FIF NA: Common Cause Partnership welcomes the Jerusalem Declaration

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2008/07/26/fif-na-common-cause-partnership-welcomes-the-jerusalem-declaration/#more-4449

[Anglican Mainstream] 26 Jul 2008--One of the two stated goals of Forward in Faith, North America, has been since its Assembly in Riverside, CA, the creation of an orthodox province of the Anglican Communion in North America.

The conservative primates of the Communion have made clear since that time their unwillingness to deal separately with a multitude of conservative groups in North America. They have asked the various groups to form a single body to speak and act for them all. Because those conservative groups are divided, not only by issues of sponsorship, but also by their respective positions on certain issues — not least, the ordination of women — the group which they have formed to this end, the Common Cause Partnership (CCP), is federal in structure. It is hoped that as these issues are addressed and resolved, the group may adopt a more traditional structure.

Forward in Faith North America was a founding member of the group, and its representatives have played an active part in the drafting of its theological statement and the design of its structure. Since the CCP is a federation, it in no way impinges on the four essentials which FiF NA, together with FiF in the UK, requires of any structural arrangment: a clearly orthodox line of apostolic succession, entire control of the process of selecting, training, and ordaining candidates for the apostolic ministry, the right to opt out of decisions of the larger structure if they contravene its theological principles, and freedom to pursue its own ecumenical relationships.

"Does the CCP Theological Statement, in the drafting of which Forward in Faith played an active part live up to the standards of the Jerusalem Declaration?" is a question that some evangelical Anglicans are asking in North America. The Jerusalem Declaration regards the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer and Ordinal of 1662 as "the" standards for Anglicans in matters of faith and practice while the CCP Theological Statement regards them as just one of a number of standards and plays down their importance. "Shouldn't a new North American province to which GAFCON gives recognition conform in its doctrinal and worship standards to that of the Jerusalem Declaration?" they ask.