Thank You Bishops: Orthodox Unity Restored

http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/2692/

[Stand Firm] 29 Mar 2007--The bishops of the Episcopal Church have done the (seemingly) impossible. With a few exceptions they have managed to heal the division between communion conservatives and federal conservatives.

In months following Camp Allen I and Camp Allen II there had been a widening rift between those orthodox who advocated an internal strategy based on a diverse group of Windsor Bishops united by the Camp Allen principles, determined to remain distinct from, but operate within, the existing structures of the Episcopal Church; and those who sought a separate, largely confessional, "both/and" structure that existed both within and beyond the jurisdictional boundaries of the Episcopal Church.

The ACI proposal, for an example of the latter, suggested an internal strategy that would have provided some significant jurisdictional relief for Windsor parishes in non-Windsor dioceses but left departed Network parishes and Common Cause partners like the AMiA and CANA with no near-term option for participation beyond an unthinkable return to the Episcopal Church.

By contrast, the strategy articulated by Bishop Duncan at the 2006 Network Conference in Pittsburgh, envisioned a structure straddling the jurisdictional boundaries of the Episcopal Church, founded on a confessional document, that would serve to unite the orthodox.

The source of the division between communion and federal conservative was, I believe, a core difference with regard to ecclesiology. Communion conservatives tend to favor a conciliar approach to controversies. It is not that they favor unity over truth. Rather, they tend to believe that truth is best discerned and determined from within the boundaries of a united body and they lament the visible divisions so evident in Protestantism. The prospect of a cohesive internal structure (the Windsor Coalition) based on conciliar (Windsor) principles was ideal from the standpoint of communion conservatives because it maintained the greatest level of institutional unity possible both within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.