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By The Reverend Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mr. Mark McCall By her action purporting to accept a "renunciation" by Bishop Iker of his ordained ministry, the Presiding Bishop has taken her abuse and contortion of TEC's canons to a new level. In doing so, however, she has inexplicably conceded that Bishop Iker has not violated the Constitution and Canons of TEC and that he is no longer subject to its discipline. This clearly unintended consequence not only will have serious implications for any future litigation in Fort Worth, it...
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The last few years of struggle within the Episcopal Church (TEC) and within the Anglican Communion have taken their toll on many persons and congregations, and on our common life in a larger way. Every day brings some new report on the impending or already achieved "break-up" of Anglicanism and on the spectacle of "global schism", even while Anglican leaders insist that this hasn't happened yet. Many congregations in the United States, and some in Canada, have left their denominations for other forms of Anglican relationship. Even more congregations, including many that have left TEC, have...
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Work in formulating and adopting an Anglican Covenant is proceeding, and with renewed focus. I judge this to be the case despite some vocal claims that the project is both pointless and perverse. Most of these limited and negative claims have come from Western Anglicans intent on maintaining their local autonomy in terms of non-accountability to other Anglican churches and the Communion at large; and among these voices, not surprisingly, is a preponderance of Americans. But there have also been conservative voices, associated with the primarily non-Western group known as GAFCON (Global...
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January 11th, 2009 The Baptism of Our Lord To the Members of the Covenant Design Group and the Windsor Continuation Group: I write to you as a concerned member of the Covenant Design Group, as a committed member of the Episcopal Church (USA), and as one whose professional and spiritual life has been and continues to be devoted to the strengthening of our common witness as Anglican Christians. This is a simple plea for us to do our work better in the midst of continuing ecclesial disintegration. What motivates this plea at this time? On the one hand, no more than the general evidence of ongoing...
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On behalf of the Advisory Committee of the Communion Partner Rectors, and on behalf of our Bishops and Primatial colleagues, we wish to acknowledge the remarks recently published from Bishop Iker and Bishop Duncan at the Charleston conference hosted by 'Mere Anglicanism.' They speak of wanting the Communion Partners and Common Cause to support one another. For our part we will continue to pray for solid progress at the level of Covenant Design Committee work and for the Instruments of Communion, especially the Primates Meeting shortly to commence. We cannot know how the efforts associated with...
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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. In recent months ACI has asked with increasing urgency whether the Presiding Bishop is willing and able to comply with the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church. Her most recent canonical misadventure is purporting to remove from the ordained ministry a bishop in the Church of England canonically resident and working in England and subject to the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Oxford and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her canonical overreaching has now...
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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. Defenders of the Presiding Bishop are scrambling to re-interpret her extraordinary action of depriving a bishop of the Church of England of the gifts and authority conferred in his ordination and removing him from the ordained ministry of The Episcopal Church. For example, the group supporting the Presiding Bishop in Pittsburgh stated that "[t]his is a routine way of permitting Bishop Scriven to continue his ministry." In the strange world of TEC, renunciation of...
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Briefly Newsworthy When Laurent Nkunda was captured leaving the eastern Congo on January 22, 2009, a tentative sense of relief was felt by many in and around the area. Nkunda has been the leader of a "rebel" army that has, since 2004 at least, roamed the north-eastern areas of Congo, killing, raping, and pillaging the populace in the name of defending Tutsi Congolese from the attacks of Hutu extremists who had infiltrated the area after their expulsion from Rwanda in the mid-1990's. Most recently, his army staged an offensive that seemed bent on overcoming areas protected by the UN following...
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THREE LECTURES ON THE CURRENT STATE AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION AND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH The Rev. Dr. Philip Turner Springfield Ill. February 2009 Lecture Three What Then Shall We Do? I have argued that TAC and TEC stand at a cross roads in their respective histories. We are faced with a classical question that St. Luke states simply and clearly. “What then shall we do?” Are we to covenant or are we not to covenant? That is the question. That the question is a live one became obvious in the responses given to TSAD by the Bishops of our Communion when last they assembled at...
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THREE LECTURES ON THE PRESENT STATE AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION AND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH The Rev. Dr. Philip Turner Springfield Ill. February 2009 Lecture Two T he Grand Design How is a space in time in which conflict can be overcome and unity preserved to be, if not created, at least marked out? How is this task to be accomplished when the collegiality of bishops has unraveled to an alarming degree, and there is no centralized political and/or juridical order to fill the gap left by its decline? Or, to put the question in a more positive manner, how is the koinonia of the...
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