Conference Examines Future of Anglican Orthodoxy

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2008/9/15/conference-examines-future-of-anglican-orthodoxy

[The Living Church] 16 Sep 2008--Two leading Anglo-Catholic bishops presented differing visions for regaining Anglican unity at “The Hope and Future of Orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion: A Festival of Faith Conference,” held Sept. 13 at St. Luke’s Church, Bladensburg, Md.

The Most Rev. Drexel Gomez, Archbishop of the West Indies, and the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman, Bishop of Quincy, were the featured speakers at St. Luke’s, an Anglo-Catholic parish in the Diocese of Washington.

The bishops agreed that Anglican unity remains torn, just as the primates said it would be, by the consecration of the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire—and by the deeper theological divisions evident in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Archbishop Gomez stressed the importance of a Communion-wide covenant being drafted by an international panel that he leads. “There is nothing on the horizon that offers reasonable hope of holding the Communion together, other than the covenant,” he said.

Bishop Ackerman referred to building unity not only with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, but also with churches that have Anglican roots but are not in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury