The Non-Episcopal Anglican Future in America

…looks a lot like the present.

This just in from Memphis (h/t Jim Naughton): “Delegates from a dozen churches in Memphis and across the South will ask the Anglican Church of Kenya to form a diocese and appoint a bishop for them in America.”

So, we have active presences of bishops from Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, the Southern Cone in the geographical area of TEC without “permission” (and oversight from a former American bishop who is now part of the Canadian church with permission)…

The Network’s attempt at creating a parallel body in America will not succeed. Why? Two reasons I can see. The first is that it is fundamentally organized and active on a congregational level and the congregations are not united in what they are for—only in what they are against. (Even the potential break-away diocese are operating with the same mentality.) Rather than all joining the same alternate structure, they pick and choose who fits best (at the moment). It’s consumer Christianity in a global market. The second is just starting to make sense to me—because it is not in the best interest of the Global South Primates who are receiving American congregations into their folds.

6 thoughts on “The Non-Episcopal Anglican Future in America

  1. bls

    I’ve run into a few conservatives who really don’t want to be “in the fold” of Global South Primates. I’m not sure if they want to be in a parallel province, either.

    They seem to want TEC to do something that will get it back in the “good graces” of the hostile entities in the AC – but I don’t see what it can do short of repudiating same-sex blessings and gay priests entirely. And that’s not going to happen.

    So in the end, unless the Southern Globals walk themselves, I don’t think anything at all is going to happen. (Don’t know what will happen with these cross-border “oversight” things.)

  2. The young fogey

    Valid criticisms. It’d make more sense for the Global South primates to assign one among them to take charge of the new arrangements in America, which again seem a mix of modern Central Church with some crossover from American evangelicalism and overseas modern Anglican Evangelicalism.

  3. LutherPunk

    This all smacks of what happened post-Affirmation of St. Louis.

    The real question will become something like this: what is the real essence of what it means to be Anglican? And, as a follow up, who holds a claim to that name?

  4. The young fogey

    This all smacks of what happened post-Affirmation of St. Louis.

    Good point and that movement started out united!

    If the new arrangements remain piecemeal and congregational it wouldn’t be unreasonable to predict similar results.

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