Three More Bishops…

Rwanda’s Anglican Church has just elected three more Americans to be bishops. They are the Rev. Terrell Glenn, the Rev. Philip Jones and the Rev. John Miller. [h/t Thinking Anglicans]

I don’t know any of these folks–but you know who they’re not?

the Reverend William Ilgenfritz

Does that name ring a bell? No? He was the candidate that Forward in Faith put forward to become a bishop by some cooperative foreign Anglican body back in 2002 along with Fr. David Moyer. The call was re-iterated in 2007 when five years later Fr. Ilgenfritz was still not consecrated… (Fr. Moyer was consecrated a while ago by the Traditional Anglican Communion, a group not in communion with Canterbury.)

So—however many American bishops later and Fr. Ilgenfritz has not received the nod. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t seem to bode well for the place of FiF and traditional Anglo-Catholics in the coming realignment.

[To clarify the confused, I know members of FiFNA and the SSC, have cordidal relationships with them, have learned much from them, but do not agree with them concerning the ordination of women.]

6 thoughts on “Three More Bishops…

  1. Caelius Spinator

    Could it be because the U.S. and the UK are the centers of traditional Anglo-Catholicism, whereas the Global South is either Low, Broad, or regards women as valid matter for Orders? (And, of course, Archbishop Gomez still has hope for the Covenant, so he can’t lead the charge.)

  2. Derek the Ænglican

    While much of the evangelizing efforts done in the Global South were undertaken by Low Church evangelicals, there are some Anglo-Catholic segments including some in Africa. I cannot remember off the top of my head, however, which provinces they are…

  3. Caelius Spinator

    Well, of course, I was excluding Southern Africa.

    The potential Provinces then would be reduced to Tanzania and Central Africa (technically Moyer’s patron.) I honestly think that Archbishop Malango would be a likely candidate to consecrate missionary bishops for the United States. He may be biding his time for sake of ecclesiology.

  4. John-Julian, OJN

    Yes, I think Caelius and Anastasia are right.

    There was a 19th century “gentlemen’s agreement” to divide the mission to the African continent between the low church and evangelical CMS and the somewhat more high church SPG.

    In addition the low church folks in Africa went through a massive charismatic revival (opposed by the Anglican missionaries at the time) right in line with “The Great Awakening” of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, and ended up looking, sounding, and thinking like Baptists with mitres.

    And we are reaping the harvest of that division now.

  5. Patrick Coleman

    The current issue of the Anglican Theological Review has an article on mission by George Sumner that details the relationship between high and low church missionaries in East Africa. He makes some good points about getting past these kinds of disagreements to focus on evangelization.

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