Sunday, June 24, 2007

A New Continuing Church Scenario: History Repeated

On 10 August 2003 I prophesied to, of all entities, The New York Times the following:

'Even leaders of splinter groups counsel caution. "We wish them well, but we feel such a process is probably not going to be successful," said the Rev. Chandler Holder Jones, assistant to the dean at St. Alban's Anglican Cathedral in Oviedo, Fla. His church, part of the 4,000-member Anglican Province of America, split in 1968 from the Episcopal Church over issues of modernization. "We have suffered multiple internal divisions, and we replicated schism after schism in our ranks," he said. "It would be a mistake to try to reinvent the wheel."'

Since 2003, the warning has gone unheeded and the anticipated replication of multiple and parallel, dare one say, rival jurisdictions has begun to advance at an ever-increasing rate.

As of today, we now have, representing Global South jurisdictions in the USA...

The AMiA Episcopate of Rwanda and Southeast Asia
Bishop Martin Mynns of Nigeria
Bishop-Elect William Atwood of Kenya
Bishop-Elect John Guernsey of Uganda

In addition to these names can be added the dozens of American parishes which do not (as of yet) have their own American bishops but are under the episcopal oversight of foreign Anglican Communion provinces. In all this surging jurisdictional division, the perfectly valid, catholic and orthodox episcope of the Continuing Churches is entirely by-passed and ignored.

And surely there are more American bishops of foreign Anglican provinces yet to be created. Sadly, it all seems like 1977 or 1979 all over again. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

As Brian would ask, shall we join the Judean People's Front or the People's Front of Judea?

Is the wheel indeed being reinvented? Is the seminal mistake committed by the Continuing Church hierarchy now being repeated? Does the prophecy ring true?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

History is being repeated by those who didn't see it the first time. The Continuers of a generation ago were held in such low esteem by the establishment of the day that nothing about them (including their organizational missteps) was noticed. Now that old establishment thinks that its current agony (in re, principally a homosexual Bishop) is a brand new phenomenon. That the slippery slope was perceived a generation ago is inconceivable to them since they didn't perceive it. That organizational mayhem is a danger is inconceivable to them since this is all so new to them.

J. Gordon Anderson said...

One of the scary things with many of these new groups (e.g. Minns group) is that the courts have not decided yet if they even own their property. If the courts decide in favor of TEC, annd these congregations are kicked out, what will become of them?

In that respect (property ownership) the CCs are much more stable than these new groups, I think.

Anonymous said...

I once mixed lemon juice and lime juice..............pretty good!

Archbishop Donald Arden

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