The Network and The Common Cause-some initial observations

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6380

[Virtue Online] 24 July 2007--I always read my friend Dr Radner's essays with care, and I highly respect him even though we belong to different forms of Anglicanism-he fully embraces women priests and I fully reject them, even as I also affirm the great value of the ministry of godly women. His expressed concerns at the direction of the Anglican Communion Network are to be taken most seriously, which I do. Having read his essay, these are my thoughts.

What may be called Episcopalianism and/or Anglicanism in the U.S.A. is in one big mess. All this has come about initially (but not completely) through the faithlessness, heresy and apostasy within the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. since the 1960s. Secessions from PECUSA have occurred continually-by dribs and drabs and occasionally in brief intensity-since the days of the civil rights rallies and marches. Thus the most recent secessions primarily over the new doctrine of sexuality in this Church are part of a long line.

The practical difference between the secessions since 2004 and the major ones of 1977 (which created the Continuing Anglican Church[es]) is that major players in the Anglican Communion are involved in the recent ones, even to the extent of gathering the seceders into their arms as shepherds and making them part of their provinces. And thus it is that very little attention is paid by the most recent seceders to those who preceded them, and so they cannot even learn from them and their experience of extra-mural Anglicanism-its pros and cons! I note here that only rarely does Dr Radner mention the traditional Continuing Anglicans in his essays.