there were a number of competing jurisdictions, not unlike the 39 resistance movements among the Free French, some politically on the left, and some on the right. Before too long, though, these movements unify under Charles de Gaulle and the Cross of Lorraine.
How do the churches of the Anglican continuum get it right? To their credit, these bodies:
a. Make a correct assessment of the enemy. There can be no communion with bishops who have forfeited their orthodoxy. The faithful must be quarantined and protected and led out of negative energy to a positive affirmation of who we are in Christ. We are not against anything. We are for the apostolic ministry, for the historic Liturgy, for New Testament morality and pro-life.
b. Commence offensive operations. There are no defensive rear guard actions anywhere in the Book of Acts. We set up a growth model and release our apostles and evangelists. All is proclamation of the ultimate event that defines all events, the truth that defines all truth: Jesus’ mighty Resurrection. “Christ is risen!” Hundreds of new parishes and missions are founded. We learn the nuts and bolts of how to form house churches and new congregations, even on a shoestring. This is something we can share with the remnant communities in the UK and Scandinavia. Our overall mission is always to stake out a claim in a geographic region and present the claims of Christ to everyone living in it, by every means available, with everyone else who is doing the same.
c. We teach the consensus of the undivided Church of the first millennium in all matters of faith, order and morals. This is the classical Anglican and Eastern Orthodox position, and the model proclaimed by John Paul II. “As we face the third millennium, we overcome the divisions of the second with the consensus of the first.”
d. As a badly needed reform, we move smartly to restore a sacramental episcopate (the Bishop as Father in God) as opposed to a juridical episcopate (the bishop as an administrator, or an adjudicator of canons, or worse, a policeman or tyrant). We also embrace conciliar governance (synods which hold themselves accountable to the rest of the Body in matters of faith, order, morals and mission).
e. We restore the Permanent Diaconate for men, so that it is normal for every parish to have one or two or more permanent deacons. We can share what we have learned here, and in (f) below, with the remnant communities in the UK and Scandinavia.
f. We train men as Layreaders, and equip them for leadership in worship, mission and discipling others.
g. We sometimes have good formation of men for the Priesthood.
h. We magnify women’s ministries based on Scripture and Tradition: deaconesses, catechists, nuns, Church Army officers, lay canonesses, and above all, wives and mothers. Gospel transformation of our culture requires a new emphasis on the Biblical dignity and pre-eminence of being a wife and mother. The great Mothers’ Unions of Africa show the way here.
i. We face the number two problem in our culture (number one is Solzhenitsyn’s adage, “men have forgotten God”): the erosion of theology, of God, revealed as the Father Almighty, and the consequent erosion of fatherhood in the parish, home and community. Priests are fathers, set to reveal to the fathers and men in the Church their priesthood. The Holy Scriptures are unambiguously and unashamedly patriarchal, and deal from beginning to end with the redemption of patriarchy, from fallen, self-aggrandizing patriarchy to gracious, kenotic patriarchy, revealed in the radical self-emptying of the Son of God. When we are orthodox, we are the most radical in our culture, able to offer the culture to the Father for transformation through Christ, in the Holy Spirit. Only thus can we re-evangelize our communities, and now, the Muslims.
Eroding our capacity for this final reform is the widespread breakdown of biblical standards of marriage throughout our movement. Annulments have been given out too freely. Even at the level of bishops the biblical standards for marriage to one woman have been rationalized away, at the very time the Africans, who keep to the biblical standards, are meeting and working with us, and are shocked to find the divorce culture in our ranks. Traditional, orthodox Anglicans should remember the devil’s attack in 1967. The marriage canon was the first to be torn apart. That is not a coincidence. As a reform, we all need to agree on a higher standard – the biblical one – and pick a date, and agree that while we can grandfather, without prejudice, everything before that date, we will apply the biblical standard after it. The biblical standard is that no man can be interviewed for any holy order who has an annulment, or whose wife has one, or, an ordained man with an annulment cannot be promoted. The whole concept of annulments needs to be reviewed and critiqued and quite possibly, eliminated. The consensus on this is growing.
Of course the fracturing of the continuing church movement was one of its other drawbacks, although it has been said that God used the divisions creatively, to prevent the Episcopal Church from taking us seriously. If we rose up, united, as a sizeable body in the early 80’s, the Episcopal Church could have not only seized property and assets, but seriously interfered with the formation of new congregations, by shutting down our ability to get IRS tax numbers, bank loans, zoning variances and building permits. Some of that happened anyway. Gnostics are always totalitarians, who cannot stand Socratic dialogue or views differing from the official ideology. Gnostic systems are based on a fatal flaw, an intellectual swindle, which debate and dialogue will expose, and undo. Opposition must be marginalized and eliminated. In the Church of England today, most of the gnostic hierarchy are trying to eliminate the witness of Forward in Faith by denying the structural solution (an independent and free province, as set forth in the book Consecrated Women?) that will be required with the consecration of women bishops.
Granting that our divisions afforded us a measure of protection, they were intrinsically a great liability. With hindsight, it is possible to apply what one of our laymen observed, a retired Marine Corps colonel. He likened our formation and deployment to an amphibious landing, the trickiest of manoeuvres in warfare. While landing on enemy beaches, there are many variables. Because of winds, tides, equipment malfunctions and enemy fire, troops can easily be landed on the wrong beaches, with the wrong officers, the wrong maps, the wrong ammunition and the wrong equipment. This can lead to a jumble and a tangle of units, and chaos, out of which the officers must lead the men, to get them off the beach, break through the enemy line, and regroup further inland.
This regrouping is now occurring, thanks be to God. For one thing, we are more likely to see ourselves today as refugees, and identify ourselves as tribes in the wilderness under Moses. As we near the 40th year of our wilderness sojourn, we are aware of a convergence point in the Promised Land. Joshua will lead us in, and we will settle down peaceably together, aware of God’s gracious hand upon us, because He has important work for us to do. He has a plan for us. We have a vocation as Anglicans, a vital role to play in the rest of the Body, and in the world. The reason we have been attacked by Satan with such ferocity is because this vocation is so very important.
So for the past ten years and more, it has been possible to see powerful centripetal forces at work among us. Informal networking and cooperation have lead up to this, along with trans-jurisdictional organizations (which have many members and contacts in the old system) such as Forward in Faith/North America, the Society of the Holy Cross, the Prayer Book Society, the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, Anglicans United, and others.
During the 1980s the revisionist leadership of Church of England, ignoring warnings from all quarters, puts the ordination of women on the agenda and enters the anguished debate on holy orders, making the break with Catholic Order in 1992. Through the dogged determination of traditional orthodox leaders, and by a miracle, a structural provision is made for the orthodox, with “flying bishops” and shadow jurisdictions. Under Bishop John Broadhurst, Forward in Faith emerges as a movement to rally the orthodox and to set about “being the Church.” Remnant communities in Sweden (the Free Synod of the Church of Sweden, and later, the Mission Province) and Norway (the Nordic Catholic Church) cooperate with it.
In the United States the group working to “change things from within,” the Episcopal Synod of America,” elects Father (now Bishop) David Moyer as President, renames itself “Forward in Faith/North America” (FiF/NA) and models itself on its sister in the UK, to work toward a unified orthodox province for North America. Bishop Keith Ackerman then becomes the President, and the Anglican Province in America (APA) and the Anglican Church in America (ACA) both enter into accords of intercommunion with FiF/NA.
Other structural breakthroughs are (ca 2001) the formation of the Anglican Mission in America, sponsored by the Rwandans (led by Bishop Chuck Murphy), and jurisdictions in North America sponsored by Kenyans (Bishop William Atwood), Ugandans (Bishop John Guernsey) and Nigerians (Bishop Martyn Minns). At last the massive Anglican communities in Africa are aware of the crisis and are weighing in to support the orthodox, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola, Primate of Nigeria. Involvement of the Africans and other Global South primates is having an enormous impact on the re-alignment here. Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone lends a helping hand every step of the way.
Another structural breakthrough comes with the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province in America deciding to set themselves on a path toward greater collaboration. Other jurisdictions sign up with this, and the Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas (FACA) is born, in about 2006. In FACA, six jurisdictions, the Anglican Province in America (APA), the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), the Anglican Church in America (ACA), the Episcopal Missionary Church (EMC) and the Diocese of the Holy Cross (DHC) hold themselves accountable to each other for Gospel witness, shared ministry, discipline and active cooperation.
The great re-alignment is given a boost in 2003 with TEC’s consecration of a practicing homosexual bishop in New Hampshire. Now there is a groundswell of new witness. Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh leads the Anglican Communion Network, Bishop David Anderson, the American Anglican Council, and Bishop Donald Harvey, the Anglican Network in Canada. FiF/NA bishops (Keith Ackerman of Quincy, Jack Iker of Fort Worth and John-David Schofield of San Joaquin) now prepare their dioceses to move out of TEC. All the groups in the post-2003 witness are converging toward a single province for North America. The AMiA and the REC sign up with this, along with FiF/NA, with the provision that those who are traditional and orthodox on the ordination of women will have the same safeguards that FiF/UK plans for a new free province in the C of E: the integrity of holy orders, and our own synods, seminaries and ecumenical relations. This concept is like the “10th Province” idea proposed in 1977, of a non-geographic and free tenth province in the Episcopal Church. The emerging new province is at this point called the Common Cause Partnership (CCP), and is being encouraged by the Global South primates, meeting in Jerusalem in June of 2008, as the Global Futures Anglican Conference (GAFCON). Late in 2008 CCP becomes the new Province of the Anglican Church in North America, led by Archbishop Robert Duncan and recognized by the Anglican primates who represent the bulk of the Anglican Communion.
The Diocese of the Holy Cross (DHC) in 2003 has its parishes recognized as overseas affiliates of FiF/UK. In 2006, DHC (a) enters into an accord of intercommunion with FiF/NA and (b) joins FACA. In 2009, DHC’s parishes all become affiliates of FiF/NA, to help form a cluster in FiF/NA that is part of ACNA. Since DHC is actively in FACA, there is an important link between FACA and the ACNA.
Other significant links are to be found between the Anglican Catholic Church, the Province of Christ the King and the United Episcopal Church, sister jurisdictions that emerged from the 1978 Denver Consecrations. They recognize each other and enjoy an informal federation, which is connected to FACA by many ties of friendship and cooperation.
All these centripetal forces are the hand of God, the work of the Holy Spirit, in our midst. Internationally there is GAFCON and the new primates’ council. In the UK there is FiF. In North America there is ACNA and FACA and the ACC/PCK/UEC alliance. We are all part of “the converging church,” the re-alignment of Anglicanism, which is not so much a split as a great reform, to return to the consensus of the undivided Church of the first millennium, to unite the catholic, the evangelical and the charismatic strands and to engage in Kingdom thinking for the unhindered proclamation of the Gospel. The Lord is freeing us to be Anglicans, whose roots go through Churchill to Alfred the Great to Benedict to the Celtic Church in Britain and to the apostles of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
The Celtic itinerant missionaries of old have left an indelible impression on us. Benedict’s emphasis on the family, rooted in one place, is with us always. Alfred’s zeal for Holy Tradition and for freedom burns forever. The Reformer’s focus on the fathers, with the incarnation as a starting point in theology, is the cutting edge for our witness in a diseased and distressed culture. Our Book of Common Prayer is a way of life and a masterpiece of liturgy for all time. We are an outbreak of Orthodoxy in the West. Alone among Christians we have a foot in the Roman, Orthodox and Protestant worlds.
We are great synthesizers. From Whitby on we agreed on a blend of the seemingly impossible elements of the Celtic itinerant and the Benedictine settler. They worked together to convert the Anglo-Saxon invaders. From repeated invasions, Christians in Britain had to learn to hold on to “core values” but have enough elasticity to absorb the good in what their invaders brought. The English language is itself an expression of this. English remains a Germanic language, amazingly enriched by Scandinavian and French. In our time the devil takes advantage of this wonderful gift, and seduces us into an elasticity that absorbs heresy and error, and has us succumb to spiritual exhaustion after the 1914-1945 European civil war. But God is reforming and invigorating us so He can use us to help reveal the essential unity of His Church…to “mend the rends” in our Lady’s Protecting Veil. We are in a position to help the two lungs of the Church, East and West, breathe together again.
How marvellous that now, most Christians in this amazing Anglican ethos live in the global south, and are making their own unique contributions. The great Churches of Rome and Constantinople, and many others, are eager to see us come into our own, so that they can receive the precious gift that we are and have, to the glory of our heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit.
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THE CONTINUUM AND ITS PROBLEMS
A Paper Delivered By Wallace Spaulding
To The Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen
September, 2009
I. Introduction
There were three major traditionalist/conservative reactions to the 1976 General Convention of The Episcopal Church (TEC)* in Minneapolis, or, more specifically, to its approval of women priests and bishops and of the first reading of a new Prayer Book (a more radical break with its predecessors than in past such cases). The first was to go to Rome, the second was to stay within TEC and fight these new innovations from there, and the third was to leave and form a new and more orthodox “continuing” body. These three approaches are still being used and thus are relevant today.
Those of the Roman orientation had produced a Pro-Diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury by 1978, which was a non-starter. But they found some welcome via the Roman Church’s 1980 Pastoral Provision, under which they founded six “Anglican Use” Roman Catholic parishes by 1983; there are nine now.
The “stay within” crowd was found in the Evangelical Catholic Mission (ECM), which then became the Episcopal Synod of America (ESA), and then the (present-day) Forward in Faith, North America (FIF-NA). They continue to work within TEC but now more and more in the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), formed in 2008-09 in opposition to the homosexual agenda but still tolerating women priests (but not bishops) and the 1979 Prayer Book.
Most of those leaving as a body following the ‘76 convention did so after a September 1977 Congress in St. Louis had given them a theological document, The Affirmation of St. Louis, which declared the existence of a new body – interestingly also called the Anglican Church in North America! - and after that body proceeded to organize new dioceses whose bishops-elect were consecrated in Denver in January 1978. A constitution and canons also were developed at the Dallas 1978 First Synod of what was the Anglican Church in North America going into the meeting and the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) coming out of it. The problems of this body and those related to it, which have split and re-split and ingested new elements since 1978 and which we shall call “the Continuum,” will be the focus of this paper.
One of these (widely-defined) Continuum elements, the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) – an international fellowship that includes among its 15 provinces the Anglican Church in America (ACA) and the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) - should be noted here for following all three courses of action at the same time. Stemming from the original ACC in part, the TAC follows the separate organization approach. But in 2002 it also entered into communion with the “stay within” FIF-NA (which did, however, ratify The Affirmation of St. Louis the same year) and - without rescinding this agreement - petitioned Rome for some sort of mutual recognition in 2007. (It still has received no definitive reply.)
Another manifestation provides continuity and a sort of baseline for the post-1976 Continuum against which the rest might be related. It consists, first of all, of the late James O. Mote, the first bishop elected by the Continuum, and his parish, St. Mary’s, Denver, the first congregation to leave TEC after the ‘76 General Convention; it is still the cathedral of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity, a founding part of what became the Anglican Catholic Church. When I visited this parish in the 1960s, incidentally, I found it the most spiritually active that I had ever witnessed; and the ACC’s Trinitarian notes that it still has three Masses daily!
II. Church Government Conflicts
A. The Role of Bishops
Bishops Robert S. Morse (Diocese of Christ the King [DCK]) and Peter F. Watterson (Diocese of the Southeastern United States [DSEUS]), two of the four clerics consecrated for the Continuum at Denver, opposed the new ACC constitution, and their respective dioceses never ratified it, thus keeping them out of what was intended to be the sole body resulting from the St. Louis movement. They objected to provisions in its constitution allowing laypersons and lower clergy to share power with the bishops (as in TEC) rather than granting the latter predominant power (as in the early church). Related to this, the other two clerics consecrated at Denver, the aforementioned Bishop Mote (Diocese of the Holy Trinity [DHT]) and Bishop C. Dale David Doren (Diocese of the Midwest [DMW] and subsequently the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States [DMAS]), successfully encouraged the incorporation of additional dioceses into the new structure, something Morse and Watterson opposed and which ensured the approval of the ACC’s constitution. Ironically, one of these new units, Bishop Robert C. Harvey’s Diocese of the Southwest (DSW), criticized the ACC – when it left that body in 1982 – for having “supremacist” bishops, the very thing the ACC associated with Morse and Watterson in 1978.(1)
Morse and Watterson, meanwhile, had cooperated with each other at first, but soon had a falling out: Morse wanted one nationwide diocese (which he then proceeded to set up), while Watterson wanted to divide the country in two, with himself as bishop of the eastern half. Watterson’s DSEUS, subject to raids by Morse’s DCK, the ACC, and others, went from 40 parishes to about 10 in 1983(2). By 1984 it was gone, and in the same year Watterson was received into the Roman Catholic Church. The DCK, which later became the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK), has four dioceses and 43 parishes today.(3)
Another vexing problem in this category for the St. Louis movement, of course, was that “the role of bishops” in the early Continuum had to be played by those who had never been bishops up to that point. Had any experienced, respected Anglican/Episcopal prelates been willing to give the Continuum more than temporary leadership, much fragmentation in the movement might have been avoided. This seems to be underscored by the situation of the latest refugees from The Episcopal Church; they have had ample oversight and guidance from sitting Anglican bishops and have been able to bring together in the ACNA a constituency far less monochromatic than the post-1976 Continuers. Many think this won’t last, but one has to admit, so far it has.
B. Diocesan Autonomy
According to Michael F. Gallo, writing in the Winter 1989 edition of Touchstone magazine, the Diocese of the Southwest’s belief that the ACC’s governing documents gave the national church too much control over the diocese was the basic cause of the Southwest’s exit from the ACC in 1982.(4) That year, Bishop Harvey oversaw the transfer of some 20 parishes from the ACC to the American Episcopal Church (AEC), a Continuing Church body that pre-dated the St. Louis movement. Bishop Edwin H. Caudill soon succeeded Bishop Harvey, and the DSW numbered 30 parishes as of 1986.(5) Sadly, however, the DSW seems thereafter to have begun a process of dissolution. Losses began in 1988 or ’89 when Bishop Caudill took a disputed number of parishes out of the AEC to join some other fragments of the Continuum in forming a new body(6) (which also never saw great success). What is interesting here, though, is that Caudill also cited an overbearing national church as a key reason for leaving, this time, the AEC. (Some sources suggested, however, that the bishop’s exit might have had something to do with questions that had arisen about some of the credentials Caudill had earlier presented to delegates who ultimately elected him bishop.(7))
More significant in the long term in relation to the issue of diocesan autonomy was the split-off of most of the Anglican Church in America’s Diocese of the Eastern U.S. (DEUS) to form the Anglican Province of America (APA) in 1995. (This jumps a bit ahead in Continuing Church history, past the 1991 creation of the ACA from a merger of most of the AEC and about a third of the ACC, but we will return to that event.)
Following the 1995 resignation of its diocesan, the Rt. Rev. Anthony F.M. Clavier (see below), the DEUS Standing Committee began taking actions that the ACA’s national leadership felt should have been referred to it. These included granting an annulment to one of its assistant bishops, the Rt. Rev. Norman Stewart, and (most importantly) proceeding with an election synod which chose the diocese’s suffragan, the Rt. Rev. Walter Grundorf, to succeed Clavier as diocesan. This caused a break and was primarily a resurgence of the old AEC: Grundorf had been Clavier’s assistant in that body and the bulk of the APA entries in the 1999-2000 Directory of Traditional Anglican and Episcopal Parishes (Minneapolis: 1999) had been listed as AEC in the 1990 Directory of Churches of the Continuing Anglican Tradition (Rockville, MD: 1990). Today, the APA has 77 parishes, while the ACA has 104(8)
III. Discouragement
The splintering of the St. Louis movement almost as soon as the ACC was formed in 1978 led to counter-efforts to hold traditionalists together at the same time it spawned new jurisdictions. Prior to the October 1979 Second Synod of the ACC in Indianapolis, its Canadian component had withdrawn to form the (earlier-noted) Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC), while at the same time announcing that it was in communion with all the bodies involved in the Denver consecrations the year before. It seems to have done a good job of staying out of the squabbles that plagued the U.S. “Continuers.” For a start, it was able in April 1980 to get the ACC’s Bishop William F. Burns, the DCK’s Robert Morse, and the Philippine Independent Church’s (PIC’s) Lope Rosete to be the co-consecrators of its first bishop, Carmino de Catanzaro (with the PIC’s Francisco Pagtakhan rushing up to take part at the last minute).(9) Pagtakhan had been one of the two original consecrators for the 1978 Denver consecrations. The PIC is in full communion with TEC, and it is unclear to what extent the former supported Pagtakhan’s North American activities. At present, the ACCC has 43 parishes.(10)
At the ACC’s Indianapolis Synod, Pagtakhan announced he would be forming an umbrella group for those dissatisfied with the way things were going in the ACC. This subsequently became the Anglican Rite Jurisdiction of the Americas (ARJA), which formally organized itself in June 1980. Perhaps ARJA’s most notable effort at promoting orthodox Anglican unity was its attempt to give its recognized Anglican orders to two alleged “vagante” groups at the same time it consecrated its own first three bishops in San Diego in September 1981. Bishops Pagtakhan, Rosete, and one other PIC prelate, Sergio Mondala, conditionally consecrated Anthony Clavier, Walter Grundorf, and G. Raymond Hanlan for the AEC, and Walter H. Adams, John Hamers, and Frank Benning for the “co-vagante” Anglican Episcopal Church of North America (AECNA), at the same time they consecrated Robert Q. Kennaugh, G. Wayne Craig, and Ogden Miller for the ARJA.(11) Pagtakhan had apparently hoped for a merger of the three groups, and the bulk of the AECNA, though not Primus Adams, did merge with the AEC the following year.
But Clavier seemed primarily interested in the AEC-ACC discussions that had begun earlier in 1981 and were to last a decade; the successful completion of these would have brought about the merger of the two largest independent orthodox Anglican jurisdictions
in the U.S. And Clavier was finding that the validity of his orders was a, if not the, major single barrier to unity (though, interestingly, less critical scrutiny was directed at AEC bishops with similar backgrounds). So, while the 1981 consecrations were of actual and potential benefit to the AEC, they do not seem to have helped ARJA much.
By early 1985 Pagtakhan had openly cut his ties with the ARJA, declaring that it had “outlived its purpose.”(12) ARJA continued on under Archbishop G. Wayne Craig, perhaps reaching a peak with the 19 parishes noted in 1986.(13) Though Archbishop Craig went into the Episcopal Missionary Church (EMC – see below) after his 1987 retirement and the bulk of the ARJA parishes were supposed to have gone to that jurisdiction, only two of the 19 ARJA parishes we have on a 1986 list for that body do we find currently in the EMC.(14) Our guess is that most are defunct.
The Episcopal Missionary Church, originally founded by the “stay-within” Episcopal Synod of America (ESA, now FIF-NA), also was a product of discouragement. Starting as an organization within TEC to give alternative ministrations to disgruntled conservatives, it moved out of that body into an independent existence after the 1992
approval of women priests by the Church of England. Founded by a retired TEC bishop of Fort Worth, A. Donald Davies, and now headed by Bishop William Millsaps, the EMC presently claims 38 parishes.(15)
IV. Churchmanship
With the departure of ACC Bishop Dale Doren (Diocese of the Midwest and then Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States) in 1980 on churchmanship grounds, the ACC lost the third of the original four prelates consecrated at Denver. Doren was the only Low Churchman in the lot and apparently felt uncomfortable there as a result. He subsequently founded the United Episcopal Church (UEC), now the United Episcopal Church of North America (UECNA). It is currently led by Archbishop Stephen C. Reber and claims 20 parishes.(16)
V. Validity Of Orders
Possibly the ACC was over-sensitive on the question of valid orders because TEC had been so critical of the Denver consecrations, apparently not being willing to make the distinction between validity and regularity. Dale Doren, the first to receive the laying on of hands during the 1978 rite, was consecrated by two prelates - Bishop Pagtakhan and retired Springfield Episcopal Bishop Albert Chambers - rather than the normal three, though this depends on what weight may be given to the letter of consent for Doren’s consecration that was sent by a third prelate, Korean Bishop Mark Pae. Pae’s letter was why Doren was consecrated first, and then joined the other two prelates in consecrating Bishops Mote, Morse, and Watterson. Clearly, an effort was made in the Denver rite to meet the three-bishop standard. Still, Chambers certainly and Pagtakhan probably did not have the permission of their ecclesiastical superiors or colleagues for their actions.
All of this probably adds up to irregular consecrations, yes, but not invalid ones. The history of the Western Church is replete with accepted one-bishop consecrations, and how about the ecclesiastical superiors of the first Anglican qua Anglican consecrators?
The issue of validity was intensified in the Continuum by the background of AEC Primus Anthony Clavier, as he entered into unity discussions with the ACC in early 1981. Clavier had been consecrated by the second AEC Primus, James Hardin George, Jr., who in turn had allegedly received his orders from the first AEC Primus, Joseph K.C.C. Pillai. Here it gets tricky: this sympathetic account notes that Pillai received Syrian Orthodox orders in 1944 and then (conditionally) Old Catholic ones in 1945, but doesn’t explain why anyone considered the second consecration necessary.(17)
In any case, as noted earlier, Clavier and his two AEC companions submitted to conditional consecrations in September 1981. Just after these consecrations, Bishop Louis W. Falk, later to become the most visible proponent from the ACC side of unity with the AEC, questioned the procedures and intent (not further explained) of the September ceremonies, while the ACC’s Canon Andrew Stahl noted that regularization of all steps (presumably including ordination to the diaconate and priesthood) would be necessary to ensure a conditional consecration’s validity.(18) With respect to Falk’s concerns, there seem to have been no such questions when AECNA Bishops Adams and Thomas Kleppinger, a product of those same San Diego consecrations, led their small group into the ACC in 1985.(19) With respect to Stahl’s point, Clavier’s ordinations to the priesthood in the Catholic Episcopal Church of England in 1961 and (conditionally?) the Free Protestant Episcopal Church of England and the Protestant Evangelical Church of England, both in 1963,(20) were suspect, though his incardination by Mar Gregorios of the Catholicate of the West in 1966(21) implied that at least he considered him a priest.
In any case, heeding such objections, Bishop Clavier and the other AEC bishops who had undergone the San Diego rite, Grundorf and Hanlan, were conditionally ordained to the diaconate and priesthood by Bishop Charles Boynton(22) (retired TEC suffragan of New York, but by that time ACC) on October 1 and 2, 1991, just prior to their second conditional consecrations at Deerfield Beach, Florida, in conjunction with the formation of the ACA.
As background we should note that Falk, ACC’s Archbishop from 1983, and AEC’s Primus Clavier - as heads of the two largest of the traditional Anglican bodies in the U.S. (with respective 1986-89 figures of 150-173 parishes totaling about 5,000 people, and 75-100 parishes with 3,000-4,000 members)(23) were becoming the major figures in the struggle for orthodox unity outside TEC. Falk had gone from a position of stating that AEC adherents were “posing as Anglicans” in 1985 to not thinking anyone doubted “the sacramental validity” of the ordinations or consecrations of either the ACC or AEC in 1987.(24) Douglas Bess, author of Divided We Stand, attributes this change of attitude to the excitement Falk must have felt in the possibility of being part of a much bigger amalgamation of conservative Anglicans both in and out of mainstream Anglicanism on a worldwide basis.(25) Falk and Clavier both attended the March 1986 Fairfield Symposium, where London Bishop Graham Leonard was seeking to unite traditionalists internationally, and even visited the prelate in England later in the year. But Leonard’s credibility among the Continuers evaporated when he ordained 70 women as deacons in March 1987. Similarly, a Falk/Clavier joint petition in April 1987 to Eric Kemp, Bishop of Chichester, asking that he broker ACC-AEC unification, fell flat when no meaningful response was received.
Despite apparent suspicion that the emerging Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) – the aforementioned international fellowship, initiated in 1990, of which the ACC (originally) was to be a component and which Falk was later to head - would restrict its authority, and a growing opposition to talks with the AEC, the ACC Provincial Synod voted to proceed with both.
Especially damaging to that dialogue, though, was the showing of a videotape of the 1981 San Diego consecrations revealing that much of the traditional ceremony had been omitted and that much of the wording and actions were unfamiliar; this caused the ACC Ecumenical Committee, confused by the evidence, to withhold recognition of AEC orders in July 1990.(26) The next month, the ACC House of Bishops reiterated this position. This all but dictated that any unification conference would involve a second/conditional consecration of the AEC bishops.
Most ACC bishops also effectively rejected any merger with the AEC in 1991 by advocating the AEC’s absorption into the ACC instead. Clearly, opposition to union with the AEC had hardened.
Seeking to find another way to meet the need and demand of many faithful for unification of the Continuum, Falk and Clavier agreed to co-sponsor a “Conference on Anglican Unity” open to all in support of that objective.
A perceived series of irregular machinations by Falk, not least his involvement with the unity conference, caused charges to be brought against him in August 1991. The now-dominant ACC leadership was unable to bring off the planned September trial because of the inability to convene a complete court, so a compromise was reached allowing Falk to resign and take his own diocese (Missouri Valley) into the impending new church.
On October 3, 1991, during the unity conference in Deerfield Beach that produced the ACA, three bishops with impeccable Anglican orders conditionally consecrated bishops for the new church body. The consecrators were: Robert R.S. Mercer, the third bishop ordinary of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada and sometime Bishop of Matabeleland (Central Africa) within the “official” Anglican Communion; Robert H. Mize, retired assistant TEC Bishop of San Joaquin and sometime Bishop of Damaraland (Southern Africa) (said to be participating with the approval of several unnamed ESA bishops (27)); and the earlier-noted Charles Boynton, sometime Bishop of Puerto Rico and later TEC suffragan of New York, who earlier in 1991 had joined the ACC, but who at Deerfield Beach became part of the ACA. (Interestingly, however, Bishops Mize and Boynton both remained members in good standing of TEC’s House of Bishops until their deaths.(28)) For the ACA, the prelates conditionally consecrated from the AEC: Anthony Clavier, Walter Grundorf, G. Raymond Hanlan, Mark Holliday, William Millsaps, and Norman Stewart; and from the ACC: Louis Falk, Bruce S. Chamberlain, Robert G. Wilkes, Robin B. Connors, and Samuel Prakash.(29)
By these acts the unity conference organizers attempted to address several issues previously raised, notably about the San Diego and Denver rites. The conditional consecrations in Florida involved an adequate rite performed by three prelates in unquestioned succession (at least one and possibly two of them acting with support from episcopal colleagues); and (as noted earlier) they were preceded, where deemed necessary, by valid diaconal and priestly ordinations.
But a storm of criticism rained down from the two-thirds majority of the ACC that remained outside the new body (and was to term itself the ACC-Original Province), with ACC Archbishop William O. Lewis (Falk’s successor) concluding that the conditional consecrations had not only not remedied the AEC bishops’ orders, they had rendered them beyond repair.
One complaint was that a fellow bishop’s territory had been invaded. Bishop Mercer had been in communion with the ACC as well as AEC, and Boynton himself was an ACC member; yet, they had not sought permission from the ACC bishop of the area in which the consecrations took place. Though this seemed an exact parallel to the ACC’s own Denver consecrations – Chambers, a member of TEC, and Pagtakhan, a member of a body in communion with it, had not sought the permission of the TEC bishop of Colorado for their action – Archbishop Lewis said that in the case of Deerfield Beach the territorial invasion nullified the AEC consecrations.(30)
Another criticism from the ACC side was that putting those whose orders you believed to be valid (i.e, ACC bishops who joined the ACA) through another consecration rite was sacrilegious and sinful. The ACA answer to this was that the ACC prelates underwent the conditional rite to put themselves on an equal footing with AEC counterparts. The ironic thing here is that the main motivation for the conditional consecrations was to assuage the ACC suspicions about the validity of AEC orders.(31)
A third criticism was that the bishops at Deerfield Beach had not been consecrated for any specific areas (since the structure of the new body was set up after the consecrations).
The answers to this and other ACC objections to Deerfield Beach are contained in a paper by the Rev. Matthew Kirby – an ACC priest who actually thinks the ACA orders are valid – which gives historical evidence negating most of these criticisms.(32)
In any case, the ACA was formed with Archbishop Falk as its primate and metropolitan of its western province and Archbishop Clavier as metropolitan of its eastern province. The ACC went from being slightly larger than the AEC prior to Deerfield Beach (150 parishes with some 5,000 communicants versus 100 parishes and about 4,000 members, according to one source in 1989(33)) to slightly smaller than the ACA afterwards. By 1994 – three years after the Deerfield conference – one source reported that the ACC had more parishes than the ACA – 157 versus 140 - but fewer members – 7,400 versus 8,500.(34)
According to their websites, the ACC currently has 94 congregations and the ACA 104,(35) making them still the largest two groups being considered by this paper. The most obvious thing to note about the Deerfield conference, though, is that it did not realize its hope of unifying the bulk of the Continuing movement.
VI. Personalities
Though personality clashes certainly have contributed to the splintering of the Continuum in many other cases (as with the widespread dislike of Archbishop Clavier), the departure from the ACC of what became the Holy Catholic Church-Anglican Rite (ACC-AR) in 1997 is one breakaway that some attribute almost solely to personality issues. Professor William Tighe, in his 2006 survey of Anglicanism, and HCC-AR leader, the Rt. Rev. Thomas Kleppinger, agree on the personality factor’s being pre-eminent in that episode.(36) However, at least one longtime observer of the Continuum, The Christian Challenge, viewed this clash as “a leadership struggle,” (i.e., having more to do with power than personalities). The HCC-AR’s website currently lists 30 member congregations.(37)
VII. Morality
Though morality has been a factor in other Continuum disagreements, the only Continuing Anglican jurisdiction we can identify as specifically founded on a moral issue is the Diocese of the Holy Cross (DHC). (Another example - but one outside our purview - is the Anglican Mission in America, or AMiA, founded as a direct reaction to TEC’s embrace of the homosexual agenda.)
The DHC broke from the APCK in 2003 over the consecration of the Rev. James E. Provence to be a bishop in that body. This was due to the fact that Provence – who went on to become APCK’s primate in 2007 – has been divorced and remarried, though he had been granted an annulment. The first leader of the DHC was the Rt. Rev. Robert Waggener. He became Orthodox, however, and was replaced by the Rt. Rev. Paul C. Hewett. Of the 22 congregations currently listed on the DHC’s website(38), 11 appear to have been from the APCK, two were from the miniscule Christian Episcopal Church, one had been independent, and eight were new plants.(39)
But morality, or lack of it, as a disruptive force within the Continuum was prominently noted in the case (again!) of Anthony Clavier. Though Clavier had been suspected of sexual impropriety from his pre-AEC days down through his abrupt 1995 resignation as head of the ACA’s eastern province amid allegations of such impropriety(40), it was his failure in July 1990 to give straight answers to ACC investigators about previous claims he had made about his academic credentials – apparently he had none to speak of – that did the most damage to the ACC-AEC unity efforts.(41) This had come at a critical time and added to the questions raised by the 1981 San Diego ordinations.
VIII. New Partners As Vehicles For Relating To A Larger Body
In July 2007, Bishop Rocco A. Florenza and 12 of his 14 congregations in the APCK’s Diocese of the Eastern States joined the ACA, in which he is now “missionary bishop for the United States.” Just three months later he joined other ACA bishops in signing the Roman catechism – an offer of mutual recognition, not submission, he said. But Florenza states that this did not have anything to do with his decision to leave the
APCK.(42) Rather, he maintains that his departure was motivated by the (legally) dictatorial nature of the APCK’s leadership as well as its ecumenical “stand-offishness.”(43) This almost places Florenza’s move in the church government-role of bishops category (see II.A above) and even involves Archbishop Morse, but it is considered here because the ACA is both larger than the APCK (107 vs. 43 parishes) and
more ecumenical, and offers at least the possibility of some sort of relationship with Rome.
In another case study in this category, the 14 parishes of the Anglican Province of America’s western diocese, led by Bishop Richard Boyce with assistance from Bishop Winfield Mott, withdrew from that jurisdiction in September 2008 to join the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) (wherein the two bishops hold the same relative positions). The REC was formed in 1873 to protest those few Anglo-Catholic influences that had been creeping into TEC as a result of the Oxford Movement. It never got caught up in TEC-style revisionism and is now more normally Anglican, that is, it has moved more into the orthodox Anglican mainstream. The APA and REC had been in communion with one another since 1998 and were looking toward fusion. What caused the withdrawal of the APA’s western diocese (and indeed put a halt in the movement toward fusion) was the APA’s decision in January 2008 to withdraw from the Common Cause Partnership (CCP), while the REC, in line with the APA western diocese’s wishes, remained in. The CCP was the basis of the new province, the ACNA, that has now (2009) been formed. APA’s objection to the CCP was its pro-priestess/neutral-on-the-subject majority, the uniting force within the new province being primarily opposition to TEC’s homosexual agenda.
IX. Conclusion: Current Status Report
With all the disruptive factors within the Continuum noted above – disagreement over the form of church government, a lack of permanent, experienced episcopal leadership in the movement’s critical early days, discouragement over organizational fragmentation and reshuffling, High Church/Low Church tensions, disputes over the validity of each other’s orders, personality conflicts, moral issues, and the enticement of relating to larger jurisdictions outside the Continuum – it is amazing that there is the degree of unity here that does exist!
Essentially, there are three groupings, based on the approach to be taken vis-à-vis non-Continuum elements; we shall term them the “purists,” the “middlers,” and the “ecumenists.” And this primarily has to do with women priests; none of the people we are discussing wants to have anything to do with the homosexual agenda, except to oppose it.
The original, direct descendants of the 1978 Chambers Denver consecration, the ACC, APCK, and UECNA, are today in communion with each other and nobody else on the basis of no relationship to the regular Anglican Communion or any group in communion with it. This was made clear in ACC Archbishop Mark Haverland’s letter of July 3, 2007(44). But it came as little surprise as, among other things, the ACC’s College of Bishops had issued a statement more than a decade earlier that referred to the APCK and UECNA, and no others, as “related jurisdictions.”(45) This automatically excluded the ACA and ACCC, which as members of the Traditional Anglican Communion were in communion with FIF-NA, the bulk of whose members were at the time in communion with Canterbury. Almost immediately, the new APCK Archbishop, James Provence, echoed Haverland’s 2007 remarks.(46) (This same month, July, the UECNA was noted as having rescinded its concordat with the APA and signed one with the ACC). Provence’s reaction also might have been influenced by the removal of an obviously pro-ACA faction from the APCK in the defection of the Florenza group, also in July 2007.
The above actions followed what was the most wide-ranging Anglo-Catholic gathering in this period: All major U.S. groups of this genre were invited by the APCK to participate in a September 2004 pilgrimage to the tomb of Bishop Grafton in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Taking the APCK up on its invitation, the ACA, ACC, and FIF-NA participated (with only the ACC not sending its top leaders and not receiving communion at the hands of clergy from other jurisdictions).(47) As this was an Anglo-Catholic pilgrimage to an Anglo-Catholic shrine, the UECNA was not even invited. Presumably, however, Anglo-Catholic identity was not a strong enough cohesive force to build upon so promising a beginning, since this ecumenical overture went nowhere.
Alongside the “purists” described above (who include the HCC-AR, though it is not in communion with the other three bodies in that category(48)), there developed a grouping which, though equally opposed to women in the priesthood, has been willing to work with those of like mind who are in communion with conservative supporters of women’s ordination who oppose the homosexual agenda. In 2006, the previously-discussed Continuum-related groups not in the “purist four” – the ACA (which stems in part from the ACC), DHC (from the APCK), and APA (from the ACA) – as well as the EMC (from TEC/FIF-NA), AMiA, and REC, formed the Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas (FACA). Its moderator, Bishop Paul Hewett, heads the DHC, which in turn is in communion with FACA’s other five constituents as well as FIF-NA.(49)
The FACA groups not going into the new province (see below) – the ACA, APA, and EMC - are apparently willing to cooperate with elements that are in turn cooperating with groups that accept female priests but not to join any new body that has admitted them. So, they remained out of the ACNA, thus apparently forfeiting the possibility of rejoining the official Anglican Communion (which the ACNA currently seeks to do). This, then, is our “middler” group.
When the new Anglican Church in North America was formally inaugurated this year, it claimed about 100,000 communicants in 28 dioceses and about 700 parishes.(50) The only groups with Continuum roots we could find therein were the DHC (as part of the FIF-NA cluster, also known as the Missionary Diocese of All Saints), and the bulk of the APA’s Diocese of the West (which had joined the REC to become part of the ACNA). These two form what we have termed the “ecumenist” grouping and (based on earlier-noted statistics) constitute only 36 of the some 700 ACNA parishes. They are closely related, however, to the following other ACNA components: the remainder of the FIF-NA cluster (about 33 parishes); the rest of the REC (96 parishes); another FACA partner, the AMiA (143); plus the three FIF-NA dioceses that went in from TEC (101). Together, these components encompass a more substantial 409 parishes.(51) In fact, the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen survey of early 2009 finds that 62 percent of ACNA parishes and 53 percent of ACNA’s average Sunday attendance stand in opposition to female priests.(52) Perhaps the Continuum – for all its problems – has been a leavening force in that significant context.
---------------------------------
*The current acronym for this body, which we will use for this paper, although during most of the 1976-2009 period it had been called ECUSA or PECUSA.
1. Louis E. Traycik, “The Continuing Church Today,” The Christian Challenge (Austin, TX), March 1983, p. 10.
2. Ibid., p. 11
3. http://www.anglicanpck.org/dioceses/index.shtml
4. Michael F. Gallo, “The Continuing Anglicans,” Touchstone (Chicago), Winter, 1989; http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=03-01-027-f
5. Louis E. Traycik, “The Continuing Church Today,” The Christian Challenge, (Austin, TX), June 1986, p. 16
6. http://www.southwestdiocese.org/parish_old.html
7. The Christian Challenge (Washington), December, 1988, p. 26
8. http: www.anglicanprovince.org/; http://acahomeorg0.web701.discountasp.net/churches/churches_index.aspx
9. Douglas Bess, Divided We Stand, Tractarian Press, Riverside, CA, 2002, p. 161
10. Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, Diocesan Circular, Ottawa, August 2009
11. Douglas Bess, op.cit., p. 184
12. Ibid., p. 204
13. Louis Traycik, op. cit., pp. 25-26;
14. Ibid., www.emchome.org.
15. Ibid.
16. http://www.united-episcopal.org/parish.html
17. http://anglicanchurchph.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
18. Douglas Bess, op. cit., p. 185
19. Ibid., pp. 205, 228
20. Ibid., p. 65
21. Ibid.
22. http://anglicanchurchph.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
23. Louis Traycik, op. cit., pp. 17, 24; Michael F. Gallo, “The Continuing Anglicans,” Touchstone (Chicago), Winter 1989, http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=03-01-027-f
24. Douglas Bess, op. cit., pp. 210-211
25. Ibid
26. Ibid., p. 219
27. Louis and Auburn Traycik, “The Conditional Consecrations: How and Why,” The Christian Challenge (Washington), December, 1991, p. 10
28. The Rev. Anthony Clavier in Philorthodox – philorthodox.blogspot.com/; in Search Box type in: Father Tony on Bishop Cox
29. Louis and Auburn Traycik, op. cit.
30. Auburn Traycik, “ACA Praised—And Panned—As It Forges Ahead,” The Christian Challenge (Washington), January-February 1992, p. 16
31. Ibid., p. 15
32. Matthew Kirby, “Reality Therapy: TAC Orders,” http://members.ozemail.com.au/ frmkirby/TAC%20Orders.htm
33. Michael F. Gallo, op. cit.
34. Gregory J. Diefenderfer, “The Traditional Anglican Movement Today,” The Christian Challenge, (Washington), October-November 1994, pp. 18-19
35. www.anglicancatholic.org; http://acahomeorg0.web701.discountasp.net/churches/churches_index.aspx
36. William J. Tighe, “Anglican Bodies and Organizations,” Touchstone (Chicago), http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2006/10/anglican_taxono.html; Telephone conversation with Bishop Kleppinger on August 8, 2009
37. http://www.holycatholicanglican.org/directory.php
38. http://dioceseoftheholycross.org/parishes.html
39. Jane Nones, Ed.,Directory of Traditional Anglican and Episcopal Parishes, 2003-04 (Minneapolis) Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, 2003
40. Douglas Bess, op.cit., pp. 65, 335-6; “ACA Rocked By Clouded Resignation Of Clavier,” The Christian Challenge (Washington), March-April 1995, p. 13
41. Douglas Bess, op. cit., p. 219
42. Telephone conversation with Bishop Rocco Florenza, August 15, 2009
43. Ibid.
44. http://www.anglicancatholic.org/met-unity.html
45. http://www.anglicancatholic.org.uk/uploads/docs/statement-on-church-unity.pdf
46. The Christian Challenge (Washington) July-September, 2007, p. 22
47. Auburn Faber Traycik, “A `Historic’ Moment For The U.S. Continuing Church,” The Christian Challenge (Washington), October-November 2004, p. 19
48. Telephone conversation with the Rt. Rev. Thomas Kleppinger, August 15, 2009
49. dioceseoftheholycross.org/involvement/; click on 070109 (FIF-NA, ACNA)
50. http://www.anglicanchurch-na.org/stream/2009/04/emerging-anglican-province-announces-28-dioceses.html
51. The Certain Trumpet (Arlington, VA), Spring, 2008
52. Ibid. Spring 2009
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