Post-Columbus: ACN Annual Council begins Monday. Will "formalize a foundation for our shared faith and ministry," says Bob Duncan.

Episcopalians seek to heal old wounds

Meetings hoped to end 130 years of division

Sunday, July 30, 2006

By Steve Levin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Biblically orthodox Anglicans will meet twice in Pittsburgh during the next three weeks to cement ties among conservative Episcopalians and several factions that have left the denomination over the past 130 years.

Both gatherings will be led by Pittsburgh Episcopal Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. Participants will develop and approve theological statements of faith and ministry.

Monday marks the third annual meeting of the Anglican Communion Network. It will run through Wednesday at Trinity Cathedral, Downtown. Bishop Duncan is moderator of the group of diocesan leaders and congregations that has aligned since 2004 in response to actions by the Episcopal Church which they believe violate Scripture. The group has some 200,000 members.

About 80 representatives -- two clergy, two laity and the diocesan bishop or convocational dean from each of the network's 10 dioceses and six regional convocations -- will consider theological tenets that, Bishop Duncan said, would "formalize a foundation for our shared faith and ministry as orthodox Anglicans in North America."

The second gathering, from Aug. 16-18, will bring together representatives of nine Anglican groups, including the network, who will vote on those tenets. Those representatives are known as the Common Cause Roundtable.

The groups include the American Anglican Council, Anglican Essentials Canada, Anglican Mission in America, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Anglican Province of America, Forward in Faith North America and the Reformed Episcopal Church. They represent as many as 80,000 people.

"These are Anglican jurisdictions that have not really known each other over the years," Bishop Duncan said. "In fact, we actually are very much unified. Not in legal terms, but there's a great spiritual consonance among us."

These so-called "continuing churches" separated from the Episcopal Church for various reasons during the past 130 years.

The Reformed Episcopal Church, for example, broke away in 1873 over issues of excessive ritualism and relations with other denominations. Today, it has about 13,400 members in the United States and several foreign countries.

The Anglican Mission in America, on the other hand, was formed in 2000. It is a missionary outreach of the Anglican province of Rwanda, one of the 39 members of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and has between 15,000 and 20,000 members.

The proposed seven-point theological statement includes affirmations that the Old and New Testaments are "the inspired Word of God containing all things necessary for salvation" and acceptance of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion "as foundational for authentic Anglican belief and practice and as correctives to doctrinal abuses."

The articles, established in 1563, are the defining statement of the Anglican Church. The Episcopal Church considers the Thirty-Nine Articles a historical document and does not require members to adhere to them.

The Episcopal Church is the American arm of the more than 70-million-member Anglican Communion and has about 2.3 million members.