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One concern about the covenant process now underway is that the reality of the Communion's present condition could be bypassed by well-intentioned efforts of a committee to hear everyone and find a common document that proves unable to address a reality. We are in a crisis. Unless someone can offer facts to the contrary, there is only one way for an Anglican Communion to remain in place, and no real alternatives to that. Indeed this was the Archbishop of Canterbury's own stated assumption from the very beginning as he sought to address the crisis before us. This is for a two-tiered composition...
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With Bishop Sauls' lengthy and considered review of the canonical irregularities in the cases of Bishops Cox and Schofield, we can now assume that the leadership of The Episcopal Church has made the best case that can be made in defense of these actions. But a review of Bishop Sauls' memorandum shows that one cannot defend the indefensible. His analysis studiously avoids addressing the controlling issues. He extols safeguards that were not followed in these very cases. His inexplicable misreading of the legislative history of Canon IV.9 points to yet further proof confirming the plain meaning...
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Communion Partner Rectors As a fellowship of Communion Partner Rectors, we welcome and support the release of the Communion Partner Bishops' Statement. As this initiative moved forward, we felt it crucial to have the support of a growing group of rectors from Episcopal parishes throughout the United States and we will form a counterpart to Partner Bishops and Partner Primates. We believe it important that we are a broad partnership, extended across dioceses of various levels of Communion commitment. We pledge our prayers and support to one another and to the Bishops and Primates working...
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COMMUNION PARTNERS In the context of discussions about the Episcopal Visitors concept announced by the Presiding Bishop at the House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans, we the undersigned have considered a need to maintain and strengthen • our ties with the Anglican Communion • our commitment to the observance of diocesan boundaries within The Episcopal Church • and our exercise of our office as a focus of unity. We believe such ties will provide the opportunity for mutual support, accountability and fellowship; and present an important sign of our connectedness in and vision for The Episcopal...
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Background The American Episcopal Church has since its inception understood itself to be an integral part of a much broader Anglican reality. Unlike the Methodist Church, for example, it chose not to declare ecclesial independence in the American context, but carefully referred and deferred to the Church of England and to Anglicanism in the wider context of the British Isles. Samuel Seabury sought consecration in the Church of England and when that was not possible for political reasons, he was consecrated in Aberdeen.Though the American Church had functioned without indigenous bishops for...
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If I may, I step ever so gently into this discussion. I rarely visit the blogs, and even more rarely contribute to them; but obviously for those of us who are, at present, committed to the CPP (Communion Partners Plan) this is an important moment to give more fuller expression to the meaning, purpose and hopes of those of us who have gathered around the Plan. TomRightmyer asks a crucial question; "...what happened in the low church evangelical parishes in the last quarter of the 19th century." Let me suggest we step just a bit further back -- to the late 1700's; and up until 1836 when one of...
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A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Dr. George Sumner, Principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto, on April 22, 2008, St. Margaret's Anglican Church, Winnipeg, on the occasion of a conference on "The Nuptial Mystery" It was a moment of clarity, and I convey it to you with permission. I was a tagalong at a meeting of Windsor bishops in Texas a year and a half ago, and it was the turn of Bishop Mark McDonald, then of Alaska, now of indigenous Canada, (and I would proudly add, a Wycliffe College graduate), to speak. He began by telling us that, during debates on the same-sex issue, Gwitchen Anglicans...
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Sermon preached by the Very Rev. Dr. George Sumner, Principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto on May 30, 2008, at the Tyndale University College Conference on "The Holy Trinity and Scripture" I heard recently that my teacher of New Testament in university, Krister Stendahl, died- though I came to disagree with him on several counts, I am grateful and appreciative of him. He was a scholar's scholar; after a serious auto accident, he was asked whether he wanted his back fused straight up or at a 45% angle, to which he responded: "give me the slanted one, I read a lot." He also had his 10...
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The Society for the Propagation of Reformed Evangelical Anglican Doctrine (SPREAD) recently issued an appeal that the Anglican Communion be split. In particular, the appeal, entitled "Counterfeit Communion and the Truth that Sets Us Free", has urged that all those committed to the "Anglican Faith" which is "defined by the Church of England's Articles of Religion, 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 1662 Ordinal" , "separate from" the Archbishop of Canterbury and form a new and properly orthodox Anglican Communion. This "urgent call to action", the appeal says, will be presented to the assembled...
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A short primer in defense of an Anglican Covenant Ephraim Radner, Wycliffe College (Toronto, Canada) and member of the Covenant Design Group How did the idea of a Covenant arise? The history of the proposed Covenant goes back over a decade. Here are a few key elements in this history: In 1997 the so-called "Virginia Report" of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission began a rich process of reflecting on the needs of a growing, diversifying, and changing Anglican Communion. This included analyzing and re-thinking in some cases the current structures and relationships among...
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