The Continuum and Its Problems

http://www.challengeonline.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=236

[The Christian Challenge] 30 Dec 2009--Editor's Note: To read this article, scroll down to the center of the page.

Introduction

There were three major traditionalist/conservative reactions to the 1976 General Convention of The Episcopal Church (TEC)* in Minneapolis, or, more specifically, to its approval of women priests and bishops and of the first reading of a new Prayer Book (a more radical break with its predecessors than in past such cases). The first was to go to Rome, the second was to stay within TEC and fight these new innovations from there, and the third was to leave and form a new and more orthodox “continuing” body. These three approaches are still being used and thus are relevant today.

Those of the Roman orientation had produced a Pro-Diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury by 1978, which was a non-starter. But they found some welcome via the Roman Church’s 1980 Pastoral Provision, under which they founded six “Anglican Use” Roman Catholic parishes by 1983; there are nine now.

The “stay within” crowd was found in the Evangelical Catholic Mission (ECM), which then became the Episcopal Synod of America (ESA), and then the (present-day) Forward in Faith, North America (FIF-NA). They continue to work within TEC but now more and more in the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), formed in 2008-09 in opposition to the homosexual agenda but still tolerating women priests (but not bishops) and the 1979 Prayer Book.

Most of those leaving as a body following the ‘76 convention did so after a September 1977 Congress in St. Louis had given them a theological document, The Affirmation of St. Louis, which declared the existence of a new body – interestingly also called the Anglican Church in North America! - and after that body proceeded to organize new dioceses whose bishops-elect were consecrated in Denver in January 1978. A constitution and canons also were developed at the Dallas 1978 First Synod of what was the Anglican Church in North America going into the meeting and the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) coming out of it. The problems of this body and those related to it, which have split and re-split and ingested new elements since 1978 and which we shall call “the Continuum,” will be the focus of this paper.

One of these (widely-defined) Continuum elements, the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) – an international fellowship that includes among its 15 provinces the Anglican Church in America (ACA) and the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) - should be noted here for following all three courses of action at the same time. Stemming from the original ACC in part, the TAC follows the separate organization approach. But in 2002 it also entered into communion with the “stay within” FIF-NA (which did, however, ratify The Affirmation of St. Louis the same year) and - without rescinding this agreement - petitioned Rome for some sort of mutual recognition in 2007. (It still has received no definitive reply.)

Another manifestation provides continuity and a sort of baseline for the post-1976 Continuum against which the rest might be related. It consists, first of all, of the late James O. Mote, the first bishop elected by the Continuum, and his parish, St. Mary’s, Denver, the first congregation to leave TEC after the ‘76 General Convention; it is still the cathedral of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity, a founding part of what became the Anglican Catholic Church. When I visited this parish in the 1960s, incidentally, I found it the most spiritually active that I had ever witnessed; and the ACC’s Trinitarian notes that it still has three Masses daily!